Beyond the Hype: How New York Educators Are Leading Responsible AI

In this episode of Achieving Joy and Mastery in Public Schools, I have the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Patrick Fogarty, the founder of the New York State Artificial Intelligence Consortium (NYSAIC), and Daniel Friedman, Director of Educational Technology in Hicksville Public Schools, for this timely conversation about the responsible integration of artificial intelligence in K-12 education.

NYSAIC brings together administrators, teachers, researchers, and technology leaders who are working to move school districts beyond fear, hype, and one-size-fits-all vendor solutions toward ethical, practical, and student-centered AI implementation. The conversation explores how districts can build capacity, protect student data, support teachers, strengthen AI literacy, and create local solutions that reflect the real needs of schools.

Patrick and Daniel will also discuss the growing “builder mentality” among educators, including the shift from simply asking, “What AI tool should we buy?” to asking, “What can we design, test, and improve together?” Their recent conversation on AmpED to 11 highlighted themes such as local AI infrastructure, practitioner collaboration, custom instructional tools, and equity of access across New York State.

https://nysaic.org/

Find us on Twitter @NiagaraErie

Or visit our website E-NSSA.org

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Eerie Niagara School Superintendents Association's podcast, achieving joy and mastery in public schools. I am your host, Brian Graham, superintendent of the Grand Island Central School District. We are really excited that you're listening today. This podcast is designed to celebrate all that is good in public education around Western New York. We will be featuring programs and innovative ideas that inspire and influence our students, faculty, staff, and community in new and exciting ways. So, everybody, let's get started. In this episode of Achieving Joy and Mastery in Public Schools, I have the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Patrick Fogerty, the founder of the New York State Artificial Intelligence Consortium. And Daniel Friedman is here, Director of Educational Technology in Hicksville Public Schools, for this timely conversation about the responsible integration of artificial intelligence in K-12 education. This consortium brings together administrators, teachers, researchers, and technology leaders who are working to move school districts beyond fear, beyond hype, and beyond the one size fits all vendor solutions toward ethical, practical, and student-centered AI implementation. The conversation explores how districts can build capacity, protect student data, support teachers, strengthen AI literacy, and create local solutions that reflect the needs, the real needs of schools. And I, you know, I I just get I'm just stopping here, gentlemen. I'm going to keep with the intro, but honestly, uh in my short time in this consortium, Patrick and Dan, that's exactly where this is headed, right? That we will have the power using these tools to truly create solutions that uh will reflect the needs of our kids. I I know I just paused that intro, but that isn't that the one of the exciting elements of your consortium?

SPEAKER_03 2:17

I I definitely like to think so. I've been looking at AI and machine learning for a very long time. I worked for a company many years ago called eSpark learning, where they were first trying to design personalized learning pathways for students using NWA scores, map scores, et cetera. And it feels like that was 12, 13 years ago, maybe even a little more, and we were at the cusp of something that we still haven't fully sorted out. So it feels like what we're looking at today as the promise or the the at least the opportunity to fulfill the promise that we've been aware of for almost two decades now. So I do think we're heading towards a brave new frontier of how these tools work in education.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

That's that's awesome, Patrick. And we're gonna hear from Daniel in a moment, but yeah, I just want to continue a little bit that these gentlemen will be discussing the growing builder mentality among educators, including the shift from simply asking, hey, what can an AI tool, what should we buy, to asking what can we design, test, and improve together? So we're entering this great time when New York State, SUNY, and school systems across the country are actively developing AI guidance, professional learning, micro-credentials, and public school AI initiatives. And this episode really will offer school leaders a grounded and hopeful roadmap for leading wisely in a rapidly changing landscape. So together, uh, these and these amazing leaders are truly helping others move beyond the question of whether AI belongs in schools and toward the more important question: how do we use AI in ways that protect students, empower teachers, strengthen learning, and reflect the values of public education? So, Patrick and Dan, I am so grateful that you're taking the time with me today. I was bl uh blessed and fortunate to join your consortium and to see how exciting it is, forward vision of what's happening across the state. So I thank you for that. And there's no doubt that we are all living in a moment where AI is just it's moving so fast that it's hard sometimes to keep up, right? So today I just want to explore your thoughts. I want to explore the origin story of the consortium and explore you know the practical work happening across New York State and how educators can truly lead instead of react. So I'm gonna start with Patrick. Patrick, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_03 4:50

Thank you so much for having me, Brian, and for having Dan as well. Thank you for inviting us.

SPEAKER_00 4:55

Yeah, and you know, this podcast is called Achieving Joy in Mastery in Public Schools. And I ask every guest, uh, when possible, to maybe share with the audience what is currently bringing you joy in your current capacity in public education. Sure, a lot of things.

SPEAKER_03 5:12

There are a lot of interesting things happening in the world outside of technology that I'm really excited about. I think there's a push towards reducing screen time. I think we're on the cusp of a movement to get kids outside more over the next couple of years. I don't think that's quite begun to bubble up, but I think there's a lot of movement that's happening independent of the stuff we're talking about today. But I think maybe the most exciting thing happening is the potential for you know, sequencing the human genome and curing forms of cancer and the things that AI are has the potential to allow us to do. I don't know if you guys read that I think it was GPT solved an 80-year-old math theorem yesterday. Oh, no kidding. You go on, if you go on X or Threads or anywhere, all the mathematicians, you know, m many of whom have been, let's call them, reluctant adopters, you know, were we talking about how incredible this is. And I I think there's been a tendency to overpraise by people who are trying to sell us something, and there's then a tendency to underpraise by people who are afraid to change things. And so what I hope, you know, what excites me is the opportunity to run Niceaic in a way that provides districts with that support to help make good decisions. And I think I'm really excited by the potential to help people make good choices right now and interesting choices. Yeah, I love that.

