Episode 12
The reality is AI is not going away. So we really need to rethink that. So it's not really if we use it, it's how we use it and just shifting our thinking to really help our students prepare them to be successful in their future.
Oliva Lara-Gresty
Welcome listeners to another episode of Educator Insights, the podcast where we navigate the ever- evolving realm of teaching in the digital age and embracing technology. I’m your host Olivia Lara-Gresty and today I have the honour of introducing a real trailblazer in the education technology landscape. Joining us is Alana Winnick, Education Technology Director at the Pocantico Hills School District in New York. But that’s not all, Alana is also the charismatic host of “The Generative Age,” a podcast fueled by the New York State Association for Computers and Technologies in Education (NYSCATE)and is an Edsafe woman in AI fellow.
In this episode, we’re set to explore the captivating world of “Embracing the Generative Age in Education” Alana brings with her a wealth of knowledge in technology implementation and a visionary perspective on the transformative power of AI.
Alana, we’re thrilled to have you on the show. Welcome!
Alana Winnick
Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to be here.
Olivia
No, we’re excited to have you. I think that you and I have gotten to speak and you really have a really awesome understanding of really where AI is in the education space. You know a lot of people are coming from the AI space. A lot of people are coming from the education perspective. There aren’t. So many people who really have their hands so deeply in both and so it’s really exciting to get to speak with you and I wanted to just get help our listeners understand a little bit about your background your story so I was hoping to understand, I know you started out studying early child debt education. You pursued your master’s in education technology and I was curious what kind of led that initial shift in your focus towards Edtech.…
Alana
Yeah, so my career started as an elementary educator and it was a really hard time to find a job at that time. So, I found two leave replacement jobs and I was also in need to get your masters in New York state, you don’t have a choice. And I was getting my master’s in educational technology just to help me stand out from everyone else who was doing mostly special edtech literacy and I was quickly finding that it was my favorite part of my job I was really good at it. It was helping all my peers with making interactive lessons when the smartboard first came out and I was helping them during lunch prep after school before school. I didn’t even know it was a job. I just really gravitated toward technology. I look back and I gravitated toward it my whole life and I never really realized that and I never really thought it was a job and then when I realized it was a job, I pursued my master’s and then I went on to recently completing my leadership degree. And now I combine all 3 of my degrees education, educational technology and educational leadership in my roles really running like educational technology leadership I guess.
Olivia
That’s great. I mean, it makes sense that someone in education is going to be persistent in pursuing their own education. So, we love to see that, and I think it also speaks to, as many teachers, I’m sure, know, students can’t really think about a career until they’ve really seen it. So, lots of thoughts on how we can help students really view the possibilities that are out there. But I wanted to just focus a little bit more on some of your other roles because, as you mentioned, you do have some leadership positions. So, while you’re working full-time for your school district, you also sit on the board and niceke and I was and Andnie of a podcast. You know you’re a published author, which I’ve really been enjoying your book that I’ve been reading. It’s just really easy to digest, and I think definitely, I think teachers out there should pick it up. It’s a quick read. Um, but your plate seems really full. So, I was wondering how you manage to juggle all of these roles and really reach where you are today, and if you could share a bit about that journey.
Alana
Yeah, thank you. So that’s something that I really have been talking to my own teachers about. My new slogan now is ‘You can do anything, but you can’t do everything.’ So, you could do anything. I tell students this: You could do anything that you put your mind to, but you can’t do everything. So, work smarter not harder and like be more efficient. Things that I do to help me work smarter and be more efficient is I try to limit my distractions, I turn off all my notifications, I time block so I could really get in that flow state and stay in that flow state. Then, really thinking about what do you need to preserve, what are your own unique things that you should never get support with, and by support, I mean maybe artificial intelligence speaking about efficiency, so I use a lot of AI in almost everything I do. And I just think like what should I preserve that’s my own work and what can I hand off to AI to help me with at least a first draft. Then, I think if you learn how to use AI the right way, you front load it with all like historical information, any information you want, of course, making sure it’s like data privacy and securities, all in check, and then you’ll get a really quick first draft and you just tweak it, so leveraging all the tools around us and just being more efficient with our time.
