EdTech Startup Showcase

Scott Schuette (00:01.512)
Hey, you're listening to the Ed Tech Startup Showcase, an original series produced by the Be Podcast Network. Hi everyone, and thanks for joining us again. My name is Scott Schuette, co-host of the Fabulous Learning Nerds and your host for today. I'll be taking you through some stories of some wonderful emerging companies in Ed Tech. In this episode, we're gonna go back and check back with our good friends from pedagogy.cloud and pedagogy.ai. Learn how they're doing.

learn how things have changed and where they're heading in the future. And with us today is one of the visionaries behind pedagogy.cloud and pedagogy.ai, my friend, Preetan Shah. Priten, welcome back to the show.

Priten Shah (00:43.726)
Thank you for having me back.

Scott (00:45.724)
Great, hey, so it's been a minute, right? So let's get caught up, especially for those in our audience that maybe skipped the first episode, like what have you been working on and what's new in the last six months?

Priten Shah (01:00.046)
Yeah. So when we initially started working in the AI space, a lot of our work was in teacher professional development. So we were building tools for teachers. We were helping, you know, do in-school PDs, build online courses, provide resources, prompt libraries, all those kinds of things. And the Chrome extension that like gives you a walkthrough of Sci2PT from an educator's perspective, everything and anything that you might think about from how does a teacher think about AI in the classroom?

And we still do a lot of that work and it's great. we find that, you know, while there's a very small niche of us who think that, you know, everybody's keeping up with what AI is and all the new developments in AI. That's not true universally. So we've been going around the world, doing some conferences, speaking to folks and educators around the world on what exactly is happening, how they can take advantage of it and what it means for their students. But

we're also starting to think about the big questions. Like the technology is developing rapidly. And I think that it's developing more rapidly than I think I even like thought possible despite, you know, seeing the evidence and now in hindsight, I'm like, okay, of course it's moving this quickly. And I think it's going to bring bigger questions for how we think about education, technology, our schools, you know, our relationship with our students. And so we're trying to take a couple of steps back and say, what

Scott (02:01.841)
Mm-hmm.

Priten Shah (02:24.226)
What's the five-year plan for educators and for students and for us? And what does that look like? Because learning what ChatGPT is and learning how to use it and learning how to use the new USAI tool, that's cool and folks need to do that. But that's not what we're gonna be doing in five years.

Scott (02:40.264)
Help me understand some of the ethical questions that you're pondering and maybe dealing with right now.

Priten Shah (02:48.438)
Yeah, so one of our, you know, our, we're trying to start by thinking about how do we actually even approach ethical questions when it comes to classrooms and technology. So this isn't a simple, like, okay, is this an ethical thing or not an ethical thing? Right? So there's some decisions in life we get to make like that. And so is murdering your neighbor ethical or not ethical? Well, you know, even that can get ambiguous. There's some philosophies coming out, but most instances you would say, okay, it's not that complicated. Don't go murder your neighbor.

But it's not as simple when we think about, we ban cell phones in schools? Do we provide AI devices to certain students, not other students? Which AI device do we subscribe to? Which AI tools do we use? What risks are we willing to tolerate? What benefits do we really want? Can we get the benefits elsewhere? There's a lot more nuance to the ethical questions that we're asking when we're saying, you know, what is ethical AI in a classroom? And so while...

A lot of our work these days is thinking about those questions. We're also making it very clear that we don't have the answers. And I don't think anyone's going to come down and say, here is how you use tech ethically in a classroom. Because, and I think every educator listening knows this, it's so context dependent. And so what we think is more important is that folks need to learn how to think about these questions ethically. Build the tool set to ask the right questions. Think about what are, like, how do I even know what is ethical, what is not ethical, right?

We throw those words around really easily, but when it comes down to decision making, we don't really have structured apparatus inside of education to say, okay, this is an ethical decision for our school system. This is not an ethical decision for our school system. A lot of it comes down to our gut. And we're trying to make that a bit more robust.

Scott (04:27.186)
How do you help educators think about those things? Because I imagine they need to start thinking about it. But if I were one, I wouldn't want to, and it would not be on my radar.

Priten Shah (04:40.379)
Yeah. Yeah. So you're right. Most folks want an answer, first of all. They're hoping that they get an answer from their principal, their district administrator, the state guidance or federal guidance. And I think that's what I'm hoping we don't get. I'm hoping we don't get some top-down federal guidance that says this is what's allowed in our schools and what's not allowed in our schools. As much as I think there's things that we could be doing at the federal level, that's one of those things that I'm hoping we do lead to our individual classrooms even.

