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Dr. Monica Burns is an edtech and curriculum consultant, former New York City public school teacher, and founder of ClassTechTips.
She works with schools and organizations around the world to support PreK-20 educators with thoughtful technology integration. Monica’s website ClassTechTips.com and Easy EdTech Podcast help educators place “tasks before apps” by promoting deeper learning with technology.
Monica’s latest book is EdTech Essentials: 12 Strategies for Every Classroom in the Age of AI, 2nd Edition (ASCD & ISTE, 2024).
We discuss:
- The biggest challenges in education the past 3 years
- How to get to the heart of AI and what makes it meaningful
- How students and educators can develop an AI mindset
- Becoming a trusted source as an educator
- What’s now possible in education?
- Navigating online spaces effectively
- Generating ideas and resources with AI
- Assessment — checking for understanding and pivoting instruction
- Interesting voices on AI: Ken Shelton and Dee Lanier (The Promises and Perils of AI in Education), Joy Buolamwini (Unmasking AI), Ethan Mollick (Co-Intelligence)
- Favorite resources for teachers to learn more about AI
Find EdTech Essentials, 2nd Edition from ASCD or wherever you get your books. Learn more about Monica and all of her books at https://classtechtips.com.
Connect with today’s guest
Listen to Monica’s Easy EdTech Podcast or connect with her on social media:
- https://classtechtips.com/category/podcast/
- Twitter.com/classtechtips
- Facebook.com/classtechtips
- Pinterest.com/classtechtips
- Instagram.com/classtechtips
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/monicaaburns/
About the 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 LinkedIn
I also host Sideline Sessions, a podcast for coaches and parents of student-athletes. The show features conversations with coaches and performance experts in the NFL, NBA, NCAA, Olympics, and more. Listen here: https://bit.ly/3Rp0QGt
We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL.
IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:
- Simplify and streamline technology
- Save teachers’ time
- Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
- Improve student performance on state assessments
🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.
Creators & Guests
Host
What is The Authority Podcast — Expert Insights and Fresh Ideas for Education Leaders?
Are you looking for proven ideas to increase your influence, hire and develop an excellent staff, build a stronger culture, lead meaningful change, and form a strong foundation for learning and leadership success? This is the podcast for you.
Whether you're a leader to seeks to refine your command of core educational strategies, learn new management techniques from those who have used them at some of the world's largest corporations, gain fresh perspectives on personal development or student success from practitioners across fields, or a little bit of everything, you'll find powerful content on The Authority.
Join leadership coach, storytelling strategist, and edtech advisor Ross Romano as he interviews the prominent education authors you already admire, up-and-coming voices, and experts from the worlds of business, personal development, and beyond — including Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Amazon bestsellers — to take a deep dive into their wealth of practical insights.
Ross Romano: [00:00:00] in, everybody. You are listening, as always, to the Authority Podcast here on the Be Podcast Network. Thanks for being with us, and it's going to be a great conversation covering a lot of the topics that are are ripe for discussion, debate, and exploration in schools today. My guest is Dr. Monica Burns.
She is an Ed Tech and Curriculum Consultant and a former New York City public school teacher. Monica works with schools and organizations around the world to support pre K-20 educators with thoughtful technology integration. Her website, ClassTechTips. com, and Easy EdTech podcast help educators place tasks before apps by promoting deeper learning with technology.
The book we're [00:01:00] talking about today is the second edition of EdTech Essentials. It is 12 Strategies for Every Classroom in the Age of AI, published by ASCD and ISTE. It is out now. Monica, welcome to the show.
Monica Burns: Thank you so much for having me.
Ross Romano: So if I'm correct, the first edition of EdTech Essentials was released in 2021. So we're, you know, only a few years apart from that, and yet a lot has been changing in the technology landscape. What are some of the biggest changes that, that have happened that, that kind of prompted, right, the the release of this second edition?
Monica Burns: Yeah. So when we put out the book in 2021 was excited to publish again with ASCD for the first edition of the book. We wanted to make sure that we had resources and strategies that I included things that really honored. The varied experiences that educators were still having in terms of classroom instruction.
So it might be physical face to face. We're all in the same environment, or it might be [00:02:00] virtual teaching online or at a distance. So in this new edition, we've removed some of those pieces that alluded to or were. or really incorporate the distance learning piece. I have a quick reference guide with ASCD that has distance learning strategies.
So we felt like that was the best place to point people to, if they were looking for that specifically the new edition has two additional strategies. So the entire book is revamped, but the two additional strategies and a thread throughout the book, not a focus, but a thread throughout the book, right.
Is the impact of artificial intelligence. in education, particularly in instructional planning and preparing students to navigate a world where they might see content that's generated not just from a person like you and me but with the help of or entirely by, right, artificial intelligence. So the two new strategies are generate, which talks about [00:03:00] ways that Educators can generate content using AI power tool.
