Ai in Global Edtech Leadership
Disclaimer:
Everything below is a mix of what I observed and heard during the event. The goal isn’t to pinpoint "who exactly said what," but to share (usually) an outsider's view and overall perspective on these industries. I’m not here to act as a definitive firsthand source—readers should do their own research. I hope this inspires you to attend events, explore new industries, and hear what leaders are presenting. These notes combine my observations with thoughts on how things could run smoother and how ideas connect (IMO). I’m not an expert, you know? Just hanging out in the room with them. Enjoy!Topics Covered: Education, K-12, Artificial Intelligence, Data Storage, Data Leaks, Privacy, Student Tracking, K-12 Surveilience, Chat Monitoring, Grade Records, Behavior Prediction Ai, Accessibility for All, Tablets for Toddlers
This event sounded super interesting. It was aimed at leaders in Education and the intersection of Ai (btw, i know that ‘not how you spell it’ but thats so stupid its not. AI is looks almost like Al. Its like, already a barrier as it is, why make its writing confusing too!! lol. In the age of iPhones, iWatch, come on, now! That is me in the making!!! The event description was a bit vague, though it was going to last four days!! Many of the speeches sounded cool too. When I went to see the price, yikes!! Over 1k/person. Though, a little more digging led me to the ‘volunteer’ tab where you could sign up to help out with speeches. Weeks later I got an email that I’d been enrolled to emcee! Unexpectedly, I headed that way, dressed to impress- and introduce some leaders of edtech downtown over two days. What is gonna happen?
Why Attend: Education is falling flat on its face here in the USA. We are not keeping up with the excellence of our past nor the standards of other countries just as capable as us worldwide. I’m curious how we will solve this crisis, as children continue to enter this broken system. I’ve worked hard in many roles within the education world, even here in Seattle recently. I’ve been in the trenches. They’re not great. There is huge need for help. I may get into my own experiences in the system more throughout this blog, as things they bring up remind me of my own experiences… and how their solutions may BE practical or just SOUND practical. It’s great to be ‘in the know’ about Ai and Education.
Overall Event Ratings: Venue (3.75/5), Food (3/5), Speaker Content (4/5), Networking (2/5), Likeliness to Return (2.5/5)… (more at the end)
Photo Collage and Commentary:
Notes from the Event
Disclaimer: Sometimes I go to these events and I just think after, “wow.. What the HECK am I supposed to do with this information I just learned. This is mindblowing and/or not good, 😅🤯. Where you’re like, what the heck? WHat is going on in this industry/all industries behind the scenes!? hahah. For example, I learned at this event that 90% OF STUDENT ATTENDING PUBLIC OR PRIVATE SCHOOLS IN NORTH AMERICA ARE BEING TRACKED WITH ~170,000+ DATA POINTS EACH!!! FOR THE ENTIRITY OF THEIR K-12 EXPERIENCE!?!?!??!!? WHAT THE HECK. AND THAT COMPANY RECENTLY HAD A DATA BREACH, ANNOUNCED IN JANUARY. ITS AN EVENT ON APRIL FIRST!!!! THREE MONTHS LATER 🤣. THEY’RE A LEADER OF THIS EVENTTTTTT. ON APRIL FOOLS DAYS. HAHAHAHA. Its like, okay, come on “life” - enough already. So, this madness is crazy and interesting and reality, so that’s why I’m putting it here on my blog. Let’s work together and figure out what to do here.I’ll give you one more fact that this event taught me that is kinda surreal and I’m confused why the event wasn’t focused around this simple issue alone: Post-Covid 20% of kids aren’t showing up to school K-12… chronic absenstee. Where are they? Where are they? Where are these kids? 20% of KIDS!!! What is going on that 20% of kids are chronic absentee and/or missing and we’re all still functioning. I think this is what Trump is talking about and the most of the news isn’t/the industry and world is ignoring.
What is going on and how is this not something everyone knows!!!? And talks about daily?! As much as they talk about netflix shows. Geeze.
SPEECHES
Generative AI Use Cases in K-12
Understand the capabilities of learners
Use cases: time
Teachers are our most valuable asset—spending so much time on administrative activities
Love to get time to do activities and connect with students
(But some students are so disruptive)
Help teachers save 7-10 hours a week, go home on time, not go home on the weekend—that’s a win for all of us. That’s the #1 use case
Echo, it’s about scale, time, and how we can really deliver a more personalized experience for the student. So much potential here
We’ll see more ability for teachers to provide and deliver tech to the needs of the student where they’re strong or inefficient and make them unique content to help them develop in that area
Biggest complaint is not enough time, then tested on it
How do you see generative AI addressing the specific challenges educators face today, such as different instruction, grading, or lesson planning?
The ability for AI to help discern strengths and gaps or deficiencies, where a student may need more attention or perspective. AI can process this analysis at a scale to the point that teachers don’t have time for—AI can suggest ways to get through and understand students.
We can do this in seconds, creating videos to help students learn in ways that are efficient and impactful.
As one of the first AI platforms out there, we want to put our flag in the sand of safety and privacy. We have a perspective that is unique to go state by state or district by district and see what the teachers are using. See the tools, IP generators, floor plans
Look statewide or districtwide and see what are the tools that teachers are being drawn to?
Lesson planning capabilities
Rubric generators
IP generators
We can see how many teachers are using it, how many times
Then have conversations with folks in this room, say here’s what we’re seeing, how can we set that up for you.
If you’re interested in your district utilization, let us know, we’ll tell you the trend data of what they’re using and not using—let us know and we’ll share it with you
There was curriculum being developed in districts where over a dozen languages are being spoken. How do you find that and map things in real time
DUDE!?!?!? WHY ARE PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN AMERICA EXPECTED TO ACT LIKE PRIVATE SCHOOLS OVERSEAS!? WE ARE SO LOST. This level of luxury and personalization peopel would pay THOUSANDS for overseas hahah. and we’ve got it as a goal at public schools, all while we’re failing at testing and reading at and sensible level!?
Our priorities are wack!!
In Shanghai, kids were 7yo and doing multiplication/division, no problem!! Reading full fledge books with me, and happy!!
Here the kids are SO behind!!!! Everyone is behind.
What role should AI play in enhancing student engagement and fostering creativity in the classroom?
You can instantly convert kids’ stories into movies now
If you need to get to the next step, what are the options available? Asking how to end the book, get help
“Yeah I love that, teachers can see a history, a chat history, to see what interests the student has.”
AI can do that for the student, using the student’s creativity to connect them with what their interest is
They can see what the student is interested in, and then align their curriculum
Teachers have a tough time finding things that are modern and current, trying to connect things to make them relevant
Teachers go in and need to create a lesson plan activity that helps them learn a statistical component, bring in all the scores from March Madness, how many points, how loud, bring in some data (bring in data that’s current, relevant, and contextualized to their interests). Make it current and relevant.
Bring the fun back to the classroom. Learn even when you don’t know you’re learning.
Making something that’s fun and enjoyable for parents, kids, teachers. This technology can just do amazing things.
The videos and music that students create
They’re doing things that are topical and relevant to music.
Let’s call out the responsibility we all have here, it opens up a Pandora’s box
It’s critical to have guardrails in place
Critical we look for language (self-harm) or videos that are being viewed
If we throw this on the teacher, that’s not fair—we’re creating a bigger problem. But within the technology, have the ability to identify and flag what’s not appropriate, or a risk or concern
Chances are they may not even KNOW it’s a risk, so it’s good to have that.
Guidelines, it’s good to at least centrally manage or see what they’re doing, it’s good to know where that training needs to happen.
What safeguards should schools put in place to ensure ethical use of generative AI, especially regarding data and privacy and equity?
I’ll start and say “all”
That’s what’s different here, in this industry, versus others, there’s not an economic motivation
We’re focused on human power, it’s a different paradigm
Make sure it fits into a K-12 setting with lots of eyes and fingers that have access to that data.
