Transformative Principal

Jethro Jones is interviewing Kiran Athota, CEO of FocalPoint Education, and Dr. Wendy Oliver, Chief Learning Officer at FocalPoint,K12, Inc. The discussion centered around the transformative potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in education and its impact on student engagement and personalized learning.

Athota and Oliver delved into the distinction between AI assistants and human teachers, emphasizing the importance of teachers in catching plagiarism and guiding students. They acknowledged the fear surrounding new technology but highlighted the benefits of AI in understanding student knowledge better than ever before.

The conversation also touched on the role of AI in assessing student progress and skills. Athota and Oliver stressed the need for authentic and personalized measures of growth, moving away from traditional assessments. They emphasized the importance of partnerships in education, with teachers and students actively involved in the development of AI tools.

• ChatGPT vs. Generative AI. 
• Georgia Tech’s Experiment
• Students not know the difference between AI assistant and professor. 
• Any student can plagiarize 
• The best tool is the teacher to catch plagiarism 
• Teachers and students should know how to use it. 
• We are afraid of new technology. 
• AudioPen AI
• Discussing plagiarism and how to make choices around it. 
• How FocalPoint is using AI. 
• Giving teachers back time for their work. 
• Using ChatGPT for scoring 
• Multi-dimensional score 
• Building a learner profile and informing the personalization of education 
• Student engagement 
• Standards work has already been there. 
• How to make it more engaging for kids. 
• “I already know the student is struggling, how do I get them from here to here?” 
• Generative AI is giving us engagement 
• Technology is at a point where we can understand what students know better than ever. 
• AI can pull in questions/assignments/activities/etc. for growth that are aligned to kids’ interests and skills. 
• Ugh, another diagnostic… 
• We need to find other ways to assess students 
• Parents found that they have a voice and choice in education. 
• We need partners, not vendors, in education. 
• Developed with teachers and students in mind. 
• If we have a good authentic way to measure student progress and skills, you don’t need the assessment. 

- Starting to see trends and growth in policy and procedure in Education.

About Kiran Athota

Kiran Athota has always been at the forefront of edtech innovations. As chief architect for GADOE’s longitudinal data system, he won national attention from EdWeek and the Data Quality Campaign. He subsequently was the first to introduce single-sign-on to K12 education. As co-founder and CEO of FocalPoint Education, he led his team in groundbreaking developments in an xAPI-enabled adaptive learning platform, and assessment platform and overcame education data silos with FocalPoint’s proprietary data-interoperability model. Most recently, he and FocalPoint have introduced blockchain student credentialing to serve the CTE segment and national trade and professional credentialing associations.

About Wendy Oliver, Ed.D.

With more than 20 years of experience in digital education, Dr. Wendy Oliver, a Tennessee teacher and administrator, thrives when implementing innovative learning models and creating amazing learning experiences for students. Throughout her career, Wendy has had the opportunity to develop and pioneer a district, TN’s state-wide, and international digital learning programs.  She served as the Chief Learning Architect for Arizona State University’s digital charter network of schools and recently launched a network of private, for-profit schools.  Wendy created Oliver’s Frameworks for Blended and Online Instruction, and subsequently, a software that allows teacher to self-assess their knowledge of instruction in each respective environment, a software that has been implemented in multiple districts and states. 

Her leadership expertise, experience as a certified scrum master, hands-on knowledge of digital learning and curriculum design, paired with her expertise in assessment and evaluation, are leveraged to design innovative, learner-centered solutions in her role as Chief Learning Officer at FocalPoint,K12, Inc.

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

This episode discusses the potential of artificial intelligence in education and how it can empower both students and teachers. Cahlan Sharp talks about his experience building the micro school platform Prenda and how it aims to empower learners. He discusses how AI tools like chatbots and pulse check activities can help teachers gain insights into how students are doing and where they need help. However, Cahlan stresses that AI should be used as a tool to enhance the learning experience rather than as a source of truth. Transparency and teacher oversight are important to ensure student safety and privacy when using AI tools. 