Maybe it's a chat bot. Maybe it's a tool designed specifically for educators. And then the other strategy is evaluate. We talked about evaluating sources in the first edition. That was something that the folks at ASCD and I were, you know, knew was important, and we talked a lot in different parts of the book.
But here we really, you know, I'm. Hold it out and wanted to make sure it was its own strategy or its own essential because we know it's so important that we as adult professional educators are strengthening our own evaluation of resources that come our way before we share it with students and we want those to be transparent conversations in many instances with students to say, I know this is strong because this is a valid source because, right.
And that comes back to the AI of it all. So there's an updated subtitle for the book as well. (ad here)
Ross Romano: Yeah. [00:04:00] And so AI being, you know, the, the big thing that's become more and more prominent and is going to keep trending in that direction. How do we, get to the heart of AI and like what's meaningful about it. I mean, I think that those two letters they, they spark a lot of emotional responses from, you know, fear and anxiety on the one end to I think some people on the other end who have decided I'm going to make AI my entire personality and it's all I'm going to talk about.
Right. And, and you know, I think in, in there's, Risks that certainly come up in a lot of discussions around schools and educators being too slow to act and embrace and understand and get students, right, really developing the skills around AI. I think there's also some risk around it just falling into, you know, education [00:05:00] jargon and buzzword land like happens with some other things where all, you know, every company is now going to put something about AI in their messaging because AI technologies have been around a long time.
They're not brand new. There's new versions with generative AI, right? But there's also a difference between new purpose and new possibilities. And tools, some of them that I'm, I think I don't really know what this does. So anyway, you know, how do we like really get to kind of defining, all right, what's meaningful about this and what are the things we want to be talking about and exploring that underpin just those, those letters that mean a lot of things to a lot of people.
Monica Burns: mean, it's important to have a healthy hesitation with any new technology, particularly something like this that's changing very fast, that has lots of layers of complexity to it. You know, as you mentioned, AI has been around for decades. [00:06:00] What we're looking at now that's been so in front of all of us, particularly in education, Right.
Is the generative AI creating content or interacting with content that someone's created, right? That didn't quite exist before, even though it's learned from and informed by other content that has been out there and available in the past. So, you know, I think it's important to look at. what the implications are in all of our roles.
So I've been doing a good amount of speaking and sharing this year around, you know, a topic that's always been one for me, which is, you know, making ed tech easier for educators. And now the primary focus of those conversations is what does AI look like, right in that realm. So not just the, how am I going to find more creative activities or look at formative assessment differently.
Something I've spoken about for a while, but now how does AI come into that same overarching, you know, mission of mine on how we can use [00:07:00] technology to make our lives as educators a bit more easier and scale our impact really. So the areas that I'm looking at related to instructional planning. So not, you know, students opening up a chat GPT, right, but an educator deciding what they're going to do within these spaces is around using it as a quick assistant to help, right, do a task that they could do, but maybe isn't the best use of their time.
So I could definitely add an emoji to a list of fruits and vegetables. But it might take me 10, 15 minutes, and it's not the best use of my time here. I could use a chat bot like a quick assistant, or I might have a colleague down the hall that I can run down to and ask a question or ask for advice. Or I might have a meeting tomorrow with a colleague, but I could also go to a chat bot as a collaborator, gather some ideas and be way more prepared for that meeting I have tomorrow with my colleague.
It's giving us a place to start our conversation. Then [00:08:00] just looking at each other and wondering, where do we start? And then, you know, the other area that I'm really focused on is what this can mean for personalizing learning experiences for students too, right? Personalized learning can sometimes feel like a big buzzword, right?
Or a, what does that quite mean initiative, but here, you know, I'm thinking of how we can use AI tools to. to scale our impact and reach more students. That might be going to a chat bot and saying, I'm teaching, you know, how to multiply fractions. My students love basketball, show me a way that these two things connect, right?
So that way I can do something that's going to get those three kids who are struggling to engage. way more interested right in this topic. So there's a lot of layers when we talk about AI in education, policy, student use cases, right? All different things. But I'm really kind of staying in my lane, if you will, and looking at how this impacts instructional planning for [00:09:00] educators.
I
Ross Romano: Yeah. So let's talk AI mindset in a world of, of AI technologies existing and, and having to understand and know that they're out there and, and basically some of the things they're capable of doing. Let's do like for students first, I think for students and educators, there's, there's different components of the mindset, but for students, what is an AI mindset?
Monica Burns: it's understanding that they may interact with content that is created not by a human, right? But with artificial intelligence. So thinking first as a consumer, right? Having that AI mindset doesn't mean that we're suspicious, right? As are all of our interactions with the world, but that we do have a bit of a radar, right?