And that means that teachers have to do a little bit of hard work figuring out where does this technology, whether it be AI, which is the primary focus these days, or future technology or technology that already exists, and how am going to use it in a way that's productive for my students? And so the way we approach this is by we draw on some of the scholarly work that exists in the area.

Priten Shah (05:39.822)
Okay. So we draw on scholarly work in the area. And so we draw on work from Mary Levinson at Harvard Graduate School of Education, who talks about structurally thinking about ethics and providing teachers with scaffolded ways to think about ethical questions in education at large. So she focuses on things from detention and promotion policies. When do we decide to penalize a student for not having enough money for school lunch? Those kinds of larger questions that come up.

that we don't really have systematic ways of thinking about. One of the arguments she makes is we might get to learn something from bioethics. know, healthcare is an industry that only recently structuralized how they think about ethics. They only recently had, you know, of the field only recently emerged. It only became like official positions at hospitals and medical institutions recently. And the idea that there are larger ethical questions that need to be asked that folks need to sit down and think about at the institutional level and make decisions about.

is something that is very similar. And just like with bioethics, the answer isn't one and done. You don't say, okay, this is exactly how organ donation policies are going to happen across the country, but you have individual people within the institutions making those decisions. And so we're trying to apply some of our work to the tech world. And so we're helping teachers think about what are the questions, what are the factors that you ought to ask in order to think about whether or not something is ethical. And so drawing from bioethics, we talk about four different factors.

There's does it do any harm? What are the benefits? Does it reduce any autonomy for anybody? And then at end of the day is it fair? So those are kind of the four factors that bioethicists use to determine whether or not something is ethical and whether or not it's the right decision. And those are really easy for somebody to sit down, grasp really quickly and then reapply, which is why I love borrowing from them for education as well. And so I'll an example because right now I'm talking like a philosopher, but we do a lot more of the just philosophy. So

Scott (07:09.416)
Mm-hmm.

Priten Shah (07:35.854)
You have the question of, we use this AI tutor in our classroom? And so you might sit down and say, okay, here's a potential benefit. The students are actually getting better test scores when you're having the students sit down with AI in the classroom. Maybe. The research on all of this is all over the place right now, and we probably won't have conclusive research for a bit. But let's pretend the evidence says conclusively it helps students with their test scores. You might also figure out that, well, it also hurts their social-emotional development. So now you're weighing...

two different factors. Is my goal to do no harm the way a doctor's is and not introduce a tool that might hurt my students? Is the benefit of actually their test scores going up worth something? And then does that happen equally? Does every student's test score go up or does only some student's test scores go up? And that's the fairness question. Are we seeing benefits only apply to certain students and how are we answering that? So if we're seeing our highest achieving students do really well and do better on their tests after an AI tool is introduced.

What does that mean for how we treat our students who aren't doing as well? And the final question is autonomy. Do our students want to use AI? And that's fun question that we're seeing a lot more of is, while we can all sit here and say, okay, this is what is best for students and we got to do it, we're getting a lot of feedback from teachers that students are tired of hearing about AI. They've decided that it's not the right way for them to approach their work and they want some ownership over their work, which...

is quite surprising. is not what, you know, there of course is the cohort of students who is, you know, is embracing it, is finding ways to use it productively. But we're also hearing that students are coming to class and saying, can we not use technology? this is where we don't want to do this. And so that's a question we to think about when we're making policies about what we do in our schools.

Scott (09:24.636)
That blows my mind that is actually counterintuitive because most of the kids I know are on their phones all day long, right? When, you know, I want to talk to them, they're on their phone. have to pee little way, right? So they're, they're, I hate to say it addicted to their technology, but in the classroom, they don't want the same technology that they would use at home. That's interesting.

Priten Shah (09:40.77)
No, that's right.

Priten Shah (09:47.446)
We're, you know, look, I'm not, this is not, you know, we're not seeing this in like 90 % of students globally, but we're starting to hear anecdotal evidence that students are saying, we're spending way too much time on our technology. This is some of the only human interactions that we're having. Can we not just like sit at our computers all day and, you know, plug away at the computer? And, you know, maybe that won't be universal. Maybe we'll still have folks who want to sit on their phones and, you know, there isn't, there was real evidence that there is addictive.