• Startup Failures: Reddit before Reddit. 
• Draw My Doll
• Prenda started with after-school programs with librarians. 
• How to teach something that you’re not totally familiar with. 
• Helping kids learn something that was focused around the student. 
• Focused on the method rather than the content. 
• Helping kids walk through the content themselves. 
• Kelly Smith holding a microschool in his own home. 
• Guides. 
• Similar to Acton Academy
• Kids with specific needs. 
• How can we help moms create classrooms in their living rooms? 
• The difference between passive and active learning. 
• Empowerment 
• People are more empowered with the right tools in their hands. 
• AI is an empowering tool. 
• If we put tools in the hands of educators 
• What would you do if you had an assistant next to you and you could ask them? 
• Ideas of personalized tutors powered by AI 
• This is going to change everything. 
• Every student will have access to a personalized tutor 
• How is everybody doing in our class? 
• Spaces - Teacher generated, student facing chat spaces. 
• Bellringer Pulse space - bringing in a personal relationship 
• Pulse Exit Ticket - working through learning outcomes 
• Desired outcome, but not a desired output. 
• Not always a right or wrong answer. 
• AI cannot always be a source of truth. 
• How to focus on what AI is actually good at. 
• Messages are safe and raising red flags. 
• Safety and data privacy. 
• Built-in mechanisms (content moderation, privacy, etc.) 
• Establishing how long we keep student data. 
• Scrubbing data 
• Transparency - teachers have access to all the kids’ chats 
• Parents are an important critical stakeholder in the process. 
• Build tools for parents down the road. 
• Motivated by giving people powerful tools. 

About Cahlan Sharp

[Cahlan Sharp] is a highly versatile leader, technologist, entrepreneur, engineer, and investor. 

Passionate about technology, education, and building things that matter. Serial entrepreneurs participated in lots of failed startups. Founder of DevMtn helped start the micro schooling Prenda, and now CTO and CoFounder at SchoolAI

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

• You have a long background in AI so you’ve seen the ups and downs of that field and the over-hype cycles of the past. Why are the warnings about AI credible now, and what do you see as the biggest dangers?  
• AI as a tool to remove drudgery
• It’s just doing a repetitive task over and over.
• Behavior has emerged from abstractions.
• These systems are babies.
• Questions schools should be asking about AI Services they adopt.
• AI companies don’t exactly know what they are selling.
• Impossible to test what all the software can do.
• Having ways to monitor what is going on.
• Bring students into the process.
• Productive Struggle - Jo Boaler
• APLUS Framework:
  1. Moving toward a realm where general cognitive skills will matter more than domain-specific expertise
  2. The way we are doing school is not the best way to get there. How you divide up your functions drives the overall ethos of the system.
• Memory system is fundamentally associative.
• The better network you have, the better you’ll learn.
• Work on problems that have different issues, trade-offs, limitations, etc.
• Resource management becomes a major skill that is needed.
• Carving up the world according to common challenges than knowledge domains.
• Knowledge on demand.
• Teaching the forest and filling in with trees.
• We tend to take knowledge and pile it up brick by brick.
• Change is hard.
• Activation energy - if there’s too much friction, it’s very difficult.
• AI in the classroom - teacher workload less.
• When you deal with complex issues, you keep what works and jettison what doesn’t.
• Working on multi-disciplinary challenges.
• Student agency is a must.
• Is there enough understanding of the conceptual ideas?
• Moving to increased levels of abstraction.

About Timothy Dasey

Dr. Tim Dasey has a long history of technical development, analysis, and leadership on huge national issues like today’s AI emergence. His graduate school dissertation in the early 90s was on AI machine learning applied to neuroscience, and that combination has allowed him unusual perspectives on learning in general, whether for AI or people.

Tim spent thirty years at MIT Lincoln Laboratory—their national security hub—where he developed (10 years) and then led (20 years) technology analysis and development for a wide array of challenges. He led 40–80 person groups focused on Chemical and Biological Defense and then AI, and grew new business areas in public health, bioengineering, disaster management, logistics, critical infrastructure protection, and law enforcement.

Tim has eclectic expertise that allows him to contribute to leadership and management studies, computer science, biology and medicine, psychology, modeling and simulation, human-systems integration, education, and system analysis. He holds a Ph.D. degree in Biomedical Engineering from Rutgers University and a B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Clarkson University.

Relative to education, Tim has taught study skills and computer science at the college level, and computer science for 8th graders. However, Tim doesn’t consider himself a teacher since his classroom experiences were brief. His expertise is in AI, the present and future of work, and learning science (humans and machines). He also led the development of numerous educational games over a decade at MIT.