That we're, we see something, it doesn't quite fit, right? No, we have a healthy level of security. Skepticism. As we're reviewing content, we're doing that double check of, can I trust this source and why? So having an AI mindset, [00:10:00] you know, that's one aspect of it that I think is important for students. You know, you might also come at that with a creator, you know, creator angle.
Like if I am operating in a world where AI is an option for me. What does that look like? Right? If I have access to a tool that can help me brainstorm, how do I use it? Do I know what's even possible with one of these tools, right? We don't know what we don't know. So if I'm not sure what to even ask, right, this tool is not going to be very helpful for me.
You know what, am I cognizant of what it means to share content that I've created with help, right? With a collaborator, just like I would give credit to a friend, right, who sat down with me. and helped me work through my ideas and edit something and get it ready to share with everyone. Am I giving credit to that tool, right?
That helped me out. So there's a level of transparency. So that's where my head is at from the student perspective right now.
Ross Romano: Yeah, it's certainly [00:11:00] Is kind of the, you know, the modern or more, even more modern version of media literacy, right? And information literacy and, and understanding that there's a lot of different ways that very real looking information and, you know, it was, it's real in some form or fashion, but that it could be generated by a generative AI tool.
And it could not be authentic in that. sense, and it's, you know, and it's coming at a time when it's extra critical and certainly really, really important for students to be learning this because it is, you know, in some ways, working against some of the tides of what digital literacy kind of looks like in the population at large and, and how, of course particularly people who maybe didn't grow up as digital natives are [00:12:00] slower to react to some of those changes.
And, but it's a real, I mean, it's really important. And as you mentioned, like, as far as understanding sourcing and, and credit, that there's those extra layers. Of sourcing to dive into to say, okay, when it comes to, you know, right, proper use and plagiarism and things like that to say, okay, I, I use the chat bot or some AI tool to.
Get a summary of some information and, and one, I, I need to know the questions to ask to figure out, okay, is this really accurate? But also, where did it come from? Right? This, this wasn't made up this wasn't the original source. It came from other sources. So how do I dive further into that? Kind of learn more about it and use this as a, as a good tool as in, you know, some cases kind of a, the 2.
0 version of a Wikipedia, right, where that's a great first place to go to learn a little bit about something, and then [00:13:00] okay, now I need to go to some primary sources to get a little more, but I understood how that was valuable to me. What about for educators? What, what's, what are the components of an AI mindset as they're entering the classrooms in this world?
Monica Burns: Yeah. So one big area for educators is understanding how these tools work and what they do right and what they can do for them right in their daily workflow is really where I come at it in my conversations with educators. So, you know, I started the year like literally January 2nd with a group of educators in Missouri who asked me, you know, their School, one of their school leaders had asked me to come out to work with this group, you know, on that early day back because they didn't want them to do a new thing.
They wanted them to understand how to save time and AI was going to be the vehicle to do that. They knew they were dealing with, you know, burnout issues. They wanted to make sure everything was sustainable for their educators. So we, you know, really [00:14:00] accomplished two goals, which was introducing them to what AI is, what it looks like, right?
Getting their hands on with it. And then strategies to save them time with their own planning, with their communication tasks. So having an AI mindset is partly understanding what's possible, right? So what does this mean? What can this do for me, right? The other piece is to understand the applications for their everyday workflow.
That could be everything from, I need help rewording this email before I send it to someone. to I'm looking to update my lessons so that it makes a connection to the summer Olympics, right? So, you know, this could be a few different things. So from a content creation side, interacting with the tools, that's one thing that I think is really important.
And then the other area, having an AI mindset as an educator. As understanding what student interactions might look like, not so that we are [00:15:00] policing behavior or are, are feeling like we need to jump in or make any sort of, you know, accusations about what a student is doing, but to understand what a student might feel.
Think, you know, is the best use case, my try within different tools so that they can be there to have great conversations with a student, you know, for example, it may be something where they're sharing, you know, we're using the student facing tool to help you ideate and brainstorm, and that can feel really good in our classroom, but that should be the experience.
Sense of the help that you're getting right now, or we're gonna use these tools that help give feedback or help with grammar and spelling and that's okay in our environment as long as we're flagging when we're getting help, you know? Or it may be something like you're working with a group of students.
They're struggling as writers to communicate ideas, and you're introducing a generative AI tool that's student friendly, that allows them to [00:16:00] describe the picture that they're struggling to draw or write about, and then have an image that they can present alongside with their work. So that's one piece of it, you know, from the educator side, you know, to extend the Their interaction with student or or designing tasks, right?
That might also mean that they're allocating some time to rethink what activities look like in their classroom. You know, I've had a few people say to me how Blue Books have come up in conversations, and I like had this. Full body reaction as a student with someone passing a blue book over my in their head to my head, right, to write out our essays as a time test.
