Better, Faster, Cheaper Technologies Reshaping Education & Workforce Skills | GSV Leaders Summit

[Music] first always want to say thank you to Deborah Michael and gsv crew that make these very special Gatherings possible and uh there's else there's nothing else like it really uh in the world um I was talking with this distinguished group and we're not going to do U bios because they're all as gsv does very well they're all in your programs online and so we if you if you want to learn more about these folks and they're accessible uh the one uh change in the program was s uh couldn't be here there was a uh family health issue so we're sending him good healthy thoughts uh and we were able to get adal who is a wonderful Visionary doing cool stuff that we're going to talk about um I I I'd want to start because this is all about things that are moving fast and uh L has probably heard me uh do this one too many times but does anyone here know and it sort of ties into Michael's slides this morning um 10 2969 so on Sunday it's an important anniversary for the world most people say man on the moon what is the first connection of the internet uh and it was a moment uh at UCLA our friends at UCLA uh Leonard kleinrock and Company were connecting up to Stanford and uh uh it was one of those kind of funny historic moments they typed in login they typed in Lo and it crashed so first word in Internet history was low so with that um we have a distinguished group of folks here uh and we wanted to uh begin the discussion and also think a little bit about we're hearing a lot about stuff here in the US uh and I think there's a lot uh that I want to kick in starting with Jessica about around the world um because post-pandemic things have been put on steroids and yes we're hearing a lot about AI today and we're going to want to talk about that um I I would start with what are the most significant barriers to the adoption of the kind of technologies that can transform teaching and learning in practical ways and again I say practical because we've all everyone in this room has seen lots of shiny lights uh and Deborah and Michael and the gsv team they see lots of stuff where you know you you ask can you quantify with efficacy and research does it work is it scalable and is it sustainable how often Deborah does that happen not so much right and so we're here about practical stuff but I thought maybe with that question what are you seeing around the world and maybe weave in a little bit about your life story and how you are thinking about technology all in 15 seconds all right I will uh I'll pick up uh on this important date October 29th I actually started out my career um as an intern at the FCC with the job that they thought nobody cared about which is how to regulate this whole internet thing um and here I am many many years later um and I think the title of this better faster cheaper I think we've all learned in this room that that is really up for debate um in all of the evolutions of technology that we've been through and this is really no exception for us um I spend most of my time in that 15,000 hours that Michael showed before on the gaming side um really around how are we empowering creators um and future creators to enter into this fast-paced economy and act ESS Economic Opportunity and so what we're seeing um in all over the world are these incredible pockets of innovation from Soul South Korea to darar Sagal to Pakistan to Louisiana to Toronto and these pockets of innovation have one thing in common which is that they bring together the intersection of Workforce um employers universities and incredible Educators who are the glue that that make it all happen happen um and so what I think is most exciting to me with um the evolution of AI immersive experiences uh 5G the list goes on cloud is that we are finally seeing these silos breaking down in these Pockets around the world that are creating massive break breakthroughs and economic Mobility so maybe um and and again I'm thinking about the US unusual we have these this panel and again it it was great we said you know let's do the K20 piece so this is K12 this is highed this is Workforce um you have someone Like Ur who's been thinking about stuff he's a doctor he's been thinking about this stuff for decades both on the K5 spe uh space on the the Career Training space tell us lessons learned that we taking into 2023 and isn't this a unique I keep hearing it I know we've had all these false starts historically but this feels like an inflection point coming out of Co coid and with uh with you know the AI piece tell us the reality check from your Viewpoint yeah thank you so so actually it's interesting because you should think that you don't know how many times people have said oh you guys must have been doing really really well during Co and after Co but to your first question is what is it that really holds us back it's like who really cares about whether Education Works I've been going back and forth with Tony Wagner who I writing a book with right now trying to figure out how do we find what Master learning is like learning that works learning that matters like and and the editors keeps coming back saying like it's still not clear enough maybe will'll get there one day and the book will be published um at least basic otherwise as a problem um but but the fundamental problem is who cares about whether Education Works and I think that is the biggest that is the biggest challenge we had both during coid we just needed something right because everybody had the excuse that we needed something too fast um we needed something because the alternative was worse but we're going into a phase right now where it's actually changing I think and I hope that it will be changing and there is two things happening at the same time F first I think the fact that everybody are now scared about like never miss a good crisis right but everybody is scared about what Will generative AI do to education I'm on the board of a major university in Europe and it's top mind on their agenda but they don't know why exactly they they just heard about