Data privacy is #1 in terms of that need.
How to safely integrate AI into schools has its own critical pieces…
Work in a lot of states that have certain priorities that connect with their laws at a local level. They have procedures they put in place to safeguard data
There’s type 1 and type 2, if they’re type 2, that’s the next level
That means they’ve been audited over a 6-month period to show they’re protecting their data.
Make sure if you have a provider
Make sure new companies, tools, and platforms are helping to secure data
Equity can also be access equity. Making sure it’s available on all devices, in all environments (Not everyone has access at home) so let’s take into account how they access it. How do all learners get access to the same type of tools across all districts?
hm.
You have to be mindful of the risk that it brings amongst all of that.
One guy says
We’ve worked with privacy regulators for years
Federal, state, and international privacy regulators we’ve worked with in crafting this in a system and model level. Don’t just ship this stuff off to ChatGPT or Gemini, there has to be that additional level of work that’s been done on this.
Host says she’s not supposed to ask or adlib questions, but she said that you brought up ChatGPT but because it’s free, remember free is not always the best. When you work with the free ones, and you go into a partnership with a vendor, remember you’re talking about security, data privacy. You’re getting the rules and cautions that are going to save your district. You don’t want to get your district on the news. It’s important to work with your vendors
- Free is not always best
- If you don’t have that kind of budget, you don’t want that prioritized… well just know you need to protect your students
- Even if it’s free, you want to do your homework. You have people that are watching
If the product is free, then you’re the product. They’re learning from you. No slide against ChatGPT, they’re doing incredible work. But it’s something to be mindful of with any of your providers
Is it true altruism or is there something behind that?
There’s a cost to everything, even if it’s free.
Free like a puppy, free like a marriage, free like a beer. There’s always more that’s related to this.
When it comes to Open AI and Google, they’ve opened the door for all of us.
This is all new, all new for all of us
I’ve been paying for my $20 subscription, I’m an adult, I have control of my data. You have to secure the data. Provide tools that are super easy for your staff.
If you’re adding another thing
One guy in the audience isn’t sure if he’s allowed to ask questions, but he finally asked,
How do schools make sense of it all?
How do teachers think about building out an AI ecosystem that’s not only secure in data privacy but also achieves the outcomes we want for staff and learners? What advice would you give?
Understand what your objectives are
Figure out how to support those objectives?
What happens to data as it moves through the ecosystem?
Are models being trained on data?
Understand your potential risks and outcomes that you’re trying to achieve.
Have transparency and a willingness to absorb feedback from administrators and teachers
This is all new and we’re just figuring it out on the fly, all of us.
If it’s not starting with them asking you, “what are you trying to do here”, hopefully they’re asking that and hopefully they’re starting with these questions first and then giving help.
Have that as the foundation of where you’re starting from
This incredible capability is in its earliest days. We’re in the beginning of dawn in what’s available this year. Know that beyond the use case we’re talking about here, you can go deeper.
Start at that foundational level. Right now you have a dozen or more point solutions floating around in your classes. The absence of policy is just going to make more and more. 12 will be 42 and then 200 and they’re going to get to be unmanageable. This would be my caution here.
There are ways to put guardrails in place that allow you to get to these solutions.
Right now we talk about all of these main generative models a lot, but there are 6,000-8,000 being added each week
You keep hearing that whatever benchmark we had for last week will just keep getting passed by someone else.
Get the foundations in place that allow you to swap between models. Do this under the hood, extract the students, and keep the guardrails in place. Before this problem gets worse, try to get that in place. We have a solution for that as well.
Don’t forget about the students. Make sure the students are part of that evaluation team.
This is all new as well, so if you can work with a provider that creates a safe space where the students can play in the sandbox… they’ve got Snapchats on their phones, but they’re using it.
It’s in the shadows right now, but bring the students into the conversation. They’re going to have so much insight.
Another question?
As the power grows and the models grow, I’m concerned the cost to run the models on an electricity standpoint, your costs will rise and rise, and we’ll be invested into a company that is getting higher and higher costs?
If you look into the Chinese AI providers, they’re driving the costs down a lot
Another player here is Nvidia. They’ve got their new Blackwell processors.
Another one coming out next year and then 2028. They’re doing a lot to push the price down with the efficiency of their processors
Agents’ power is outpacing. If you look into agents AI. Next year is going to get a little bonkers, but the idea is you can say, “I’m a teacher, I want to teach this this semester, go do this all for me” and it’ll do it for you. This is by far surpassing Moore’s law. It’s showing the doubling of the powering of these agents is occurring 3-4 times per year.
It’s going to get to a point where the innovations are coming out so quickly it’ll be hard to create policy around
We’ve got to figure out how to make policies that will keep up, as soon as you have one, it’ll be outdated a few weeks later
I think there’s a balance where the costs will get pushed down, but the market will decide if the really expensive or more affordable work better. It’ll develop in the next 2 years
When we build out AI, we’re doing like LLM obstructions.
We can do things that are cost effective
If anyone saw in the news in the last 24 hours they just raised even more billions of dollars, valued at hundreds of billions of dollars.
Will GPT get even more expensive, will that strain your budget even more? If you’re just on one provider it’ll limit your options and put you in a hard spot.
Another question:
Silicon provider for smartphones and tech… to drive costs down is moving the processing to the device and the edge—partnering with Nvidia and Google, it helps with the costs and private security.
This happens within the device.
I’m in the industry, in all this ‘bringing the best technology to the world’ but at the same time it’s based on where the data is being pulled from. Where are these models trained? What data do these models use? My question to you and to the team is, like, what are we doing to create these data lakes? So it’s not just up to the supplier how they train the models, how they can be transparent? Are they just driven by profit? What is the community doing to make these data lakes, are we training the model so it is safe for K-12?
I like how people ask super long questions in the audience when they ask, very often haha. It helped you see the impressiveness of a short question.
We can provide data with AI and additional books, etc. Add to data even more over time so models have access to new data
I feel like students will mess around with AI and joke with it and confuse it on purpose. So your schools’ AI’s data is really crucial, now that they mention it.
There are providers like Google and xAI which just bought Twitter, now they have a huge repository of data—but now what are they doing with it? They’re going to incorporate real-time sentiments into this analysis. IDK it requires a whole new framework cause this is so sensitive.
If you have the trust with someone who has been around 140 years, there you go, that’s important
What needs to be done to make sure these are safe and secure? We’re pioneers here, we’re just figuring things out, there are arrows, it’s messy.
AI on the edge, these devices, elsewhere… giving smart people with creativity, give them the tools, give them the education, and then learn from it.
IDK who should be the curator of that data. I don’t want to be it? (He points to himself)
You see AI is getting so far from the original training data it’ll be a little hard to get that back. So make sure you can proxy everything going in and going out. Maybe a teacher, well-meaning, is uploading something they shouldn’t be.
Maybe we strip it (like maybe test scores) or mask it
Make sure that they’re willing to offer you a version that is “on prem” (idk if that’s what he said)—it’s entirely possible to develop this on prem, you don’t have to go out to an Open AI.
What strategies can help educators and administrators evaluate the effectiveness and safety of AI tools before adoption?
- Use case, pull in librarians, do a pilot program and see if the solution works. If it doesn’t, how quickly can we react and solve problems with the users? (I didn’t fully get this)
Look for errors and hallucinations. Ask where it got its data. Get an audit log from both sides of the data from your vendor. Self-monitoring will help with that
Make sure students aren’t talking about self-harm or criminal behavior
Don’t put it on the teacher, that’s not fair to them.
Put the content in the teachers’ hands and let them look at it, they’ll tell you how it is. Have a survey, a quick survey—what are the top three tools you use. What are the pros and cons? Give that feedback that is right there. We’ve talked about the models in place for assessing the security.