Olivia
Yeah, and anyone out there who’s been hesitant to set try to use some of these tools because there can be a bit of a learning curve with any new tool, I think that’s great. You have a spokesman here who has been able to really kind of dive in and appreciate the use, and I definitely have found some of those tools to be useful in my own workflows as well. I wanted to ask you a little bit about your book ‘The Generative Age’. It definitely caught our attention, and I was wondering if you could dive into what that means, the generative age, in the realm of AI and education, and kind of how that concept plays a role in your title as the Education Technology Director.
Alana
Yeah, so the title, “The Generative Age.” So, I just want to talk about the word “generative” for a second. So, generative artificial intelligence is a version of artificial intelligence, and it’s where it’s generating content—so text, audio, video, any type of content. So, the AI is generating the content. So, you know, AIs in our cars and in our homes like Alexa and all those things that I want to say because it still listens to me, but generative AI is that content generation. So, now the generative age is like this era or this age with generative artificial intelligence. So, about three years ago, this was not readily accessible in the hands of every teacher and student, and now maybe a year and a half, two years ago, it is. So, we really need to rethink teaching and learning. And in my role as an educational and technology director, this is where, like, my focus is right, like making sure that my teachers use and understand and my students understand what this means, but then really reevaluating what we are asking of our students. So, in a world in the generative age, in a world where AI can literally produce the end product for us, like let’s go with the traditional essay, in a world where AI could produce the essay, the end product for us, we need to really reevaluate what we are assessing. So, we need to really assess the learning process, not the end product. So, I work very collaboratively with my principal, curriculum leader, student support services, my superintendent, and we’re really—you know this year, well, you don’t know, but this year we’re working on curriculum mapping and a curriculum initiative. So, partnering with an initiative like that, just really rethinking our units, rethinking our curriculum, and rethinking a scope and sequence and assessment that really match the new world that we’re in right now.
Olivia
Yeah, I mean, it’s definitely important. They’re lucky to have someone on staff like that. I think you’ve mentioned that not all school districts have someone in your role, right?
Alana
No, or they do have someone in my role, but they’re more on the IT side of things. They’re focusing on infrastructure, server switches, access points, hardware. They’re not necessarily like have an instructional lens.
Olivia
Yeah, I mean, I think just, you know, any teachers out there that have some of the insights and honestly curiosity that you’ve definitely demonstrated, could definitely think about how they might push for that in their district, saying it’s really important. I think I wanted to actually dive into some of the technology implementations that you’ve really been able to implement in your school district, and I was hoping you could walk us through a couple of those notable implementations and either some success stories or even lessons learned that you could share.
Alana
So, when I started working for my school district, I was actually working as a consultant through New York state for them. And it was the heat of the pandemic, and they were like, “We really can’t share you anymore. We want to hire you full-time.” So, September twenty-twenty, I started full-time in my school district right in the middle of the pandemic. But I had been obviously supporting them for months before, a year before that. So, I really was there with them through the transition to remote and then hybrid learning, and transitioning back from the pandemic. So, a lot of, you know, making sure everyone had a learning management system, online classroom learning, how to teach in really two different ways with students physically in front of you and students not physically in front of you. So, that was one of the bigger success stories. We went one-to-one. We were not one-to-one, now we’re one-to-one in the whole district. We were not. We were only one-to-one in the middle school, just streamlining processes and shifting toward more paperless systems, like online registration or online forms. We have a very large ENL population. So, not only do we need to keep in mind our students who don’t necessarily speak English fluently, but more importantly, their parents, because they might graduate out of the program, but we serve a large population of non-English speaking parents, and they’re the supporters of our students at home. And I really think a lot of parents want to support their children at home, but they don’t know how, so building in like two-way communication, translation software, things like that. We tried one. I’m also working on data automation, so the data doesn’t flow every night with that system and it’s such a manual process, and I’m moving a lot towards um, data automation. So, when a user is enrolled automatically, they get a network account and access to every software through class rostering or if a teacher is hired and they’re entered into our human resources system, then they automatically get a network account, and then if they’re a teacher, any instructional software that they need. Um, so just data automation, and then in the classroom side, just more flexible learning environments, buying teachers a 2-in-1, it’s a surface with a detachable screen where they can physically walk around the room, sit anywhere in the room, wirelessly projected to the boards. We got new boards where we could simultaneously cast, I think, 9 devices to the board, and its touch while it’s wireless, so like just really making a room that’s super flexible and adaptable and really teaching to a year of 2024. I also helped really shift professional development. I’m really empowering teachers to teach their peers. So, a lot of people bring in experts or maybe pay for PD, but you have champions in your building with you, and just taking them and having them share.