He currently runs a consulting company that focuses on AI opportunities and strategic implications for a variety of communities, including biotech, education, and entrepreneurial investment. He has recently published a book called Wisdom Factories: AI, Games, and the Education of a Modern Worker, about AI’s impact on work and the education reform implications.

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Richard Gerver is a sought-after speaker, bestselling author, and world-renowned thinker on human leadership and human transformation. 

His career began in education, first as a teacher and then as a school principal, when he turned the fortunes of a failing school and its pupils around in just two years. Since the success of his first book, focusing on his experience in frontline education, Richard has devoted himself to advancing society’s thinking on learning, change, and how best to realize our full potential.

He has worked with an extraordinary range of people, from elite athletes to former US President Barack Obama. Named UK Business Speaker of the Year three times, Richard has been invited to speak on the world’s biggest stages, including TED, the RSA,, and the BBC.

Today, it’s our pleasure to welcome Richard to The Authority for an enlightening discussion based on his international bestseller, Change: Learn to Love It, Learn to Lead It.

Richard and Ross discuss:

Questions:

• What is change and what makes it meaningful.
• How the pandemic necessitated change and changed Gen-Z’s perspective on the inevitability of change. 
• “We are living in the first age where we no longer determine the rate of change.”
• How Richard navigated the change from teacher to three-time UK Business Speaker of the Year. 
• Overcoming the fear of change caused by “imagined consequences.”
• What the innovation of “Total Football” shows us about embracing change. 
• Is loving and embracing change necessary for leading it?
• Fear of the unknown and how authority figures will react to our own efforts at change. 
• Overcoming artificial complexity and self-constructed barriers. 
• CQ — the Curiosity Quotient. 
• Richard’s next endeavours. 

Find Change, Simple Thinking, Creating Tomorrow’s Schools Today, and all of Richard’s other books and work at www.richardgerver.com     

Find Richard’s LinkedIn Learning courses, Overcoming Complexity and Developing Mental Toughness for Leadership, here.

Subscribe to The Authority to get more deep-dive interviews with education authors. It’s available wherever you get your podcasts. 

Visit https://bepodcast.network to learn more about the Be Podcast Network for educators.

About today’s guest

Richard Gerver is a sought-after speaker, bestselling author, and world-renowned thinker. His career began in education, first as a teacher and then as a school principal, when he turned the fortunes of a failing school and its pupils around in just two years.

Since the success of his first book, focusing on his experience in frontline education, Richard has devoted himself to advancing society’s thinking on learning, change, and how best to realize our full potential. He has since written several books on leadership and innovation, including the bestsellers Change and Simple Thinking

Now regarded as one of the world's leading thinkers on human leadership and organizational transformation, Richard has worked with an extraordinary range of people, from elite athletes to former US President Barack Obama. Named UK Business Speaker of the Year three times, Richard has been invited to speak on the world’s most recognized stages, including TED, the RSA, and the BBC.

With his unique insight into our development from infants to adults, Richard helps us understand the nature of our personal and professional responses to risk, change, creativity, and development. His ability to connect experiences across many, often seemingly different, environments helps individuals’ companies and organizations expand their thinking and their perception of their own potential.

Follow Richard on Twitter @richardgerver and on LinkedIn. 

About the host

Ross Romano is a co-founder of the Be Podcast Network and CEO of September Strategies, a consulting firm that helps organizations and high-performing leaders in the K-12 education industry communicate their vision and make strategic decisions that lead to long-term success. Connect on Twitter @RossBRomano or LinkedIn

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

What does it mean to maintain humanity?  - To practice the forgotten art of being the ordinary.  - We are ok as the messy, complex meat machines we were born with. Don’t have to be personal brands. Don’t have to elevate or project or photoshop.  - Reverence for the base model.
- Technology does train us, regardless of what we think about that.
- Have an understanding of the basis of what we have as a human.
- We’ve lost the drive to imagine apart from entertainment and convenience.
- We don’t have a vision of what a profile of a graduate looks like.
- We need imagination for education, housing, energy.. the areas that would benefit ordinary people the most  - 9 beatitudes of media technology
- “Let’s just wait until the data is conclusive”
- Kayfabe vs. Collective journey
- Jerry Springer - Brilliant politician in Cincinnati.
- Personal brand prohibited him from being a good politician
- Hero’s journey is tiring.
- Collective journey doesn’t have heroes. It has conductors: Ted Lasso, Encanto, and Barbie.  - Teams taking down misunderstandings, and systems.
- Not individual villains. People perpetuating those systems are redeemed not banished.  - It’s a lot easier to ban an avatar.
- Let’s teach kids new modalities. Don’t perpetuate the hero’s journey. Create collective journeys.