SPEAKER_00 6:35

Nicely done. And Daniel, uh, welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you here. And basically it's the same question: what's bringing you joy in your current capacity?

SPEAKER_02 6:44

I I'd have to say it's it's the excitement I see in in my teachers again. You know, our you know, our veteran teachers, you know, we were you know, if you've been in this game for 20 years or so, like the pandemic was just a time where we we kind of threw everything we could, you know, into what we were doing. We tried to sort out all of the things we needed to sort out. And if you were tired at that point in your career, that made you very tired. So I see I see a lot of, yeah, I see a lot of my veteran teachers, they're excited again. Yeah. They've just got a little bit more spring in their step, they're a little bit kind of rejuvenated. Like I've said before, I have teachers thanking me for PD that we're doing, which just never happened before. But when I can tell them that AI is like, here's not it's not another tool for you to use. Like here's the toolbox. Like, what do you want to build today? And what really excites me is all of the things that are happening organically around the district, administrators that are finding solutions, teachers that are finding solutions. Not anything we did PD directly about or showed them directly, but they got interested, they got excited and they started they started exploring. That that's really that's been a joy.

SPEAKER_00 7:58

Yeah, I love I love that whole concept of what do you want to build today, right? So it's almost like you have a big bin of Legos and you're bringing that over to a teacher, and yeah, what do you want to build? And let's use these AI tools to get at it. I love that. So, Patrick, help our audience understand the origin story of the consortium. And maybe, maybe, and first, you know, I I don't think I shared with the audience uh where you work, right? So maybe talk about your position and where you're working, and then the origin story of the consortium.

SPEAKER_03 8:33

Sure, my pleasure. I am uh currently the assistant superintendent for curriculum instruction and innovation at Hewlett Woodmere Public Schools on Long Island. Previously I was at Jericho, CarlPlace, been through a number of districts, and I've served in the past as a coordinator and consultant for districts like the Diocese of Brooklyn and Queens. So that's kind of my where I got my start, but I did leave education to go into software, so that's been a persistent interest of mine throughout time is building and developing things. And that's sort of how Nysaia came about was back in 2023, I got a cold call email from Skillstruck Chat for Schools, and it was the first product I got an email about, literally the very first AI product that emailed me. And I picked up the phone and I called them and said, Man, how did you guys get this to market so fast? This is incredible. What what year, Patrick? What year was it? 2023. Would have been yeah, it would have been mid-CHA.

SPEAKER_00 9:27

Chat comes out 2022 of November, and sometime in 2023, somebody already made a product.

SPEAKER_03 9:33

These guys had it to market, and obviously, you know, I understood that it was a thin wrapper around Chat GPT, you know, I got it, but it was so impressive how quickly they got it up and running, and they would probably dispute that it's a wrapper around GPT at this point. I don't know. I think it works with multiple platforms now. Oh, but interesting. Yeah, so but but that was the first company to get in touch with me. And when I I I bought it almost sight on scene because I was so excited, and you know, our district was very innovation-oriented, so I bought it and I sent an email out to we have in Nassau County, we have a tech director group called NASTech. And and I've been fortunate enough to be on the executive board and to just sort of serve as a mentor and helper to folks who are newer to technology positions and districts. And I sent out an email saying, hey, I got this email, I bought this thing, I don't know what it's all about, but at some point we should get together and if anyone else wants to buy it, we'll talk about it. And and then in December, we had just a couple of folks who were it well, I have a group chat of friends, Dan Mung them, and a bunch of us said, let's get on a Zoom to talk about this product and whatever else. And that was the first I I call that meeting Zero because it was before I had the name. I had the name before I had zero. So there was it was not a real meeting, you know, technically, but it was because it was the first eight members of Nysayic. Nice. Um, and it it was it was one of those things that grew completely without my provocation expectation. So we started, you know, year one, I think. So the first meeting that we officially set up was January 2024. That was meeting two, I guess, technically. So we had we had launched in 23, and in 24 we went from 10 to 100 people. And really, in the last 12 months, the it's been a snowball rolling down a hill.

SPEAKER_00 11:24

We I sent out an email yesterday just saying, hey, if you have anyone, yeah, yeah, let's let's get people to join, right?

SPEAKER_03 11:29

And in that was less than 24 hours, we're we have 11 new members because people and I think that's two things. I think it's the trust that the organization has built. We don't, you know, we we just do this for folks. We're just this consortium who does this. That's one. And two is I think it's just been such an opportunity to bring people together, coordinate, share, talk, meet new people, and and I think it scratches an itch for a lot of districts.

SPEAKER_00 11:57

Oh my gosh, for sure. So I feel bad that I I just joined. I I I should what is this what version of this is now, you know, this this meeting? Uh, you know, meeting uh 100 already, or how how often have you guys uh from zero to now been meeting regularly, right? Is it monthly?

