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And then a student, Jake, (name changed), reached out to me. He had a D in math. Mom was desperate for him to get support. He had struggled with the teacher, and with authority in general.
I spoke to him about Khanmigo. He didn’t like it. Too wordy. Too inauthentic. I went back to Tutor.com. I suggested not doing the chat. I suggested he use the microphone and speak with a live tutor. Jake is confident in his interactions with others. It is something that separates him from many other middle school students. He is not afraid to talk to a stranger. I facilitated an introduction with the tutor. We, Jake, the tutor and me as the facilitator (only), agreed to do a 30-minute tutor session. The teacher had given Jake the math standards so he could reference. He showed a problem to the tutor and off they went. Now Jake uses Tutor.com independently. So... did I just do a full circle from Tutor.com, to Khanmigo, and back to Tutor.com? No. I realized the truth of education as we accelerate out of 2024 toward 2025 and beyond. If we truly are going to personalize education... if we are truly going to do equity (meaning we give every single learner what they individually need), we may need all of it, as a menu of options that we explicitly, and repeatedly, teach students to use. We teach students to empower and give them agency to access what they need when they need it. In this way we may be onto something:
The right combo potentially leads us down the path toward actual personalization (true equitable differentiation) in the classroom that educators dream of... we may be closer than ever to finally having a structure to address each individual learning need in a classroom at the same time. *Tutor.com is being replaced by the district with another platform for live tutor help: https://my.nicheacademy.com/tacomalibrary/course/5840
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My own argument had been our district didn’t necessarily need something new, like Khanmigo, because we already had a game-changing teaching product, Tutor.com, - being almost entirely unused by the district – right at our fingertips.
Well, I threw my own argument out the window. My curiosity got the better of me. How would Khanmigo compare to Tutor.com? A human tutor-for-hire versus AI-for-hire. For a quick explainer on what Khanmigo is... it is a "pre-prompt" engineered program, based on Chat-GPT. The AI prompt engineers set Khammigo to be Socratic, give positive/tutor-like feedback, and scaffold as best it thinks it needs to for the learner. Fortunately, funds were available to do a pilot of Khanmigo. We implemented it with the 8th grade math class. It took time to get everything in place, so it was not truly up and running until January 2024. Here’s the usage data by mid-February: Users: 108 8th Graders (out of 136 possible). Average minutes of use: 40 Average # of chats per user: 4 Average # of interactions with Khanmigo per chat: 11 I spoke with one of Khanmigo’s researchers around the same time. The researchers were learning about as quickly we were ourselves (granted they had much larger, and more in depth, data access). It was new for everyone. By March, data/observation evidence showed that teachers were having the most success, and engagement, if they are strong at modeling on how to use Khanmigo and why. If it was done with purpose and guidance students were more engaged. It if it was just made available as an option by the teacher usage was, I quote the research report, “varied.” “Varied” is kind wordage of saying it was inconsistent, and potentially weak. Some kids engaged, a whole lot didn’t. “Varied” was definitely true. According to the researcher, it got a 3 out of 5 average for student satisfaction out of 1600 students surveyed. I ran my own survey. Out of 105 responses to the question, “Would you recommend Khanmigo to a friend to help them with math...” 15 were NO 51 were MAYBE 39 were YES By no means a grand slam. But we did get a chunk of kids authentically engaged with it as a learning tool. I followed up with some qualitative interviews. There were students who said it was too wordy, or stilted, or inauthentic, or inaccurate. There were also students who found it useful to get support when the teacher was not available. As they reflected on their own learning practices, they saw the need for patience and just building the habit to make the effort to refer to it. Two months later, we got our 7th grade math students to give it a go. After a few weeks using Khanmigo we ran the same survey. 55 more responses to the same question ('recommend it to a friend...') 5 were NO 21 were MAYBE 29 were YES Speaking with the researcher after reviewing both my collected data, and Khanmigo’s data, we landed on this for a starting point: 1. Teachers had better consistently model usage of Khanmigo to get traction. 2. Conversation is key to be successful with Khanmigo. BE COVERSATIONAL when you interact. A bigger learning/teaching opportunity that can come from this: What are the qualities needed for a productive conversation (we're not talking about an easy conversation, like about the weather, or sports). There is a nuance, the need to be willing to be patient, push, and press to get more out of it. These are skills to learn. They are skills that must be taught in tandem with AI. Our middle school created Thunder Rolls: a couple days at the end of each quarter students are given a fresh chance to demonstrate a previously assessed standard. Often, using stations is a helpful model when running Thunder Rolls. Basically, you make a standard available for re-exploration and demonstration of understanding.