I hope we're not going back to that. I don't think that assessment as we know it is extinct, but I think we're in this period of evolution where we aren't going to be able to jump from one to the next thing without some really thoughtful time and planning to say, we used to do this. Now when we are checking for understanding, we're leaving a lot more time for [00:17:00] process, a lot more time for peer to peer feedback.
We're celebrating the parts of the process, not just the finished piece. Like, we care about how you get to the end, not just that you got to the end.
Ross Romano: Yeah, yeah, that's interesting too. I mean, they're like, I think there are some things that are cyclical or some ideas to, to revisit that there used to be more or, or, you know, more debate about, or the debate landed in one. direction, you know, the ideas around, right, showing your work in math at partial credit, things like that, that now it's like, well, there, there's, you know, particular reasons why we want to see that thought process and understand it and have students make sure they understand it.
Also it seems like an opportunity for teachers when done right to establish themselves as a trusted source for exploration. These [00:18:00] technologies and, and to, you know, I, I've, I've. I've been thinking a lot about, of course, the implications for equity and access with AI and, and how, you know, if schools are not embracing it and making sure that students are having the opportunity to learn what's available and to start developing skills and figuring out how to use it, it's going to create divides between students.
Students are going to have that at home and have somebody teaching them about it and are going to learn it and are going to then, you know, really multiply those skills and creating opportunities in the future and those who may not have as many opportunities outside of school, but also even to be, you know, You know, for students to be willing to ask the teacher and say, hey, I was trying to do this, and I couldn't quite figure it out, and how might I prompt this differently, or, you know, when there's guidance around, alright, here's some tools, here's some good ways to use it for this [00:19:00] assignment, here's some ways that would be inappropriate to use it for this, or, you know, having some guidance and parameters, and and then it gives, you know, You know, creates a dialogue or creates a willingness of students to, to ask and to learn more and to not be afraid.
Hey, if this, if the term chat GPT even comes up in our classroom, it's like, you know, an automatic punishment, right? The, the code of silence, but. That can happen if it's never mentioned and it's just thought, all right, this is just something we can't talk about here.
Monica Burns: Yeah, I think that's a really great point in terms of having transparency, having great examples, right, and getting in front, right, of these conversations so that everyone knows what's going to feel good, right, in that particular learning environment and for students to understand that just like they might change the way they talk when they're talking to a friend or they're talking to a grandparent or they're talking to someone, right, when they're ordering at McDonald's, right, [00:20:00] like their voice and their way that they interact with that person might change, right?
The way that they leverage digital tools, particularly, right? AI powered tools in different environments and different parts of their life, right? Could look very different and they should be tuned into that.
Ross Romano: Well, let's, let's go through some of the strategies in the book. Of course, there's 12, so we won't get through all of them today, but I think there's some that are worth pulling out and having a little more discussion about. And they relate to, you know, ed tech beyond just the AI piece that we've been talking about.
But of course, again, that's, that's prominent now. But the first one, you know, navigating online spaces effectively. I mean, even in the time between now and back in 2021, but certainly over the past decade so much more of life takes place in online spaces, right? And, and those spaces start to look different and, and have, and take on different lives of their own.
But yeah, what are some of the, you know, [00:21:00] important things to think about as far as how to navigate them effectively and how to. Have that be part of teaching and learning.
Monica Burns: so as you mentioned, a big topic. And I say in the introduction of the book that, you know, each of these essentials, right, we're going through the components that I think are worthy of highlighting for someone to make a decision on how they might address or go into a little deeper. You could write a book or five, right, on all of the essentials.
And so when it comes to navigating online spaces and digital spaces, there are a few areas. that I highlight a bit more, you know, in that first chapter of the book. And one of them is just simply understanding the different types of content that someone might come across in a digital space, right? How do I interact with a video?
How do I Right. Interact with a text that might feel different. What should I anticipate when I see images, right? Just like we might look for captions or a table of contents when we open up an [00:22:00] informational text and study that together, right? As a group of second graders, right here is we're opening up a web page.
What are things that students should notice? What are things that they should see? And so. In that chapter, you know, that's one where I place an emphasis on modeling and thinking aloud the same way you would if you were solving a math problem with eighth graders under an overhead, you know, projector, right?
You'd want them to see your thought process as you were making decisions on what your next step is. So really in any content area, And any gray level, right? There can be a level of intention, right? As you're opening something up that you're maybe going to read aloud on an interactive whiteboard to just say, Oh, I think this is the button to make this text larger, or I'm going to pause this real fast and just rewind 15 seconds because you know, the bell just rang in another part of the building and was a distraction, right?