About CJ Casciotta

CJ Casciotta brings more than a decade of experience as a results-driven creative strategist and award-winning media producer.

Seen by many as a trusted voice on 21st-century cultural shifts, he’s consulted and developed campaigns for presidential candidates, IPOs, startups, and Fortune 500s alike, partnering with notable brands such as MGM Studios, Delta Airlines, Sesame Street, Lululemon, and The United Nations Foundation. An accomplished media producer, he’s collaborated on projects with leading culture-makers like Ira Glass of This American Life, Seth Godin, and FoodNetwork’s Maneet Chauhan.

A sought-after communicator and TEDx alumnus, he’s traveled globally speaking to creative professionals at venues like Creative Mornings, Charity: Water, and STORY. In addition, CJ’s work has been featured by Forbes, Salon, CBS, MTV, and TechCrunch. He’s the author of the book Get Weird: Discover the Surprising Secret to Making a Difference (Hachette, 2018). His next book, The Forgotten Art of Being Ordinary, releases in 2023 with BenBella Books.

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Janessa Fletcher, Content Director for Education to the Core, discusses the future of AI in primary education. She explores the potential of AI in teaching reading skills, the need for supplemental resources, and the impact of technology on reading habits. Fletcher emphasizes the importance of the science of reading and personalized approaches to support students’ diverse needs.

• Dabbling in ChatGPT
• Using it to write emails
• Cons - science of reading - following a scope and sequence.
• still figuring out what to type into chatgpt to get what
• It can be trained to do what we need, eventually.
• How bullish she is on developing it
• Aligned to orton-gillingham or full foundations.
• Need for supplemental resources in addition to
• Upper elem and secondary schools.
• How genuine is that feedback?
• How does the science of reading help
• Read Naturally
• This is research this is best practices.
• Phonics, orthographic mapping.
• One size doesn’t fit all.
• Barriers to reading: lack of support and practice, lack of resources,
• Tech making it so that kids don’t need to read as much.
• What is the future of AI as it relates to primary education

About Janessa Fletcher

Janessa Fletcher is the Content Director for Education to the Core, a primary curriculum resource creation company and primary teacher printable membership subscription service.

Previous to her current role, she was a Preschool Teacher for 2 years; Kindergarten Teacher for 8 years; Instructional Coach & Interventionist for 3 years.

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Kevin Shindel, a high school social studies teacher, discusses the impact of technology and AI in classrooms. He emphasizes the importance of understanding the purpose and potential of AI before fully adopting it. Shindel raises concerns about trust, privacy, and the need for collaboration with AI. He believes AI is not just a tool, but an ecosystem that requires careful consideration.

About Kevin Shindel

Kevin Shindel is a high school social studies teacher with 28 years of experience. He has taken a keen interest in technology and its impact in classrooms. 10 years ago, he created a digital detox program for students, and he runs this experience every year with his kids. He’s very interested in the holistic impact of technology on students when adopted in schools. 

• Begin with purpose.
• What’s the purpose of AI?
• Skeptic by nature.
• Personalization is important.
• Aristotle’s golden
• Virtuous but vices at the extremes.
• How much will taxpayers be willing to pay to have teachers be hand holding and AI.
• What is driving the AI Push right now?
• Money
• Power and status
• Fear
• Hubris
• Can use the technology they create to solve the world’s ills.
• Big tech exploitations.
• Trust is a big issue.
• We need to work with Collaborators, not Service Providers.
• What are the problems in today’s classrooms?
• We don’t know the advice an AI Therapist would give.
• What is the problem and is this the solution?
• It would be difficult to replace me in a classroom right now, but these are the dumbest AI we will ever work with.
• AI’s carbon footprint
• Greatest learning tool ever created by humans. Greatest cheating tool, also.
• AI is not a tool. It’s an ecosystem.
• Unleash learning about AI before we unleash using AI.
• How will this affect Human relationships, privacy, data, Accessibility, hard work vs. meaningful work
• Where do we have the hard work happen?
• Promise of offloading hard work
• See people wanting to get this plane off the ground without knowing everything in there.
• Defining hard work is incredibly challenging.
• The purpose is to help someone find gainful employment.
• 4-month exploratory window before we adopt whole heartedly.
• Ai is not a tool, it’s an ecosystem
• See Jason Fried’s ideas about tools here
• When AI tool is not a user error.