I suggested to our 8th grade math teacher to use Tutor.com as one of the stations (and then list the standards instead as a menu and the student can pick). Our 8th grade math teacher is open-minded and curious. She was intrigued and so gave it a shot. The teacher worked in advance to teach the students how to use Tutor.com to get that logistical piece out of the way. She set it up as a station (with a menu of standards to choose from). The outcome? The teacher said bluntly, “I wish I had been doing this the entire year.” Here’s what I what we learned from this first foray: 1. Students in general were afraid to speak to a tutor directly, but chatting was more palatable. 2. The chat was a barrier to some students as they struggled communicating technical information, but there were many students that took right to it. Here is one example of a significant learning moment recorded real-time in Tutor.com. Quick background: Mali (name changed for privacy) is English speaking. She comes from a lower income household. She is reserved, shy and incredibly gifted (can do a Rubics cube in seconds), but also withdraws from academics, particularly math, and struggled reaching out for help from the teacher (and never in front of others). Here’s her dialogue with a live tutor (abbreviated for key exchanges). Mali [00:00:02] I need help with irrational and rational numbers Madhu T (Tutor) [00:00:06] Thanks for signing on! How are you? Mali [00:00:23] Im ok [00:00:27] how are you Madhu T (Tutor) [00:00:35] I am well, thank you for asking! [00:00:45] I see you are working on rational and irrational numbers [00:00:52] Was there a problem you were looking at? Mali [00:01:12] no Madhu T (Tutor) [00:01:33] Would you like to learn how to identify or differentiate between the two? Mali [00:01:55] could we do both Madhu T (Tutor) [00:02:03] Sure! [00:02:15] Rational numbers are numbers that can be expressed as a fraction [00:02:20] They can be positive or negative [00:02:24] Here are some examples [00:02:57] See that decimal? Do you know how we can write it as a fraction? Mali [00:03:16] no Madhu T (Tutor) [00:03:22] That's ok, I can explain [00:03:35] Nearly all decimals can be expressed as a fraction [00:03:44] First, we write the number without any decimal [00:03:57] Then a 1, followed by some zeroes [00:04:15] How do we know how many zeroes? We count the number of digits after the decimal point [00:04:27] Three digits, hence 1000 [00:04:31] Did that make sense? Mali [00:04:40] yes Madhu T (Tutor) [00:04:44] [00:05:00] Repeating decimals can also be written as fractions, hence they are also rational [00:05:25] Finally, let's look at whole numbers [00:05:31] For example: 19 [00:05:38] Can we write 19 as 19/(something)? Mali [00:06:06] cant we write it as 19/1 Madhu T (Tutor) [00:06:14] That's right! Well done [00:06:23] That is why, whole numbers are also rational [00:06:39] Rational is another word for 'fraction' [00:06:45] Any questions before we look at Irrational? Mali [00:07:14] so whole numbers and fractions are rational numbers Madhu T (Tutor) [00:07:24] Correct. Also, repeating decimals Mali [00:07:30] ok Madhu T (Tutor) [00:07:33] And any other decimals that can be successfully written as fractions Mali [00:07:45] ok thanks Madhu T (Tutor) [00:07:57] Irrational numbers cannot be written as fractions [00:08:03] The most common example is pi [00:08:19] And square-roots that do not simplify into repeating decimals [00:08:39] These are Irrational Mali [00:09:25] how do you simplify square roots to figure out if its irrational Madhu T (Tutor) [00:09:44] Good question! Are you familiar with square roots in general? Mali [00:09:58] a little bit Madhu T (Tutor) [00:10:07] What is the sqrt(9) = Mali [00:10:28] 3 Madhu T (Tutor) [00:10:40] Very good! And this is a rational number, because 3/1 [00:11:02] On the other hand, if we look at sqrt(7), we will need to use a calculator and it will give us a lengthy decimal [00:11:33] Square roots that give us neat answers, say even like sqrt(12.25) = 3.5 [00:11:37] Would be rational [00:11:52] However, lengthy decimal root means Irrational [00:11:55] Did that help? Mali [00:12:03] yes very much It worked in at least these ways: 1. The teacher could potentially use the recorded chat, along with a follow-up demonstration with a series of problems, as an assessment piece and update the students understanding of a standard. 2. The chat gave this talented, shy student direct, personalized feedback on a particular math question while in a classroom of 27 other students. There was a brainstorm session between a group of educators in the spring of 2023. The premise was on how a student can get support using AI as a tool, and then the agenda would shift to how teachers could get a boost themselves to rapidly create quality content.