So, you know, just modeling those behaviors of how to navigate. And so [00:23:00] the ability to navigate digital spaces can be massive, particularly when it's in the context of a content rich activity. Sure, you could teach some of these things that are in a standalone, this is what this button does, this is what that button does, right?
But if we can thread it through the work that's already happening with those think clouds, right, it can help students start to make connections between how they also navigate digital spaces.
Ross Romano: Yeah, yeah. And I think that also relates to the, you know, the last point about there's so, so many things that students may be wanting to, to know about this. So, We don't want to have them feel like our teacher doesn't want to hear about this because there's a lot of good questions and good exploration they can have.
How about when it comes to generating ideas and resources with AI what, what's the value add, I guess, that AI brings to this versus You know, how, how ideas and resources would have been generated previously.[00:24:00]
Monica Burns: Yeah, so there is, of course, a level of more ease and efficiency when we're interacting with a tool. Make me a list of this, like reformat this information in a particular way, but when it comes to generating ideas and resources, it can really help us scale our impact and address goals that we have on our to do list, but we might not be able to do that.
get to everything. Like for example, we might know that differentiated instruction is so important and that we want to have two or three levels of tasks for an activity ready to go for students, but it may just be hard to do. So you might have a core task or activity and say, and ask for support with a chatbot and just say, I'm looking to make this a little more simple.
I'd like to add this extra vocabulary to this activity, right? And it can take that next step for you. It's not going to be perfect. It'll be maybe 70, 80 percent of the way there, but it can do something that you just might not [00:25:00] have the time to do, even if you know that it's a best and intentional. So generating resources.
with differentiation in mind is massive. It could be kind of the leveling example, like I just gave, or maybe differentiating by interest. So you might say that you're teaching this content and I want an activity that aligns with these three interests. Some of my kids love sharks. Some of them love dolphins.
Some of them love the solar system. Like how can I teach these three things? What's an independent activity that I could do in three different groups, right? You are in the driver's seat. It's only going to work if you know what to ask it to do. And that's really where an educator's expertise in pedagogy and the content area can, can shine.
So that's one component of generating content. The other piece that I think is worth mentioning is making connections. So this kind of goes with the interest piece, right? Connect this topic to this topic, but it also can be great for [00:26:00] cross curricular connections or connecting to an initiative. So the science of reading is an example of something that is being embraced by students.
by schools, right? All over. There might be a science teacher who's asked to incorporate literacy skills or more literacy skills into her work, right? If she's not sure how to incorporate, compare and contrast, or cause and effect, or even alliteration, you know, into an upcoming unit on the rock cycle.
That's where she might go to ask for some ideas, right? It might not be perfect, but it might get her wheels spinning on what she can do to accomplish both of those goals. Maybe it's not science of reading and literacy skills. Maybe you're looking to infuse computational thinking or computer science skills into a place that like, doesn't seem obvious at first.
This can help you make the jump. And I think that's a really powerful aspect.
Ross Romano: Assessment is another. Assessment, this one's, I don't know, maybe the most interesting to me right [00:27:00] now. When it comes to the checking for understanding, you know, pivoting, pivoting instruction accordingly. But even how it relates to working backwards and to the design of assignments and what they are and what are the skills that we want students to be developing.
You know, what are the skills that maybe are. now or in the very near future will no longer really be super valuable and marketable? What are the skills that will be durable and flexible? And then how should that be represented in assignments, right, and assessed? And then of course understanding again that There's all these different tools that can be used in completing assignments that we need to assess the, you know, the knowledge underneath that and then, you know, tools that can be used in assessing them as well, but you know, tell us about this assessment piece and how this, how this strategy is, is being modernized, could
Monica Burns: Yeah. So this assess essential was in the first edition, it's in the second edition, and it's one that usually grabs people's [00:28:00] attention too, right? They're thinking of how they can better check for understanding with digital tools. And, you know, I, when running book studies will sometimes suggest that we choose, you know, two or three of the essentials.
I'm doing one. Okay. This fall for a group and we're picking four essentials to focus in on for the book study and assess is one of them. It tends to always be one that people go for, you know, and this is something where we can identify the value add. Like what is the benefit of using a digital tool for assessment over instead of in addition to a sticky note, an index card, a thumbs up, thumbs in the middle, thumbs down, you know, like what is the value add or benefit?
And there's a few different things. So with digital tools, you can often give kids more choice all at once on how to share their thinking. Maybe they're using a tool that has an audio option, a video option, voice to text. text they type, [00:29:00] you know, or drawing tools all in one place. And you might have 30 kids and 25 of them choose one way, but the other five each choose something different, right?
So you might give more choice. You might also direct students to just use one type of way to share their learning, right? Depending on what it is that you want them to do, maybe snap a picture, annotate their diagram, right? And then send that right back to you. So Not only is there a level of choice for students and choice for teachers and how to check for understanding, there's also an opportunity to streamline your workflow so that you can organize content in a way that makes it easier to access as a teacher, but then quicker for you to give real time feedback.