it somewhere right um they don't know what it the impact will be on education I think that helps I think something that happens at the same time which is it's both generating the crisis but it's also going to and give some of the answers to how we're going to get through this which is we are going to like profoundly change the cost structure of delivering education as of before and then you can say but why the why the heck are we interested in that that going away right no it's not this is my big Interest i' been my big interest for 25 years is the interaction between Knowledge and Skills now knowledge is not going to go away just because you you can find things and ask chat gbt about everything that's not the role of humans in the future it's actually what we can do with what we know how we can ask even better questions to it and a lot of people think the same way as they've done with everything since laser discs in the 80s being like wow there is this General technology let's use it in education anybody got their lives changed by laser discs nobody right or CD ROMs right we can keep going so it's a matter of how do we how do we build how do we figure out ways to build domain specific things like this super technology in education on top of these things and if we combine those two things happening at the same time the scare that people might be a little bit more prone to actually looking at does learning really works what is the science behind it what does it really mean that it works and at the same time they we able to change the cost structure of solving that fundamental problem that we both need to learn more of the traditional stuff and some some ways there are also lots of facts you can forget about but but you but you really need to learn more probably there only been going one way through four industrial revolutions we need to possess more in here but we also need to learn some new things which is the seven C's or whatever we end up calling them so I think the good news is that there is a like there is a good chance now but it's not Co that helped it's probably what the few things that are happening right now at the same time so maybe it's a good intro for Josh for those again that you folks have looked at Josh has a long stored career uh in edtech and education and uh his most recent Incarnation he's Allin on something called Dreamscape learn and maybe taking what you know W just talked about and I know that uh our friends I I see Phil out there and so you know ASU has made a significant investment just not on shiny things but Phil shop action lab is been quantifying it and does it work and so are we at this inflection point with Dreamscape well we're just getting started and I I think we've seen really quite astonishing results in the things that we've done at ASU and it's exciting but I think um the the part of what we're doing that I think is um sort of most unusual and maybe most important and most indicative of an inflection point sort of comes back to something that I thought was great about uh Mike Mo's opening talk today and the fact that it was called um What's Love Got to Do With It which is that I think in our industry we often forget that we're in the engagement business and we've spent a lot of time energy and money on very worthwhile things thinking of ourselves as being in the feedback business and um so adaptive uh platforms and intelligent tutoring systems and um a lot of thought about uh what people should learn and all that has done a lot of good and but I think we often forget sort of two things one that we have an audience that we have to find a way to make lean in to um to what they're doing in school I'll come back to that in a second uh and there are some often I think sort of unintended consequences to being in what I'm calling the feedback business that um most of us either maybe not all but most of us uh were kind of good at school or at least liked school had some success in school and a lot of the students were trying to reach that's that's not where they start from and when the systems that we build are really skilled at or sort of sophisticated at showing individual students in individualized ways the exact way in which they are not getting it it sends a message to students who aren't sure who they are with respect to school and learning that like this you're wrong we can help you get a little bit more right but you're wrong and I think we haven't done enough to sort of figure out how do we get students um sort of launching into educational experiences from a place of I can I want to be a part of this this is super exciting it's thrilling before they even get to the learning stuff so um from a technology point of view um what I think is interesting about this moment and that at least as it relates to what I do for work is the immersive technologies that are emerging are ones that I think allow us to take students to places we could not possibly have taken them before in incredibly um rich and compelling and realistic ways and whether that's um to museum they could never possibly visit to a Fantastical Intergalactic Wildlife Sanctuary or inside an atom it's it's a way of getting um the classroom to not be the conventional classroom and to to capture students imagination in ways that I think the the tools that we've used until now were much much more limited I think you'll hear from all the panelists the word engagement uh and then the word storytelling uh I I keep I always say that we don't have education problems in America or the world as much as we have Communications problems and so you when I'm thinking about things that are breaking out um uh for for a deal uh let's do it just to a quick quiz um so his space so you know we have different audiences we have students we have Educators we have administrators we have K12 we have HED we have so uh adal is focusing on he was a principal uh in Colorado he's got something very exciting in terms of Magic School um anyone want to take a guess so his focus is on AI for educators um how many how many folks do you think uh how many Educators in the last five months do