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Welcome to EdTech Adventures. Join us as we explore the role of technology, STEM, and creative play in education. With expert guests, we’ll discover how learning is always an adventure.
EdTech Adventures: AI Literacy in the Classroom with Sonia Spindt
[00:00:00] Liz Derman: Hi everyone, and welcome back to EdTech Adventures with CodeCombat. It has been a while since we released an episode, so I am really excited to bring this podcast back. My name is Liz. I am a senior account executive at CodeCombat, and I spend my time talking to teachers and administrators about AI and computer science. I am happy to be taking the helm as host as we explore some of the most pressing questions in education technology today.
There is really no better place to start right now than AI in K-12 education. AI is exciting. It is confusing. It is useful. It is overwhelming. Whether schools feel ready for it or not, it is here, and we have to deal with it. Teachers and administrators are trying to figure out what responsible use looks like, how to address cheating concerns, how to protect student thinking, and how to move beyond a simple yes or no approach.
I am joined today by Sonia Spindt. She is the head of curriculum here at CodeCombat. She has been the mastermind behind a majority of our AI curriculum, and she spends a lot of time thinking about how students learn, how teachers teach, and how tools like AI can be used thoughtfully in a real classroom experience. In this episode, we will talk about AI literacy, cheating concerns, the AI Assessment Scale, emerging CSTA standards, new AI models, and how all of this connects back to practical classroom use, including with CodeCombat and AI HackStack.
Sonia, thank you so much for joining me today. I want to start big here. When you look at how schools are handling AI right now, what are you noticing?
Sonia Spindt: I think it is kind of all over the place. We see some schools and districts excited and eagerly adopting AI left and right. We have some on the opposite end of that spectrum who are nervous and do not want to put students in front of AI at all. Then we have the people in between who are saying, let me pick and choose the tools we have access to and who has access to them within the district.
I largely see this fall along certain grade band divisions. The early adopters that I have noticed most prevalently within this space are probably our high school and upper middle school classrooms. Maybe they are older and more capable of interacting with technology efficiently and effectively. I think there is also a big question around AI use in the workplace. Many of our high school classrooms that are focused on CTE education are really thinking about AI because they are always trying to align their coursework to industry standards. They want to prepare students for the next generation of work.
So I think we are really seeing adoption take place at those upper levels first. We are just now starting to see it trickle down into the middle school and maybe upper elementary school age students. But largely, those students are seeing AI presented through an unplugged lens. That way they are spending less time in front of this technology while we still figure out how it might be impacting students and their critical thinking skills.
Liz Derman: Yeah, I think critical thinking is one of the number one things I hear that teachers want to improve for their students, especially around AI. One thing I am curious about is that there are two different channels to this, right? There are students interacting with AI, but then there are also teachers using AI to help them teach. How do you see teachers navigating AI themselves as a tool?
Sonia Spindt: I think teachers are often trying to leverage AI to take some of the tasks that they have to do every single day off of their plate, because teachers are overburdened with work, period. AI might be a way to alleviate that. I am seeing teachers use it to customize parts of lessons. For example, maybe you are an English teacher and you really want to present an article to your class, but it is not at the right reading level. You can use AI to quickly make it the appropriate grade level for your students. That is something that I see quite a bit of.
I also see teachers leveraging it for things like assessing their students. Grading is a big part of teaching and it can take a lot of time. AI might be able to fast track that a bit if you are leveraging it for grading support. There is also communication with parents and families that might be aided with the use of AI, like how you write a professional email if a parent is coming at you. It is really a shotgun of, what are the things on my to do list every day as a teacher that I could maybe get off my plate if I had this AI assistant to help me?
Is it successful in many places? Not always. But teachers are currently in that experimentation phase. I think that is starting to show up more and more on the student side of things. As teachers experiment with these AI tools more, they understand what it looks like to teach their students how to do that because they have enough practice to understand what that routine looks like. Once you make something a routine, it becomes something you can explicitly teach to.
Liz Derman: So if teachers are using AI to help them teach, yet when students use it to help them learn or research, it is often viewed as cheating. That creates a lot of tension because teachers are using AI, but the students cannot, or the students are going to be using AI in the future, but they are getting no understanding of how to do that because a lot of districts do have a no AI policy.