Or make a judgment call on what needs to happen next. So I often think back to my early days in the classroom when I would ask everyone to put a sticky note in their spot they left off of on their composition or their marble notebook and then put it in a [00:30:00] pile when they went, you know, to lunch or to the next thing.
And then I would go through and look at all of them, right. And make some judgment calls on what should happen next for that student or for our whole class. Now that was a routine. It's a routine that I did a lot of, right. Especially in my first few years teaching, but when having access to devices, if the kids could put this in a digital notebook and I could swipe, swipe, swipes through, maybe even do a voice note, maybe they would get a notification right away.
Right. Especially now. or in a secondary classroom where kids might be, say, in a Google Doc or in a book reader or in a tool that has the feedback piece incorporated, you know, you can also gather, right, that real time data more quickly, organize it more quickly, have a level of cadence of your checking for understanding that students expect and able to take action, right, with that feedback piece.
Stronger information in many points, right? A student who might not be able to spell numerator and denominator might [00:31:00] hesitate to tell you, right? How they solve that fraction problem. But if they're jumping on audio, they're going to tell you every little thing. So better quality information in many instances, right?
More frequent. information and many instances and then that ability to take action.
Ross Romano: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, certainly when it comes to formative assessment, just regular ongoing, the timeliness of. Being able to, to take the appropriate action and move things forward. That adds up, right? Every, every day that you're able to deliver a lesson that is covering some of the things where, where kids need to catch up and you're able to do that more quickly over the course of a year takes advantage of, you know, a lot of that opportunity cost of, of the time that you, don't have extra time available.
And it's, it's a really good use. How about transferring skills across digital spaces? That is you know, that, that's an interesting [00:32:00] strategy as well.
Monica Burns: Yeah. So having the ability to transfer an experience from one spot to another is really important. We do it sometimes without thinking or naming it. And just like the navigational strategies, this is one where we can intentionally model for students. Like this button looks just like what we saw in the last tool.
I bet this button also means this, right? Or that icon is the camera button. I wonder if this tool has a camera built in. I've seen that before, right? So we're transferring skills from one digital skill If a tool sunsets, right, or is no longer available, thinking Jamboard or Flipgrid, right, or a tool that a lot of students spend time in, right, there's, you know, feel, everyone should feel their feelings about big changes, right?
Because it can be traumatic when you've spent a lot of time in one space. I don't mean to minimize that with any sort of level of, you know, toxic positivity by any means, right? But there is a lot of learning that happened. When students were in that [00:33:00] those spaces, right? They learned how to wait for a countdown clock to record.
They understood what it meant to go back and rerecord. So now if they are transferring those skills to another tool, right? They already have a foundation to build off of. So part of it is understanding these skills. Thread lines between different platforms, what to anticipate, what connections there might be, and how to take those experiences and use them when they get to a new or updated space.
And then another area really connects back to this idea of independence and building some autonomy so that students understand that there's not one person who has all the answers in a classroom, right? That they should be able to problem solve. that they should be able to go and ask, you know, three before me is a popular terminology in elementary school classrooms, but that they should be able to see their community as potential helpers.
Continuing that at the [00:34:00] secondary level, understanding that there are resources, forums, YouTube tutorials, books. places where we can often find answers and help, right, to questions in a tech environment. So the transfer chapter includes a few different angles of what it might mean to build independence and the experience, take experiences from one space and pull them, you know, see them as an asset right in another area.
Ross Romano: Yeah. So I wanted to talk about some of the, I think, You know, clarifying some of the goals around what some of the technologies enable which I think may help eventually to to, to fix some of the feelings about what's not working or what's broken. And in particular, one of the biggest things is, I think a lot of the [00:35:00] messaging around AI tools is about This saves teachers time. And there's also some current investigation and, and, you know, re revisiting of, is that actually happening? I mean, are there all these new things they're needing to learn, right? Are things that need to be changed because of the present that actually isn't? And I think both of those are true, but I also, my belief is that the point.
Like, saving teacher's time is not the point. It's saving time so that what? So I, you know, anytime that I, and, and this is of course, part of a lot of technology, not just AI tools, but anytime that I was working with a company on, on messaging and a company that had features that were meant to save teacher's time, like I always made sure we, we covered the next step, [00:36:00] Save teacher's time on this.
So that they can then do this. And so, you know, the goal as always is to ensure that more students can learn more, right? Develop more skills, have more opportunities for success in the future. These tools enable that. So I'm, so basically what I want to ask is what are some of the, so that. If we are saying, and we can really focus on that time saving piece, right, like AI and other technologies can help save teachers time, enable them to do these things more efficiently.