SPEAKER_03 12:16

Monthly meetings, and then we are now we've added this year the practicums, which has been, I think, a major value add, which is just folks. So we run our regular monthly meeting. Oftentimes we'll be visited by a vendor, someone who's created a product, but also thinkers. Right. It's not really a marketing thing. It's i if you're a vendor, you're coming and you get an email saying we're gonna ask you really hard questions and you're not gonna be able to answer them all, and that's fine. This is a curious group. It's not a group that needs every box checked, it's a group of very curious people. So we've had wonderful vendors come in and share with us products that were brand new that are now dominant, you know, brisk being one of them. Um they visit us early. We've had great guests who've come through, but we also have Glenn Kleiman from, or Glenn Kleeman, excuse me, from Stanford, the accelerator, uh, who comes and talks to us about how their perception of AI is shaping what higher education is doing. So the the real purpose of the group once we expanded was we want to make sure that we're covering all the bases that a district could need covered regarding AI, and then we expanded to the practicums to say, what about if we actually start building these tools? And that really, I literally there was a weekend or week where I said, if I spend 200 hours building a Regents Prep app, it can be amazing. I'm gonna start a timer for 200 hours, me, Claude Code, and a Regents Prep app. And by the time I'm done, it's going to be a fully functional, it may even be the best Regents Prep app that has ever been. And that was my 200 hours, and by the time it was done, we're now using it in my district as the Regents Prep App.

SPEAKER_00 13:51

Congratulations. Really, Patrick, that is fantastic. And for our listeners, I just want to emphasize this great potential to be able to use tools like Claude Code or other tools to build something that is yours, that it's your it's branded with your district. And when you have amazing people that are innovators who can do that because they just had an idea and they're willing to put in that extra time, I think that uh is emblematic of the potential that exists. And and and to that end, Patrick, you know, districts spend a lot of money on different software, and the fact that you were able to spend a lot of hours building this with the uh with a strategic thought partner such as uh Claude or Claude Code or whatever you were using, and now it's deployed, really very impressive work. And Daniel, what what drew you to this consortium besides Patrick's amazing personality? What what else?

SPEAKER_02 14:51

What you know, why is this why is um well to be fair, it it is Patrick's it it's his infectious enthusiasm, as I say, like the it's his excitement. He just he sees the potential in things, and I I should take a step back. Pat and I have known each other for the better part of a decade at this point. When Patrick was working for longer, yes, I know, but when I was when Patrick was working for ESPARC, we were an ESPARC customer and we worked a lot together. And I think where the consortium comes in is it's a chance to control the narrative rather than be controlled and dictated to, and that when we step forward as a group, we we do have a voice. Like we can we can take the collective wisdom of our group and make a recommendation and give suggestions and you know group members share how they're building AI literacy or how they're developing their core beliefs and values versus a policy, or if they're being pressured for a policy, you know, you know, some language that might work. So it it it's it's that that learning from the past, you know, what's the history doesn't always repeat itself, but it often rhymes. You know, we we learned the hard way as we got overly excited and rolled out iPads and apps, and that there was a lot of promise with with really not a lot of return because it was cool and we could do these things with it, but there was never really a clear way that it was going to support instruction. Maybe with personalization. You know, Pat, I I did Regents Review, I did Regent's Review websites, so this was probably 2008. So I built three Regents Review websites, hiring teachers, you know, thousands and thousands of dollars to be fair to the people I was working with, to build content into you know a website and all of the regents questions and answered and explained, and kind of all of the things that would make you know Regents Review the best for students, that was all done manually. And it, you know, Patrick accomplished in 200 hours what took me the better part of two years. And that's that's real. Like, you know, the output of what he's created, the ability to parse and generate new regents type questions. Yeah, um is amazing. It's it's just you know, having done the work manually, I can truly say that it's it's a game changer.

SPEAKER_00 17:34

So I may be one of those individuals that are on the extreme. Like if we drew a bell curve, right? I may be in that tale where I'm like, let's go, AI, right? But Daniel, right, there's there's an extreme version on either end of the bell curve, and then there's a clustering around the mean. Tell me about your perspective uh with respect to how AI is being framed, either nationally or locally in schools, and you know, how we can help our educators, our administrators uh work in a very thoughtful, respectful, responsible way.

SPEAKER_02 18:10

So I would say take a deep breath and just let these experiences kind of wash through. And if you look at the the history of public education, move along sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, but we always revert to the me. So I mean we see it now, the the push for one-to-one devices and you know Chromebooks in every student's hand. And now we're seeing the exact opposite. Our parents are very clearly saying they want their students in front of screens less. So the pendulum swings in both directions, but we always return to the me. Like, truly, that just take a breath. You don't have to fix this now, you don't have to learn this tomorrow. Just let it, you know, go with the flow. You know, let the what let what seems like too much wash over you, and just keep following and keep following the waves, and eventually you'll you'll just come along.

SPEAKER_00 19:06

So, Patrick, what what do you think are some of the challenges? You know, Daniel's you know talking to us about riding the waves and move, you know, following the flow, maybe taking a breath and not you know doing cartwheels like I am when I get to play with these tools. So what are some of the obstacles and or fears that that people are struggling with, whether it's ethical and responsible or fear-based? And how do we help people, like Daniel's saying, go with the flow a little bit?