Scott (09:51.688)
Mm-hmm.

Priten Shah (10:16.674)
you know, habit of students. But if we show them what that might look like and help them enjoy that process of like being in a classroom with humans with that with their phones disconnected, that might allow them to actually start to make those decisions themselves and advocate for themselves and say, you know what, like I spend enough time on my device outside. I find myself learning better when I'm doing something with a peer, when I'm hearing from a human teacher, when I'm like, you know, interacting in a group setting.

But the problem is I think a lot of folks are rapidly just embracing the technology, bringing it into the classroom because they see their students, you know, addicted to their cell phones here at Hammerster on TikTok. And they say, okay, we just need to like bring the tech into the classroom as well. And that's what I'm worried about is maybe we can, we can take a vote. let's keep this a space that allows students to experiment with what a world that isn't fully tech enabled means and see if they like that. Because I'm at least hearing anecdotes that some students like it I'm hoping that...

As more students get to explore that and more teachers try that, we hear more of that.

Scott (11:17.48)
Yeah, that's really interesting. So one of the things, know, from an adult learning perspective is we're experimenting in a world where we're allowing them to use their phones because we know that they're going to have them anyway. And one of the nice advantages of that is I can actually get data from an engagement perspective, right? So as I'm following along with whatever you're doing, I can just like I would on Instagram, I give you a nice little thumbs up there or I give you a nice little heart, you know, and as a somebody that creates tools for adults to learn.

Priten Shah (11:40.407)
Yeah.

Scott (11:46.268)
That's really powerful data for us, right? So are we creating an environment where people are actually going to engage? I wonder, I wonder if that's part of it, you know, just the tools, like I, we don't see the same kind of engagement when they're sitting on a laptop. The engagement goes up exponentially when we're dealing with a device that is a little more, let's just put it bluntly. If you and I were going to have a conversation, I was going to share some things with you. I'd want to use my phone to do that and not my laptop.

So maybe it's that interpersonal thing. there's something that hasn't been invented that I'm sure you would invent, right? That kind of brings those two worlds together because I feel like that's kind of where that needs to be.

Priten Shah (12:22.542)
Right.

Priten Shah (12:31.042)
Yeah, and we agree and we are working on stuff in that space right now because I think that is where we kind of need to be, right? So we need to figure out like the alternative, the world in which every student is at their individual computer doing their own thing is a world that no one wants, right? Like there's not, no educator out there thinks that that's what the classroom ought to be. you know, education policymaker out there thinks that's a great idea. And I don't think most students would say that makes me excited about going to school. But we also can't avoid technology completely. And there are advantages to it. And so

Scott (12:43.336)
Mm-mm.

Priten Shah (12:58.562)
This is where the ethical question comes in. Where is that right balance of how much data can we collect from the students to do better for them, to get more evidence about their engagement, to get more evidence about where they are in their learning journey without harming them, without exposing them to later data leaks, without exposing them to misinformation campaigns because this random AI tool now has data about their learning process. And so those are questions we can ask. But there's also questions about how do we use this technology to make their human interactions better?

Scott (13:12.424)
Mm-hmm.

Priten Shah (13:28.302)
And so we started with one of the most biggest pain points, which is like group discussions, right? Like that is one where it's extremely hard as an educator to, you know, want the group discussions, they can be really high quality. Students can actually learn a lot by speaking to their peers. Students who don't normally engage in the full classroom setting are more likely to engage in the smaller settings sometimes. But there's also lots of instances where it fails miserably.

And you get like this one person who report that for the whole group and only they and maybe one other person did all the talking and discussing of the questions you had. And so we're building a tool where every like, where every student has to sit down. They initially had their computer open or their phone open. And they draft out a response to whatever the set of discussion questions are. And then the AI tool synthesizes all everybody's discussion and then shows everybody, here are things that you all agree on. Here are things you all disagree on and you might want to discuss.

