Tech & Learning.com - School in the Age of AI - April 2024

DESIGNING A MODEL SCHOOL IN THE AGE OF AI

A playbook for schools with best practices, advice & more

BUILDING A MODEL SCHOOL IN THE AGE OF AI

In the Spring of 2024, Tech & Learning gathered a team of school district leaders at several Regional Leadership Summits in Baltimore, Utah, and Atlanta to create a Blueprint for a Model School that embraces the core initiatives of the new National EdTech Plan to create an equitable, safe learning environment for all students. This video captures highlights from these events: At each

Summit, attendees, all district leaders, were divided into teams to design Model Schools that considered some key components of the framework for their model schools, including:

• Cybersecurity planning in the age of AI

• Building a sustainable, secure infrastructure

• Rethinking CTE to prepare students for a future careers that do not yet exist

• Ensuring all tech access is equitable and sustainable

• Rethinking assessment to focus on the skills needed for future careers

The resulting presentations were inspiring, creative – and attainable. In this issue, we capture some of the highlights from these conversations and presentations. We hope you find the inspiration you need to design your model school!

IMMERSIVE LEARNING, NETWORKING, MODEL SCHOOLS, AND MORE AT THE DMV REGIONAL LEADERSHIP SUMMIT

The Tech & Learning Regional Leadership Summits are unique opportunities to engage with other school and district leaders whose work draws from national, state, and edtech organization standards such as NGSS, CCSS, and ISTE. For educators, it provides a think-tank like space to dream and build innovative and accessible futures for learners.

At this year’s Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia regional event held at the Maritime Conference Centre in Baltimore, teams of colleagues, many meeting for the first time,

worked throughout the day to craft their own versions of schools based on the new National Educational Technology Plan.

ISTECEO Richard Culatta and Keith Krueger, CEO of CoSN, both addressed attendees about education, touching upon artificial intelligence’s impact on the classroom as well as emerging technologies, cybersecurity, digital equity, and much more. (See more on the following pages.)

The day was quite full, and a dozen other topics were presented and discussed. Some of the highlights include:

• Esports: An esports presentation by Tarrin Morgan from Morgan State University and CEO of REALdigitizED was exceptional, and showed the alignment between esports, student wellness, and career readiness, amongst many other areas.

Clockwise from top left: Jennifer Wachs and Jenna Whitney having some fun at the welcome dinner; Attendees enjoyed a delicious welcome dinner at the Guinness Open Gate Brewery Baltimore. Tarrin Morgan led an engaging session on scholastic esports; Dr. Amy Jackson and Krystle Pearson led a table discussion on The Shifting Role of Edtech Coaches; Attendees broke into teams to collaborate on the designing of a model school.

• The Shifting Role of Edtech Coaches: Dr. Amy Jackson and Krystle Pearson discussed shifts in instructional coaching in this post-pandemic era, recognizing that many teachers have fatigue with using tech tools. Change management using Kotter’s method was suggested as well as intentional long-term planning with coaching teams.

THE 3 BIG CHALLENGES OF THE FUTURE FOR EDUCATORS

By Stephanie Smith Budhai, Ph.D.

Sharing that one constant in edtech is change and that none of the top five issues from ten years ago are the same as today is how Keith Krueger, CEO of CoSN, discussed the future of education during the recent Delaware/ Maryland/Virginia Regional Summit.

Kreuger’s three big challenges that affect tech leaders are:

1. Cybersecurity: Since 2018, cybersecurity concerns continue to increase, and K-12 schools are the No. 1 targeted population for ransomware attacks, at 57%. Unfortunately, there is not a lot of protection of data or people keeping things secure in K-12, and districts have large amounts of employee and student personal information, including SSNs, DOBs, and addresses.

2. Digital Equity: Despite increased focus on access, which can still be a challenge, student connectivity remains an equity issue. As we move into the future, underconnectivity will be a focus and ensuring that not only do all students have a

device, but they have the right device to handle robust computing and enough processing.

3. AI in K-12: AI will undoubtedly be a challenge going forward: Currently, there have been three responses from school districts regarding AI use: ban it, embrace it, and duck and cover. CoSN is working on providing supports for districts and has created a K-I2 generative AI readiness checklist and toolkit.

AI’s cross-cutting impact with cybersecurity, as well as its influence on analytics and adaptive technologies, are also areas to watch.

EMERGING EDTECH TRENDS: EMBRACING AI

By Stephanie Smith Budhai, Ph.D.

During the Delaware/Maryland/Virginia Regional Leadership Summit, ISTE CEO Richard Culatta sat down for an intimate chat with host Carl Hooker to discuss emerging tech trends on the horizon. Culatta highlighted the importance for educators to have an understanding that ChatGPT is not AI, but instead is one tech tool that uses generative AI, and that there is a shift from generalist AI to specialist AI.