SPEAKER_03 19:36

So the real answer to this is that we probably owe people an explanation because we've done a lot of things that we haven't necessarily really looked into whether they worked. And I I generally bring this up when I give presentations, but when you ask a room full of people how they've assessed the success of their one-to-one program, virtually zero hands will go up because no one has ever assessed the quality or efficacy of their one-to-one program. Um you probably haven't, I haven't, Dan hasn't, and the three of us are probably among the forefront of people who would be interested in assessing such a thing. So when you're having the conversation with teachers that we're going to roll out AI, I think it's a very fair question for the staff to ask you, well, aren't you now talking about bringing some of the Chromebooks out of the classroom? And we say yes. And they said, but you want to put AI into the classroom? And we say yes. And then they say, have you thought about have you thought about this? Have you ever seen a snake eating its own tail? You know, or like and I just think one of the things that I'm fearful of for our staff is that we don't engage in enough honest reflection as administrators and as tech leaders and as people who I I think the most important sentence can be, I was wrong, in building trust in an organization and telling people. And I'm not saying that we are wrong to deploy one-to-one devices. It's obviously nothing's quite so clean or simple, but I think beginning your AI conversations with a conversation about some of the things that have come before and what has come of them, because I I don't I think it would be hard to make an argument that smart boards worked. And I think it's fair to say that smart boards perform a function.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

Yeah. They perform a function. That's right.

SPEAKER_03 21:20

I guess a lot of what I would like us to start doing and the things that I'm afraid of that we haven't really done is reflecting honestly about what has worked and hasn't worked, reflecting honestly on the tools that we've added and what they've contributed to student learning and education generally, and then explaining how this could be different. And then saying, you know, or acknowledging that it might not be. Because it's it's also powerful to lead with uncertainty sometimes. I don't I know that artificial intelligence is going to be transformative in the public sector sector, in the private sector over the next 10 to 15 years. That's I think that's indisputable.

SPEAKER_00 21:56

Yes, I agreed.

SPEAKER_03 21:57

Don't know how that's going to manifest itself in the education. Educational environment. And we're building that. And if we lead with, I know and you don't, you know, and that's not about the death of expertise. We do need experts. We need people who understand things. But I think we have to be honest about what we don't know and honest about not necessarily mistakes we've made, but decisions that we've made that haven't necessarily played out the way we might have expected. And the fact that we haven't necessarily assessed why, you know, ask somebody why the smart board didn't work out.

SPEAKER_00 22:26

No, yeah, I love this conversation a lot because you two gentlemen are much younger than I am, but there was a thing, a new technology in the 70s called a ditto machine. Did you guys ever hear of that thing? Yes. The purple ink, right? And now the mimic. Yeah, so now, you know, that was transformative in a sense of wow, I can easily make a document and share it with children using the ditto machine. And you know, that smartboard is kind of a ditto machine on steroids, right? Like I'm taking my you know handout and I'm showing everybody on a big screen, and whether or not that impacted learning is a whole other question. So yeah, it's a very, very interesting perspective. So when the two of you are working with your teachers, do you begin this AI converse conversation showing teachers some tools that may benefit their uh workflow? Is that a good place to start?

SPEAKER_02 23:30

Well yeah, when I when I when I do professional development with teachers, I always have taken the approach of trying to show them something that's going to grab their attention. And it might not necessarily be relevant to their teaching practice. Like for you know, I showed when I many, many years ago when I was doing professional development teachers on Excel, like I could I showed them how to make their holiday card mailing list and spit out labels, and it was like genius. Nice. Yeah. But then I got them, I showed them how to do mail merges and how they could do certificates. And that was just like the way in. Uh in like that's been my approach in the past, but but now it's really it's check out what I like. I'll show them something that I've done for my professional practice. Like, here's how I've used a Google Gem to essentially augment my capacity. Like, and you know, I'm not ashamed to say that I do that. In fact, I I almost I make a point of saying it, like yes, I used AI to generate this memo, or yes, I used AI to sort of generate this whole thought process.

SPEAKER_01 24:35

For sure.

SPEAKER_02 24:36

So I I I do there, but I you know it's yeah, I'm trying to uh and I guess I I I approach it, I guess I would I would say this too, like I can completely see how you know I as an administrator, my teachers as as professional teachers, instructors, how we can use AI to augment our skills. So I can but we we went to school the old-fashioned way. We went to lecture, we took notes, you know, I was a musician, I went to the practice room a lot, you know, all of those traditional ways of learning. So I can see how I can then augment with AI tools. What I and I tell my teachers this very much, like I don't know how we're going to teach kids to grow up alongside of it, where they they have to learn these two independent skills together. But you know, I'm excited to to learn with them because I'm if I'm ahead of my teachers, it's it's it's by maybe 15 minutes, just because you know I I went to the first Nice meeting, and that's kind of cool. I'm not really that far ahead of them, and in some ways what they're doing is already ahead of me, and and that's okay.