But what they’re doing, I think, really creates this collegial community where they get to learn and grow from their peers. If they have questions, they can walk down the hall. We have teacher-activated cameras in the classrooms, and the teachers can record themselves and share it with their peers or self-reflect. I created a student tech group where most other districts have their student tech group as more of a break-fix. My student tech group is instructional. So, a middle schooler might go push into a second-grade class and help the students with coding, so it’s more instructional or digital citizenship, or something like that. We have a coding initiative in grades one and up. This year, personally, I made it my mission because people are probably wondering what I am doing in your district. So, I personally went into each classroom teaching students about AI in grades one and up. So, those are the big initiatives, I guess, I’ve done my 4 years there.
Olivia
Yeah, you mentioned quite a few really important ones there, and I think I loved that. What you mentioned about parents definitely wanting to be involved. They don’t always have the ability to be, so having, you don’t want to have too hard of a learning curve. Or for them to be able to get involved in their child’s education. But I think we saw, especially since the pandemic, when parents just had so much more visibility into their kids’ experience in school, they really do want to get involved. So definitely, I love that idea of implementing that, and I think some of the technology you’re mentioning, you know, especially with this classroom where teachers can walk around, really brings to mind a lot of the ways in which I think we all love technology. We also don’t love that we’re staring at devices all day, so thinking about how we can kind of create more of a spatial technology experience so that it’s actually really improving the classroom experience. It’s not just kind of replicating what we saw in Covid and then just trying to pull it into a classroom, so it definitely sounds like you have a lot of cool issues in both those arenas.
Alana
Yeah, for sure. I mean, definitely, balanced screen time is so incredibly important. I’m working on a blog or—I don’t know—it’s going to be a newsletter, a blog, an article. I’m not sure yet. But I’m working on something right now about balanced screen time because I don’t think all screen time is created equal, I think. Sometimes I read a book on my device, and that’s very different than me scrolling aimlessly on social media. So, I think we do need to limit our screen time, but we also need to evaluate what we are doing on our phone or device.
Olivia
Right? And what we’re asking students to be doing and actually.
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Alana
Oh, for sure. But I’m saying I’ve particularly been trying to limit my screen time, and I realize it’s not just screen time. It’s what you’re doing on it also. But not only do we, as adults, need to do that, we need to teach our students how to do that because that’s the only way they’re going to be successful when they’re our age if they learn those skills now.
Olivia
Oh yeah, because it’s just an endless supply of content, and so, as we know it, it can be very distracting. You mentioned time blocking and some other skills that I think teachers definitely, there’s a curriculum they need to teach. But if that’s not specifically part of the curriculum that they’re thinking about, it’s definitely important to incorporate those sorts of personal management and abilities. And I think that thinking about some of the technology implementations and initiatives you’ve led, I also know that you were mentioning you actually gone into the classrooms and talked with students about using AI. I wanted to just ask with this universe of possibilities with AI that you’ve talked about, it really emphasizes the creativity that can be incorporated. So, I was wondering how you really convey this message to teachers and what role creativity plays in integrating AI into the curriculum.