you think have joined up his Brigade in terms of AI for educators anybody any thoughts a hundred a thousand do I hear 5,000 Deborah could we get like we we'll have a bidding thing uh the answer is because I I won't waste time because de will start staring at me it's 500,000 wow that's so that's a lean into to um welcome and share with us about because it does feel like you've got a lot of collective individual and Collective throw weight in the room it does feel like this is an inflection point tell us how you're seeing it from the front lines yeah so I can start with like how magic school like the idea from Magic School uh like the from the Inception is actually I think illustrative of the AI sector in general and um so I'm a former teacher and principal by training a lifelong teacher and princip uh and I started magic school when I was on a sabatical uh came back from some travel came back in November December of last year chat gbt changed the world um I've always been like a technology curious and I was tinkering with chat GPT and the first thing that I thought was wow there's so much utility here for teachers this would have saved me so much time I would have been using this every day when I was a teacher and a principal so I started calling around you know AI was in all of the headlines and I called my former colleagues at the school that I founded and I was like you know what's going on with chat GPT you know like this is amazing have you seen it and the answer was nothing's going on uh and the only chatter about chat TBT happening right now is the chatter about how are students going to use this to cheat there are a couple English teachers whose students have clearly turned in chat tobt uh written essays but in terms of how it can help us um a profession known for Burnout a profession known for a shortage wasn't even on the radar of all the folks I talked to and I worked in pretty Progressive schools that were technology forward so um I did what a principal would do I went out to my old school and I led a training I led a professional development session on chat GPT I said this is what chat gbt is this is how to use it responsibly um uh here's some ethical considerations before we use it let me demonstrate it for you I'm going to give you a couple High leverage use cases things that I think would help you in your world uh you know the first time you see generative AI used productively it's like a wow moment it's oh my goodness Jaws on the floor this is incredible um so I thought I'd done something something really great for my old school um and I gave them homework I said I'm going to come back in a week I want to hear all the ways that you use this in your work now that you understand how to use it came back a week later and uh started asking around you know for the folks who were there how are you using chatu PT this must be like this must change changed your world uh and we already see some people who like you know know know the end of the story and like the uh the answers were well I got to it and I just kind of forgot what to do um I was like even though I showed it to you and like we did it together they're like yeah I just didn't use it uh then there was a second part of you know I got to it I tried to do what you showed me how to do and it just didn't quite come out right and I was trying to get it to work right and I just gave up and did it myself because that would have been faster um and then there was a third layer which were just like I have 20 different ways I use this this is so cool and that was the smallest percentage of people so I was like okay how are how are we going to shortcut people to getting to use AI in schools and the answer wasn't training I just tried that it failed so uh so what the idea came about which was magic school and I think it was demoed earlier today was this idea of like let's capture all the greatest ways that Educators can use generative AI put them in one place um make them super easy to use control for really high quality outputs and let's see if it works uh and again I have no software background um but I was resourceful got some folks together and 5 months ago we launched magic school which was a series of like five or six tools that could help teachers 5 months later we have half a million users and um it's really struck Accord with Educators because it solves problems for them right so when you can like have generative AI solve a specific problem um the problem in education is very clearly a capacity problem there's never been enough capacity in public schools so this solves a little bit of that capacity problem it starts you know there's a value proposition here for a singular educator and we hope districts in the future um but but I think that that's that's like where we start is is generative AI the mo like the sexiest use cases to me are like why aren't we using generative AI at the VA and getting people through the medical care they need and like using AI to have agents that process paperwork why aren't we using it in these spaces that really have practical um implications and doing it for tasks that are things that we know it can do well um and you know some of these things are uh the teacher shortage is a crisis so we can't wait for AI to be perfect we need to like implement it now and we need to start getting our folks uh acclimated with it and using it and having it work in their world meaningfully and and that an illustrative to the broader point and I'm sorry for taking so much time here but like the the the last thing is that most people people talk about chat gbt being like the fastest growing technology ever the most signups ever those kinds of things I would venture to Guess that like there is maybe one or two or 3% of those users users who've actually used chat GPT for productive purposes most people go to it they get the novelty out of it just like I did when I did my training and they never return to it so it's like how are we going to build this technology in a way that is really practically solving problems for us in ways that people can work into their workflows I think that's