SPEAKER_00 25:43

Yeah, I love I I do I do love that, right? Because once it is becoming part of the workflow, just like Patrick had this idea of building something and then spent some hours doing it, and it's really a wonderful outcome. Once teachers begin to experiment with these tools, then their imaginations open up and they become innovative, right? So I do I do love that concept that we are also learning from the educators that we work with, and that's exciting to me, right? That that they are embracing the tools and then they become role models for the students as well. Is that is that a fair story?

SPEAKER_02 26:25

Very fair, yes. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 26:27

Yeah. So so Patrick, with that said, now again, you gentlemen are ahead of the curve, but when you start it, you know, when you start it working with the people in your school system, is your story similar to Dan's that you know people are coming to you with exciting ways that they're using AI, or are you the one or you and your team the one showing them some new things that really, really benefit the their workflow?

SPEAKER_03 26:54

That's a that's an interesting question because I'm actually running the playbook for the second time here. I you know, I this I was at a different dish. I was at Jericho when I first did it back in 2023. Now I'm at a Hewlett Woodmere trying the same essential thing in 2025, 26. It's different for me in that I think certainly at Jericho, I was more the one bringing it to people's attention, literally showing up in a classroom with a Chromebook and saying, Hey, can I show you this chatbot? You know, and uh when when we first were using the first apps we were using, I would sit, whenever someone was teaching a lesson using the AI tools, I would sit in the room with them and pull up the back end of the admin tools. And like, so for example, we were in a fourth grade class or third grade class, and the teacher said, the students were like, We can ask it anything, and we said, Well, within reason. And one of the students said, We can ask it about Santa Claus. I'm frantically pulling up the back end of chat for schools to ban Santa Claus as a as an askable question or as a term that can appear. And then I have to run through my head, the Easter bunny, Santa Claus. I'm thinking of all the things that I can't believe to third graders should not be exposed to this level of intel, right? So I I now have to like go into the back end on the fly and start striking out search terms because I'm so afraid that I'm gonna let you know ruin some kids on the right.

SPEAKER_02 28:12

You know, I remember that conversation from one of our other Nice A colleagues who works in a in a K8 district, and it was just not something I had thought about that you know we could be the the reason that kids find out the truth about you know Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny because you know we gave them an AI chatbot that told them so. Like that would be horrible. I'd be terrible.

SPEAKER_00 28:34

Right, right. That's really an interesting thing. That's simple.

SPEAKER_02 28:37

We're worried about bombs and and you know self-harm and all these things, but it was just as simple as like like what Patrick said.

SPEAKER_00 28:44

As that, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:45

I do I would encourage people who are giving PD on AI to start with the premise that no one actually cares about AI. They care about uh solving their problems and making life easier for themselves. You care about AI, I care about AI. No one else cares about it. It's like asking people to care deeply about a printer, you know, or a middle machine. These are problem-solving tools. We have to show people how to solve the problems with them, not because I you know I have a tendency to just be talking to a room full of people saying, How amazing is this? This is incredible. And they're sitting there thinking, like, yeah, but can I do a lesson with it? Like, great, buddy. You know, I'm glad you're excited. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:24

What about the American Revolution? How does this fit into that unit of studies? So let's let's talk about students, right? And AI literacy. And maybe, you know, as you gentlemen have been working in school districts, helping educators become familiar with these tools and how it does benefit them as teachers. What about kids? And you know, I I'm putting together a second book on AI, and I got a bunch of contributors. And uh, one of the things that I'm starting to think about now is is that the student AI, what does student AI literacy look like from kindergarten through grade 12? And and or, you know, what's going to happen with this uh new group of kids coming to us in September? And what you know, what is their 13-year journey or you know, with us? How does that evolve, right? But not taking it so deep, just overall, where does where does this AI literacy live? Is it with a librarian? Is it with a tech coach? Is it with the classroom teacher? And what are some things you're thinking about with student AI literacy in general?

SPEAKER_03 30:32

I think um it probably right now for the short term is gonna live in digital citizenship, which is where we dump sort of a lot of a lot of that sort of thing. I don't know if that's where it belongs. I do, I think we're we probably just don't really understand yet the the scope of the impact that it's going to have. So for me right now, I I'm making sure that we're giving kids some level of exposure to it. We're talking about it, we're introducing it in the digital citizenship frameworks. I don't think policy is necessary at this stage because I think your policy is probably going to evolve. I think you have to have, if you have a good base of policy already, you don't need to revise it for AI because it should really include almost the only gray area I've heard people surface is that technically copying from generative AI or or what we call generative AI is not plagiarism because it's a new product. Uh, you know, that's specious to me. I think it's still, you know, a copy-paste job. So I don't think you should, I think for for the most part, we have to be introducing these tools to kids because they're going to introduce themselves to them anyway. But I had, I I have to share this because I had someone say something so funny to me, and it's been in my head for two days now. I said this, actually, I said this yesterday to a group of people who are curriculum people, but not necessarily tech people. And I said, So we have to show them how to use it. And she said, Yeah, that's why we all uh that's why they taught us how to smoke cigarettes in school in the 70s.

unknown 32:01

What?