One guy in the front row is looking at Twitter on his phone and another social media on his phone. Lol. It’s crazy how even the presenters can see him—so disrespectful and this event is so important. But he’s just cropping pictures of the basketball game. From the front!!! OMG so rude. Even the presenter can see him being distracted front row!! Like a child at school lol.
And it makes me think about the leaders not even paying attention
OMG he’s about to ask a question, the host just called on him and he’d submitted a question earlier and now suddenly he’s called on—lol!!
“What’s the appropriate age for students to start using AI—he says it’s not appropriate for kids 13, realistically they’re using it much younger. Are they offering products to kindergartners? What do we do
It depends what type of AI are we talking about?
Kindergarten, AI can power the recommendations.
AI is at the core of search tech, recommendation technology, what are the use cases and the capabilities
If there is a provider going to the degree to protect the data
Understand that there’s new tech, there’s a lot of fun activities that teachers can do to help students get aware of what they can do. We talked to fun teachers that are thinking of these ideas. Make sure there are procedures in place so that provider, even if they’re using the name-brand ones behind the scenes, make sure you know what they’re doing with that data
There are certain categories of data you wanna look out for. Know you’ve got the right precaution in place. Look for language or behavior, is the data going out to be 3rd party?
Transparency is important too—so you can see how teachers and students are using it. If they are misusing the tool, we flag this. Does the school or principal need to do something?
Some of this is so niche, it’s good for the teachers to be aware of this too. It’s so new, so we need to see what students are putting into the search we need to be aware so we know if they’re doing things illegal, we’re aware
This is so new, so it may look like a student is cheating—but a lot of students are learning about this too. If the school isn’t ahead of it, we need to be giving a 2 or 3 mistake leeway is going to be helpful. We’re all learning what works and what is allowed.
If you’re looking at a product that says it’s not good for a certain age group, ask “why”—maybe it’s just a signature needed, like Google or something, and then you can write off on it. That would be the red flag for me—what is it going to do that is not safe.
Have that discussion.
Another audience question:
What lessons can we learn from the LAUSD and whatever rollout.
People laugh ( I don’t get it hahah)
He said, what can we learn from it
Mistakes are going to be made, it’s going to happen in a lot of districts, miscommunication between the community and the board
Something in LA? Surprising
Why are we all here now? There’s a certain level of empathy that we need.
Have some empathy as we all try to have the same goals in mind. But know that we’re forging ahead and pioneers get slaughtered.
Have grace and empathy, mistakes happen as we’re learning
Everyone wants to be on the cutting edge.
The same product doesn’t work for all grade levels, districts, etc. It depends on how your district is structured.
Don’t depend on IT to take care of it, they can’t take care of privacy. It’s a culture, it’s everyone’s responsibility to take care of it.
What does the future of AI in K-12 education look like and how do you see your organization contributing to this vision?
These interconnected systems are going to open new pathways to new opportunities
It’s going to increase the speed and efficiency we have
I’m building a lesson plan, how do we make sure things are available?
This future ecosystem is exciting and a catalyst for change
We start talking about robotics, that’s a whole area that’s going to grow like crazy. All the robots look scary as hell. I wouldn’t want that in my classroom next to a student. But when you wrap that in a fluffy approachable skin, letting that sit beside a student that has special needs, let them sit by that kid, and let’s see how that develops.
Let’s train those robotics
Even the Newton system is so exciting, you can train robots in virtual worlds
Like in the robot, you can train them in a virtual world like the Matrix where they have the knowledge and are learning it all together.
Look for providers using RAG: retrieval augmented generation
Looking at MCP: Model Context Protocol, if you haven’t take a look at that—this is going to be the foundational model that most of the large LLM providers are looking at as the standard to build their agents on top of. This is next year stuff. Look into that too.
Stay connected to the people that are on the edge, connected to these things
The guy who asked the question and was looking at this and that is also texting his wife about their daughter having a fever. Makes sense why he’s distracted, cause he has a reason to keep checking his messages
We’re excited about empowering students and teachers with these capabilities. There’s tremendous potential there. We’d love to show you what you’re building.
Audience member: change is hard for school systems
Everyone laughs
If we’re a barge and it takes a few decades to turn around, I’m a little worried about the accelerated pace is outpacing our ability to digest them and create structures to utilize them. By the time that happens, you’re 25 steps ahead. How does any sized school system get their arms around how to create a structure to manage the change and utilize the tools?
Having an orchestration capability in place to introduce as you’re ready.
Know there are guardrails in place throughout the system that will look for bad behavior that could be concerns. Whether with us or another provider that allows you to advance after that security base.
Every technology has its own path, every district has its own path. If you can find a set of solutions that allow your staff to get on the first floor with it, maybe you’re ready to go to the 11th floor, maybe not
Find a way to save them 7-10 hours a week, that’s a huge win, I’d say “yeah”
No one says you have to jump into the deep end.
We’re not economically driven here. This is power driven. Take the time to make sure the tools are meeting your needs.
NOW this guy is looking at videos of pigs. And he’s sending his “fishing group” the article about the basketball game”—everyone is so chatty. SO rude.
OMG his calendar is SOOO full—looking at videos of pigs and arms stuff. Crazy. Lol looking at how acres and acres of land were “bought by Muslims”
His wife said she can’t go to daycare tomorrow cause her fever.
Then someone sends advice on how to make good PowerPoint even better in 2025.
The teacher is saying again, “you’re not fully aware of the world we live in. In my mind, I’m thinking how do we create these structures? The biggest thing for me: how do we get admin, busy as heck, to start to see some of the tools, utility and the things you talk about with time, in a way they can digest”
Sitting in the front row distracted it sets the tone for everyone behind you. This event is so expensive. And this guy is just social media browsing, cropping pics.
How do we move to project-based learning with the tools of AI, allowing things to be managed. I’m working on the problem but I’ll be retired by the time it’s answered.
Get people to use it, then they get addicted to it, then they’re not afraid of it anymore. These tools are there to help them. If you can get them to use it,
Give two (at least) the time to just use it. If you have time, but if you have 30 minutes where they can explore together, that’s many possibilities connected in their minds.
Now he’s texting his ‘guys’ groups’ about pictures of girls all in ripped jeans, sometimes he texts about business, then another group he texts about stocks and money (he’s legit in my view of this event). They’re showing off their Robinhood earnings, his friend earned over 1k in the caption and he texted that he’s so impressed with that guys skills. So crazy and distracting haha!!!
BREAK: I leave and walk around the site
A cybersecurity company has cupcakes as a goodie to get customers to talk to them at the table.. I told them I thought it was a bath bomb. Then they said that’s a good idea. I said yeah, but be careful if you want your company associated with baths.
At lunch I wanted to get tea, after eating. They had no more mint (my first choice) so I got ginger peach instead. As I was adding honey and lemon, a guy came up wanting mint, too—but I told him great minds think alike, as he reached for the box’s interior and it was empty.
I told him the drink station at the other side of the room may have some, he said it’s too far.
He asked if I took the last mint, but I said, no, it was gone. Maybe the non-minty people are at the other side of the room.
Eventually, he went to get ginger peach! And I said, wow! See, great minds think alike. I got the same! He said, it sounds good didn’t it. And I said yeah, exactly. A good plan B.
Then I told him someone should do a case study on that moment haha.
He laughed as he walked away. Haha. I liked my joke too. That’s why it’s here. It was also strange statistics and I’m always curious about people’s preferences, scientifically/patternly. SO I was half-joking, half-erious.
Okay—now I need to find out which speech I’m emceeing at. I think it starts in half an hour.
BTW - they had no clue of my schedule and when I showed up to EMCEE both times there was already someone there to emcee (provided by the speakers) of what I thought I was supposed to be hosting. So, they will learn how to host volunteers better next year.