And now that allows them to kind of start. Everybody has now put down some thoughts. They've done some thinking of their own initially. And so that pull to rely on that one person who's ready to speak the minute you get into your group is gone because you now have had to produce something and think about it yourself. Helping them figure out where are your commonalities and where are your disagreements? Where is that discussion best produced? Where is that time best used? I think it's a great use of time with students together because a lot of times you also see, especially with younger students,

They get into the group discussions and then everybody's just like agreeing with each other. They're just like, yes, like that's right. And so if you allow folks to kind of like have these individual thoughts themselves and then say, Hey, no, you all did not agree, right? Like when you, when you hadn't heard your peers talk about it, you all thought something very differently. And so now discuss this, here are your differences now see if you can reconcile them. So those are the kinds of tools that we're trying to explore, which actually like help facilitate those peer interactions and teacher interactions rather than, you know, let me sit at my computer.

Scott (14:56.584)
Mm-hmm.

Priten Shah (15:22.318)
and just talk to the AI and have a discussion.

Scott (15:26.214)
Yeah, that's pretty phenomenal stuff. And I totally agree with you. And one of those things that I think that we're on the cusp of is really exploring beyond what we want to teach our children to know, right? The reading, writing, arithmetic, all that other groovy stuff is just how to be successful in the world that we live in. Right. And part of that is how do we work together in teams? Part of that is how do we, how do we handle conflict? Cause guess what?

going to be conflict, You know, collaboration, all those groovy things that I feel like I wish I would have spent more time in school learning, right? So, but I'm an old guy who didn't have that. But I feel like we're on the cusp of identifying those things and just creating, dare I say, better humans, but also more prepared humans for the world that we

Priten Shah (16:05.932)
Yeah.

Priten Shah (16:17.248)
You are way more optimistic than I am, I'll be honest. I think that is the ideal. I think that that is what I hope happens. Like you're absolutely right. This is a perfect opportunity for us to embrace the idea that like a classroom can be a very like human oriented place, a place where our students can learn how to be better humans, learn more about themselves, learn more about how to interact with folks. And you know, fundamentally that's what will make our students more successful and more happy. know, like agree. That is the North Star. That is the ideal.

My worry is that folks aren't approaching it that way. feel like there are a lot of the discussions that we still see are, how do we turn out more multiple choice questions using this? What does this mean for standardized testing? Are we going to get better SAT scores? How do I make sure that my students are writing the essay that I assigned them to do? Can I track that using this new AI tool that says they can track it? The discussions that we're having are not about how do we make our classrooms more human and make our students more well-rounded individuals.

improve their social-emotional development in all regards. But they are like, how do we preserve our system that has been around for so long? And that's the scary part. And I'm hoping that it's just gonna crumble, like, and we're gonna be forced to reach the North Star that you have already articulated. Yeah.

Scott (17:26.162)
Well.

Scott (17:30.376)
Okay, so I'm a Pollyanna, so I apologize for that, but I do believe in the goodness of folks. But I also want to base it on some of the things that, you know, in the adult education world. Are you familiar with Bob Moser? Bob Moser did a study on this whole like workforce learning, like putting learning in the flow of work, right? And one of the things that he said in one of symposiums that I was talking about, which is directly in correlation where I believe you're talking, is this idea that in education,

Priten Shah (17:42.648)
No.

Scott (18:00.418)
or in adult learning, we really focus in on mastery. And that's the things that you're talking about. Like, hey, I want to create a million retention questions, right? And I want to create all these ways to measure just the knowledge component of what's going on. But what do I really want? Mastery? No, I don't want mastery. I want competency, right? So competency in the adult world is so much more important than mastery. And yet we don't focus in on it. So anything that we can create

that will get us to the behaviors that we want, this new and better place for our kids, the things that we can do there, that's where we should be focusing our energy. And that's where I think some of the work that you're working on can really help, right? What are those, what's gonna be new, better or different at the end of the day for our kids? What's gonna be new, better or different when they cross the stage and get their diploma?

What are the actions and behaviors that are going to set them up for success? And those are not necessarily, hey, I got 99 % of all my test scores right, or I scored 1500 on my SATs. None of those necessarily equate to the behaviors that are going to lead to real success. And I think that's where technology can help us identify that. And the work that you're doing to kind of provide some new ways of thinking around that can...

I think can leapfrog us into a really cool place.

Priten Shah (19:26.926)
Yeah, and I think along with those exact same questions about what will make our students most successful. I think when, when folks say that sometimes they often just mean career success. I think that when we, the broadening that idea, especially as AI starts to, you know, change careers or move, like get rid of careers, add new career, like we don't know what, when you're kindergarten teachers today, can not predict what their students are going to, what like careers will be available for their students. So this is not.