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Sarah Rubenstein, principal of OCEAN School, shares her experience using ChatGPT to write grant proposals. She highlights the time-consuming nature of grant writing and how ChatGPT helped her generate drafts quickly. Rubenstein believes that using AI for certain writing tasks is acceptable and efficient, freeing up time for more meaningful work.

• OCEAN School - 20 year-old school
• Family partnership program school. Some learning on campus with a teacher
• 30% in school settings. 70% with parents
• 6–12 online program.
• Experiential learning opportunities.
• Place-based learning
• Grant writing is needed for that job.
• If you want teachers to get kids out of classrooms, need school buses and time to plan.
• Some grants are straightforward.
• Super time-consuming, read, highlight,
• Didn’t always get the grant.
• writing 20–40 pages on the grant.
• 130K over 2 years.
• First time, took 4–5 days uninterrupted time. Needed to work from scratch.
• Only took 3–4 hours.
• I didn’t have to do any of the thinking.
• Read, objectives,
• Spit out the chunks in sections.
• Thought it would be the best
• The way chatGPT writes and the way technical grants want it to be written align well.
• Almost everything, take its first draft and then edit it in Google Docs.
• Not sure if it was cheating
• Was transparent with the superintendent that she was doing it.
• We can’t afford grant writers.
• Decide if it is really coming from me.
• Almost anything is acceptable to use chatGPT.
• An article for publication somewhere
• If AI can generate that assignment, why are we assigning it to them?
• It’s not worthy of my time.
• Anytime that someone asks you to write something, just open up the AI and ask it to do something.
• Audiopen
• I haven’t tried to write anything that I care enough about to not use ChatGPT.

About Sarah Rubenstein

Sarah Rubenstein is the principal for OCEAN School, a K–12 Alternative School in Port Townsend, WA. Sarah also serves at the Port Townsend School District Place Based Learning Director supporting community connected learning across the district. 

She is a credentialed teacher with Masters’ Degrees in Biology and Educational Leadership. Sarah has worked as a math and science teacher in Washington and California, as well as a curriculum writer, and teaching coach.

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Today we are talking with Michael B. Horn about the impact of AI on K12 (and higher) education and it’s level of disruption. 

• Are students more disengaged because of the pandemic or AI taking over jobs?
• Anxiety from high school students because it is just far enough away.
• In every field entry level role becomes something much different.
• Intermediary places that employ apprentices.
• Theory of interdependence and modularity.
• In the early years of a system, different systems have to be done by the same entity.
• The nature of skills and work is moving so fast
• Book learning has to be done interdependently with the actual work.
• willfully blind to the reality.
• Google has changed the game and so will AI.
• Combination of human skills with the AI
• Hard things are still important.
• Habits of success, social emotional skills, soft skills, etc.
• What is hard may change.
• What is scarce may become clearer.
• It’s easy to get a bunch of gibberish written on the internet.
• What’s harder is to write something that compels others to take action.
• How to idenitfy hidden bias in AI.
• Rhetoric, philosophy, ethics and others are more important now.
• How we shape the AI and the code itself using ethics, philosophy.
• Overcorrection of humanities vs. STEM fields.
• Our ability to be discerning consumers is going to be more important.
• Are we training AI or is AI training us?
• Maybe knowledge is less important.
• Discerning what is fact vs. fiction.
• Information exists, knowledge gathers it, wisdom is applied knowledge, discernment is knowing when to use it.
• Schools seek to organize information into knowledge, smart people gain wisdom, and enlightened ones seek for discernment.
• Context gives meaning.
• Contrast give meaning.