Got some nice snacks. When I arrived the host had already started and there was a person there greeting everyone, so it seems they are good, introducing myself would have been distracting to this. Tomorrow I’ll get more on this. They even said most of the speakers don’t need introductions.
Thanks to everyone for being customers. Just having everyone introduce themselves.
Working in student services.
Asking if everyone has introduced themselves—a woman works with making content interactive.
Assistant executive director for Washington school administration in AI, just an hour and a half south of here.
She asked if anyone else wants to introduce themselves, asks if you’re good to start (but they said to wait two more minutes and if anyone else did not get to introduce themselves. But I won’t speak up unless called on. I like how she is collecting data about the group. She decides to just get started even though it’s early.
Thanks for this, the lighting is relaxing but I hope this session is fun and interactive.
Many people here have been with her company longer than here, many people in the audience. She’s done this for 4.5 years, current role for just over a year. Role is to figure out that all of the products and new things meet needs. Love working and brainstorming with customers. Love feedback (good/bad/different)—what you want to see, reach out! I’d love to collaborate with you. Today we talk about how we turn messy data into impactful AI.
I was doing AI before AI was cool, but it’s only been cool for 18-24 months now
Glad we have this transformative tech
Really passionate about problems we are solving. This tech is really transformative.
If you’re on your journey well or just started, we’d love to partner with you. A lot of this will make a huge impact for the kids, which is why all of us are here
Anyone not know PowerSchool? She skips over the first few slides cause literally no one raises their hand (I’m not going to in the front row)
95 million students
17,000 customers (largest K-12 community planetoid. Proud to serve you all)
55 million students, 80% of North America
Before getting into the AI, make a few points:
We’ve been around 25 years and evolved a bit. We’ve made selective acquisitions or built organic products that were intentional to create a full K-12 ecosystem. We’re just about on the brink of being where we want to be. Have one holistic K-12 platform to solve every problem that a K-12 district would have.
Every activity, from predicting enrollment, enrolling students from a family perspective, school perspective, manage students, take attendance, IEPs, form filling out, migrant forms, native language, free or reduced lunch types of forms
Introducing payments that will be launched shortly
Curriculum and instruction. Attention and behavior support, etc., Naviance, Perform, professional learning, applicant tracking, employee records, performance matter, personalized homework
The reason I’m calling all of this out—regardless of the problem you’re trying to solve, we want to be the platform to solve those problems for you. I’m excited about three things:
How do we connect all of the data together? What puts the intelligence in AI (trick question, not really) the data puts the intelligence in AI.
When all of the data is connected we can do so much more for all of our stakeholders.
Our goal is to have a single pane of glass
If you’re a parent, how many systems do you need to login to understand their behavior, attendance, homework, etc.—
How many platforms are you logging into? 3–6 platforms, yes?
We want that to be one. We don’t want them to login to 20 different platforms in order to do the things that they need to do.
Today my goal is to show how we’re bringing AI into each one of these solutions.
Even an educator, admin, everybody is able to benefit from taking the work out of workflows.
What I hope to do every single day is not dream up things you guys want, but actually work with you guys on what’s going to make a difference.\
We work really closely to survey our customers on a custom basis
We did a survey about 12 months ago (chart picture taken)
Mostly they wanted integrating technology solutions to personalize learning
We’re suffering from chronic absenteeism, 20% across the country aren’t showing up for school.
WHERE ARE THOSE KIDS!?
How is this not a national emergency!?!?/ 20% of kids missing? Absent? How many are 100% missing?
And btw this is the speech given by the company that had data go missing for millions of customers lately :(.
With all of the innovation we’ve done in the last 24 months, we need to bring all the data together.
That’s what puts the intelligence in AI. We don’t want people logging into so many different products. How do you do one single login?
Every single product in the future will have AI in it.
5 or 7 years I haven’t stepped foot in a grocery store, I do all of my shopping online.
Everything has AI.
Everything has its own AI. Not all of them will talk to each other. This will cause broken experience for your school district.
We want cohesive AI so every stakeholder has the same experience. So the AI responds consistently, bringing economies of scale, as tech leaders you understand this better than everyone else.
What is the promise of AI?
What can it do for the next generation of education?
Personalized learning
What do you want to do for teachers? Save time—eliminate overhead and inefficiency
Student portfolio management?
What other ideas do we want to do with AI?
I want to see it use the way we track people and our shopping habits. I tried to buy a soccer jersey for my wife cause she and this Algerian soccer player have the same name, so if we can apply that to math, reading, across curriculum learning, I’d love to see that
I want my teachers to have meaningful data around the students that have a gap or a strength, because there is just so much information that their brain can’t comprehend about 20-120 students. Maybe the data can be a partner to them and their teaching strategies and how they differentiate.
They should do this with their teachers too (I feel like he sounded like a leader telling them how to do their job, but he can do this too! With the people he leads)
She says they’re doing the best job setting her up and she promises she didn’t pay them to say this (cause she does good data on what they need!)
She says the tech is here now to solve every problem.
We can solve personalized education, democratized insights, eliminating overhead, meaningful engagement
Her customers in California said even her kids and parents aren’t reading at a 5th grade level. We’re sending them things but not connecting with them. They’re being sent so much stuff but not even reading it.
How do we create cohesive, consistent AI for every stakeholder?
How do we have guardrails, how do we help them be a thought partner when they’re stuck… being a partner to help them think through a problem.
How many of you have kids going through the college and career process?
She said she feels educated, she has a master’s, but she could not do this it’s so confusing. She wants AI to help with college and career exploration.
Scholarship opportunities, this is my GPA, what I’m interested in, expose me to opportunities. Once I’ve expressed interest, help me find opportunities, internships, help me prepare for interviews.
We can help save educators time, like the lady in front just here said. How we can help create assessments, not just for ELA math, but also for CTE.
How many of you have dual language in your district—how difficult is it to create content in multiple languages.
Creating newsletters, creating a passage, creating test items.
How much time would that help save an educator?
As families if someone has submitted their grades today?
Would that help with family engagement?
Getting responses in the language of the parent—or if they’re communicating at a 5th grade level, can we communicate with them in a way that makes sense.
What are school board policies? For an administrator, as Michael said, a teacher or a principal being able to ask if all the teachers got D’s and F’s last assessment, these are problems we’d like them to solve.
All of this is with a common foundation of data
We have a large ecosystem of products, AI in each product, removing work from workflows, personalizing education, eliminating overhead, time saving, democratizing data, and user engagement
Other AI tools can do other things, why PowerSchool AI? Here’s a few things I’d say:
If most of you are our customers… would you use an Android app on an iPhone? No, it’s not going to work
Would you use Copilot with Gmail? No. It doesn’t make sense.
When you’re within the ecosystem, this is AI that is contextual and personalized
It’s embedded in existing user workflows. No copy-paste, it anticipates the intent.
Built-In Adoption and Training. No change management, no learning curve, existing SSO, rostering, integrations
Bring AI to Data: modern approach to AI, no data movement. Eliminates security risks.
Transparency and District Control: sensitive alerts. Content Moderation. Chat logs. Limited to district content. Feedback mechanisms
If kids talk about sex, harming, etc.—it will be sent to the appropriate people
You can even limit conversations so it’s only conversations about what you want students to be learning about
Consistency for every person, every persona journey, students, educators, parents, admins, and counselors
K-12 specific guardrails, restricted to the topics, K-12 readability, etc.
How many datapoints do they collect about a student in an educational ecosystem 170,955??
What puts the intelligence in AI? The data.
How many of you have clean consistent access to your data today? It’s a challenge, right?Most of what K-12 (and most industries) this is what the architecture looks like. If you want the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the first step is to streamline and process—start making sense of it.
Secure data consolidation.
Bring together all of the data in a safe and secure environment in real time to have access and start making sense of it.