SPEAKER_03 32:02

And I said, Wow. I said that's a lot. She said, No, that's a lot. She was joking because she's saying you're introducing this harmful thing to kids that you know, her perspective was this is dangerous and bad. And I just thought, what I know, I may not agree, but what a great perspective. Like, what a what a that's a person I want in my meeting because that person is thinking in a whole different way than I am. And you know, her point, she went on to talk about social media and all the other things, and it's and her she she's presenting the fox in the hen house argument, which is that we keep letting the fox in the hen house and then being surprised when we run out of heads. Um and I just thought, so from from a balanced perspective, there are people out there who are thinking that about our students in AI that were essentially handing them a pack of Marlboro's and saying, have at it, right? Yeah, very diverse perspectives about how we should be doing this with kids. And I want to hear them all.

SPEAKER_00 32:57

Yeah, yeah, Daniel, uh, what are you what are your thoughts? You know, we just heard about digital citizenship. I think that's a beautiful place to embed this. And then who who does that work? Is that the teacher? Is that the librarian? Do we start very early in introducing you know digital citizenship? And and what are your thoughts about AI literacy in general for students?

SPEAKER_02 33:18

So we actually wrote kind of these these plans into as a goal in our next, you know, our 26 to 29 instructional technology plan. So our approach to the computer science and digital fluency standards is you know, we have a series of lessons that fits in in every grade level, and then middle school and high school, we have a dedicated course that you know for that's computer science and digital fluency that that predates you know AI essentially by a few minutes, you know, on the timescale. But our goal is specifically to use to really comb through all of our curricular areas and find the places where we can fit in lessons about AI, about bias, about fatigue, about ethics, about you know, all of those, you know, all of those subjects. And it it's even in like a literature lesson where you're talking about a bias of the characters in a particular story, it's just an opportunity to talk about how bias can exist in an AI algorithm.

SPEAKER_00 34:18

But the uh So it sounds like your district has been very thoughtful and have has built this out so that pieces of this can fit in every grade level.

SPEAKER_02 34:27

Correct. And by codifying it in our technology plan, it's sort of you know, we we set ourselves in a place where we you know we have to meet these goals. So the other side of it too is almost like the adage that every teacher is a teacher of reading and writing. It doesn't matter if you're social studies or math teacher, like this is a this is a topic of literacy. So really every teacher should be a teacher of AI literacy in a way that applies to their particular subject area or grade level. And that's certainly an approach that we're taking as well.

SPEAKER_00 35:00

I love it. All right, so I love that a lot, and it really does make sense, it resonates really well. What does active literacy look like across all content, right? How do we speak the language of math, right? How do we speak the language of physics? All elements of uh being literate in different content areas, and then how do we speak the language of AI and what does that mean, you know, for a student and for an adult? So that's pretty thoughtful. So I guess you know, we have a few more minutes. Maybe both of you guys could share some exciting ways that your teachers are using AI. That is it as simple as Notebook LM, or is it is it something else that you guys are excited about that teachers are starting to enforce?

SPEAKER_02 35:45

So we developed in Hexville our core beliefs and values as they surround AI. And honestly, that was a process that we learned in Niceake from one of our members from Patrick Kylie Rendon in the West Ice Lip Schools. Just this great thought exercise and how we developed what essentially are six pillars. And if you look at any of the frameworks that are out there from large organizations, ours pretty much looks like theirs, except ours is our own. It's based on you know hundreds, really thousands of points of feedback from our teachers. But our next uh nice practicum actually, Lindsay Sotrano, who's our model schools trainer from BOCIS, took those core beliefs and values and built them into a series of notebook LM sessions. Okay. So there's one for K2, there's one for 3.5, there's one for middle school, one for high school. It's it's really how they can then a teacher can take their lesson and look for you know where they can incorporate some of those core beliefs and values, where they can incorporate AI literacy from a lesson which might not otherwise look like it has the potential to do that. So and with our teachers doing that and using that, it's just like that's that's been like kind of a great what's happening next.

SPEAKER_00 36:58

Yeah, I love it. Patrick, anything from your perspective, any tools? Maybe it is notebook LM or something else that you're the adults in your organization are really gravitating to?

SPEAKER_03 37:08

Yeah, we're so we're we just launched a BRISC pilot here about three months ago. That's we already have Magic School, which I think is a good product. I'm partial, I I like Brisk quite a bit. I think their their CEO, I think, is a really smart guy who's making very smart choices. So I appreciate that. So I have a lot of trust in them. So we're piloting BRISC. The teachers are doing really well with it. It's a small group pilot across multiple grade levels, but one class per because we want to be able to have some you know A-B style testing and see what we're you know. One of the key learnings I think for our teachers really revolved around it doesn't need to be a student-facing tool to have great value to you, but that the fact that they have recognized its value means they're more open to using it as a student-facing tool. There's a lot of reluctance when I began here in September. And it's not I think this is just a general state of affairs for many teachers. There was some concern about flipping the switch on these tools and making them student-facing. So we slowed down and we did the brisk trial for some, and we kept Magic School out there for teachers, we gave teachers Gemini access. Uh you know, I I've always really loathed the expression go slow to go fast, but we're going slow to go fast.

SPEAKER_00 38:24

I got it.

SPEAKER_03 38:24

I got it, I got it.