Alana
Yeah, so that is how I got the image on the front cover of my book if you look at the book or my podcast. It’s this light bulb, like an education. We have that light bulb aha moment, but inside of it is a galaxy. So the first chapter is called “A Universe Unveiled,” and it really is like a universe bursting with opportunities that are vast and endless. It’s really whatever your imagination can come up with, and I always teach to start small. So, more like a world, that’s a second chapter. But yeah, let’s start small but eventually, it’s like a universe of possibilities, and it’s whatever you can dream of. And if you don’t know what to do, ask AI, and maybe it will help you come up with ideas. No, but for real, what we do in my district is we do a lot of creativity. So it might be as simple as a middle school foreign language classroom learning about physical characteristics on a face, like how to say brown eyes or any physical characteristics, and then they can come up with these creative characters using words, and we could put those words into AI and make an image using their French, so that’s one creative way I’ve used it. And then another way, most recently in a third-grade class, we did it in more than one class. But I’m just going to use this one example for Poetry Month; we did it in multiple grades. The students wrote a poem, and then we popped that poem into an AI image generator. It created very beautiful images, and the students went back and revised their poems based on things like inspiration from the images, and then we got a final image with it. So I think the image generators really lend themselves so nicely to this creativity. Also, you can use the text ones in creative ways like helping you brainstorm or helping you create different opposing viewpoints. Maybe things you didn’t see help you through your creative writing process if you get stuck and you need help brainstorming. There’s just so much, like I can go on and on about it because it’s just literally unlimited. It’s just a universe of possibilities.
Olivia
That’s great, and I think that there are so many interesting ways, and it’s changing, as you mentioned. There’s changing what we’re thinking about the students or what goals students have, right? Like if the goal was to make an image and then we think about, well, they just used some of these AI generators, well then that might be considered not really kind of adhering to the ideas of the project. But if the project actually does involve writing your own poem and then seeing what kind of images come out, now we’re actually encouraging that usage, which I think is a really interesting way to involve that. And I think I was just reading about recently, a teacher who has been having their students conversing with a character from, if anyone out there has read “Catcher in the Rye,” they were having their students converse with Holden Caulfield, but obviously it was a chatbot. So the students were actually being told, “Hey, this is not actually Holden Caulfield,” but we don’t have spaces like that where teachers are reminding the students who, at this point, might not be able to have so much of a distinction like these chatbots. It’s really easy to start kind of giving them a feeling as though they have that personality. And so I think they call it the Eliza effect, right? But so thinking about that, just any thoughts on how to kind of help students be mindful and kind of understanding what it is they’re actually doing and what the model is that they’re interacting with and how it’s actually working? Have you been able to work with teachers on sharing that information?
Alana
Yeah, when I taught teachers, we rolled out teacher-facing AI last year, and this year, we rolled out student-facing AI. I didn’t think that every teacher felt super comfortable with it. So, I personally did it myself. Um, and I met with every single flat or grade. The way I rolled it out was, I explained to them, first of all, what is AI. Then I explained somewhat what is the difference between AI or machine learning and coding, which they’re familiar and comfortable with, and then I helped them. We used this Code.org activity, even in middle school, how to save the fish or something, and you train, in quotes, train this AI bot to distinguish what’s a fish and what’s garbage. You’re training the AI to learn, and we purposely didn’t train it well because I wanted them to see that a large language model or AI is only as good as the humans that trained it or the information that was trained on, so they should know that it might not be good information. So, that was their first exposure and experience, and then we talked about bias. What is bias? The way I rolled that out, even to a six-year-old in first grade, was if you were an AI image generator and I told you to generate an image of a nurse, what would the nurse look like, and what do you think the first word out of their mouth is? A nerth. Yeah, it, she, has a woman who, and then I go, why does it have to be a woman, and they’re like.
Olivia
Well I would guess it start saying she looks like something or other.
Alana
I don’t know. It doesn’t, and then I was like, “Okay, so what other biases exist in the world?” and a six-year-old can give you a million and one biases. A girl is a ballerina, a boy’s a football player, and they could keep going on about it until they get it. You tell them that there are biases in this information because, let’s say, there are a hundred pictures of a nurse and 99 are women and 5 are men. It’s just going to assume that it’s a woman. Or maybe, what actually I had two interesting—well, many, but the top two interesting conversations that came out of it were: I had one second grader say, “Why does it have to be ‘he’ and ‘she’? Why can’t it be ‘they/them’s’?” I was like, “Why can’t it be ‘they/them’? It can.” And then I had a fourth grader say to me, “He was a black um, fourth grader,” say, “The AI would assume that I was a criminal,” and my stomach dropped. I didn’t even know what to say because I wasn’t expecting that in a fourth-grade classroom. And then I texted one of my friends who is a diversity, equity, inclusion expert. I actually just recorded him on my podcast this week, so that should be coming out first week of March about AI bias and discrimination. So I really wanted my students to see that. So now their first exposure to AI was about bias or misinformation. So now when they use AI, they’re hypercritical. They know that it could help us do a lot of really great things, but we need to fact-check. We need to know where is the data coming from and is it accurate, just like media literacy, which we’ve been teaching for so many years now. It’s really about also AI literacy as well, and I think as long as you tell them, like, my six-year-old first-grade students understand this, so anyone can understand.