So that they have more time available to spend on these other things that are, are not part of the, you know, the technology piece, but really require that expertise, that human touch. And they are the things that, that [00:37:00] really are getting squeezed when there's a lot of time that needs to be spent on the, you know, the more operational or inessentials.
Right. So what's the, so that.
Monica Burns: Yeah, so a few things there, you know, one big piece of it is that, you know, they have, you know, we have tasks when we're working with students, we're working with colleagues that are not the best use of our time. And that often means that we either, you know, are not doing something else. That's really important.
Or not doing something else as well, right, as we would like to. So if we're able to save time delegating some of what I think of as tedious tasks, right, or the things that take up a lot of our brain capital, but are not the best use of our time, we can reallocate that. in different ways. So one area, right, is that we can scale our impact a little bit more, like the differentiation example, right, so that I now have more time to create that reader's theater that I know, right, everyone [00:38:00] really would love to engage with, right, as we explore this topic and this literacy skill together.
Or so that I can sit down with with a group of three students and take them through something, you know, one more time, right? And I can now dedicate that time to working one on one or in a small group with students. There's also this opportunity to really pause and say, you know, we can also save time so that we can preserve some energy.
You know, teachers, educators at all levels, right, their to do list, right, is very long, and oftentimes, right, any time there's space made, it's filled up with something else. And so I also see this as an opportunity to have a conversation on, you know, we don't need, we don't need, Our to do list to be full, right?
All the time, or if we make space, we don't need to fill it up, right? We can preserve some of our energy so that we are better prepared [00:39:00] to have those one on one interactions so that our bucket is more full. Full when we come in tomorrow, like if I'm able to accomplish these tasks right by the end of my three o'clock, I don't need to stay here until four 30, right?
Just because, right. I can now take that energy into all parts of my life so that when I'm in at. 7 a. m. the next day, I am even more prepared and energized to go. So there's really kind of two areas to look at for that that I think is really important to, to honor, right, those experiences and that balance for educators.
Ross Romano: Amazing. So in this last section, as we're kind of getting toward wrapping up I'm going to ask a few things that are, that are outside the scope of the book, but that are certainly beneficial to our listeners, continuing learning and exploration around AI and, and emerging technologies. And you, as I mentioned in the opening, you host your EdTech Easy EdTech podcast [00:40:00] and and you have your blog and you're always doing a lot of work.
A lot of these things and conferences and things, who are some of the other, like, interesting voices on AI that you've been talking to that, that our listeners might be interested in?
Monica Burns: yeah, great question. So there's a lot of people inside of our education space, right, our K 12 education, if you will that I've, you know, known for a while and I'm watching how they're kind of interacting and talking about this stuff. I just got Ken Shelton and D. Lanier's new book, right? All about AI and education.
It's sitting it's not in my office right now. I think it's downstairs. Cause it just arrived from Amazon a couple of days ago. It hasn't made its way up here just yet, but it's high on my reading list. So that's one thing that I think, you know, one area, two people to follow, right, who are doing really great work in the space of ed tech and have a fantastic perspective.
I've heard Ken speak on this topic at an event we were both at in, in Florida last year too. So those are [00:41:00] two folks to follow along with, you know, that are doing great work in this space. I've also been reading and following people who are. Outside of our traditional K 12 that may be in a higher ed space or that may be working with educators or, you know, the public at large who are thinking of the big impact.
One great book that I read earlier this year was Unmasking AI. By Joy Buolamwini, I believe is how you pronounce her last name. She has a very popular TED talk on this topic, too, but I recommend the book. Sometimes academic books can feel a little dry, but hers is very narrative and friendly for readers who might not be right in that grad school hat on.
I know my grad I don't is off right now, but hers was a wonderful book that has great storytelling and really important information on AI. I also just finished one from Ethan Mollick. So he is a [00:42:00] popular it's a popular substack. Also I heard him speak at a conference in April and it was great to see him in person, talk about some of the things he's seeing also in higher ed and on the business side around AI.
So those are four people, right? And three books, there are three books would be ones I would recommend for anyone who's inside of this space, adjacent to this space, curious about it, and is looking for some different perspectives.
Ross Romano: Yeah, I'm, I think rightfully, and as a learned response there's you know, resistance to kind of quote unquote outside voices in, in K 12 in particular that, that like to tell education what to do. But I think when it comes to the AI piece a great starting point is non. tech voices, you know, that, that helped to ask the right questions and identify the right [00:43:00] opportunities for, you know, if the technology could help us do this, this would really be meaningful.
And then give some of that. That vision to the technology people to sort of figure those things out. And I've, I've noticed that in particularly in the AI industry, like inside and outside of education, but the presence of, or absence of that in some companies and tools to say, okay, you know, we developed this tool for this, but.
were the voices that really would apply that and are considering that industry involved in that. And it can mean all the difference. And there's a lot of interesting thoughts. about that, about people in all areas of education that are not, you know, that are not the techie tech folks, but that are saying, Hmm, you know, these are the things we've been trying to do.