SPEAKER_00 38:26

And and I think, you know, for our listeners who maybe, you know, some of these tools maybe new as they're listening, maybe new to them, right? So for the notebook LM people that lives in the Google world, and my understanding it was some of their scientists, some of their researchers at Google who begged for a tool that would allow them to synthesize research, you know, in a in a faster way, because they were overwhelmed with how quickly AI was you know being written about and things of that nature. Wonderful tool, amazing tool. And then Magic School AI and Brisk, I think, have partnerships with OpenAI, which is which is the chat. And they're also excellent tools, right? Here in Grand Island, we use ConMigo, which is uh part of Con Academy, and every six every student from grade six to twelve has a ConMigo AI tutor. Now, that's another partnership with OpenAI, right? So there are wonderful tools like that that are out there that are really either partnering with Anthropic or partnering with OpenAI or maybe other tools and things of that nature. So I'm excited to hear that Brisk and Magic School are starting to resonate with some of the adults in your organization, of course, in OPACLM, and and how the BOCs is using it to help people process and synthesize information. Daniel, were you gonna add something to that? No, okay, sorry. So listen, we're winding down uh the future. I am one I'd love to hear from both of you what you think, how how what you think two years from now, three years from now, will what how can AI in a more thoughtful, maybe equitable way, you know, enhance teaching and learning in schools? And any other any other ideas that you have with respect to how AI is deployed in each school district? So kind of two twofold, right? How can we safely deploy it? Maybe outside of these vendors that we're talking about. Like how can we safely deploy what what what does the future what how might the future look like? And then how might it how what you both might be seeing now that you're thinking two years from now things might look a little different?

SPEAKER_03 40:42

I think there's a few things that are gonna come down the pike. I I I think first of all, it it looks like we're experiencing the death of software, but I think what software is just gonna become is a plug-in, you know, you so you're going to pay for all the same things. The great consolidation, I I said this some some some other place I was talking, so forgive me for repeating myself for the three people out there who heard me say this before. But um the like what happened with streaming services is happening with AI.

SPEAKER_00 41:10

They cut charges as little as possible, save some money, and then you have 17 streaming software, you know, companies.

SPEAKER_03 41:18

The way it's gonna work instead of doing it that way, is that you'll have Claude and GPT and I mean I guess Grok or whatever, and Gemini will have the good ones, and then right now they'll do your taxes for free and they'll build your business for free. And then in a year from now, because they're all you know losing money in buckets, they're going to have to monetize these services in some way. And so, what's what I think is coming for school, obviously, not obviously, I do believe software as we know it is probably going to be shifted towards a different model of distribution where it's more plug-in-oriented. And here's what I think is going to be interesting for schools. Right now, and I mean no disrespect to us, because I work in schools too, but we're doing like what amounts to hand-to-hand combat with the Googles, Anthropics, and OpenAIs of the world. Where, you know, trying to get DPAs signed by 800-pound gorillas. There's going, I think the next step is going to be intermediate, like intermediary trust layers for schools, where instead of interfacing directly to bring in the apps to support the training, they're going to have some kind of layer that they bring in for themselves that does a lot of it. And maybe instead of purchasing these apps where by there's no real reason for a school district to buy an off-the-shelf app. You could just have it designed for you. And I don't mean like I mean anything, you know, any kind of app, not your school app that tells you the bus schedule, but like literally, you know, you you could build something just for you could build Parent Square just for your district. I love Parent Square, no disrespect, great product. But there's no reason there's no reason that you couldn't really seriously look at custom building that stuff.

SPEAKER_00 42:55

Yes. So I love that. I want to talk a little bit more about what you just said, Patrick, but Daniel, same question to you, right? What does the future look like? Do you are you you know, do you have the similar ideas that Patrick has, or do you have anything else that might be a little different?

SPEAKER_02 43:10

I'm excited to see what happens almost outside of education in the research fields, in medical science, specifically in drug discovery, in compound and in molecular sciences. Like I think that's just that that's very interesting to me. And ultimately those advanced ideas will trickle down into schools. But the other side of it is, and we talk about data, we talk about personally identifiable information, but you know, all of these LLMs, all of these AI tools are logical word engines, the next most logical word. We know that. It's these massive, massive data sets. And massive data sets, look where they are. They're in markets, they're in schools, they're in healthcare. So I think what you can do with these massive data lakes and an AI tool, we really start to get into some of that kind of pre-cog type futuristic matrix, you know, the matrix, you know, predictive analytics about this child is going to do this in the future because of these factors we know. And I don't think it's something that, you know, to be like very scared of. I think it's something to be very aware of. And as we move forward, to keep that at the front of the conversation, just like everything else.

SPEAKER_00 44:38

Yeah. So listening to the two of you, I don't know if you've ever met or heard Chris Hagel speak. So Chris is a chief information officer at Peninsula School District in the Washington state. He's on the COSIN board. I had an opportunity to present at CoSon in Chicago. Had a great opportunity to sit with him and some other amazing chief technology officers. And there's a couple articles written about Chris where he is building his own AI agents for his school district. So in essence, you know, he's he's has a server and maybe he's using open claw and he's creating this very safe but uh and secure way for the administration to interact with AI without going out to cloude or chat or whatever. But the story that that is very impressive is, and this is what I think Patrick was alluding to earlier, was the fact that he's building software for that district and saving tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. I think one article said 250,000. So that whole concept of, you know, can you build your own AI software that you own as a school district, and you're not spending that same amount of money with another company, but it's secure, it's safe, it's not leaking data. I just wonder if if you two see that as, you know, two or three years down the line, more districts will be doing things like that.

