Conversations on Applied AI

Peter Olson-Skog - How AI Is Forcing Schools to Rethink Learning

• Justin Grammens • Season 6 • Episode 2

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Today, we're talking with Dr. Peter Olson-Skog. Peter is the Chief Administrative Officer of School District 197. He was named a Richard Green Scholar for his doctoral research, which described how district offices can support and empower principals. He's also been an assistant superintendent, principal, and director of teaching and learning.

Peter holds a BA in elementary education, an MA in human resource development, and a PhD in educational leadership and policy. Most recently, Peter has been leading his district and exploring how transformative the role of AI and artificial intelligence in education is, from empowering teachers to integrate AI tools responsibly to preparing students to graduate as AI-literate and ready for the future.

He's been co-leading district-wide fishbowl discussions on AI readiness for both students and faculty on how schools can navigate this new frontier. Peter's a thought leader in AI and education and policy, helping shape how K-12 systems can thoughtfully adapt to ensure the next generation is ready to thrive in an AI-driven world.

If you are interested in learning about how AI is being applied across multiple industries, be sure to join us at a future AppliedAI Monthly meetup and help support us so we can make future Emerging Technologies North non-profit events!

Resources and Topics Mentioned in this Episode

[00:00:00] Peter Olson-Skog: I'm not sure if cheating fully encapsulates the concern that they have with ai. I think the concern that I hear expressed is, is it taking away important? Critical thinking experiences that students need to have in order to develop fully into the critical thinkers that we want them to be. It doesn't need to, by no means does it need to, but I think it's a concern and a legitimate one.

[00:00:26] It's not one that should be run rough shot over. I mean, it's something that we need to wrestle with because we want our kids to be critical thinkers more now than ever. 

[00:00:38] AI Announcer: Welcome to the Conversations on Applied AI podcast, where Justin Grahams and the team at Emerging Technologies North talk with experts in the fields of artificial intelligence and deep learning.

[00:00:49] In each episode, we cut through the hype and dive into how these technologies are being applied to real world problems today. We hope that you find this episode educational and applicable to your [00:01:00] industry, and connect with us to learn more about our organization at Applied AI Dotn. Enjoy. 

[00:01:08] Justin Grammens: Welcome everyone to the Conversations on Applied AI podcast.

[00:01:12] Today we're talking with Dr. Peter Olson Skoog. Peter is the Chief Administrative Officer of School District 1 97. He was named a Richard Green Scholar for his doctoral research, which described how district offices can support and empower principals. He's also been an assistant superintendent, principal, and director of teaching and learning.

[00:01:29] Peter holds a BA in elementary education, an MA in human resource development, and a PhD in educational leadership and policy. Most recently, Peter has been leading his district and exploring how transformative the role of AI and artificial intelligence in education, from empowering teachers to integrate AI tools responsibly to preparing students to graduate as AI literate and ready for the future.

[00:01:51] He's been co-leading district-wide fishbowl discussions on AI readiness for both students and faculty on how schools can navigate this new frontier. [00:02:00] Peter's a thought leader in AI and education and policy helping shape how K 12 systems can thoughtfully adapt to ensure the next generation is ready to thrive in an AI driven world.

[00:02:08] All of this is directly in line with our mission at Applied ai, so that's why I'm thrilled to have Peter here today. So thank you, Peter, for being on the podcast. Thanks, Justin. I think you're pushing the needle forward on a lot of these things, and I mentioned about the fishbowl discussion here in the intro, and that's how you and I met was sort of.

[00:02:24] Through that. You know, one of the questions that I like to ask people is, you know, I kind of told people where you're at today, but how did you actually get into education? Maybe wind the clock back a little bit, give us a little bit of a feel for your trajectory through your career. 

[00:02:35] Peter Olson-Skog: Sure. I was going to school at the University of Minnesota Morris Go Cougars, and through volunteering in some classrooms, I just stumbled across the joy of.

[00:02:46] Watching and helping kids learn. And so that's what started the career. And then I was a second grade teacher, a fourth grade teacher. I taught science as a specialist in elementary school, gifted and talented. Started off in Oakland, [00:03:00] California, then came back to Minnesota and in Minneapolis. And then from there I did a short little stint in the for-profit sector and did some project management.

[00:03:10] Taught me a lot. Didn't love it. Wanted to get back to teaching and education. So then I have been in an administration ever since various roles. So started off as kind of the numbers guy for a school district, crunching lots of spreadsheets, this is back and no child left behind. Making sure people understood what they were seeing and all the different types of assessments that they gave.

[00:03:32] And then they filled in my assignment with lots of other things. And then eventually I was the director of curriculum and instruction for a school district. Then became a principal, then became an assistant sup, and now I'm a superintendent. 

[00:03:45] Justin Grammens: Excellent. Very, very cool. Yeah. So just kind of the traditional path, I guess, kind of where working your way sort up.