So much of the AI conversation that I am having in schools starts with cheating. I hear that teachers are not anti-AI. A lot of them are using these AI tools, but they are worried that students are skipping that critical thinking piece that is so important. They are worried that students are just using AI as an answer ATM. They are not thinking, not using their brain, and just copy and pasting. What do you make of that?
Sonia Spindt: I think it is a fair concern. That is something that teachers of all kinds have to grapple with as new technology is introduced to the classroom. AI is no exception to that. But just because it changes what kind of thinking occurs does not mean that thinking stops altogether. I personally believe that AI has shifted what part of the critical thinking process students spend most of their time doing.
I think a lot about my own students, who I have been teaching a data science course for over the last five years. That has exemplified to me how students were working before and after ChatGPT became famous. A lot of the time my students spent critically thinking before GPT became a thing was really focused on writing programs. Writing, like it is in any language, is an act of critical thinking. I think it is one of the hardest things that a human can do.
But now that GPT has made that process a little easier for students, it does not mean that students are not doing critical thinking or making sense of the work that they are producing with AI. Now I think about my data science students and what they are doing. It is less writing code, for sure, but that means they spend more time on the evaluation phase. Does the program produce what I want? How do I interpret the outputs produced by that program? These are still really valuable parts of the critical thinking process.
It just means that we get to spend a little more time there than we would have before because we spent so much time in that building phase. Evaluation, interpretation, and decision making are really the ultimate goal of critical thinking, in my opinion. AI just helps us get to that meaty piece faster. I think it has shifted the window of our critical thinking.
Liz Derman: I really love that point. It is not even just changing the concept of cheating, but it is also changing how we think about critical thinking and how those thought processes are working. How they will work in a future with AI is going to be different. It is not going to be exactly the same, but that does not mean it is not valuable or that students are not using their brain in some way.
I have heard multiple districts adopting the AI Assessment Scale. That is an assessment scale to say, these are different guidelines for how to use AI. What do you think about that? Is that valuable, and why do you think it is being adopted so widely right now?
Sonia Spindt: I think it is incredibly valuable to have in any classroom that leverages AI because it provides teachers with something that is more concretely described or explicitly defined in terms of how students should be leveraging AI. Those levels correspond to what we might expect with a critical thinking process.
You can ultimately break this process down into something that you can see with your interactions with AI. If you are just using it for brainstorming, you are at a certain level, and that allows you to ask, how is my student brainstorming with AI assistance? What does it look like for them to evaluate a product? How does AI assist that?
I think it is excellent to have in any classroom that has AI because it makes that explicit. That being said, it can be really hard to make sure that you are not only touching upon each level within a lesson, but also evaluating it in a way and consistently evaluating it in a way that actually moves the needle in terms of our students' output and their critical thinking processes.
This is where I would love to make a plug for AI HackStack because we do have these built-in features in the platform. As a teacher, you are able to see the prompt sessions that your students have that were specifically curated around particular levels. The goal might be brainstorming, so the student's process of working with the AI is evaluated around that. We also automatically look through this so that you as a teacher can see highlights of the student's performance with HackStack.
I think that is maybe one of the largest barriers to evaluating our students' AI usage. It takes a lot of time to read through a prompt session with AI, and we are doing our best here at CodeCombat to give you that TLDR, high level overview of whether this student successfully brainstormed with this AI to achieve this goal. So take a look at HackStack if you have not already done so.
Liz Derman: I think it is great to have a tool to break it down because a big question on teachers' minds, as administrators roll out the AI Assessment Scale, is how do I actually implement this in my classroom? What does this look like logistically? Do I have to integrate every single level into every lesson, or do different lessons have different levels? What level of understanding do students have to have about AI before they even interact with that level?
I think we do a pretty great job of addressing that AI literacy need at the beginning before students even dig into that. I would love to hear from you. What is important about our AI literacy curriculum?
Sonia Spindt: One of the things that stands out to me is the need to define what AI literacy skills are important to you and who should be learning those skills. When we started this journey of providing AI curriculum and platforms to students across the world, we wanted to be able to internally define what that looks like and for who. So we came up with our AI literacy framework. It breaks this down into skill levels for each major grade band that you would see in a K-12 classroom.
That AI literacy is broadly defined into three subcategories. The first one is really our technical skills. Are we teaching students what an effective prompt looks like or how to analyze data sets of a certain size? Those technical skills are really important when trying to learn how to effectively use AI to accomplish some goal.