SPEAKER_03 46:25

That's a that's a good question. I actually think uh two or three months ago, districts were doing stuff like that, and it's I I almost think it's already done, which I know is insane to say, but like we've already started you can do much more using cloud-based computing and the AI tools that you have right now than you could even uh six months ago. So we had a practicum on this, and we have members. Jason Lopez from Roslin is one of the people who's at the forefront of this, Mike Larkin from Jericho, who's also one of the helpers, one of the people who works as part of Niceaic. We have Alex Goldberg from Plainville Beth Page, we have a lot of friends who are doing exactly that, building local LLMs. I think that's awesome as an endeavor. I don't know if it's a durable endeavor, because well, there's two things. One, the problem with anything like that is when that person who built it leaves the district, how do you turnkey a large language model to someone who may not have those skill sets? And now what does that mean for as far as like data sitting somewhere if it's locally hosted? And what does it mean for there's a lot of ownership that you take by doing that? So I wonder if it wouldn't be easier for you to pay some to have it built for you and have them take on the headaches of the data privacy, all that, all those things that could, I think. So I think it's a great idea. And and I just named really technical, yeah, gifted people who can do it.

SPEAKER_00 47:55

What about the Boseys?

SPEAKER_02 47:56

I'm glad you said that. That's that's where exactly where I think this comes in. I if if Patrick's Regions Review application, you know, were developed and hosted by Bosees and essentially available to every student across New York State for a cost, because there is a cost to to to building it and hosting it and keeping it secure and to you know the care so the care and feeding of it. But you know if if we pay if everybody paid Bose's you know a dollar a student, would that be enough to run this thing for a whole year? And that would save us a bundle. But even one step further, like the could Bose's give us access to like raw compute?

SPEAKER_00 48:37

Yeah, you you each each school has a server that's that's hosted by the RIC, and there's there's a couple tools on there, and you start small, right? Start slow, you know, and let people you know interact with that. But if the RIC hosted it, then they know it's Edlaw to be compliant, right? They have all the privacy and equity, you know, protections and so forth. And yeah, so it's just a thought that's running through my head and meeting Chris and and like you said, Patrick, some of these other amazing folks in New York State. I just wonder, you know, maybe two or three years down the road, you know, things might look a little different and people might be creating on these tools in a way that you know that is manageable when you start adding up tokens and trying to figure out what the cost is, right? So listen, you guys are amazing. I as we wind down, Patrick, maybe you could share with our listeners ways that people that want to engage in the consortium, ways that they can do that, maybe your website or ways to contact you to get connected.

SPEAKER_03 49:42

Oh boy, thank you, Brian. Yes, I would love all of your listeners to head over to nysaic.com or.org, nysaic.org, nyas, I think I own both, nysaic.org and sign up. Anyone can sign up who's an employee of a school district. We ask that you use your official work email so we can verify that you work there. As soon as you do, you will be accepted pretty quickly. And you'll have access to our resources, you'll have access to the meetings, you'll have access to the weekly Nysaic, which is a weekly update that I send out full of news and updates on exciting things we're doing from practicums to regular meetings to opportunities. Like last week, we were asked to solicit for folks to attend two different conferences. So if you're a member, you oftentimes will get a call for presenters before anybody else. You'll be solicited to do things because really it just seems like membership is kind of its own inherent benefit in that people understand that you're part of a larger group that is doing a lot of important or interesting work. And as a result, you probably have a lot of interesting stuff to say about it. So I would love for folks to reach out to me via nysaic.org. You can email me personally, but why would you want to? Just go to nysaic.org.

SPEAKER_00 50:52

Dan, anything else? Anything else different if people want to contact you or learn more?

SPEAKER_02 50:57

Patrick summed it all up. That's that's where to find us, that's where our resources are, that's where our AI literacy resources are. So that's the spot.

SPEAKER_00 51:05

I love it. And it's what $3,000, $4,000 a year for each member?

SPEAKER_03 51:10

Amazingly. It is free, Brian, if you can imagine. It's free. Love it. And uh yeah, we'd love to have you. I don't know if it'll be free forever because it's really hard to run. But it's free for now, so join up.

SPEAKER_00 51:22

And it's super smart, gentlemen. Very smart in what you're doing. And I'm I just can't thank you. I can't thank you both enough for your not only your leadership, but helping to create a space where educators really can learn from each other, learn together, but also challenge one another, right? I think this work is really the work that will lead to a responsible and ethical way that AI can you know be embedded in the work that we do. And so nysaic.org seems to be creating really exactly the kind of statewide conversation we need right now. And it's grounded obviously in practice, privacy, equity, and listen, innovation. You know, we we throw that word around a lot, but when you sit and you listen to these amazing people in this consortium, innovation is truly occurring. So I want to thank you guys for your leadership. And for our listeners, don't forget you can follow us on Apple or Spotify or Odyssey or any one of your favorite podcast platforms. Until next time, thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you for joining us today as we explore the concept of achieving joy and mastery in public schools. We will be interviewing school districts in Erie and Niagara counties on a regular basis as we look to shine a spotlight on all of the amazing programs and practices essential for achieving joy and mastery with our students, faculty, staff, and community. This podcast is sponsored by the Erie Niagara School Superintendents Association, and we hope you consider subscribing.