[00:03:50] Peter Olson-Skog: Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. Yeah. I guess the only other part that I'd throw in there is that I, uh, my mom's a Canuck and my dad's a Minnesotans and I don't play hockey. Wow. But I, I do love [00:04:00] education though, and that's been a long time family thing. 

[00:04:02] Justin Grammens: Awesome. Very good. My mom was an educator for many years, and my stepdad too as well.

[00:04:06] So yeah, I feel like I probably have that gene somewhere inside me as well. And I teach today, I'm an adjunct at the University of St. Thomas. So, so yeah, go fellow educators, for sure. One of the things you mentioned was spreadsheets. You know, I mean, do you feel like you have that sort of technical angle, like, you know, you, you want to dive into technology and sort of figure it out?

[00:04:21] I know spreadsheets don't really seem technical per se, but I don't know, do you feel like you're wired that way? 

[00:04:26] Peter Olson-Skog: I would say I'm wired that way. I had a palm pilot. I've always been somewhat of an early adopter, uh, of different ways that technology can make us more efficient, more effective at what we do.

[00:04:39] So yeah, that's gone back a long way. I was one of the early adopters of Scantron to get quick assessment results in the classroom. So I had my little scan tron. Scanner to give kids quick multiple choice tests and really quickly, and this is by no means quick compared to what it is today, but to get a sense of where kids were [00:05:00] at and where their strengths and weaknesses were.

[00:05:01] So yeah, it's been a long time passion of mine. Awesome. 

[00:05:04] Justin Grammens: Well, I guess we can jump into the meat of it too. Like, I mean, how do you see this wave being different? 'cause I'm sure you've seen technology come into classrooms or impact students over the course of time. 

[00:05:13] Peter Olson-Skog: How do I see this wave being different than prior ones?

[00:05:17] Justin Grammens: Or 

[00:05:17] Peter Olson-Skog: do you, yeah, I guess I see a lot of similarities, so maybe I'll start there to try and identify the differences. The similarities is that there's hesitance, teachers and educators, especially in my mind, pre-K 12 educators don't have enough time. To develop their lessons, right? Like if I was to tell a salesperson, here's your day tomorrow, you're gonna present three different sales pitches.

[00:05:46] Actually, let's make it six. Six different sales pitches to six different audiences. They all have to be different. They all have their unique needs, and I'm gonna give you 45 minutes to prepare for all six presentations. And then the day after that, you're gonna do it again. With six new [00:06:00] topics, six new groups of people, and you're still gonna have 45 minutes to get all that ready, right?

[00:06:05] Like so. So then in the midst of all of that, you need things to help you be efficient with the time that you have, but you also like develop these lessons and they become these cherished things in your lives because you're like, oh, this is something that I really. Poured my blood, sweat, and tears into, it's worked well.

[00:06:22] And then to, I don't have enough time to really, to change that entirely every year, all the time. And so you get, I think you get this hesitance, understandably so, uh, when something new comes in. And so, because not only are you trying to figure out the lesson, but now you're trying to figure out this new technology and does it work?

[00:06:40] What happens when it glitches? Mm-hmm. I'm live 80% of the day with 30 kids in front of me, and when it fails, it's a problem. Yeah. And so I think the way that it's similar is that there's hesitance, one way that it's different, I think, is people have worried about cheating using technology. Mm-hmm. Every time it comes up.

[00:06:57] Right. Calculators were a [00:07:00] form of cheating. For some computers, phones were a form of cheating for some, and definitely with ai, I think that is a concern that educators have, and I'm not sure if cheating fully encapsulates the concern that they have with ai. I think the concern that I hear expressed is, is it taking away important critical thinking experiences?

[00:07:25] And you were in the fishbowl with me, and so you heard people talking about mm-hmm. This alongside. Yeah. Is it taking away important experiences that students need to have in urge to develop fully into the critical thinkers that we want them to be? It doesn't need to, by no means does it need to, but I think it's a.

[00:07:42] Concern and a legitimate one. It's not one that should be, you know, run rough shot over. Yeah. I mean, it's something that we need to wrestle with because we want our kids to be critical thinkers more now than ever. And what skills and tools do we need to put in place to help them use [00:08:00] ai? Well, but that's the other thing that I think is also pretty fascinating about this one.

[00:08:05] And actually I wish it was more like the older ones. So lemme tell you what. Yeah. I think the focus right now for educators is how will students be using this tool? Like what's gonna happen when they have it? Write this essay instead of writing themselves what's gonna happen when they plug it in and have it answer all their math questions instead of doing it themselves.

[00:08:25] And I understand that and it's something we need to wrestle with, but I wish that more of the conversation was actually around how can teachers use it with their limited time to augment what's happening in the classroom and to deepen what's happening in the classroom. There's some really fascinating work.