like the next stage of this technology and one that we're focused on building but I think that applies to just about any space so I'm thinking like again there's so much going on here and again it's it's a tough discussion because we're talking 20 and we're talking everything uh but when I'm hearing about you know these gating items you know when people talk about public education it's like well it's complicated yeah and it's 14,000 CEOs and they've got their elected School boards and they have their 50 state superintendents and they have all these standards for for the group here whether it's K12 HED there is there's the wholesale and Retail Market there's straight to the students and then there is through the districts or through the high Ed institutions talk to us what the expectations because expectations in realities of highered Administrators K12 administrators they look for the fixes and there has to be a business model behind it but there's got to be a pedagogical model that you can quantify just just curious about how does this room and everyone here deal with wholesale meets retail and that sort of reality I mean I I I I told I told them just before here I've got 50 superintendents I got a talk with tomorrow in La just in that region and they've brought in their lawyers to talk about AI all day and it's going to be that administrative side of the house just just meanwhile their teachers are there their students are there so maybe the wholesale and Retail side of the house I have no idea only because I I mean the way that I look at this is what are what are the creators what are the young people or old people the what formerly were known as the Learners used to do I mean I think the key theme that's happened with this continuing explosion and exponential growth of technology is that the roles have totally blurred the consumer is now the Creator and vice versa the teacher and the learner are continuing to blur as well um and I think you're seeing this not just across education but across every industry because AI is really empowering the agency of the human that's using this to to drive forward but I all that to say we can continue the wholesale retail perspective for people who are more I think in the industry and by the way Jessica's current uh expertise a lifelong of of of of expertise games and so again like there's a stunning number that Jessica you got to share it with the audience so I was that something I'm focusing a lot on media literacy and everyone was we got to change it through films and TV and and music do you want to share the the revenue of the film TV and music industry versus games um I can do film and music because TV is changing as we speak um because of the the strike but yeah fil film and music is about a tenth the size of the gaming industry um gaming is 200 to 250 billion depending on on how you measure it um just for the work that we do we have millions of creators who create their experiences like Josh has um to about four and a half billion consumers and so that's the data and the AI and immersive technology that we're seeing all of this be running on right now and that's where I'm kind of gathering like here's how these roles are changing this is no longer about like we are going to publish learning experiences to individuals or gaming experiences those individuals are pushing back the Innovation and creating the Innovation and I think that's what we're continuing to see from a learning perspective too guys I guess what I would say like so we do nothing direct to Consumer so it's all in some sense wholesale um but and actually so we we're selling and marketing both to higher ed and to k12 and the um the demand Dynamics and the things that make for product Market fit in some ways are different in that as we all know higher ed leaders are very worried about enrollment um they are worried about things that um they can fund raise around K12 it's not an enrollment crisis it's a it's a different set of problems but the um but in some sense they're all worried about Student Success and if you can if you can prove that you can drive Student Success especially with populations that they've had trouble with um in the past you get their attention and I think the um you mentioned before in the first question to me that the um sort of alluded to some of the studies that have been done at ASU and uh and we are seeing really really dramatic outcomes for students that in the past we've really had a lot of trouble reaching in stem so the the the flagship um product for our company essentially replaces an intro biology wet lab for both HED and K12 with instead of the traditional wet lab experience a series of immersive experiences that happen in a um a wild Fantastical Sanctuary for the endangered species of the Galaxy that was cooked up by uh our founder who is uh comes out of Hollywood and worked with Steven Spielberg for many many years um and the thing that has been most interesting and that is really getting the attention of both k12 and higher ed when when when they see it is how much story is driving academic outcomes the the amount of time that students spend in the actual VR part of what we do is like 1 140th of the curriculum time so for every 10 minutes that they're in VR they're spending three hours in pretty traditional um lab environments doing a bunch of hard math and science but the amount of that math and science that students are willing to do because it's in service of a problem they desperately want to solve because they have a deep emotional connection to the they are a protagonist in the story and to the other characters in this story so if they have to figure out how to help a bunch of super cute creatures called spotted gliders that are dying of lung cancer live and then they're willing to spend hours and hours and hours learning how to build predictive models and distribution and statistical analysis around what could conceivably be the contributing factors to that cancer because they care about the gliders and this is not like shouldn't be that surprising to any of us like we all know what inspires us