Moving from a primary focus on academic integrity concerns with AI, Culatta highlighted three trends in schools that are doing AI right:

Time to Tinker with AI: Providing time for educators to explore using different types of generative AI.

Modeling AI Use: Leaders in schools are modeling use of AI. For example, a school leader will include an AI-generated image in their weekly newsletter to show it is ok to use AI in fun ways for teachers.

Talking to Students about AI:

Instead of banning AI outright, schools are having intentional discussions with students on what AI is and how it could or should be used or should not be used.

WHAT MODEL CTE LOOKS LIKE IN THE AGE OF AI

By Erik Ofgang

In a perfect world, CTE education would embrace AI. Educators help CTE students use AI coding assistants, AI tutors, and more. But before any of this can happen, teachers need to stop being afraid of AI, Tera Brooks says.

“I think we see it as something that the students can use to cheat on, we don’t see it as something that the students can use to be a feedback tool,” says Brooks, principal of Prescott South Middle School in Tennessee, which has a robust CTE program as a STEM Platform School.

Career Readiness for AI and Beyond

While CTE educators need to help prepare students for the impact AI will continue to have across industries as diverse as engineering and fashion, doing that just means continuing to do what CTE educators have always done by helping students learn to learn.

“Jobs in five years are not going to be what jobs are today. So we have to give them those transferable skills that they can use when these new jobs become available,” says Jackie Vester, CTE program supervisor for Putnam County Schools in Tennessee.

Starting CTE Training Young

Middle school students today know a lot about the world, more than many adults did at the

same age, Brooks says, but they still don’t know a lot about how things work or the different careers and skills that they can learn. Part of good CTE education is helping to fill those gaps.

“I feel like our job is not necessarily to steer them down one path, but it’s to help them to see the different paths so that they can have a better understanding when they do get a little bit older in high school and can make better decisions about what they are interested in,” she says.

Virtual Reality and Simulators

“CTE has really adopted the VR world, and using those virtual training tools for students because we can’t always get students in realworld scenarios,” Vester says. “Of course, the real-world scenario is where we want them to be, we want that hands-on learning. But if we can’t provide that, we have the technology to provide a virtual experience.”

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BUILDING EQUITY THROUGH NEXT GENERATION SCIENCE STANDARDS

By Ray Bendici

When Maryland adopted the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) in 2013, STEM leaders in Prince George’s County Public Schools, home to more than 130,000 diverse students, knew it would take a comprehensive effort to make sure that all learners were included.

“I think the whole notion of equity and access from day one should start from pre-K, not middle school, not high school, but pre-K and go through college,” says Dr. Godfrey Rangasammy, K-12 Science Supervisor for the district, who recently won the Tech & Learning’s Innovative District Leader award, along with Jessica Leedy.

Consequently, the district has undergone a decade-long effort to address STEM equity

across all grades, focusing on equitable access to exemplary teachers, science/STEM curriculum programming, and instructional best practices.

Being Intentional

The PGCPS STEM equity effort originally started with an internal assessment, and then has focused on improving engagement with new NGSS-aligned textbooks and course materials, phenomena-based learning, handson activities, and creating opportunities to connect with those working in STEM fields. “You really have to bring in the experts in science in the city, so the students can see people of the same race, ethnicity, and so forth, in the district,” says Rangasammy.

‘No Price on Curiosity’

The district has also embraced phenomenabased learning, and is connecting it to realworld situations such as studying the nearby Chesapeake Bay ecosystem. For a hands-on learning example, ninth-grade students grow live mussels in tanks in their classrooms, checking and analyzing data on pH, temperature, dissolved oxygen turbidity, and other factors.

“There’s no price on curiosity,” says Rangasammy. “That crosses all socioeconomic groups, right?”

Dr. Godfrey Rangasammy and Jessica Leedy Prince George’s County Public Schools

CREATING A COMPREHENSIVE CYBERSECURITY PLAN FOR SCHOOLS

By Erik Ofgang

Shad McGaha, Chief Technology Office for Belton ISD in Texas, and a recent winner of Tech & Learning’s Innovative District Leader award, has a simple principle that guides the work that he and his technology staff do in the district: “Anything affecting education in our classrooms takes top priority,” he says.

How to Build A District Cybersecurity Plan

Phishing Awareness Campaigns and Staff Training

- One of McGaha’s first initiatives focused on threat identification. “We implemented regular phishing awareness campaigns to educate all staff members about recognizing and avoiding phishing attempts,” McGaha says.

backup hardware and software with an integrated approach that adds an extra layer of protection. “By combining these upgrades, we’ve significantly bolstered our storage system’s security, ensuring data integrity and availability,” McGaha says.