[00:08:41] Actually. One of the people you introduced me to, Democrat talk to me all about these micro sims and that takes me back to like, coding is not something that. You know, your random mathematics teacher is going to be able to do, right? But if AI can all of a sudden code them on the fly, [00:09:00] some type of simulation that we would've either had to have bought as a school district as part of some larger curriculum package or some one-off type of software program, but now we can do it themselves and then it's right in front of their kids the next day.

[00:09:14] And so I think that's where I want the conversation more to go to is in the world of. Limited resources and teachers not having, they're not gonna have more time tomorrow than they had today. In fact, I would argue that they, there's continued and increasing demand and workload on teachers. Mm-hmm. So, amidst all of that, how do we help them?

[00:09:35] How can these technologies lessen the workload? And still maintain the deep quality of learning for our students and even do things that we could never do before. So that's where I wish the conversation would be more. Not to say that it, there shouldn't be conversation on for our students and appropriate use and what they need to learn while they're in school in terms of their own usage and [00:10:00] effective usage of ai.

[00:10:01] We definitely want to equip them for the future that. Is there now. So I guess that's not really future. It's for the present. Yeah. But yeah, I think that's what the focus has talked, has been on students and maybe improper usage of ai. Right. And I'd love to see more conversation about how it can augment what teachers do.

[00:10:21] Justin Grammens: Yeah. Yeah. No, I totally understand. And that's, I guess that's one of the things that's interesting as I'm sort of thinking about this technology, how it can be used in multiple different ways. So, you know, when I graduated from college, I actually worked for a math software company called Math Check. And basically what it would do is, is I, and I programmed this, you know, for students in the classroom, and we did everything from first graders all the way up to advanced calculus, but it would randomly generate different types of problems based on your weaknesses, right?

[00:10:47] So there would be a series of questions, you'd answer 'em all. If you're really good at addition, great. Your next test won't have any addition on it, right? Or less numbers. And so over time. Teachers could utilize this thing, kind of like what you're saying, to sort of like amplify and obviously it was a [00:11:00] way for tests to be automatically generated.

[00:11:02] Well that that was a tool that was strictly a tool, right? The student couldn't take, turn around and take that tool to go ahead and sort of like cheat, you know, I'll use that term to sort of cheat. It was sort of a one-way thing that literally did help to teacher speed up. Do you think that there are some teachers that are just hesitant to I, I guess what I was thinking in my head when you were talking is, is do you think teachers are cheating if they're using the AI to actually generate.

[00:11:25] Problems. No, no. 

[00:11:27] Peter Olson-Skog: Zero concerns. Okay. 

[00:11:29] Justin Grammens: Like it's too easy for them to generate lesson plans, like most of 'em are fully willing to be like, let me dive in and use this. 

[00:11:34] Peter Olson-Skog: Would love to wrestle with that problem, that teaching is too easy. Yeah. Don't think it's ever gonna happen, but, because here's what I know of every single teacher out there, if something is taking them less time, they are going to fill that time.

[00:11:50] With something else and novel that they can do for their kids. Now, I will say simultaneously to that, I would also love the problem of teachers having a little [00:12:00] bit extra time to have some better work-life balance. If they're working 70 hour weeks right now and this could reduce it to a 60 or a 50 or oh my goodness, a 40 hour work week, like, wouldn't that be lovely?

[00:12:10] So no, I would not consider it cheating. Yeah. In the slightest, yeah. On the teacher's part. But I really, I just, I love the idea of. Being able to create all of these different, these micro sims. I don't know why they're on my brain so much. 

[00:12:24] Justin Grammens: Yeah, yeah. 

[00:12:25] Peter Olson-Skog: I've just been, I learned about 'em about a couple weeks ago and they've just been fascinating to me ever since.

[00:12:30] Is that how you can develop these on the fly little interactive computer simulations of input the topic? 

[00:12:37] Justin Grammens: Yeah. 

[00:12:37] Peter Olson-Skog: And that's something that, you know, as a teacher, you're probably trying to dig for some web tool somewhere that had that thing on it, or some curriculum somewhere that had that on it. But you can do it specific to the lesson that you have on a given day and have this huge growing repository that you can access.

[00:12:52] Justin Grammens: Yeah. A teacher can't know everything all the time, you know, simultaneously. So it's like, it feels to me like this is just another thing to say, look, you wanna teach [00:13:00] on a specific subject like you said. Math teacher maybe has an even programmed python ever, maybe. Mm-hmm. And so now they can all of a sudden offer this up to their students.

[00:13:08] And you know, the interactivity is cool, but even just being able to generate these things and so now students get a better experience based on that, but the students could turn around and use AI to solve those problems, which I think is the flip side of the coin, is what you're basically saying is.

[00:13:22] That's what I heard from a lot of that is students aren't actually gonna exercise that muscle, that that rigor. Right. And that's the biggest concern that has sort of taken over the conversation. 

[00:13:32] Peter Olson-Skog: Yeah. It's definitely gonna challenge us as educators to think about. Assessing and meeting students' needs differently.