Bring data together and start doing cool things with it.
Then she’s going to show data of how to use the software live.
Examples of data:
Five customer conversations this morning
So difficult to get the data of the things you want
How many of you get messages right at Friday afternoon with an urgent question to answer—look at how we can see different signs, like “give me the absence rates for all students for this year”
After you give them that data, they’re going to ask you five other questions. Break it down by x, y. (Ask them to do the exact same thing)
The AI does that, it looks at the attendance data and puts the risk status down
Then we look at lunch status and homeless codes. Till we get to exactly the data exploration answer that we want.
Then we visualize the data distributed with lunch and homeless codes activated.The point is for any of you, this is available today at your fingertips. You can start exploring with it.
Tech talent is a problem, people understanding the data is a problem
These are extreme examples, things most of your teachers aren’t going to care about but maybe your board members will. I want you to see the capabilities of the software, then you can create an executive summary. In a lot of cases, we can get the answer
This is the ability for, what we’ve done behind the scenes, we’ve trained the AI, taught the model using semantic searches, what the relationships are between different entities and data elements, how to interpret all of that.
Every customer has custom things. So not only the standard scheme, but also custom data, to learn and understand what those relationships are. Then it’s intelligent enough to start giving you those responses.
A guy raises his hand and says “we have this, you’ll see on the top it says there’s the SQL—we’ve built out all kinds of reports for our administrators”
We’ve started putting all of our SQL queries and built a question bank that people can just go back to.
Now people can just do this analysis. We’re in the early stages of doing this and it’s crazy what it is going to provide to our staff (yeah that was the guy who talked earlier that I made the comment about, how he should make sure he’s taking his own medicine).
You’re in a virtualized environment, not mixed in with all of the other school districts, absolutely not.
Next piece is to have this single login experience. Here’s what’s coming:
You probably have a parent portal you actively use, but this is the next generation. This will have SIS, MTS, school assignments, one-stop shop
First we have this now for parents, next we’ll have it for teachers
Then all the personas can use this.
We watch a video of what this looks like.
Simplified experience for educators
Course, schedules, getting into things
Communicating coms tools
One-way and two-way communication, directories, groups, all of this brought into the single pane of glass experience for educators
All of that, grades, all the PTP (PowerTeacher Pro)
They can do all of this and not have to do lots of logins just to get what they want
Then she has some technical difficulties—but then it keeps working
You can ask the AI for lots of questions,
Ask questions and use PowerBuddy to create assessments, assignments, create coursework. Select the level of readability, grade level. Personalized practice, everything a teacher needsThe guardian experience exists today.
A parent can come in, they have access to the newsfeed, grades, logging in
Next month they can accept payments through there too so it’s not a disconnected ecosystem.
See the grades, the absence policy, etc.
You get natural language responses right back there on the back.
Here’s what it looks like for a student today:
Within this (looks like Facebook lol)—see that the app knows you’re working on “the power cycle” and then they anticipate your questions—and then they read the stuff to you—they can read audio to you, give you a quiz, etc. You can answer the quiz questions.
This has context of what the student is studying
Summarized for the teacher.
If the student is inappropriate. The district admin will be notified.
Also language is a huge thing, language accommodations. Home language may happen, then you don’t have to copy/paste. You just deal with unnecessary data integrations.
Teachers know how to use this system.
This chatbot just hangs out and can answer a quick question.It’s already available. Just work with us to turn it on.
The teacher version is what everyone gets excited about too.
Teachers can access all of the chat logs. See the chat history, summarize it—are there recurring themes that students are asking?
Just like before, we have a lot of tools.
Every week we’re adding a dozen different tools.
Assessment creation, science labs, a discussion, newsletters, I don’t know the 32 tools. There’s a lot and we’re adding more every day. Working on IEP, letters of recommendation, tons of different tools for teachers
And releasing capabilities to create AI tools.
If a teacher has a question about how to do things within websites, you can just ask within the website. That capability will be within any product.
Every product we’re bringing those capabilities.
Get it so you can control the district experience so you can form AI. Let’s be careful and be sure you can control who has access to the AI. You will see the results. We’ve done dozens of programs. We can help educate you on the right mechanisms for your school districts to do these pilots.
She asks her assistant what she missed
She said this is not learning anything new, it’s just an extension of what they’re already doing.
All of the different tools (lyric, lesson hook, knowledge check, family communication, mnemonic, proofreading, study guide, social story, quick context refresher, project-based learning plan, math word problem, lesson planner, fluency passages…
Also doing student voice and choice
The AI will generate an assignment on velocity, if you’re interested in baseball and I’m interested in being an astronaut, it’ll try to use those things as it incorporates the content for you.Or an Algerian soccer player, someone says—I’m like, wait! Wasn’t that joke from another speech? No this speech haha. Seems a long time ago. But I was thinking, wow, those odds are crazy that we both went to the same two speeches and this speaker gets it.
The audio isn’t working
She says she doesn’t want the audio to play.
Basically we can talk to the chatbot and see the grade.
What are the missing assignments?
Then the chatbot can tell them the exact correct answers.
All of the data within SIS is there. If someone wants to know the uniform policy, the rules for PE, the names of the teachers, etc.
Hope this chatbot is a way for more parents to be engaged.
- We’re working on proactive notifications for the parentsJoin me in Nashville in July, we’ll talk about that—how to send out comms to parents and families. So that we don’t just have to rely on parents asking questions, though I shouldn’t say “just” because this is massive.
Next capability: coaching and mentoring. A lot of time taking notes, following up, etc. But what you’ll see is that we have AI transcribe the conversation between the mentor and mentee. Depending on the framework, it’ll organize the conversations into each specific category you discussed and what the mentee needs to follow up on.
Assume my assistant and I had a convo, she’s my mentor, then the AI takes all the notes, transcribes all the notes.
- No one is manually writing anymore. Just analyze the meeting notes. These are district goals and policies.Summarizes each one of those categories and creates action items
Focus on the coaching and mentoring pieces of it.
This is amazing and time-saving. Imagine doing it with a small or large school district, it’s time-consuming.
Is mentoring separate or a part of SAS?
It’s separate—the student information is not meant for stuff like this. You may not even have this set up in SIS, it’s a separate tool.
CCLR, custom support for every student: student-to-counselor ratio is crazy in our county.
Just like your apps know what assignment we’re working on the activity to create, in this case, the student is asking for career suggestions, they say maybe medical or elementary education. A career in nursing might be a nice fit.
Then you’ll see that a lot is being brought into this.
We download data from the national data exchange, salaries, a learning workplace module, job opportunities, internships, scholarship
Exclusive partnership with Petersons, 16,000 non-college pathways
Not everyone wants to pursue a 4-year degree
This is how we engage students and can get to our goal to get 100% counsel.
We can look at this information, and we want them to engage with their parents and counselor—help them find scholarships. We provide them videos, relevant videos if they’re preparing for an interview. Do you want to be an EMT or a lobotomist or veterinarian? All of these questions can be asked to AI and expose them to opportunities they have.
All in production, all available, and more we’re going to be launching for back-to-school
Last—showing a parent texting the chatbot in Spanish and the bot can speak Spanish.
So this speech is just a big commercial—but it’s what 80% of schools are using
She said think about this—put it on your website, or behind your firewall per se. Documents you only want teachers to ask questions about. All of this, admin or internal stuff. You can have us help you answer questions.
This is all mostly live and I can show you some of the school websites already using this and you can play around with it.
You could do sentiment analysis on the data. We have the entire country of Uruguay using our products. They were worried about bullying, and now we help them with sentiment analysis. What are the types of questions from parents and sentiment between kids.
What does it do when it doesn’t have info? It just says it doesn’t know or have answers
One of our principals is making sure it doesn’t hallucinate.