Data Privacy Agreement

Standardization - “We established a standard data privacy agreement for all software used within our district. This ensures that privacy and data protection are prioritized consistently across applications and platforms,” McGaha says.

Staffing Study and Incident Response Plan

- Early in the process, McGaha conducted a thorough staffing study to assess the adequacy of the current network staff. “This analysis helped identify any gaps or areas for improvement in our cybersecurity team,” he says.

Secure Data Storage - McGaha and his team recognized the need to replace outdated

Establish Formal Technology Vetting Process - “First, we conduct a needs assessment to understand specific educational goals and challenges,” McGaha says. “Next, we meticulously research and evaluate potential solutions, considering factors like functionality, ease of use, and support. Security and data privacy are top priorities, ensuring compliance with relevant regulations.”

Read

THE SCIENCE OF READING: WHAT TEACHERS NEED TO KNOW

By Erik Ofgang

The science of reading has become a hot topic in schools in recent years. Since 2019, more than 45 states have passed one or more bills aimed at reforming reading instruction. These bills were passed in response to a growing consensus among researchers that many classrooms had veered from the best practices for teaching reading.

What Is The Science of Reading?

“The science of reading refers to a body of research about reading, and that includes research about the reading process, what happens in our minds as we read, but also reading development, how do we learn to read, and how does that proceed for children differently and at different paces, and so forth,” says literacy expert Nell K. Duke, a professor of education and psychology at the University of Michigan and the executive director of the Center for Early Literacy Success.

What Are Some Teaching Strategies That Don’t Adhere to The Science of Reading?

Duke stresses that the majority of reading instruction practices employed by educators are at least somewhat effective at teaching reading, but are not always the most effective way to teach reading. “For example, something you’ll

often see teachers do is try to get children to memorize certain high-frequency words,” Duke says. “That’s actually not the most effective way to teach those words and have them stick for kids.”

What Should Teachers Do Instead?

When a child is learning a word such as “was,” Duke understands that it can be tempting to try and get them to memorize it. “That’s not spelled as you might guess, and so you might think, ‘I’m going to have kids memorize that whole picture of the word,’” she says. “It actually is still best to say, ‘was” and listen for the three phonemes the sound in ‘was.’” Then she advises having kids map the sounds of each syllable to the corresponding letter even if it is making a slightly unexpected sound, as is the case with the “a” in “ was. ”

JOIN US FOR OUR LIVE SUMMITS

Calling all Superintendents, CTOs, CAOs, Instructional, and Tech District Leaders – join us for our free upcoming Regional Leadership Summits!

The Tech & Learning Regional Leadership Summits allow district leaders to come together in an intimate, relaxed, face-to-face setting to talk about focusing on the needs of students and faculty with a future focus. Come join us to share, listen, and learn about the great work going on in your region!

Find our more about out upcoming Summits:

New England: May 3

Denver (Pre-ISTE

National Audience): June 22

Texas: September 20

Northeast: October 18

Midwest: November 8

Innovative Leader Summit, NJ: Dec 6

Our Regional Leadership Summits will be continuing. See our website for updates.

Our Summits provide a full agenda including working groups, keynote addresses, panel discussions, and interactive activities, as well as our announcement of the awards winners (see the next page).

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SIMPLIFYING AI FOR EDUCATORS: THE 3 THINGS YOU REALLY NEED TO KNOW (FOR RIGHT NOW)

By Michael Gaskell

Afrenzy of AI platforms and products are coming at educators in this pioneering stage, which can be exciting and exhausting. How can we possibly siphon off the irrelevant, too complicated, too expensive, too whatever, and sort out how to leverage AI innovative concepts and tools?

To simplify it for educators, here are the three main facets to understand before using AI in classrooms:

1. Ethics - Providing safeguards helps comfort teachers, and letting students know these techniques are in play increases the likelihood they stay on high moral ground. Educators must be conscious of the inevitable inequities that persist with AI too.

2. Prompting - Prompting can be most closely compared to a good old-fashioned Google search. Yet within AI, there is more power in both the output and risks associated with this power. Therefore, the greater thought and practice that goes into prompting, the better output.

3. Resource Tools - Many AI tools are available for educators, but remember that most want you to pay eventually. For now, stick with the LLMs that come from large companies such as Microsoft and thank capitalism for the fairly robust, free versions.

MANY SCHOOLS USE EDTECH THAT PUTS STUDENT PRIVACY AT RISK.