[00:13:40] Homework, things that students are doing away from the classroom. I mean, I guess you never necessarily knew whether they're Big Brother wrote the essay for, right? I mean, there's, there's always things that can happen out there, but you know, when they're writing something down and when they're. Handing it to you and it's [00:14:00] your handwriting.

[00:14:00] I mean, they'd have to go through a bunch of snaps to, so yeah, I mean, it's real that kids can take shortcuts that are not good. For their development because the learning is in the process. So that's definitely gonna challenge us to look at what we're doing inside our school walls on a regular basis. I actually wonder more for some of our online schools that don't have as much of that face-to-face element.

[00:14:29] It's gonna be even more of a challenge for them. I saw. Some little YouTube video where a guy was interviewing for a job and he had two screens going, and the guy who was interviewing him back was like, your answers are just. Too good and too polished. Are you using ai? And he is like, no, of course I'm not.

[00:14:49] And then he said something to the effect of, show me your screen. And he shows him a screen. But that's this screen that he's on and he's got another laptop over here running ai. Right. So it's real. But like there's been some really [00:15:00] funny movies put out there about what happens to us as a civilization if we don't.

[00:15:05] Maintain these critical thinking skills and so it doesn't have to be that way. Yeah, it really doesn't. Yeah. Like we can see this in a different way that says it's here. Students will have access to it. Now and forever in their workplace and everywhere else. And so how do we create these really vibrant discussions in our classrooms aided by multiple simulations and discussion points and aided by.

[00:15:37] On the fly assessments of them as individual students that help us or to give them feedback and to give them additional support. I do think it has the power to move teachers increasingly out of the lecture roles or out of the. Giving of knowledge, role and into the, I'm gonna use my class period time to engage [00:16:00] you in the critical thinking process right here in this classroom with me right now.

[00:16:03] Mm. Like that's gonna happen live in front together with ai, with ai, with ai and or. Using ai, like outside of the, like you can still protect your classroom space if you want to for paper, pencil types of things, when that makes the most sense. Do it like there's no, that's the other thing that I'm wrestling with my community, legitimate concerns.

[00:16:27] Based on the surgeon General's warning about screen time. Mm. And social media and the amount of time that kids spend on social media. So I don't want it to seem like we as a district, or I as an individual, think that we should be sitting in front of screens all day long. We shouldn't, and we aren't.

[00:16:46] There should be really healthy, vibrant things happening in your classrooms that do involve paper, pencils, scissors. Crayons. You know, friends talking to each other like that. And that's why I keep saying that. I want the conversation to go back to [00:17:00] how is the teacher using AI to get ready for this vibrant, critical thinking imbued.

[00:17:09] Moment that they have each day with their kids or throughout the day. If we're an elementary teacher, I could see an entire day going by that students in the classroom, in the school aren't using AI at all. That's fine. Mm-hmm. I'm not saying that they should. They could use paper pencil in the classroom all day long, except that a lot of our curriculum is no longer available in paper.

[00:17:27] You gotta buy it on a digital version of it, but that would be fine. And even laudable, like it's not about kids in front of screens when they're with us. That's why I want the conversation to change. It's about what can teachers do, because one of the top concerns that I hear from teachers is burnout due to workload.

[00:17:49] Justin Grammens: Sure. Yeah. It sounds like it's a great tool that teachers can use. They can even use the tool to give them ideas for other things too, as well. Right. I mean, that's where I think I was, you know, thinking of AI as this collaborative partner. That's what the [00:18:00] industry's been talking about a lot is it's not gonna replace teachers.

[00:18:03] It should actually help them. Collaborate and give ideas and help them generate maybe things that they hadn't thought of. And that happens with me a lot in my profession and and students can use AI that way as well, too. I mean, you need to not just take the answer. And no matter what field you're in, you don't just take the answer that comes out.

[00:18:19] That's where you sort of have the critical thinking. You mentioned about sort of society going down this bad path, I guess. Interesting. You know, I, I can see that as well. At our Applied AI conference yesterday, I did a little panel with regards to people that are, I had an attorney and someone who was a creative writer, others that were there, and as I sort of did an intro to sort of like set the stage for this.

[00:18:39] Uh, there's an author called You've All Noah Harari, and he basically has got a really, really interesting book talking about ai, and he's comes at it from a historian's perspective around this idea that this AI can actually have the potential to stop humans from making decisions on their own. And is that sort of the concept that basically students, because let's [00:19:00] just, let's just say for the sake of argument, everybody submitted an AI paper.

[00:19:03] They graduated 12th grade, they used AI all the way through. What's your thought as an educator, K 12 administrator, like as these students go into college, like playing? I'm just playing the devil's advocate a little bit, right? What happens to society like, because at the end of the day, the students that don't use AI probably are gonna survive better in that world.