It’ll say I don’t have an answer—depending on the settings, it can notify you on the things that it was not able to answer, then you can decide if you want to upload info to answer these questions, or just let it go.
Helping them streamline the enrollment process
Funding is top of mind and enrollment is a big part of this. A lot of parents get lost if they can’t find the info on the website.
Is there info missing that is preventing parents from choosing that school district?
It won’t make stuff up, it’ll just say ways you can go send the query to a real human being, forward the help.
Six Principles:
1. Human-centered (AI not replacing humans, humans always in the loop)
2. Fair and Bias Eliminated
3. Data Governance, Privacy, and Security
4. Transparency and User Control
5. Digital Equity and Accessibility
6. Ethical Use of AIWe put a lot of work and effort into having controls in PII direction. What if PII is in our work—we spit it out right away. Nothing needs PII right now. We detect and protect and alert the district.
Lots of observing and evaluating of users
Feedback, thumbs up, thumbs down. Constantly looking at that and evaluating responses
Looking at availability and sustainability.
We white-hat our AI models to keep them as safe and secure as possible
Share reports on that. Lots of work goes into everything I shared with you. Trying to be mindful and thoughtful.
I think she thought her speech was one hour long, but it was supposed to be only 45. She said: I hope this was a good use of your time
Day 2:
Walked in and heard a guy who was talking about how he’s working in juvenile detention centers. Not exactly sure what he was talking about, but they’re not passing codes—and he said when he talked to them about the problems, he realized they’re not using the plugin he built for them
So the point is that they have technicians build these things, but even a year later, they’re not implementing it. These serious security requirements, at the juvenile detention center! Wow.
Something about how it’s exposing their IP address
WOW the people I talked to during the brunch break were from Tennessee. They are wondering how people can afford to live in Seattle. I told them about the transplants, I sold my car, the government is all contracted out
Then we talked about how they learned a bit more freaky than they expected, so I hit them with one more since they mentioned
I told them that the company that leads all of the data of 90% of schools in North America has 170,000 data points that they track on kids.
GUESS WHAT SHE SAID!?!?!?!? THEY HAD A DATA BREACH IN JANUARY.They said it was 13 years of information from their districts
Lots of people seem to have had a ‘big night’ last night, all exhausted.
I saw a really interesting exchange of two people in the morning/throughout. At first, the woman about my age was in the hall jumping with her hands on the shoulders of this attractive guy, about our age too, kinda flirting. Then he looked upset and separated himself from her. (It’s the last day of the conference btw). Her smile was wiped off her face. Then later they were sitting side by side, extremely serious in a meeting with two other people, but in the hallway amongst everyone. Very awkward body language and she had the most focused look on her face. I actually, felt a little sad for her, with how severely her mood dropped. She went overboard for his taste, with PDA in public, but he encouraged it prior to that, it seems….
Then again - I don’t know the whole story AT ALL - but the few times I saw them were interesting.
NEXT / FINAL SPEECH:
I’m attending the speech hosted by “leaders of the state” as I pick which to attend as my final speech.
Before we start, the speakers are chit-chatting about their daughter in college and whether or not it’s a responsible time in her life to get a pet. They’re talking pretty loud lol.
One is from the head of Nebraska, and she’s the entire office for the state.
She said they feel like sports announcers
One is the director of gov affairs in Illinois. Grant-funded—they’re the feet on the ground across the state, though someone in the government has that office.
Edtech office of five, let’s see what the state does with funding (idk what state she said she’s with). Oh! She and the Emcee said she’s also from Washington.
She started this job 4 years ago and likes to think she has some influence over the past four years, asking for an edtech office
Lol! Seems like everyone should hope they have influence at their job now that she mentions it.
Okay—state edtech trends report.
This report was released late last year. Right now they’re working on 2025
This is the third year of the annual survey and report of the state edtech trends
What are the state priorities relating to edtech?
How are state education agencies transitioning to a digital world
We are behind versus other sectors in modernizing our edtech sector.
They work with Whiteboard Advisors from State EdTech Directors, CTOs, The Department of Defense, and a few others.
AI has taken over the conversation. Cybersecurity is still number 1 but artificial intelligence has leapfrogged
Now with SEAs and policy guidance,
Does your state have any of the following initiatives to any of the following education technology topics
ONE LADY ARRIVES LATE. She interrupts things. The emcee jokes that these people are her mom and father, a guy in the audience and the woman arriving late. She said she was scheduled to be two places at once which is why she’s late.
As the spokesperson the one thing she’s interested in is cybersecurity
She saw states aren’t funding as much in cybersecurity as before. They are not sure how to respond to this, they wonder if it’s going to other states? Other responsibilities?Dude. More like other priorities!? After this cyber attack and 20% of kids missing? WTF. Save us Trump/someone.
Anxiety around funding should be no surprise. The pandemic funds just expired March 31st,
She says it’s been a spicy legislative season this year, extra spicy. She said I’m very tired in March, usually it’s June I feel this tired
They’re trying to keep an eye on appropriations that come to states
We know that states are facing budget issues as well. They’re trying to deal with that
Home connectivity and access is still underserved and underfunded. We want to work on this as well.
Also, support for effective and equitable use. Technology can make a difference for students. For educators.
We are still trying to figure out, about half the states have an office of EdTech, but there is still a way to go.
There will be a refunding at the cabinet level to help show how this can help schools
She talks faster than I can type
They’re trying to make sure the sector itself gets better and has stuff built in to make it successful.
We don’t want to hear about a steak dinner, a two-million-dollar deal, and then no one knows what happens and we waste money.
States want to look at this and not have to make bets on hundreds of thousands of tools.
Her slides have problems (again, tech rehearsal is always good)
This was the first year that
Equity seems to be a dirty word right now, but we hold it still dear as a value. It’s still significant for us to provide access.
She mentions how her slides are all kinda repetitive and sorta mumbles, going through her slide. They don’t show up on the screen though.
She said that when Utah kept funding No Child Left Behind, it was impressive. They kept making investments even though federal dollars weren’t there. They’re considered to be one of the best states in edtech, so we need to look at them and see how do we continue and who gained during the pandemic.
The Utah guy in the crowd is easy to identify cause he’s the only one with a huge smile on haha. I was wondering who would be the Utah person.The lady who showed up late is the Sr. Director of External Relations. She works with policy and advocacy with strategic partnerships—she’s a great person to do that, she’s an original member of this group, she’s been around many years. You’ll find these groups partner a lot on things because we work with state-level agencies who are providing resources and support for the districts. Colin serves the districts. It’s important we’re aligned in the messaging we’re doing. Particularly policy and advocacy, sing in chorus, increase our volume, and increase our impact when talking to staffers and officials on how to educate them on what their educational needs are. How we’re changing them moving forward.
The host says we’re a small community.
The waters we’re navigating are different than ever before. We don’t know if our butts, our boats are rising or falling with the water, whether it’s funding. I think there are changes in policy happening fairly rapidly. It’s going to be important for us to navigate those waters moving forward
We’ve had to be careful with language on our websites, at sessions in our conferences. There are people interpreting things like “inclusion” as being forbidden now by new stature. We believe there’s a place for everyone here.
They all have blonde hair haha, and four out of five have glasses. When people say the word “inclusion” you suddenly notice elephants in the room. I just notice that haha. Dyed and highlighted blonde hair.
She says it’s not taken care of. One-time funding solutions don’t solve an ongoing problem. How are we going to fund device replacements? Even with a place in place, replacing all devices at once instead of traditional cycles. Now they have to decide if kindergarten needs to use worse than high school (how about NONE for kindergarten?)
There is a lot underserved, but it’s just talking about where the grants go in place.
It doesn’t serve all the places that are underserved
The legislature thinks that the problem is solved, but it’s not solved
It’s all fundamentally based on relationships. Local, conversations happening in local communities, state, and how important those communications and relationships are.