About Michael Horn

Michael B. Horn strives to create a world in which all individuals can build their passions and fulfill their potential through his writing, speaking, and work with a portfolio of education organizations. He is the author of several books, including the recently released From Reopen to Reinvent: (Re)creating School for Every Child; the award-winning Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns; Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Schools; Choosing College;and Goodnight Box, a children’s story.

Michael is the co-founder of and a distinguished fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, a non-profit think tank and an adjunct lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He cohosts the top education podcasts Future U and Class Disrupted. He is a regular contributor to Forbes.com, the New York Sun, and writes the Substack newsletter The Future of Education. Michael also serves as an executive editor at Education Next, and his work has been featured in outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Harvard Business Review, and NBC. 

Michael serves on the board and advisory boards of a range of education organizations, including Imagine Worldwide, Minerva University, the LearnLaunch Institute, and Guild Education, and is a venture partner at NextGen Venture Partners.

Michael was selected as a 2014 Eisenhower Fellow to study innovation in education in Vietnam and Korea, and Tech&Learning magazine named him to its list of the 100 most important people in the creation and advancement of the use of technology in education. Michael holds a BA in history from Yale University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School. 

Previous Episodes with Michael Horn

• Disrupting Class with Michael Horn Transformative Principal 202 - Transformative Principal with Jethro Jones
• Blended Learning with Michael Horn Transformative Principal 203 - Transformative Principal with Jethro Jones
• Transformative Principal | Choosing College with Michael Horn Transformative Principal 295
• Transformative Principal | Tackling the Teacher Shortage Problem with Michael Horn, Charles Fournier and Kevin Stoller Transformative Principal 525

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

In this podcast episode with Caleb Hicks, the focus is on creating learning experiences with AI. The discussion revolves around empowering teachers to move beyond traditional methods and become designers of engaging environments for students. The use of AI-powered apps and FERPA-compliant chat platforms are highlighted as tools to enhance student experiences. The concept of “spaces” is introduced, allowing teachers to create personalized learning adventures for their students. The episode also touches on the benefits of using AI for tasks like SAT prep and streamlining administrative duties for teachers. Overall, the conversation emphasizes the importance of prioritizing meaningful connections with students and designing environments that foster engaging learning experiences.

• How do you make decisions around this for what you create for teachers?
• School and education is a human-first endeavor
• Talking about career exploration.
• Magnifying the work that teachers do.
• Teacher busy-work vs. meaningful work.
• Frictionless first draft
• Teachers are stuck in this traditional overloaded position.
• Allowing teachers to move into the role of designer.
• 2 things that should take priority for teachers: connection with students and anything that is designing the environment to help students create meaningful learning experiences.
• Getting your classroom to be engaging is no easy feat.
• There are steps on the journey to be engaging.
• Lecture/worksheet/canvas quiz process.
• Spaces - AI powered apps for student learning experiences.
• FERPA-compliant chat for teachers
• How can we move beyond the quiz or worksheet to feel what it is like to make decisions as a colonial soldier?
• Space is like Choosing your own adventure for different scenarios.
• Template, Spanish cafe.
• Every student gets their own personal experience in the spaces.
• SAT Prep tutors
• Bellringer check in and exit ticket - pulse checks.
• Response from early users of SchoolAI.
• First question: how can we have a FERPA-compliant chatGPT experience?
• Next: action buttons - write a newsletter, prepare a lesson plan, etc. Making it so teachers didn’t have to be prompt engineers.
• Spaces - choose your own adventure - all teachers can create their own spaces.

About Caleb Hicks

Caleb Hicks is an experienced educator, founder, and angel investor, boasting over 15 years of expertise in instructional design, learning experience design, educational leadership, and early-stage startups.

Presently, Caleb leads SchoolAI, a venture dedicated to developing AI-powered tools tailored for teachers and school administrators, aimed at transforming educational institutions into extraordinary environments. 

Alongside his commitment to SchoolAI, Caleb is the esteemed founder of Factor, a non-profit organization that empowers students to explore various careers and lifestyles by facilitating their collaboration with professionals from renowned companies such as Apple, SpaceX, and the San Antonio Spurs. Caleb continues to provide ongoing support to Factor, nurturing its mission.

We’re proud to be sponsored by IXL. 

IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:

• Simplify and streamline technology
• Save teachers’ time
• Reliably meet Tier 1 standards
• Improve student performance on state assessments

🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.