[00:19:22] And maybe you just sort of let people use AI if they want. Again, I'm not advocating one way or the other, I just wanna have a thought experiment. Like, what's your thought on that? Are you not doing your job? Or what do you see as the overall harm to society of students? Kind of just take shortcuts. It's a big question.

[00:19:37] Sorry to drop it on ya. 

[00:19:39] Peter Olson-Skog: Yeah. Well, and it's, it's a complex, like you could maybe wrestle with it in extremes. Should students never be able to use ai. I don't agree with that. Should students always use ai? I don't agree with that. Should students always let AI do their critical thinking for them? No. [00:20:00] Should students never use AI to help them with critical thinking?

[00:20:04] No. So like if you start hemming yourself in from the corner there, then you come across maybe an uncomfortable gray middle, which is like, where is the line where it's helpful and where it's not helpful? Where is the line where you are? Allowing them to go into the world unprepared and without the ability to think critically on their own.

[00:20:27] Like, okay, so yesterday Xfinity was doing internet service on our house, so we wake up. We can't listen to music. Mm-hmm. 

[00:20:35] Justin Grammens: Yeah. 

[00:20:35] Peter Olson-Skog: Because we stream everything. We can't watch TV because we stream everything. We can't check the weather because it's either on the TV that's not streaming or it's on our Alexa, which is not working.

[00:20:49] Right. Yeah. So like you can put yourself into these interesting little thought experiments of like, what do you do when the internet's not around? Yeah. Like if the internet goes down. For whatever reason, [00:21:00] be it for a day or for an hour or for a week, right? Like what do you do? And I think that could probably be a helpful exercise for people to say like, yeah, who do we want our kids to be?

[00:21:10] In those moments? What do we want them to be able to do in those moments? They might not be able to be as fast, they might not be able to crank out as much, but should they still be able to x. Whatever X is, and if they, without internet in those moments, if they should be able to do X, then let's define what those things are and how we're going to build them, the skillset to do those things when Xfinity does a service upgrade on their home.

[00:21:35] So I think that's why I keep going back to, I am an advocate for making the school day experience as independent thinking as possible. Right. Like you should really be mentally taxed as a student during your school day. You should be thinking hard. You know, there's an adage that talks about teachers.[00:22:00] 

[00:22:00] Teachers like, you should never be working harder or thinking more than your students are. You should be having your students like it shouldn't be that you are. You are thinking about how to deliver the next sentence, and they're just sitting there writing their notes and taking down what you say. Right, right, right.

[00:22:14] Justin Grammens: Yeah. 

[00:22:15] Peter Olson-Skog: And if anything, I think AI has the possibility of creating more opportunities for deeper and active engagement of students in the classroom because of what the teachers can do with AI outside of the classroom and what the students can do with AI outside of the classroom. 

[00:22:30] Justin Grammens: Sure. Exactly. Exactly.

[00:22:32] And I love what you just said there with regards to sort of. Like maybe just the rule or the metric, you know, like the yardstick that we would go by. Just imagine like GPT wasn't around, right? So, you know, can I still do my job? Right? So when I wake up in the morning and I go to G pt.com and I basically sort of like, Hey, here's some things that I wanna use.

[00:22:50] 'cause I use it pretty much every day, but if it wasn't there, could I still do my job? And could these students still do what they're supposed to do without that? And that feels like that hones in [00:23:00] on kind of this gray area, right? At least a little bit. And that's ultimately what you're trying to do is having these students still be able to accomplish the task without actually having this crutch or using the tool to basically do the critical thinking for them.

[00:23:12] I love that. And I think the internet example is good, but you can play around with, you know, your cell phone and, but for me, yeah, it's like what if you didn't have a large language model around, what could you do? The other thing that I was sort of thinking about is, you know, you've been really pushing this hard, it feels like, 'cause I mean, since I met you at one of these fishbowl things, and I'm wondering like, how do you see this progressing over time?

[00:23:31] Because right now you're having a lot of conversations, I think, with teachers. I'm not sure if students are even involved in some of those conversations, but like. Paint for me or paint for our audience. I guess a little bit of a picture of maybe like, you know, where you're at today and where you wanna sort of like move the conversation in the district.

[00:23:46] Peter Olson-Skog: To be fair, I think there's districts that are far ahead of where we are. I still think we're really in the infancy stages in our district and I appreciate you saying that. Whatever adjectives you're using to describe me. Yeah, yeah. I'm just thinking I'm a little geeky and I think it's cool [00:24:00] and I wanna think about it and I recognize that it represents a big change.

[00:24:03] And so with our schools, my belief is that I just wanna get people engaged in conversations about it and let the professionals and the adults in the organization work together to see what that means overall for our school. So where are we? Our curriculum, instruction and assessment department. And yes, that acronym is CIA, which makes 'em sound kind of cool.