to binge watch television and go to movies and so on and uh and I think the um uh the finally finding ways to bring what we know about what stirs the human soul to institutionalize education is the is a breakthrough that I think we're sort of on the cusp of and not because people weren't interested in these things before but just because the tools weren't so great like people have been trying to do and you know Larry has been doing and we worked together at amplifier for a long time on similar kinds of things but we're starting to have a set of tools that make the authenticity of that narrative experience just much much more real and much richer and so um uh I guess it's sort of a long-winded way of saying if if you can so at ASU uh and it's now been almost 10,000 students um the uh what was a sort of 40 to 45% achievement gap between the highest performing students and the lowest performing so highest performing demographic groups and the lowest performing demographic groups in intro biology is now about a 4% um difference and it's almost doubled the number of students that are getting an A in what is a much um more academically rigorous program than business as usual and you know when you put those kinds of numbers in front of whether it's a superintendent a school principal um the the president or Provost of a highly selective University a community college system leader you you're in a conversation because that's what they're in the business of first and foremost s storytelling that works so back to the just for L and and for a deal the wholesale retail you know like or you you have seen a lot of models work and a lot of models fail right help us help this audience think through we're we're coming out of the pandemic things are different we all know it in our gut we know it in our brains we know it every which way how do how do we navigate this stuff and we're in the United States and so we're not going to we're not going to get rid of 14,000 School superintendents we're not we're not going to get uh rid of 50 state superintendents how do you navigate those gating items of and even on the higher ed piece you know state systems Etc how do we make this stuff scale and and do it in a speedy fashion so the last thing Alan said before we walked in here please say something we've not heard before um so I will I'd like to start a tent a tangential part to that so what just said have unfortunately has been said 25 years in a row which is we've made this thing we made it work for 10,000 people like it's super exciting and people get completely merged the new thing with need to prove is that we can do it again and again and again I think DARPA alone has funded the first five dozens of projects that did this where people were like wow look at this simulation Battlefield simulation this that and the other we've done it in healthcare we've done it in so many places so I want the big challenge we have ahead of us is how do we find something that works over time how do we find something that we can as an industry as an as a part of the world actually sustain and I think it leads to maybe the answer to your question they commentary question at least which um and I'll start a slightly different way again I spoke to a financial institution one of the largest in the world recently and it's not the one represented in the room um and they said that 100% of their staff was using chat GPT all the time as opposed to what you describe for teachers which I think is right so what is the difference here I think the difference is that the outcomes for those people who are some of the best investors in the world some of the best analysts in the world is that there is a measure and there is an agreement about what is the measure of high performance this directly is linked to what they're being measured on what success means how they make more money how they make better Investments how they deliver better reports on an industry fast it's super easy for that person employed by that giant Bank to say this is the reason why I should do this and integrate it into my life that's different for teachers because we're not looking at the end goal being how do kids actually engage Eng super enthusiastic in that experiment and how do they learn those seven C's from it it's an intermediate goal of getting through the next lesson and it's not the teacher's fault because that's the entire system we've built but as long as that's the yard stick we're applying I think we'll run into this problem so like like a huge cters to a deal for beginning to teat it systematically but you're pushing you're pushing these Boulders uphill we need to figure out how do we systematically find a way to remove that fraction and remove that inertia that that goes behind like goes against it and I think the fundamental thing is we probably if we want to look at it a more systematic or systemic U from a more systemic approach we probably need to figure out can we measure things differently can we find a way to change the magnetic north so that there is the same reason in in education to begin to deploy these things the right way as we see if we take a company where it's very obvious where it applies because I agree it should apply to that but it doesn't make a teacher or for that matter a student meet their immediate goals and the worst example of that we had was even for intermediate goals like passing your exam getting a higher grade you should think that students would flock towards these Solutions and we built like I think we're way past 50 million High higher education students are learn smart and smartbook now I don't have the numbers anymore um but but even even with those kind of very very clear metrics like you will pass your exams you'll get higher grades students were still saying but is it assigned they prioritized the things that were assigned by their Professor which were right in their face so meaning they were looking at how do I optimize the next 24 hours 48 hours they were not even optimizing for the next 3 to four weeks maybe let alone the next 3 to four months to get that grade or pass that exam