Now we work together to build the relationships with what our visions and priorities are, we stay true to our visions around equity and access. Universal access to technology is a conversation. Cell phone bans, social media bans… unless you’re in the room with those decision-makers, your voice will not be heard
You need to build relationships and depend on them
Anyone who comes in contact with our students, and now more than ever we need to work on them.
I see a burnout over the past five years being an issue.
People want to return to what it was before, and although some students still feel overwhelmed, they don’t want to put more energy into it.
It’s our job to bring data forward, to continue to work on a speed test through Chrome, and continue to push votes to no (not that you’re not burnout) but not ignore the needs that exist on a local scale. To help lift their voice so those legislative sessions result in the assistance that we need.What should be done to make sure all kids have access to high-quality access to digital resources?
If we can get kids to school, we know they are connected.
In our state, they’re not all coming to school. And that becomes an issue.
We’re not all listening to what our parents are wanting for students
We have no virtual school, that’s disappointing that they find that out. Their kids have not been going to school, so how do they deal with that?
Ask districts to lean into universal design.
We have a large design divide.
When it’s tied to your MTSS programs and they’re brought together, you can make strong outcomes from all kids, whether they needed the assistance or not.
How does the MTSS plan and accessibility LAW which we’re required to now do, which everyone is excited about, I’m sure, get the UDL to all come together. To be the way to which we’ll achieve all the things.
Illinois has really large and really small school districts. One way to address those that have and have not is to create a purchasing consortium. Now we’re implementing it and telling people about it. Schools can leverage and buy things at a discounted level.
They can have the same buying power as the large school district. The large school districts have enough money to give tools to kids, but when we see the poorer districts, they’re using the free versions.
That’s not equal, we’re trying to make that more equitable.
We’ve had grants, back to the conversation around relationships, we’ve been working with the special ed lending learning center to design the grants and be able to provide grants to districts that can then take and work with the center. So, looking for intersections of opportunity, trying to elevate those.
It’s not a lot of funding we’re getting but we’re trying to leverage it.
Where is the funding coming from? Where is the support coming from?
Districts are struggling and having to let staffing go. It’s happening all over our state. There are holes in support in our district.
What do we do at a state level to leverage support from other organizations and agencies? What’s the creative way we can continue to do the work that is underway?Top challenge of 2025 from our reports is home connectivity. We had progress during COVID, there were a lot of hotspots put out. A lot of additional home connections through ESSER grants. Through different grants in states. But as that funding decreases and funding for hotspots are up in the air, that’s still a question. The ability for school districts to provide connections at home is greatly diminished. What happens to those kids and communities?
The people on stage are distracted haha
138/170 districts are rural. To build there, there’s no ROI for the internet provider. There’s a lot to cut through. You can’t go over/under tribal lands. It makes things more complicated. So we look to our other partners.
- Whether it’s telehealth (now that we’re losing our regional hospitals)
- Business and industry are dependent on communication as well.
- Find friends, you’ll have a larger voice when building your case to extend connectivity to the rural areasProfessional development and learning: we can provide the tech but if they don’t know how to teach it, it’s pointless.
Ready to have a brave conversation about the way we do things. I have staff who spend hours doing a PowerPoint, driving a car, making a PowerPoint, drive five hours, drive home, and never talk about it again. If it was worth the time, money, hotel, per diem, I think it’s worth your time to require the folks to find a way to get further reach. Universal design for professional learning.Record it, make it asynchronous
We have 25,000 professionals and 30 of them heard it at the speech
We have courses
We have many things at our site. It’s asynchronous.
We still do face-to-face cause relationships are important
We need to start thinking strategically about how we can still leverage the small number we still have to hold onto those who still like education. We’re telling teachers how to do this in classrooms and we’re not doing that ourselves.
Everyone claps
I AGREE!—this is why we need to glamorize education.
As a result of COVID, I drove around and did 15 trainings.
She said all the teachers around her states are doing filing of forms by themselves without consulting.
After this, she had her funding cut—but now they do everything virtually. Now she helps even more people in these trainings and it’s successful.
Now they’re looking at other professional learning they’re doing with teachers.
Can they gather multiple groups together on the same day?
Have the outreach? Can we get creative with professional learning?
Conferences are professional learning opportunities to inspire people, but we need professional learning in modeling and coaching in our classes
Many people want coaches, but now we have a problem where we lease coaches and they have certain numbers of days in these classrooms
It’s making a profound difference
Integration coaches have benefits
You can see the benefits then add it to their budget to fund these coaches.
The answer is always “do you have Title funding” but that’s not a good resource—how are we funding professional learning in a way everyone can take advantage of it?
In WA state we have built strong relationships with districts across the state. When we receive funding to expand the edtech department, we got funding again with edtech leads at every ESD. We have PD enrolled, this offers essentially clock hours—they sign up and it’s the mechanism to track that. It works really slick. The Canvas courses that we offer, also we provide them asynchronously and synchronously. The hands-on, professional learning that’s happening in the state is delivered through our ESDs that are really well situated for that professional learning.
We all know the summer days that we say, oh, we’re going to get time to learn “this, this, and this”—what I’ve learned is “embedded” is critical, but what does that look like?
Having teachers and partners is critical
Getting substitutes, the costs… we’re in a series of challenges to get creative to continue to support teachers learning, growing, and thriving. We’re looking at “where are teachers after pandemic”. With what’s happening, we have to find a way to build them, thrive, and support students.
You have permission to say “no” to some things. There are over 25,000 applications in any one district. There is no way staff is using that well or with strong pedagogy behind it. Look at what tools we have that we know work, are tied to strong pedagogy, and be okay saying “no” to the rest.
Bree or Brie
In Oregon, the ESDs were my partners in crime in many good ways. I was doing federal programs and edtech. Indeed friends to help with PD. They were instrumental to get that through the state. Now in partnership with AESA, whoever you call them in your state, and some more partnerships, with superintendents. We were able to get a grant to do train-the-trainer across the country. We started in Milwaukee. Last week I was in Milwaukee.
We got trainers that will train teachers.
This PD is around the K-12 Generative AI Maturity Matrix. It’s not instructions on how to teach your kids to do AI… it’s “we’re going to implement AI in your district, what do we need to talk about?”
This training will lead district teams through the process of seeing where you are and where you want to go—building a roadmap
You can’t go to the tech person, they plug in the tech. With AI, everyone needs to be a part of the conversation. The launch was just last week. We’re also going to be doing some national leadership summits and we have these partners because we know, we want to work together to be as effective as we can be.
For our small districts, some only have 3 students a year, on a ranch—how do we get resources to them? Usually it’s through an ESD—so let’s let that voice do the training. They’re helping us modify the training.
This is our proof of concept there
The foundation side of Google gave them a guide. They’ll launch it in November and it’s a guide for how to use your funds. 14 allowable uses under Title 2. The biggest use is professional learning.
People are trying to figure out AI literacy training. We’re trying to showcase what that is.
They produce a Title 4 guide, we need a Title 2.
When money ran out, a bunch of us got riffed.
Helping people who don’t know what tech is, we need to show them what it looks like with tech integration.
She said it’s the “not sexy project, but it gets the job done”
Personally, I roll my eyes when people use “sexy” to describe anything related to K-12. Sexy or unsexy. Let’s end that trend.
What we’re asking districts and states to do needs to be consistent or we’re going to confuse the heck out of people. We’re working to be coherent and connect the dots.
We need our associations to quit competing with each other and work together. Find a way to collaborate together.
If you need an association in Illinois, you will find three. Because of the lack of funding, everyone is competing for whose job it is.
- It’s time for us to work together and spread services. It doesn’t matter who gets credited.
The work going on at the district level, we’re looking for economies of scale. We lighthouse districts that don’t normally get that kind of attention.