[00:24:23] And, but they are taking on a large part of the lift and so they, so they put together, what you experienced was somewhere along the road, I think it was near the tail end, but it was somewhere along the road of a teacher academy, which is a term we use for this summer learning experience. Some of them are during the school year, but where teachers pick an area of interest and dive into it together.

[00:24:45] And so that one was on ai. And so the output of that is going to be some development of guidance for our school district. And that's why I say other districts are ahead of us. Like if you take a look at Bloomington, I think they're probably one of the. In my knowledge that here in the [00:25:00] Minneapolis St.

[00:25:00] Paul Metro area, they're one of the leaders in the field, and so they have guidance and they have different people that they've hired and are putting into positions to really get more and more of this into the classroom. So I'm appreciating their work. We are in the stage still of developing what our guidance is gonna be for our teachers, you know.

[00:25:18] What should student use? Like what are the edges of the sandbox, if you will, for experimenting with AI and using AI from the student perspective, from the staff perspective, and then simultaneously working with people that have a particular interest to say, yeah, you wanna explore this more deeply? Let's go.

[00:25:35] Let's work on the resources. Let's have the conversations to really see where you wanna go with this. Where do I see it? Down the road? We will have provided professional development or training to all of our. Licensed staffed in terms of, you know, what's our criteria? What does effective use look like?

[00:25:52] And they'll all begin receiving that in, well, they already started, but they'll be getting more of that over the course of this year. And we'll kind of [00:26:00] be through our first foray or our first level of utilization. In particular for the secondary schools. I would say probably mid next year. So maybe by end of next year, but definitely starting this year.

[00:26:12] So more to come, I guess. Yeah. Um, 

[00:26:14] Justin Grammens: is there clear guidance out to the students right now and their parents at all? I mean, are they getting anything, like, don't use it or no? Yeah, 

[00:26:20] Peter Olson-Skog: they're not. I think that right now it's pretty, I mean, teaching has always been one where I think that. Teachers appropriately.

[00:26:26] So have some professional judgment to determine what makes sense for their classroom, given the assignment, given the skills that they're trying to develop. And so as of right now, that's where it mostly sits. Teachers are saying like, okay, for this assignment you can use it for this assignment. You can't.

[00:26:42] But it's up to their individual professional decision to decide where that lands. And so I think we are trying to get a little bit more while maintaining some of that decision making authority, still have some. Common themes that run throughout our district and that's what we're working on right now.

[00:26:58] Justin Grammens: Yeah. Very cool. So I, [00:27:00] the class that I teach is a little bit easier, I would say in quotes. 'cause it's not like a literary writing class or something like that where students can sort of like go off. I'm doing a lot of data science software development and I know students are using AI to generate all the source code and it, it's totally fine.

[00:27:15] In fact, I tell them that, you know, but part of the class is actually presenting what you have built. Right. And so we have a capstone project where students need to get up in front of the class. Show what they built. They need to create an entire PowerPoint around this. They need to show mastery in it, and we're gonna give them questions like, why did you build it this way?

[00:27:30] Why did you not build it that way and get more details? And I actually, you talk about paper. I mean, I told them, I'm like, I'm old school. We're gonna do a a midterm test with a piece of paper and I'm gonna give to you and I'm gonna sit here and we're gonna do it. And you can use AI to study all you want, everything like that.

[00:27:44] But I wanna understand that some information has gone into your brain through your ears, and you can actually reproduce it out through your hand. Right? So sounds kind of arcane, but honestly all the students were cool with it and they did fabulous on the test. And I've been doing this for 10 years. [00:28:00] Why change in some ways, you know, with regards to that.

[00:28:02] But yeah, 

[00:28:02] Peter Olson-Skog: I honestly love that it does become a scale issue. Like what can you do for all of your students when you have 150 or you know, students over the course of a given day? I mean, in high school teachers, that's tough, right? You've got. Five, six classes coming in and going out every period with 30 plus students in it.

[00:28:19] And so that's a lot of kids. Now you could easily turn that into an argument for, well then you, then you gotta use AI so that you can, you know, make sure that you're having a little helper in the room track where everybody is at with all of their stuff. But that being said, I think I love the idea of enabling more conversations in our class where we are.

[00:28:42] Engaging deeply in thought, right? Like if we go way, way, way back in terms of our educational process, and you talk about the Socratic method and whatnot, and like how do we make that even more vibrant and alive by having AI augment our prep time in our planning [00:29:00] for these critical moments in the classroom?

[00:29:02] You described. Some critical moments in the classroom where they are producing the work, right? Whether it's writing it down and the presentations that they give, great. Or oral examinations. I'm gonna quiz you back and forth, and that's I think, where the 150 kids comes back and forth, because wouldn't it be great for you to be able to have a one-on-one conversation with each of your kids for 15 minutes where you would.

[00:29:25] Through that conversation, be able to pretty much assess where they're at with their understanding of all the concepts in your class. That's a great way of assessing. Now, do we have the time to do that for every student? Probably not, but to the extent that we can have more of those and we can give students more opportunity in the classroom to really demonstrate their knowledge thoroughly.