The second category that we think is really important in AI literacy is the critical evaluation piece. This is focused on helping students identify things like bias in AI output or hallucinations. At the end of the day, who is going to be held accountable for the work that you produce, even if it is AI-assisted work? It is not the AI. It is you. So we want to make sure that students are building up those safety and responsibility pieces of AI literacy before we get to our last subcategory.
The last subcategory is our problem-solving standards that are connected with AI literacy. Can you perform the steps of computational thinking? Those are still useful for leveraging AI. Do you know how to troubleshoot? That is a common thing we need to do when leveraging AI.
We have outlined all of that, and it pulls from the major standard bodies around AI across the globe, including the CSTA standards that are about to be released, because we got a preview of them here at CodeCombat. We really wanted to make sure that we did all of that hard work for you so you did not have to spend as much time in the weeds being like, is this relevant to me or is this not relevant to me? Because we get to put this in front of so many students, there is a vetted process of designing what we think are important AI literacy standards. We have done that for all of our curriculum so that you do not have to, and hopefully that makes your job a bit easier.
Liz Derman: Definitely. Absolutely. It is really interesting, the new CSTA standards. Just to circle back on another topic, we touched on the AI Assessment Scale and how it prevents cheating, but I think we have not quite explained it or walked through it. So to give an overview, if any folks are interested in using that and seeing how that would work in the classroom to help mitigate this concept of cheating or transform it into different levels involving critical thinking, students actually explore AI and think about how they are using it before they use it.
The first level would be no AI. Level two is AI planning, so using it to plan and research. Level three is AI collaboration, so you let AI complete some tasks and use some AI-written content. Level four is full AI, so you let it complete any task extensively that you direct. Then AI exploration is level five, where you use AI creatively. In my mind, that is vibe coding, where you are prompting and feeling where the AI is going and creating something in equal collaboration with AI.
I have talked to some administrators who are taking this scale, changing it, and adjusting it specifically for their needs. They are allowing their teachers and classrooms to take the scale and decide which levels are appropriate for ELA, social sciences, math, and more. Boston Public Schools has also published a scale that is unique to them and that they are putting across the board for definition. So this does not have to be a hard framework. It can definitely change. How do we incorporate that framework into AI HackStack, and how are we thinking about it?
Sonia Spindt: I think there are two big things to mention. One, we are gung ho on AI literacy, which means we are putting students in front of AI. We want to make sure we touch upon all of those different levels, or some version of those levels, in our curriculum. You will see different styles of AI activities in the lessons that your students can complete. Those are the things that your students are being evaluated on with our autograder in HackStack.
I also want to mention that level one, and I think this is probably true for anyone who is coming up with their own version of this scale, is no AI use. There is something to be said about making sure that whatever AI literacy curriculum you decide to go with has that built into it. That tells me they are being thoughtful about how students are exposed to AI.
We really want to make sure that students are still learning the foundational skills that you would see in any curriculum, and sometimes that just means we need to unplug. You will see that within the curriculum as well. We are very intentional around making sure that some of the activities your students are asked to complete, even if they are focused on AI literacy, are unplugged and do not have students interacting with AI. So they are still doing things like developing the ability to talk to each other or think about something mathematically without the help of AI. We recognize the importance of all of that, and that is something you will find in our curriculum. I would challenge you to look for it in any curriculum you choose to adopt, that the full scale is included.
Liz Derman: I love that, and I think any good curriculum is adaptable to the circumstance, the student, and the teacher. But a lot of schools and teachers are completely overwhelmed because there is so much about AI. There is so much content, so many things they can do, and so many things kids are already doing that they do not even know about or understand. What is a good starting place for a teacher, a school, or a school district? If they want to do something about AI and do not know where to start, what would you recommend?
Sonia Spindt: That is a good question. I think my answer depends on which role we are really focused on. If you are a teacher who just wants to get started with AI, your first step is to maybe come check us out. Go to HackStack and find the course that best aligns to the things you are teaching. Although we originally started as a computer science focused edtech company, our AI offerings are really designed to be for anyone interested in learning AI literacy alongside whatever content area you are specializing in.
If you are a CTE AI teacher, great, we have something for you. If you are a math teacher, great, we have something for you. Maybe you are an English teacher. Great, we have something for you. Your first step is figuring out what might be a good product to use. I have been thinking about this for years at this point. I actively integrate this into my own classroom every day. I know it is a lot of work because I think about this more than eight hours every single day. Sometimes it is nice to just expose yourself to what is already out there and what is already being developed. It can be hard to figure out which one is good for you and your students, so I would challenge you to take a look at our stuff if you are a teacher because we do a lot of that heavy lifting already.