Olivia
I think that’s really important, and it’s great that they have that exposure. I think, you know, definitely hope that any teachers out there who are listening are thinking about just giving the students—it’s not that dissimilar from, even, you know, some experiences in classes where we talk about it. For example, when I was in the science classroom: How did these scientists actually design their experiment to discover whatever it is they discovered, right? So, thinking about putting them kind of behind the scenes is a really cool way to give them some exposure, and that brings to mind some thoughts on just equity and AI knowledge because, as you know, it’s crucial, but you know, not every student is getting that same kind of experience. You just described a really cool activity that not all kids are doing, so I’m just curious how you might approach making AI and education accessible to students across diverse backgrounds and any initiatives or strategies you’ve implemented to bridge those knowledge gaps.
Alana
Yeah, I think that’s incredibly important right now. I think a lot of schools are blocking or banning it, and the students that have a second device at home, a phone, another laptop, they have access and will use it. It’s really our students that don’t have access there. This is a really critical time because they’re going to fall a little bit further behind. Because if you notice, like, let’s use the traditional college admissions process: the families that have a lot of money hire a coach or someone to help them write their essay, to help them with their resume, to help them get into college. There are plenty of documentaries on all of these things, but the students that don’t have access to funds to have, let’s say, a tutor to help them do this, they can use AI to help them. Um, make their college essay a little bit better or make their resume a little bit better. And if we’re blocking it and we’re not teaching them how to use it the right way, then they’re more at a disadvantage. And not only that, like the data that is being used for college admissions or loans or hiring processes is very biased. And if they’re using AI to help make those decisions, then it’s going to really make all the biases that exist right now so much worse than they already are, just going to perpetuate them. So it’s really, really important that as an educator and as a school, we look at the tools that we are using and making sure that they adhere to certain data privacy guidelines, that they, we question where the data is coming from. Think using multiple chatbots, let’s say, whether you’re using OpenAI or Gemini or Copilot or Perplexity, or would everyone’s just use more than one, see if you get different results if you are blocking it. You might really want to rethink that. You might want to, you know, I think at our core, our job is to prepare students to be successful in their future. Whatever their future is, and the reality is AI is not going away. So we really need to rethink that. So it’s not really if we use it, it’s how we use it and just shifting our thinking to really help our students prepare them to be successful in their future.
Olivia
Yeah, I mean that’s really important. I think you just kind of outlined a really important, twofold approach here. It’s about making sure the student instruction that they’re getting involves, and/or for all students, involves teaching them how to use, again, these tools that are going to become ubiquitous, and that they’re going to fall behind from if they don’t use. I think the college essay example is great; they need to have the experience on how to use these tools well. But then there’s that second layer of also, you know, thinking about, well, making sure administrations, I should say, are supporting the teachers’ initiatives there. But then on that next level, it’s also going to be about how are these institutions, whether it’s college admissions offices but also employers, how they’re thinking about how they use AI when they’re bringing in those new, recent students. So definitely both are, I think, about equity in this new digital age and age of AI. I wanted to ask you because I think when we spoke you had a really interesting perspective on this one, but as we see educational landscape changing with the rise of AI, you know, a lot of teachers are actually starting to incorporate it into their lesson plans. Although not all are, but there was initially a lot of attention on catching academic dishonesty with these tools, and so I was curious from your experience, like, how can students kind of make the most of these tools while really placing the focus on academic integrity and really shifting that conversation from talking about risks to actually encouraging that responsible and ethical use of AI tools?