Scott (19:36.893)
Mm-hmm.

Priten Shah (19:55.01)
I mean, I'm being very generous with this kindergarten teacher, right? Like this could be true of a 12th grade teacher at this point, if we're student who's gonna like go through their bachelor's program, like I don't know what careers are gonna exist in four years and which ones won't, like I don't think any of us do. But there's a lot more to like living a happy life, leading a successful life that we can actually do in the education system, teaching the same skills that might also work in the workplace. And so the ones you talked about earlier, those collaborative skills,

communication skills, the ability to talk to a peer and resolve conflict. Those are all things that will make people happy in any context, whether it be at home, whether it be at the workplace, whether it be in a relationship. I think that this is an opportunity and I'm hoping, maybe this is where we differ. I think our end vision is the same, but I think I come from a very pessimistic angle that I think that

things are gonna crash and burn first. Like we're gonna realize that we're failing our students and kind of have to like refocus and figure out, what do we want for our students when they walk out of our doors? Like I think that question needs to be asked and I do not think we're asking that enough. Like what is it that our goal is by teaching XYZ content, by having them learn XYZ skill? What does that mean for them as an adult, as a individual out in the world?

That's not an easy question for any, like, you know, we can sit here and we can, you know, like armchair discuss it all day. And when we speak to individual teachers about it, I think that they are starting to think about, like, I teach a foreign language. What does that mean for my students? Why do I want them to learn this foreign language when they might be able to use an AI translator? And so there are folks that are starting to ask those questions and say, okay, well, maybe there's something about communicating about language that helps you gain a perspective, right?

And I think, you know, there's, there's evidence that backs that up that like actually speaking the language gives you a unique perspective and enables you to share something. But also when you're speaking to another human and it's AI mediated versus like you're actually speaking their language, the entire emotional interaction is very different, right? Like if you have Google translate in between versus you use your broken Spanish, that the whole interaction, that person perceiving your effort and trying to speak their native tongue, like all of that is very different.

Priten Shah (22:15.33)
And I think that that requires a lot of thinking for a teacher who has the standardized test to prepare for. But if they can start having those conversations with themselves and with their students about, this is the value of what I teach, right? This is why you still ought to learn a foreign language. Because when you go and you speak that broken Spanish, you're going to have a unique experience that that AI mediated tool, even if it's 100 % perfect, is not going to give you. And I think that that's the exact question to ask. It's like, what is the point of this? When we walk out of our classroom, what?

Why do we teach this? What is the value? And I think some folks are afraid that if we ask those questions, it's going to be that everything we're teaching is irrelevant. There's a cohort of folks who just like, no more essay writing, no more standardized testing, no more learning history because you can look everything up. You have a calculator at your hand. But none of that's true. There's value in holding knowledge, right? There's unique value that I get from knowing things that I learned in school, even if I can look them up on my phone.

I can use them in very different way than if I had to ask the right question at the right moment to even know that the knowledge existed. But we're not having those conversations with our students or with each other. I think time is of the essence, and think that's part of it. And I'm afraid we'll have those conversations too late. And think that's the pessimism.

Scott (23:31.144)
whether we have them too late or just in time, my belief is those conversations will happen. And it all starts with asking questions. You have to ask the right questions. I think that everybody, no matter where we're at, when it comes to the things that we produce, whether it's educating our kids or whatever, we have a tendency to be like, okay, I'm gonna go and I get this done. And I feel like the older I get, for me, like,

Priten Shah (23:32.194)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Priten Shah (23:39.084)
Yeah.

Priten Shah (23:43.15)
Yeah.

Priten Shah (23:53.827)
Yeah.

Scott (23:57.318)
I get wiser and I start asking questions, right? Again, what's going to be new, better, or different, or why we're doing these things so that we can get the desired results that we want. And one of the things that I think that is a great place for what you're working on is to just educate educators on what's possible, right? I don't think they know what's possible. And that's okay. Like it's totally okay. This is all brand new. What's possible? I don't know. And this goes beyond the classroom.

Priten Shah (24:21.89)
Right. Yeah. Right.

Scott (24:26.982)
What's possible? I don't know. By the way, what was groovy and cool today is going to be replaced tomorrow. That's my experience. Like, this is so cool. Look at this. Wait, this does this? Holy crap, right? So it's a new way of learning. It's a new way of thinking. It's a new way of asking questions. And you're probably right. It's going to take some time for us to get there. And it may be painful. How painful? I don't know. But that's one of the value adds that I think

Priten Shah (24:27.224)
Yeah.