If you are an administrator, I think we need to take a step back and wonder, who of my student population do I want to start developing these AI literacy skills? Are they my high school students? Do I want to include my elementary students? If so, what teachers am I going to ask to champion this? Is it my CS teachers, who are often charged with doing these technical adventures first, or do I want to bring some other people into the fold?
Making that decision might be your first step, because you can then go talk to these teachers and say, go check out HackStack on CodeCombat and see what fits for your particular context. That ultimately requires you to make a decision first about where you want to start. I know that can be overwhelming, so having conversations with your colleagues around where your goals really lie can help you direct your teachers and teaching staff where to go, what resources to use, and what resources to invest in.
Liz Derman: I think you make a really good point on the goals. That is something administrators and teachers need to keep in mind when they are thinking about AI. What is their ultimate goal for these students? I think it is for them to be successful in the workplace, in college, as scientists doing research, and in so many other paths. We are seeing AI change every aspect of academia, research, and work.
We are also seeing that with our new cybersecurity curriculum coming out in August. That is going to be heavily affected by AI, for sure, and even more so in the future. But what still makes you excited? What gives you hope about students learning and education even with this new AI landscape?
Sonia Spindt: For me, it is always the exploration piece. I want to put my students in a space where they can explore real, messy, complicated questions about the world, because that is all you and I do every single day in our jobs. How do we make informed decisions that impact us and impact other people? That is what I really think is exciting about AI, because it unlocks all of these things in a way we have never seen before.
Prior to AI, my students needed to have pretty strong foundational technical skills to even build up the models and simulations they needed to explore in order to answer a question they had. That was hard. It was hard to make sure students had access to those skills in a uniform manner. But now that we have AI, that decreases that barrier, and more students are able to engage and evaluate things that are more complicated and messier than they would have seen before. They are more authentic, which is more engaging for students day to day.
I think about a lesson I recently built for HackStack in our math curriculum, where students are exploring geometry and things like the area formula and perimeter calculations. Sure, maybe before all we had the technical ability to do was talk about those formulas or give some word problems where you used a calculator to crunch some big numbers. That may not have been the most engaging way to present that information.
In this lesson, where students are thinking about area and perimeter, you can ask a more meaningful question that is impacting us today, like how do we draw fair congressional boundaries? What does fairness look like to you? How do we model that so we can see the relationship between all of these different chunks of a congressional district that we have divided up? Is there something about area and perimeter here that we can use to make an argument around what is fair and what is not?
That kind of open-mindedness allows students to find themselves in the work and make meaning of it in a way that is important to them or their particular perspective. That was not possible before. Now we have the ability to bootstrap that technical piece very quickly, and that allows students to get to the juicy problems faster. At the end of the day, what do I really care about within my students? It is that critical thinking piece. I think it is more valuable to present them with things that are more authentic, more real, and more engaging. AI allows us to get there, which really excites me.
Liz Derman: Rather than holding back, it can be an accelerator for their abilities. It can support that critical thinking piece, and AI can make their work more authentic and more productive. I also think it is nice to feel success early. Success helps us stay engaged in the learning process. It might define career trajectories for us, and when students feel success earlier, that can be a really pivotal moment. It is easier to change minds when you set those things up correctly.
Sonia Spindt: One hundred percent.
Liz Derman: We have talked about a myriad of different topics around AI, AI HackStack, CodeCombat, and the AI Assessment Scale. If there is one takeaway, what do you want educators listening to this to remember from this conversation?
Sonia Spindt: Oh gosh, that is a hard one. I think I am in the camp of AI is not going anywhere anytime soon. There are too many things dependent on AI's success. So it is worthwhile to try and expose your students to AI, knowing that this will be part of their future, whether we like it or not. How do we equip students to do that is your next big question. I say, take a look at HackStack. We might be able to help you do that in a thoughtful, meaningful way.
Liz Derman: That is all for this episode of EdTech Adventures with CodeCombat. A huge thank you to Sonia Spindt for joining me today and helping us think through what AI literacy can look like in real classrooms. If you are interested in learning more about CodeCombat or AI HackStack, or if you would like to set up a free trial for your school, you can reach me directly at liz@codecombat.com. Thanks for listening, and we will see you next time.