The video that opened the conversation was this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJP5GqnTrNo by Sal Khan from Khan Academy. Early in the video, he states the 2 Sigma Problem: essentially that tutoring creates significant growth in learners, but tutoring is not accessible to everyone. Quality one-on-one tutoring accelerates learning, but we don’t have the resources to get that to 25+ individual kids in a classroom. I am guilty of derailing the meeting agenda. I called out a blind spot in our conversation. We introduced the 2-Sigma Problem and AI as a potential solution, but then post-haste jumped to how to create content for teachers through AI. We moved away from how to help the learner to how to help the teacher. I felt we needed to stay student-centered. I was on a mission because I needed to know if we even were using our current resources to help the learner. It happens with educators, just as with any high-level creative enterprise, that we at times get so focused on the next thing - and the potential of that next thing changing everything if it was just in our grasp - that we miss what we already have right in front of us. In this case, we were looking for a tool to support personalized student agency and we already had it. Our school district had a contract with Tutor.com (I’ll leave its cost out of this). Tutor.com provides live tutors, emphasis on math and ELA. I sampled it with a few students to see the potential. It took handholding to guide them on how to use it but it proved surprisingly effective in a few test cases. At the meeting, I asked if any staff had used Tutor.com. No one had. My point was this: we are speaking in an all-too-common educator fever dream... this fever dream was that AI would make a teacher’s job easier to create learning... all the while we skip over a progressive tool that fundamentally changes student equity. We had it at our fingertips. I will say it again, we were seeking a new resource to change our world when we were overlooking a resource we already had. One of the staff members then challenged me to put my energy where my mouth was: use it more robustly before the end of the school year. That was fair... More on that in the next post... * Link to actual research paper addressing the 2-Sigma Problem: https://web.mit.edu/5.95/readings/bloom-two-sigma.pdf “It’s often either vocational training or liberal arts,” Gallagher said. “But if you look at what employers want, it’s both, and I think that’s often lost in the dialogue today.”
This is a quotation from an article published on the PBS Newshour site in 2021. Essentially, the quotation says two key things:
Students need to learn from both. But here’s the problem: Many public education systems have overly compartmentalized liberal arts (General Education) learning from specific skill learning (Career and Technical Education). They coexist in schools, but often don’t play together well. Essentially, General Education classrooms are jealous of the funding and tech CTE classrooms get, and CTE departments justify not wanting to play in the same sandbox as Gen Ed to protect their own turf. Examples are:
To be fair, it goes both ways too. CTE courses that potentially would draw away students from a gen ed course could also then cause that gen ed course to be reduced because student counts create dollars which then justify FTE allotment. This protectionist mindset crushes important opportunities for our kids. The challenge of CTE and general ed is they often behave like they are set against each other when they need to be much better aligned in an interdisciplinary fashion. The current and future workforce need requires a stripping down of the compartmentalization of gen ed and CTE. There needs to be interdisciplinary mindsets, practices and systems wherein core subject area competencies are demonstrated in tandem with career and technical skills. Examples:
In any of these examples you can turn the learning of two (typically) 50-minutes a day classes and then layer and reinforce much deeper learning into 100 minutes. You get double by putting career/technical learning with liberal arts learning. Moreover, you gain expertise of two instructors, as CTE teachers often lack depth in pedagogy because they frequently come straight from industry, and gen ed teachers often lack the technical skills to create technically rich project-based lessons.* The options are limitless. We need to create and accelerate the opportunities for authentic learning that bridges liberal arts competencies and career and technical skills. This requires a shift in protectionist thinking of school district departments and courses. That is not an easy shift, but it’s ripe for exploration. It’s an achievable way to deepen and accelerate our kids’ learning while also ensuring they are globally competitive. *Another avenue is through developing better interdisciplinary design between gen ed competencies embedded into CTE courses. Many CTE frameworks can be better designed to be more credit flexible, meaning that they can count as a CTE credit as well as a core subject credit (like ELA, math, etc.). However, in doing this, true intentionality at the core competency must be greatly emphasized, and not fall second fiddle to the technical skill, and vice versa. This also requires a teacher with the ability to competently meet both the liberal arts and vocational worlds. Many CTE courses, if unpacked and re-designed, could be much more inclusive of the core competencies. Examples of this include:
I had a conversation with a principal who is a great leader of his school. But he said something that told me he was missing the point of an important shift in his school district, probably because he felt threatened by the unknowable, but also undeniable, changes coming.