[00:29:44] And without the assistance of AI or anything to fake their way through it. That's great. That's what we want. 

[00:29:51] Justin Grammens: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I wanted to come back to the other superintendents that you're talking about. I'm curious, is there some sort of a education summit that you all are sort of going to, [00:30:00] or is there a central place where now a lot of this knowledge is being sort of cross collaborated?

[00:30:04] Or are you just kind of reaching out one-on-one? 

[00:30:06] Peter Olson-Skog: Well, I'm, I'm guessing like any profession, there's a lot of both, right? Like there's informal networks of. District administration, colleagues who are talking to each other. That could be superintendents. It could also be curriculum instruction and assessment people.

[00:30:19] It could also be professional development, right? So like everybody that's in one of these support roles, and including teachers too, going to education, Minnesota stuff, right? Like, I mean there's, there's lots of opportunities to collaborate. And in terms of professional organizations, yes. I mean we have the Minnesota Association of School Administrators, the Association of Metropolitan School Districts, the American Association of School Administrators.

[00:30:43] So there's lots of big alphabet, alphabet soup organizations out there that are talking about ai, not exclusively. 'cause like there's a lot of things going on in education, 

[00:30:53] Justin Grammens: like budgets and not all of 

[00:30:54] Peter Olson-Skog: them have to do with ai. Right. So we collaborate about a lot of stuff including ai. 

[00:30:58] Justin Grammens: Yeah. Yeah, [00:31:00] good. So at the conference yesterday, I ran into somebody that I knew from Augsburg College, 'cause that's where I did my undergrad.

[00:31:05] And of course we had it at the University of St. Thomas. And I've been talking with people at Hamlin, so I'm kind of working at that, you know, beyond K 12 level. But I am really serious about putting together some sort of an AI education summit in the spring here. So I just kind. And fishing around to be like, Hey, you know, could we bring everyone together?

[00:31:22] Right? Not only K 12, but also undergraduate, graduate, to really have a day focused on AI discussion and really around that idea of how can we reframe the discussion exactly what you're talking about, you know, sounds like that would be valuable. I guess I'm just sort of using you as a litmus test 

[00:31:37] Peter Olson-Skog: for sure.

[00:31:37] You could bring superintendents together and curriculum coordinators together. I think that would be valuable. I also really dig the idea of bringing people based on like subject area together to share ideas. So then, and there's different organizations for that. Like there's the National Council for the Teachers of Mathematics, right?

[00:31:56] And they, there's the Minnesota Council for the Teachers of Mathematics. So there's [00:32:00] different organizations like that. I think it might be interesting to, now, of course you can cross pollinate between different areas, but I think there's a whole lot of potential. In math teachers getting together and saying, go both ends of the spectrum.

[00:32:16] How do you still assess kids' knowledge in an authentic way in the world of ai? And how are you using AI to make your learning experiences deeper and richer? But if you get a whole bunch of people together that are all teaching Algebra one, that could be a really rich conversation, right? Because they're all like, okay, this is how I'm teaching.

[00:32:38] The quadratic formula, this is how I'm teaching, right? Like, and these are the tools that I'm using for that. If you talk to superintendents like me, you'll get like heady, aspirational pipe dreams. Uh, you know, but I think, and we are all working on kind of creating the big, broad strokes. And I do think there's benefit to it, so I don't wanna cast too much of a [00:33:00] wet blanket on it.

[00:33:00] I just, I would want like those other things happening as much, if not more often, because I think that what the teachers are doing in the classroom is really the gold for this in education. 

[00:33:12] Justin Grammens: Yeah. Yeah. No, that makes sense. That's where the rubber meets the road. That's where the interaction is with the students at the end of the day.

[00:33:18] That's what needs to be most important in sort of focusing and nailing on that. And we could have, again, I'm just sort of spit balling, but you could have multiple tracks, right? You could have certain tracks for certain, but Yeah. I get what you mean. A teacher teaching English is gonna be using it a lot differently than potentially a teacher teaching math.

[00:33:32] So sort of right. Sort of getting those subject areas together and possibly different classrooms or different tracks would be great. 

[00:33:39] Peter Olson-Skog: But I've been, I've been using it more like I still see the possibility for crosspollination. 'cause I've been using it more just to like. In my area. Have somebody to role play with, right?

[00:33:50] Like various topics, whatever it's, whether it's, well, all the, all the things that have to do with my job. I can go to AI and say, okay, act [00:34:00] as an expert in this. And it's not perfect, but it gives me some, like, I really like that. Talk function where it's talking back and forth with you. I forget what, it's the button all the way to the right on the chat.

[00:34:09] GBT thing is, but voicemail, not the transcribed one, but the one after the voicemail. Yeah, I like that a lot. 'cause it gives me, without taking up other people's time in my organization who are all busy doing their own thing, there's somebody that I can bounce ideas back and forth with. And so then I, I do think about how that gets augmented into the classroom.