And if we had another resource that would help us do that. Do you have [00:44:00] any, any favorite tools or resources that you've observed that you think are really doing good things, you know, big or small, but ones that are okay, these are, these are clearly doing something new doing something that's making a difference.
Monica Burns: Yeah. So, you know, as much as I spend time and I'm excited about some of the growth that's happened with chatbots, like a chat GPT, Gemini, I'm watching closely as a Google user and a lot of my own workflow, right? Just the integration with Google tools. And I think that's where a lot of, Every, you know, a lot of the everyday interactions people will begin to have more.
So with AI will be like in these spaces, like their phone, like their inbox and watching it work for them as almost a personal assistant. So those are, you know, things of course, I'm watching, but in the EDU space, there's a few tools that kind of align with a few of those. The things I've mentioned where, you know, I'm watching how to differentiate, scale your impact, spark [00:45:00] conversations with students.
DFIT is one that I'm, I'm watching closely. They've evolved pretty greatly, you know, over the past year or so. They have a lot of interactive, you know, activities for students. So sure, like it can generate, you know, a reading passage and, you know, what might look like an activity sheet or worksheet, but they also have interactive activities where kids can, you know, open something up that's now in Google search.
I think there's a lot of potential there for some really great use cases with that tool. I also like how it makes it simple to differentiate, toggling different levels, changing different subject areas. And then another one is Brisk Teaching. They have a Chrome extension, and even just, you know, Scratching the surface with what they can do.
I love that. I can pull up an article and it could change a reading level quickly It includes all the citation and everything [00:46:00] there, too It can also work as a way to facilitate a conversation on how someone has gotten to Start to finish in the process of their own writing. So those are two that I would, would flag as ones to watch.
I know I've been looking to see, you know, how their development has continued over the past year or so. (ad here)
Ross Romano: Awesome. So for the last piece here these, you know, all this stuff is evolving quickly and, and that's exciting. And it's also, I mean, a sense of urgency, right? That that time really is of the essence when it comes to utilizing what's available to make sure students are having the best possible learning opportunities.
What What would the objective be over the next year, like, the next, we can say the next school year, basically, for every educator to at least have done their degree? This, right, to, to make sure that we're making adequate progress and, [00:47:00] and you know, and not really falling behind on this, this evolution of tech.
Monica Burns: Yeah, I think it's important to give some exposure and to give some context. And so that can look very different in different environments. You know, so if someone is listening to this and is facilitating professional development during the first half of the school year, you know, opening up a tool that teachers already have access to, maybe it's Copilot if you're in a Microsoft school, or maybe it's Gemini if you're in a Googly school, right?
Or ChatGPT if you're kind of all of the above, right? Get them in there. Have them do something that's pretty surface level, like write a song about the solar system, right? Layer on and show examples of what's possible. You might also want to take a creative spin, open up an image generation tool, have them create something, right?
That didn't exist before. Just give them the context. They might say, you know what? This is not for me. I don't see how this is relevant. I'm not going to use this again, but at least now I have [00:48:00] some context and a vocabulary around this for conversations that will continue the school year. And I don't mean to imply that someone should come around to this by any means, right?
But they now have a foundation and maybe in six months, they'll see a connection to their work. Maybe they won't, but at least they can be a part of this conversation around what AI could look like. in an educator's workflow. So introducing some strategies that have quick wins, I think are a great way to start just to build that context, right?
Build a level of capacity, right? For interacting with different spaces. You know, it would be massive, a massive move.
Ross Romano: Excellent. Well, listeners, you can find EdTech Essentials, the second edition from ASCD or wherever you get your books. You can also find a lot more resources from Monica at ClassTechTips. com. Anything in particular people should check out or, or anything new there?
Monica Burns: Yeah, if they're interested in the AI of it all, I did make a new [00:49:00] dedicated artificial intelligence resources page so they can click on that button. If they're interested in all other things ed tech, the blog has a search bar so you can type in formative assessment and creativity and other topics. Lots of resources, a decade worth of resources you can search through.
Ross Romano: Excellent. Search bars make all the difference. Listeners, we also have a search bar on authoritypodcast. net. You can find any episode, any topic, any guest. We have a whole page with all of our guests where you could find them. So check that out, too. Please do subscribe or visit the podcast. net where we talk about all of our shows.
Thank you. And visit the links below. We'll put the link to Monica's website, her social media pages where you can find the book. So any and all resources there that are valuable to you, go ahead, check them out. We'll make it easy for you. Monica, thanks again for being here.
Monica Burns: So much. Thank you so much. [00:50:00]