He said, “I still don’t think Edgenuity will work as a school.” That was a very telling sentence. He was confusing Edgenuity, a corporate, 3rd - 12th grade, learning management system, with the district’s new online school’s holistic approach to online learning. Yes, the district’s new online school is currently using the Edgenuity learning management system to house and deliver content. However, that is not how learning is happening. Edgenuity is one aspect of the school’s online learning ecosystem that I was part of developing. That ecosystem is being continually refined (I transitioned away from the project in the summer). What this principal was missing was that we built the online school to use a platform like Edgenuity by thinking of the content it provides, subject by subject, as digital textbooks. These textbooks can be edited down just as a teacher would pare down the content of a regular textbook. A teacher can identify stronger aspects of the content as well as prioritize standards and eliminate redundancies of the standards. What’s more, teacher-generated content can be added. Human-to-human connection is actually THE bedrock principle of online learning. The online school has developed a coaching model where a teacher facilitates personalized learning targets, kid by kid, at a level of detail much more refined, and appropriately differentiated, than what happens in a classroom of 30 students. The systems and practices look and work differently online, but the development of human relationships (teacher to student) are still the core mindset that MUST be maintained for successful online learning. That mindset drives the school. That mindset is why it will remain as an important school option for many students and families. That mindset is why it will cause valuable change in the community. That mindset is why it will work. Building a Second Brain, or what I shorten to BSB, is essentially a branded process for digital meta learning. You use your one-to-one devices, services and apps to build an "external, centralized, digital repository for the things you learn and the resources from which they come." Those things and resources are organized in such a way that you tap into it as needed to create new thinking.
The BSB process is below: I. Remember
How might BSB be of value to an administrator? How might it be of value to staff? How might it be of value to students? Is this a mindset/skillset that ALL of us would benefit developing in ourselves as we use one-to-one devices? My personal thinking is this: We still and forever need our kids to read and think critically; they must be able to communicate effectively; and they must understand the systems in which they are a part of (both natural and social). But ultimately, in our age of information overflow, where the totality of human knowledge can be accessed at any time, they must develop skills beyond specific facts. They must learn how to access data based on their individual need, then connect that data to their ongoing, personal learning, and finally be able to make something out of that data (Seth Godin calls the latter ‘shipping the work.’) Administrators, staff, students - all of us - need to learn how to build our second brain. Otherwise, we are failing to use our one-to-one devices, and therefore our own minds, at their full potential. The cool thing is this is a practice that we (administrators, staff, and students) get to learn together because it is hardly mastered by any of us, no matter our level of “education.” One of the significant challenges I am hearing as I dialogue with colleagues from other International Baccalaureate institutions in our district is the ability to authentically be interdisciplinary. Elementary school is so good at it precisely because it is taught by one person. Obviously, it's simpler to collaborate with oneself.
Subject areas after elementary school become siloed because they are taught by different teachers. Math teachers teach math. Science teachers teach science. Twice within two weeks, I proposed an interdisciplinary opportunity between subject areas to different leaders. Both times I heard, “It sounds great, but it won’t work with our staff.” I get it. But it might be worth the elbow grease. We need a big rethink as we prepare students for their future. Life is interdisciplinary, so our schools should be. We need our accountants (math) to communicate effectively (language). We need our climatologists (science) to express the data so laypeople can grasp it (art). We need our athletes (PE) to lead social change through a community organizer lens (individual and societies). There are endless examples (it's fun as you start thinking of them). For the sake of our children, we need to move from theory to action when it comes to interdisciplinary teaching and learning in our secondary schools. We will go through some discomfort on the journey. This includes me. I will be OK. Others will be OK. Kids will win. Where to start? Here is a podcast that could help a leader start the conversation of interdisciplinary teaching and learning. It is called the "Edge Effect." Description: "There is great comfort in the familiar. It's one reason humans often flock to other people who share the same interests, laugh at the same jokes, hold the same political views. But familiar ground may not be the best place to cultivate creativity." It's a 38-minute listen: The Edge Effect Here are questions to ponder as you apply this idea to education:
I figure my first blog should address what I’m doing here in this sliver of the webiverse. I’m an administrator in public education. I’ve been involved in leadership for much of my career.
Without much intent -- perhaps by necessity because it was the work I was able to land — I have been the lead, or I have been part of the lead team, for startups, including TV shows, a film company, community boards, educational departments and programs, and whole schools. I’m not a millionaire due to this work but I make ends meet for my family. Often, I’ve failed forward, which I hope to be able to document for the opportunity to reflect on it. Other times I made it work, which has its own lessons. And I’ve also had some moments of legit success, which I hope to document and reflect upon as well. In essence, I have learned along the way, and I want to store it somewhere. Seth Godin’s The Practice reminded me shipping the work (publishing) keeps me honest. So, I’ll house my learning here. If it helps you in anyway, either as a what-to-do, what-could-you-do, or a what-not-to-do, great. The learning, and thinking, I post here will be eclectic, but my goal is to keep it tied to education. That is very broad. I like to have wiggle room. |
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