HERE’S WHAT THEY SHOULD DO INSTEAD

By Erik Ofgang

Recent research conducted by Internet Safety Labs, a nonprofit that advocates for software safety, concluded that 78% of required or recommended school apps were “very high risk” in terms of privacy, and 79% of the apps collected student location data.

The findings were particularly troubling for schools in socioeconomically challenged areas. Even though these schools generally used less technology overall, the ones observed had the highest rate of “unsafe apps with digital ads,” and “apps with behavioral ads.”

“We originally surmised that the lower the number of apps, the safer it would be, except they kind of blew that out of the water because they had some of the lowest numbers of technologies but unfortunately those technologies were more likely to have ads,” says Lisa LeVasseur, executive director and research director for Internet Safety Labs.

Recommended strategies for better protecting student privacy are available, and some are free, LeVasseur says.

Free and Immediate Steps Schools Can Take

• Limit the overall amount of tech tools used in a district. “We found on average schools were recommending 20 apps or technologies,” says LaVasseur, adding that this is inherently a lot for students and their parents to manage, and using fewer apps makes monitoring to meet privacy standards easier.

Verify technology is COPPA Safe Harbor Certified.

• Examine website risks using the EFF’s Privacy Badger, or The Markup’s Blacklight tools.

• Examine apps using Internet Safety Labs’ App Microscope Tool

What Schools With More Time and Funds Can Do

• Develop a technology vetting process and recognize that they need a process for “off the shelf” tools in addition to any existing processes they might have in place for licensed technology.

• Schools with funding available should create a dedicated software management position specifically to look at these technologies.

BUILDING A FIT-FOR-AI INFRASTRUCTURE

By Rory Bathgate, Features and Multimedia Editor at ITPro

Bringing AI to the education environment will require IT leaders within the school environment to pave the way with the right kind of infrastructure. After all, any AI system is only as good as the fundamental technology that supports it. This all starts with data.

It’s an old mentality in IT, but one that still holds true: get your data in order and everything else will follow. AI models simply can’t operate effectively without the right kind of quality data, both in the training stage and when models perform inference in the field.

BUILDING A FIT-FOR-AI

INFRASTRUCTURE: WHAT TO KNOW

Establish a rigorous data governance model that takes into account the current and short-to-medium-term demands on your data. Depending on the level of digital transformation your institution has already undergone, this may also involve heavy digitization efforts, all of which will help smooth AI integration.

Data should be processed, labeled for ease of use, and stored in a scalable environment to meet future data expansion. In the short term, this will be ideal for any school looking to use AI to derive insights from their data using data analytics.

If there’s any question of exposing sensitive information to a third party for AI training purposes, leaders will have to add extra protections to their tech stack. This could mean investing in privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs), which allow organizations to analyze data without moving or exposing it and also to generate synthetic data on which a Large Language Model (LLM) can be trained.

Be ready to add new hardware specifically designed to support AI. AI hardware is in hot demand right now – it’s hard to see graphics processing units (GPUs) and neural processing units (NPUs) dropping much in price while AI interest remains high.

Be aware that future-proofing AI infrastructure for any school is anticipating future demand. Additionally, while current innovations in the AI space might make it seem like schools will be forced to keep up with constant changes and leaps forward with AI technology, this is unlikely.

4 PROVEN STRATEGIES FOR TEACHING AI TO GIRLS

By Erik Ofgang

We don’t need the computing power of a large language model to realize we’re not doing enough to teach girls about AI.

Women account for just 22% of the global AI workforce, according to the United Nations. But the good news is we know the formula for AI teaching success, say Tara Chklovski, Founder and CEO of Technovation, and Shanika Hope, Director of Tech Education at Google.

Technovation, a tech education nonprofit, recently partnered with Google, UNICEF, and other organizations to launch The AI Forward Alliance, which seeks to impact 25 million young women globally by providing them with evidence-based and actionable AI training.

The training is built on four principles that are based on motivation theory.

1. Provide Relatable AI Role Models - “You need exposure to role models, people who look like you, who talk about the challenges that they overcame to get to where they are. That’s critical,” Chklovski says.

2. Incorporate Project-Based Learning - “It starts really with this idea of learning by doing,” Hope says. “We just have to give girls the opportunity and the

access to actually start using the tools, building the tools, designing the tools.”

3. Have People Who Believe In Each Student ’s Success - “You need people around you that have high expectations of you. And so this is where it’s really critical for parents to understand how they should be supporting their daughters,” Chklovski says.

4. Celebrate Success - The final step is to have a large-scale celebration that honors the student’s success in completing the program or an AI project. These should involve lots of people cheering on the student in an emotional ceremony of some sort.