- If someone figures out how to do something innovative and elevate it, we connect the districts. The innovation and ability to leverage the funding, digital navigation programs, work hard to then spotlight that and communicate what that work looks like, why it’s important. It’s back to messaging, relationships, and having the ability to get to the key stakeholders.
- I’m working with broadband, I’m working with the state CIO, I’m working across as many agencies as I can. We’re doing similar work, but unless they see how our work dovetails into their priorities, we get lost in the mix. We need to talk to legislatures and agencies and take advantage of the opportunity we had during the pandemic, to continue to make that work.Look to the leaders of your local state to help you
Look local. It’s a crutch or it provides the flexibility to do what you do well.
In Nebraska, we provide a consortium. Together, we do it in a way that we can come to the water to drink, so to speak, we don’t even have to know you did it. Take those resources and still use them locally to know what you need to do
We are stronger together. We don’t all need to make computer science law a required course now with that one person who probably doesn’t even know what computer science is
We can work together. I feel awful for them
Local control is wonderful, lean into it, don’t be afraid to ask for help.One lady was laughing while the woman speaking looked upset
Then the Emcee says “you can tell we have fun together”—I feel like she keeps wanting to show off how they’re all BFFs. Calling everyone her mom, dad, etc. It’s like a cool kids club vibe, and we’re not quite in, but also claiming to be approachable??
She’s sorta acting like a gatekeeper a tiny bit, but also only worked here a few years and the youngest on stage…
We’ve had big breaches the past few years, you might have been involved with your partners or something like that. We hadn’t been doing a good job telling districts how to take old data, keep it secure, take it off and pull it out. We didn’t do a good job saying, “you know, you don’t need to put the SSNs of the kids inside this. That’s not stuff we need and if we get breached that’s not supposed to be there.” We don’t realize it until it’s happened.
Think proactively.
Leaders, go back and ask for help on these things. It’s something I should have probably been doing myself.
It’s a failure on my part to make sure we were ready
SDPC, they have to look up what it means on their phone, Student Data Privacy Consortium or something. Seems crazy haha they don’t even know, but who knows
We need to fund cybersecurity for K-12. I’m a cheerleader for anything funded by the FCC. I don’t care what your discount level is, everyone is going to apply.
Apparently she’s convincing, cause they had so many school districts in Illinois apply, now 72 districts are all applying for programs in this cybersecurity pilot to say what works. Some of them won’t work and that’s what a research project is all about
Once we have those results and know what will best fit a school district based on size and reality, I’m a big fan of
We need cybersecurity funding for this—it all goes for voting and driving, there’s no money left for K-12.
You can have a kid enter Kindergarten, their info is released in a data breach. But you don’t even know their entire financial person has been destroyed. We don’t even know what we’re doing but the impacts of that we’ll see 18 years from now.
Holy crap.
I love my advocacy school who show up and share examples of what they experienced and why it’s important.
- Please be willing to share your story. School districts can’t talk about things. They have liability insurance and their lawyers have been told not to talk about things. That’s a problem. If districts can’t talk about things, cause a vendor has backdoor entry and they’re using a generic password for every client in every school district. It just perpetuates.That’s fundamental to an issue that districts have. I asked we look at critical issues, 60% of the state has no one on staff with cybersecurity experience. Also, create a safe environment where districts can have the conversation, share information, and work to problem-solve that doesn’t put them at risk for their insurance
We have insurance pools in this state, it exists and we keep quiet because we are told by our legal counsel cause it cannot be done. How do you have meaningful conversations about what’s happening with your students? We know there is MFA and basic things that can be done. In real time when vendors are hacked, school districts are hacked, how do we have conversations and take school districts out of the hot seat?
I’ve attempted to have conversations here in this state when we have these conversations
We have all the mechanics here in this state but still things are happening
What do we do to be proactive?
We still have the same vendor, the same issue, I’m not going to name names. There are other districts all across, we have no safe way with this funding going away.
We have less way to do this in a safe environment
You need to be a good storyteller, you need your talking points about what you have and what you need.
The funding schools have for cybersecurity and staffing is critically important and what.Understand what the impact of having that funding is.
Go back to your data governance plan
We need procurement before we buy. And we need a knowledgeable staff. Teachers need to understand things.
Sometimes the biggest leak is the person at the top as well. Include your administrators.
Explain what can be shared through what mediums and how. Always view it
I brought up that I think we should make public school and education cool again. It’s the only reason we don’t have charter schools.
I brought up I think we need to have more content being made by people in the area that is “cool”—in media and trending.
Be programming coming out of here
What can the people in the private sector, broadband, do to better show up to partner with you? To get the word out about the funding programs? How about partner with any other programs?
Education isn’t invited to the table
Go straight to the Department of Education.
The Washington woman said she invited herself. She made sure to invite herself, utilize partnerships with the broadband office and office of equity. I was vocal on saying K-12 needs to be included. It was difficult, it was hit-and-miss. Some understood what it was a conversation to be a part of
Often times we get involved in things and nothing happens?
How do we figure out how your actions can have impact?
One thing to notice about this panel is we’re all women who are very shy. We know you have to get a seat at the table to have a voice. It’s challenging to get a seat at a table. But you have to make choices and leave some things to join the table.
As we move forward with what might be happening, we need to support each other as much as possible.
I think this talk was really nice and I like the local representative. She’s cool and hardworking.
At the end of the speech, the Verizon guy told me “LOVED your comment!” Haha. I said you too!! We fist-bumped and I said, ‘let’s save ‘em’
My goal was to start to become familiar to local leaders. I didn’t quite expect to speak up, but I figured planting this idea seed of my reality TV show to glamorize education.
I said that we need to glamorize education. Cutting costs can only do so much, but we need to turn to other industries that are influential and help us make ‘education’ cool again.
After, the verizon guy asked how his company can help hahaha.
The verizon guy asked how they can get involved cause they’re never invited to anything. Any education meetings or policy meetings.
The local lady replied that she isn’t either, but she gets herself a seat anyway.
Just go directly to the schools, invite yourself to the table.
I loved that!!! And I think he did, too.
Overall Event Review Elaborate:
Venue (4/5): A little big, the tables were WAYYY too big in the rooms for presenters. There wasn’t enough room for people to listen. But, it was fine!
Food (4/5): I hate when these big events skimp on the people and the food. Overall, it was good, but they ran out of salads on the last day and sandwiches that you can make in your own kitchen are just not a nice meal when you pay money for these tickets. I didn’t, but money was spent on this. It was a good setup, but still a little lazy and unhealthy-heavy.
Speaker Content (3.5/5): I mean, it was super informative but also insane. When you learn of the data breaches that are going on and not even mentioned, you’re like, OMG these people are just giving us an infomercial right now but leaving out some of the MOST IMPORTANT PIECES of this, if they were actually being honest. Instead, they just want your business and to maintain leading everything.
Networking (2/5): I really didn’t meet anyone at this event directly, though it was good to get face-to-face with some local leadership. Longterm thinking. It was easy to meet no one, and it would have been easy to meet people. You know?
Likeliness to Return (2/5): As much as I’d like to, I can’t imagine they’ll repeat this ‘volunteer’ set up next year in such a disorganized way. hahah. It benefitted me really well, cause I just enjoyed the event as much as an attendee did, just with a little more unnecessary stress of thinking I’m about to emcee most of the time. The tickets are expensive and the topic is fascinating, but idk if I’d spend THAT much on this topic. I already learned plenty to be spooked hahah. But I’d also be happy to help make great impact on this industry too.
Until next time, I wish you the motivation and success to search for opportunities around your area. Search and explore: Who is out there giving talks? There are new things happening all of the time
Find relatable or interesting topics you like and check them out! Maybe even something hosted at a cool venue, if there’s no other reason to go. Let’s see what you can learn and discover not too far from home. 😊