so there is a fundamental mind change that I hope is beginning to happening and and a good example would be North Carolina where they actually from state level coming back to wholesale has decided let's try to see if we fundamental can change the playing field so that these outer boundaries are changed and we Chang the magnetic north so I know we're running out of time we're going to try and get in one or two questions so we'll do sort of lightning rounds but uh adal just on that front again you are thinking about it from a wholesale and retailer you are going straight to the teachers and yet you are having to have a business relationship or want to with the school Juris and again when I'm listening to you and thinking about what seems to be the future so much of education is peer-to-peer talked to us about but those are different talking to the administrators and talking to the teachers very different audiences yeah so one thing that that brings me some optimism is that we have pretty Progressive administrators who are you know one thing that's really unique I think about this AI moment is that most folks who are in an administrative role or superintendent principal have lived through some of these technological areas like you've been through cell phones you've been through the internet and now you're kind of like okay like this is inevitable it's going to happen so um you know my teachers won't use chubbt but they'll use magic school I hear that a lot uh and I think that my teachers need to learn how to use this like Literacy for this is really important and it's part of our thesis is this idea that you can't really create a meaningful experience with artificial intelligence for your students if you as a teacher have never experien technology in meaningful ways so uh we want folks just like you know I use this example often that it took like 20 years from like when every professional in the world was using a laptop in their work to schools having one toone laptops for kids uh and we're going to start seeing the AI being used in work regularly and hopefully that's teachers starting to use it first and then they're going to be demanding it for their kids they're going to say well if I use AI as a work partner it's helping me in my job um and I'm preparing my students for the future of work we can argue about the fine details of you know when is it introduced like you know is a calculator introduced in a high school level or later or whatever it might be but I think that nobody will argue that if if this is going to be something that we integrate in the future of work then our students should probably get exposure to it sooner than later and and like my challenge to any like School District leader is that your seniors at the very least they should be using AI now they will go to uh College next year and there'll be a student whose Progressive private school decided that they could use AI the entire year and they're going to get a really great first draft of their nth grade their freshman year English essay and they're going to spend all their time making it the best essay ever and your kids is going to be sitting there if you're a school district leader having never touched it and spending all their time just getting the draft done and you are putting your kids behind right now right today so uh it needs to start with like your your teachers it needs to start with your students but like we can't wait our kids can't wait um and I think that we you know the only folks who are going to drive that responsibility are going to be the leaders of education so so let's do this because we want to be respectful everyone's time the clock is ticking um all these folks the part of the great things about gsv is you can Mingle uh afterwards in anytime this evening uh we'll do a lightning round uh and then feel free afterwards to do Q&A with our distinguish panelist uh there seems to be a a big friction the world is more anxious and skeptical than ever about all education institutions K12 higher ed it's there it's deep in our souls it's everything that was you know before the pandemic has been put on steroids and yet we also have all these tools now right extraordinary more than any other time in the history of civilization so how do we get that inflection point that change for both you know the the wholesale the retail folks to get comfortable and to do widescale adoption when we know there's a skepticism K12 parents highered students and yet we've got these amazing tools so let you around Jessica um these tools are disrupting all of our lives but they're the very tools that will lead us to the next opportunity and so so it's really about embracing them and making them part about of how we continuously upscale throughout our lives I mean to me I think it's as simple as move the damn needle like if if you demonstrate that you can significantly change the trajectories of students or Learners you're doing good in the world and there's a return on the investment if we can't then we're all messing around on the margins and going to conferences and not making a difference okay work I don't think it's a tool discussion I think it's a strategic discussion I think it won't happen just because we try to see if we can sell tool Solutions one by one it's the Strategic leadership of organizations schools companies that need to decide we're after outcomes we're not after these intermediate goals before that happens tools means nothing the tools can deliver but it's not enough yeah I agree with that I think it's embrace the change and then deal with the Fallout you're going to have to do it either now or five years from now so like instead of being on your heels do it proactively know that you're gonna have to figure out things that you didn't know you have needed to have answers to before um but take the Leap Forward um you're either postponing it or or you may as well get ahead of it so thank you all for giving us a lot of Hope thank you for all that you do let's give a big round of applause for our thank you

2023-11-19 11:29

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