Priten Shah (24:33.324)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Scott (24:56.078)
your organization is providing, which I think is great.

Priten Shah (24:59.438)
Yeah, and we try, and that is one of the pain points we're trying to solve is because even as someone whose entire day right now revolves around keeping up with these updates and learning what's new out there and supposedly being excited about every single one of them, it's fatiguing. The pace at which things are moving is extremely fatiguing. so, for an individual teacher to keep up with all of this is not reasonable. That is not a reasonable ask of any individual educator at any level.

to say, okay, keep up with every single AI development that's happening. And so a lot of our work ends up being, how can we distill the biggest developments, put them into two categories? Here's things that teachers can use today. Here's how they can make their life easier. Here's how they can make their classroom more engaging. Here's how they can make something more interactive for their students. And then what does this mean for education long-term, right? Like not everything will impact education. There's all these weird AI things coming out that we might not need to exactly think of, you know, doesn't influence the future of education.

But there are some big developments happening. There's some research happening. There's some beta models coming out. There's cool stuff happening at CES that might be relevant for educators that might actually change how they think about those bigger questions and maybe not their daily practice. And so we try to do some of that hard work for teachers and distill that information for them because we realize exactly how fatiguing it is, how overwhelming it is. Things are moving at a pace that I don't think that we've seen move.

in any sort of major change, at least in our lifetimes. And I think a lot of folks are like, the example is always the pandemic. Teachers dealt with the pandemic really well. We ended up doing way better than everybody thought we would with our students. There was pain points. There was not to say there was not a lot of pain. There was not a lot of...

You know, we did have students who didn't fully catch up until just recently. There's still students who haven't fully caught up. But overall, as a system, we did way better than folks thought we would do as a system. But that was a one and done. There was a pandemic. Everybody was shut down. Schools were closed. And then we got like two and a half years to figure this out. AI is like a pandemic every day. Like there is something new happening every single day that is causing us to rethink what we need to do in our classrooms and in our schools. And I think that that's

Scott (27:02.664)
.

Priten Shah (27:15.554)
That's the part where I think we still get resistance from folks who are just like, don't, we don't want to think about it. We're not there yet. We're just going to keep our, you know, we're going to not have devices in our school. We're going have everybody handwrite things. we're going to, you know, record everybody's screen and just see what they're doing. And the only thing they're hyper fixating on is can we just make sure that our old assessment styles remain, valuable? Can they make sure that they, they're still indicative of something? and it makes sense. It's, this is not any, right? Like I, don't, I, I sympathize with the fact that.

moving away from that requires an extreme amount of effort from every single person involved. And I think that's why it's so meaningful because I think we're going to have to do it.

Scott (27:49.768)
Mm-hmm.

Scott (27:54.632)
Yeah, well, you one of the things that I know is that, you know, we all have to deal with change, but almost all of us are allergic to it, right? It's like, whoa, no, no. And I'm going to hold on as long as I can to those things that I know and I understand whether they're good for me or not, because it's comfortable, right? It has a sense of comfort in the things that I know, right? The unknown is probably one of the scariest things out there.

Priten Shah (28:04.909)
Yeah.

Scott (28:19.9)
Whoa, this is new and different and I just don't know how I feel about it. So I'm just going to hold on to what I do know because it's nice and comfy and I don't have to worry about it. What are some of the things, other than the framework that we talked a little bit about earlier, what are some of the things that you're doing to help educators think differently and learn more about or want to learn more about how the world around us and their world is changing at such a rapid pace?

Priten Shah (28:48.558)
Yeah, so I think we there's like three or four different things that we end up doing during most of our interactions with teachers that I think kind of like tackle all the different problems that we've talked about. The first often is to just show them like some the newest coolest developments. And so I'll be in front of a room of teachers and I'll put chat tpt voice on and like we'll all have a group interaction with it. It'll tell some jokes. It will like speak. You know, my one of my favorite memories were we were in Singapore.