Alana
Yeah, I think a lot of people are trying to do detection, and detection does not work. And you don’t really want to create a culture where, like, a gotcha culture where you’re catching the students cheating. I think, like I mentioned before, our job is really for our students to be successful. And I think we really need to rethink teaching and learning and assessment and focus on the process over the product. So teachers becoming more of like a guide on the side instead of like lecturing at the students, like siege on the stage, to respond to the side. Maybe more project-based learning, maybe more if you are gonna lecture like flip classroom, have the student watch it at home, come in ready to work, be sitting there with them while they’re working on it. I’m telling if a teacher or someone comes to you and wants to have that cheating or dishonesty conversation, then they’re not watching the students work grow. Like you could have a student who is a really good writer, and they’re going to get A’s on all of their essays every year because they’re just a great writer, but are they growing? And I think that’s what we really need to work on, like watching a student’s growth and rethinking what we’re asking them and rethinking what we’re assessing. So instead of focusing on the cheating, maybe we should rethink the assessment of what we’re assessing. But I also do think that if you still don’t really understand what it means to use AI ethically or responsibly, maybe if you take the same scenario and you swap the word parent or tutor for it and you said, would it be cheating if they did this with a parent or a tutor, and your answer is no, then that might be okay, but I think it’s not a yes or no if you used AI, yes or no, I think it’s a how you used AI. Because if you, in your prompt, give so much contextual information, historical information, you fully load that prompt with all of the information you’re really looking for, not just, “Write me an essay on World War II,” but you put in all the details and the things you want it to help you with, so that’s why it’s not an if but it’s a how, and I think it’s really important for the teacher to see how the student uses it. So if you take, let’s say, the link to it, if you’re using something like perplexity which allows you to grab a link and you submit the link to the chat along with your work, then the teacher can supervise how the AI is used and if you see how the student is using it. Maybe they’re just asking it to help them identify. Um, grammatical mistakes or maybe giving them feedback on their writing piece just like a tutor would, so I don’t think it’s an if I think it’s a how, and I think supervising it and focusing on the learning process will really help reshift and refocus these conversations.
Olivia
Yeah, that’s interesting. I think I wanted to just mention, you know, I found in your book that section – kind of like, I forget the title. But if you could assess who wrote it or who created it, if it was generative AI or a student, and I was pretty confident about my answers, and I did not get a lot of them right? So, it is really challenging, and I think that’s, as you’re to your point, it’s missing the point. It’s not about catching but rather it’s about encouraging. Yeah, I like the frame you created, of kind of if it – you did it with a tutor or something like that, would it be permissible? And just really thinking about the outcomes and that, or the process, not just the outcomes and helping students see that. So, I think that’s really helped me here.
Alana
Yeah, because if you focus on the process, those are things that will translate to real life. Like, if you even take a traditional math problem, and the student might get the answer incorrect. But if they show their work and you know that they really understand how to solve the math problem, then you’re like, ‘Oh, maybe they didn’t get the answer correct, but they understand the process of how to do it.’ That’s more valuable.
Olivia
Yeah, I definitely agree. I think it’d be interesting to see, just, ah, continue. I think it’s important for schools to be having these conversations and, as you mentioned, you know, you might have an expert down the hallway. And so, just having teachers discussing, I think especially this – how can we encourage looking at the processes is really important. I want and oh, go ahead.
Alana
Yeah, I mean, just one more thing. I just think this is new for everyone, right? So, it’s not like there’s true real experts on how to do this the right way in the classroom. So, I think as teachers are discovering new things, like when I start a faculty meeting, no one really likes to share. So what I do is I’ll say, ‘Get up and go find someone you don’t normally work with and tell them one way you’ve used AI since we last met,’ and then we maybe switch again. And then when we come back together, I’ll say, ‘Share something interesting you heard from someone else.’ So then they’re not talking about themselves because they don’t like to do that. But they’ll share something interesting and I think the more things they hear from their peers and the more ideas they get, the more likely they are to try it.
Olivia
You know, Alana, that’s definitely something that I used. I can see that you were in the classroom because that’s a huge teacher tool right there. And I hope that any of our education technologists out there who are listening, if you’re looking at kind of looking for ways to encourage collaboration or even idea generation on your teams, it’s a great try to do to try to just have people turn and talk and share about what they’ve heard from the group. I think it really also encourages just that – the shouting their colleagues out. So, I love that that process is taking place.