[00:34:30] With like, okay, how do you do simulations in the class? Like if you're a social studies teacher, could we start using ai? And probably somebody's already doing this, but could we start using AI to have role play to I'm a world leader. Your World leader, it's middle of World War ii, and we're trying to negotiate this particular aspect of X, Y, and Z.

[00:34:52] Right? So like. In that exchange that the student is having acting as whoever it is. Winston Churchill, right? Like are they [00:35:00] able to learn more about the underlying concepts in social studies of scarcity of resources, power, all the things that are, rather than memorizing dates of things and all that kinda stuff.

[00:35:09] Does that create another avenue for you to. So I think there's lots of possibilities. Yeah. And I would love to see people that that really know the tool and then know its extent in the different ways it can be used paired up with people who really know their craft and really know the deep concepts that we're trying to get across to students and say like, how could I.

[00:35:32] Justin Grammens: Yes, utilize this and sort of build a, build a better experience. 'cause yeah, I think we're all in agreement. The last thing, you wanna just have people just memorize facts and dates and you know, two plus two equals four. Now you need to understand what that means and how you can actually use the concept of addition in the real world.

[00:35:46] Right. AI can be a great tool for that. Well, this has been, this has been great. You know, I always sort of put people's contact information and stuff in the show notes and how do people get ahold of you if that's all right. 

[00:35:57] Peter Olson-Skog: Okay, so here, here's where I am an [00:36:00] asynchronous. I will tell you this. I am asynchronous in terms of my belief in use of tools like AI and all sorts of online collaborations with social media.

[00:36:11] I'm not a fan. I don't use it. I. I think it sucks up time and it doesn't create a product that I spend a lot of time on. Yeah. So I'm sorry if that smacks in the face of any of your, of your Listen. No. Listeners love their social media approaches, but it's just not me. Yeah. So if people wanna get ahold of me, they should just email me.

[00:36:27] That is the easiest way to get ahold of me. And it is Peter, P-E-T-E-R, period. Olsen Skoog, O-L-S-O-M-S-K-O-G, at ISD. As an independent school district, I SD one nine seven.org. 

[00:36:44] Justin Grammens: All right, perfect. That's awesome. Was there anything specifically you wanted to mention here at the end before we kinda wind this down?

[00:36:52] Peter Olson-Skog: Um, well, sure. Just my gratitude for public educators. That's what I would mention at the end. I think that it is one of [00:37:00] the most fulfilling, honorable. Jobs there are, and it's hard. So it's not for the me of spirit, meko of heart. I'm not sure which expression that I would use there. It's so fulfilling. And I tried leaving the education world and, and I didn't like it.

[00:37:16] I came right back. And so I think that I just wanna give my shout out to all of the public educators and, and, uh, when I say that. I'm thinking about people in lots of different roles, not just those who are licensed teachers, because our bus drivers are educating kids on getting along and making friends, and it's the first smiling face that they have when they come in in the door or start their day.

[00:37:39] So like I'm thinking very globally of all the people that are involved in public education as educators, and I'm grateful for who they are and what they do. 

[00:37:46] Justin Grammens: Beautifully. Well said. That was awesome, Peter. Well, I appreciate you for being on this program and giving all of our listeners sort of your unique perspective on this.

[00:37:54] You're looking at it across the entire district. We've got a lot of, I would say, challenges ahead, but I think [00:38:00] I'm with you on the side that this could be an amazing tool that will completely transform the way education works, and we gotta get away from the discussion of how our students can use it and abuse it to, how can it basically empower better discussions.

[00:38:12] Peter Olson-Skog: Can I throw something just on that closing comment there? Absolutely. I would say I don't want to get away from it 'cause I'll have teachers that call me and talk to me about that. If I said We gotta get away from it, it's not getting away from it. Those are good and valid conversations. 'cause we want kids to be thinking critically on their own.

[00:38:28] So that conversation continues. I just need to amplify it and also balance that out with the conversation of how do we stop that? But how do we. Take away the bad that could happen from ai, but amplify the good and I think there's a lot of good to be amplified. 

[00:38:44] Justin Grammens: There you go. Okay, good. Thank you for clarifying that.

[00:38:46] We won't get you in in any hot water, so, all right. I appreciate it today, Peter. Thanks again for being on the program and we'll definitely talk in the future. All. 

[00:38:55] AI Announcer: You've listened to another episode of the Conversations on Applied AI [00:39:00] podcast. We hope you are eager to learn more about applying artificial intelligence and deep learning within your organization.

[00:39:07] You can visit us at applied AI Dotn to keep up to date on our events and connect with our amazing community. Please don't hesitate to reach out to Justin at Applied AI if you are interested in participating in a future episode. Thank you for listening.


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Justin Grammens

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