in front of a classroom of like 50 science teachers. one of them was like, well, can it speak in Singlish, which is like, guess, like a mix of Chinese and English that a lot of folks are speaking. And Chai GPT like kind of mimicked what they all thought was a fairly accurate rendition of it. And they were blown away. that was like, okay, look where the technology is today. Look how crazy it is, whether or not it's relevant to education. Let's see the coolest and newest thing. So you realize

because folks need to see how easy it is for any person to just go in and use this technology. I think part of the fear and part of the resistance we get is, well, the cool stuff is happening in research labs, the cool stuff is happening at the tech companies, but I as a random person might not have access to it. think there's still some, there's a myth that is a myth that we try to dispel first, is that the technology is accessible. You can go in and play with it and do really cool things. And that gets folks to start asking questions about, oh, I can do this.

my students can do this, right? Like now what does this mean for you? That's our intro. It's like, let's break the ice about this is only for techie people. The second part is we try to help them figure out like, how can this make your life easier? is there something that, what is your worst task that you hate doing every day when you're like, you know, when you get home later than you expected and you have to like prep for the next day and you really just don't want to do the task. What is that task? And let's

let's have an AI tool help you do that task. that's a huge chunk of getting folks to just start to see, okay, in my own workflow, regardless of whether or not I feel comfortable with using this to build entire curricula or to design an entire online course, maybe I can use this to make this silly worksheet that I have to make or put my lesson plan into the exact format that my principal wants the lesson plan to be in. Something like that, that's nice, easy starting place for teachers to say, okay, this tool can do something for me.

Priten Shah (31:10.862)
And then we start to ask bigger questions about, what does this mean for how students learn? What if they have access to this tool at home? What does this mean for your assessments? Right? Like that's low. That's kind of our funnel into the final, like, and what does all this mean for education? Right? And we kind of leave everybody there, but, that's, that's the funnel that gets folks to actually take it seriously. And that works. And I hope that folks listening can, you know, because I feel like the audience for this podcast, probably at the bottom of the funnel already.

Scott (31:25.82)
Right.

Priten Shah (31:38.382)
But when you're having those conversations, hopefully some of the experience that we've had can be useful there where getting folks to just kind of like slowly go through this step by step and see the accessibility of the technology, the usability of the technology, and then really like what this means if it keeps growing at this pace for schools, but the world at large is a good model, I think, for getting folks to start asking those questions.

Scott (32:05.308)
Really interesting stuff. Thank you for sharing that. Unfortunately, we're coming to an end of our time here today. You and I could nerd out on this, I believe, forever. So we're going to have you back and we'll get an update. And I'm sure that everything will have changed by the time we get there again, right? That's just how it works. Could you me a favor? Could you go ahead and just, what are some takeaways, like maybe three takeaways that you want to leave with our audience? the things that

Priten Shah (32:21.715)
Yeah, exactly. The world would be very different.

Scott (32:32.604)
that you're working on and things that they should be keeping in mind as they move forward in this world of AI and education.

Priten Shah (32:42.232)
Yeah, the first is the ethics angle. And so I encourage folks to not embrace tech for tech's sake. Like think about why you're using whatever technology you're using. How is it benefiting your students? What are the risks? And are those risks worth it? Like that is worth asking before you use any tech tool, not just AI tools in your classroom. And so slow down, don't fall for the hype because there is a lot of hype out there. And ask that question. See what your conclusion is to that question.

The second is it's okay to be overwhelmed. We're all overwhelmed. Even those of us who's full-time jobs it is to do this. Find a resource that you trust that can help you figure out what Parsons information are important to your workflow, to your classroom, and then focus on that. Don't try to keep up with every single thing that's happening in the AI world because no one currently is doing that. That's the reality. And I think the third big takeaway is like, please keep having these conversations. Ask

like what is the importance of what I'm teaching? What do I want for my students? What would I want for my students if I had no idea what jobs would exist? What if no jobs existed by the time my student graduated? What would be the value of what I teach or would I teach something differently? Would I teach it differently? Those are the kinds of questions that we're hoping that you can start having in your, you know, in the teacher lunchroom, you know, while you're driving home from work and listening to a podcast and, you know, mulling over it later on.

But I think we need to start thinking about those things and hopefully come back and have even better conversations.

Scott (34:15.346)
Preeten, you're doing some great stuff. I'm super jealous because you're in it, man. You're totally in it where things are. And I really appreciate you sharing your knowledge and what you're doing. And I can't wait to talk to you again.

Priten Shah (34:21.998)
You

Priten Shah (34:31.534)
Thank you for having the show. It was a great conversation.

Scott (34:33.819)
Not a problem.