Alana
So yeah, and it’s modeling to them how they could and should be teaching in their classrooms, right.
Olivia
Yeah, and it’s important to continuously do that because it just helps. It’s important for us to be on both sides of any situation, you know, giving and receiving feedback. And as a teacher, especially, thinking, what is it like to be a student or to be kind of in an activity in that sense? Well, I just wanted to kind of, you’ve given a lot of advice, I would say, to our teachers out there. But if you had any last words of advice for teachers in the classroom who want to prepare their students for the generative age, anything that they should be focusing on, conversations they should be having, or tools that they should be trying.
Alana
I think just don’t be scared. I think people are really scared. Just try it. You can’t mess it up. Just go for it. Try something new. I think for a lot of people, they get very overwhelmed. You don’t need to use so many tools. I like to say stick to the tools that are already in your toolbox. Don’t go out and use a hundred new things. AI is embedded into a lot of things we already use and love, like Canva, Padlet. Ah, it’s in, probably, it’s in, I mean, it’s depending on your version, but Word and Docs, and it’s in all of those things. So just use what you have. If you’ve never used one before, the easiest one that I tell people, text-based one, it to use is perplexity because it doesn’t require a login. You don’t need to create an account. You can literally just go to it. Have some premade questions for you to click on or you can start typing your own, so just playing. But then also to start to, once you’re more comfortable with using it for simple things like ‘help me write an email about this’ or just very basic things. Once you’ve done the basics to start. Working on your prompt engineering skills and there’s a bunch of frameworks out there. I’m going to start to link everything to my website, so probably by the time this is released, I will have resources on my website alononwinnic.com. So I think your first step is to just play. So don’t be scared and play. That’s my first device and step two when you’re ready after you feel comfortable to start learning more about prompt engineering because as you get better with your prompting, your results will be even better after your first initial prompt, and you won’t have to go back and forth as many times.
Olivia
I know that’s all really great advice, and I think I really appreciate you saying not to be afraid and don’t let fear control the situation because there I think was a lot of fear stroking towards the beginning of when some of these tools have been first released. But I think that. You know as we get a little bit more comfortable I think the best way to approach it is just as you said to play and trying it out in a safe space such as when you’re preparing before you’re actually leaving a class activity that uses some of these tools so just being able to play.
Alana
Oh, and I was Mark, I have one more thing. So, if you’re skeptical and you weren’t thinking of using it, here’s a piece of data that will help you. The US Department of Education released a report called ‘The Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Teaching and Learning’, and in the report, it said that 49% of our time is spent directly in front of students. So, that means 51% of our time is spent doing administrative tasks that we never went into this profession to ever do. And it said that the AI that’s currently available right now can save us 8 hours a week. So, if you feel burnt out and you feel like you are tired and exhausted, you could save 8 hours of time. So, if you want to buy some time back, you know, to spend with your students or just to do something that you love, like hiking, knitting, I don’t know, whatever it might be, try it because I’m sure you want some time back.
Olivia
Yeah, I know, that’s great to think about, you know, maybe you’re afraid but what’s the alternative? It’s just losing more of your time. So, really having that in mind and encouraging, I think teachers to just try these things out. And for those of us who are out there making the tools, the teachers can try considering this perspective and thinking about what teachers are trying to really teach their students when they are actually involved incorporating AI tools and really teaching our students at generative AI. Well, Alana, thank you so much for joining us, and to our listeners, thank you for tuning in. We really appreciate you, Alana, your passion for using AI to enhance the learning experience for students and teachers really has inspired me and I hope some of our listeners out there. I just want to mention that if you’re eager to delve a little bit deeper, I’ve mentioned it already but I would highly recommend checking out Alana’s insights in her book titled ‘The Generative Age’ and don’t forget to check out her podcast also with the same title, ‘The Generative Age’. And you can check her out on our website, alanawinnick.com. And to all our listeners out there, we really hope that you found this discussion enlightening. We know that the AI brings a lot of possibilities to education and we’re excited to hear from you about how you’re trying it out. With that, until next time, just help with, we hear from you soon and can’t wait to see what you do with all the tools out there. Thanks, Alana.
Alana
Thank you so much for having me.
