EP 22 - 2023 Year in Review with our Podcast Superfriends (Superfriends II, the Return)

Jan 8, 2024

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In this episode, John and Jason have a “year in review” conversation with their podcast superfriends about why they podcast, the impact of artificial intelligence on education, the importance of human interaction in learning, and their collective efforts in forming a community of education podcasters. See complete notes and transcripts at www.onlinelearningpodcast.com

Join Our LinkedIn Group - *Online Learning Podcast (Also feel free to connect with John and Jason at LinkedIn too)

Links and Resources:

Here’s a link to our original Superfriends episode:

https://www.onlinelearningpodcast.com/e/ep-10-podcast-super-friends-crossover-episode-at-olc-innovate-23/

Our Podcast Superfriends:

Josh Reppun

What School Could be

https://whatschoolcouldbe.org/

Bio: ormer chef, hotel manager and history teacher, Josh Reppun is the founder of Plexus Education, LLC, dba as Most Likely to Succeed in Hawai’i, a “movement” founded by extraordinary people dedicated to developing global public, private and charter school conversations around Ted Dintersmith’s film, Most Likely to Succeed and his book, What School Could Be. Josh is also the founder of Josh Reppun Productions. He is the host of the What School Could Be Podcast and the producer of two films: Ka Helena Aʻo: The Learning Walk and The Innovation Playlist, both about creative, imaginative and innovative educators and education leaders. Josh’s podcast, edited by the talented Evan Kurohara, with music by Michael Sloan, has now reached nearly 80,000 downloads in over 100 countries.

Course Stories (from EdPlus at ASU)

https://teachonline.asu.edu/podcast/course-stories/

Mary Loder

Mary Loder is an Online Learning Manager at EdPlus, supporting Faculty professional development and training along with managing special projects in a variety of disciplines. She is also co-creator and co-host of Course Stories, a podcast where an array of course design stories are told alongside other designers and faculty from Arizona State University.

Ricardo Leon

Ricardo Leon is a Media Developer Sr for EdPlus and is a co-creator and co-host of Course Stories. He has developed a number of other podcasts and various other forms of instructional media.

Tom Pantazes

ODLI On Air

Tom Pantazes, Ed.D. is an Instructional Designer with the Teaching & Learning Center at West Chester University who loves helping instructors integrate technology and robust learning pedagogy. His research interests include digital instructional video, extended reality, content interactivity, and simulations. If he is not cheering on Philly sports teams, camping or building Legos, you can catch him as a cohost of the ODLI on Air podcast.

Specific Episodes:

Generative AI in teaching

Ram Poll gauging student opinions

Lee Skallerup Bessette on LinkedIn

All the Things ADHD Podcast

https://allthethingsadhd.com/

Theme Music: Pumped by RoccoW is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial License.

Transcript

We use a combination of computer-generated transcriptions and human editing. Please check with the recorded file before quoting anything. Please check with us if you have any questions!

EP 22 - Podcast Super Friends II

Intro

[00:00:00] Jason Johnston: Questions? Anyone?

[00:00:02] John Nash: They're podcasters. They don't talk.

[00:00:06] Ricardo Leon: We listen.

[00:00:07] Mary Loder: That's right, intently.

[00:00:09] Jason Johnston: That's right. It's going to be all questions, actually. The whole podcast is people asking each other questions.

Start of Episode

[00:00:15] John Nash: I'm John Nash here with Jason Johnston.

[00:00:18] Jason Johnston: Hey, John. Hey, everyone. And when I say everyone, everyone that I'm looking at as well. This is online learning in the second half, the online learning podcast.

[00:00:26] John Nash: Yeah, we're doing this podcast to let you all in on a conversation we've been having for the last couple of years about online education. Look, online learning has had its chance to be great, and some of it is, but there's still a lot that isn't. So how are we going to get to the next stage, Jason?

[00:00:42] Jason Johnston: That is a great question. How about we do a podcast and talk about it?

[00:00:46] John Nash: That sounds perfect. podcast and talk with a bunch of people about it?

[00:00:50] Jason Johnston: That sounds amazing. We're so excited today to have our next episode, our super friends, podcast, Super Friends II episode with a bunch of our friends. So, Let's get into it and meet some of our friends. How does that sound?

[00:01:04] John Nash: Yeah, let's do it.

[00:01:06] Jason Johnston: All right. Let's have each one of you introduce yourself and the podcast that you represent, and maybe just a little something about where, maybe where you're located, your podcast, what you currently do. Starting with Josh.

[00:01:21] Josh Reppun: Good morning, everybody. It's a little after 7 a. m. in Honolulu, where we are experiencing torrential rains here in at the end of November, the beginning of December. My name is Josh Rapun, and I'm the host of the What School Could Be podcast. And it's just an absolute blast to be on this episode today and to be with other podcasters as part of this conversation.

So glad to be here

[00:01:44] Jason Johnston: thank you. Lee?

[00:01:47] Lee Skallerup Bessette: Hey I am Leigh Skallerup Bessette. I'm coming at you just outside of D. C. I work at Georgetown University where I'm the Assistant Director for Digital Learning at our Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship, also known as CANDLES. And I have a little podcast with a colleague of mine, Amy Morrison, up in Canada, and it is called "All the Things ADHD"

it's called All the Things ADHD. Where we talk about neurodivergence in generally, but since we're both in higher education, more specifically in higher education.

[00:02:20] Jason Johnston: Amazing.

[00:02:22] Tom Pantazes: Hi everybody, I'm Tom Pantazis. Really excited to be here on the sequel of Super Friends and I am one of four co hosts of the "Oddly On Air" podcast that runs out of the Westchester University Teaching and Learning Center.

[00:02:36] Jason Johnston: Amazing. Ricardo.

[00:02:38] Ricardo Leon: I am Ricardo Leon. I am one of the hosts and producers of the "Course Stories" Podcast, which is produced through EdPlus at ASU, Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona, where I am currently at right now. It's a little drizzly. Looks like the sun's coming out though. So we're doing good. But also in addition to the podcast, we also I'm part of a studio that runs quite a few things, including something that will be coming out in January of 2024 called "Space for Humans"

it's a YouTube program about how we design futures in space that are accessible and inclusive.

[00:03:10] Jason Johnston: Amazing. And Mary. Mary. Mary.

[00:03:12] Mary Loder: And I'm Mary Loader and I am with Ricardo on "Course Stories." We created this about two years ago. Is that right, Ricardo? I think

so.

[00:03:19] Ricardo Leon: I don't know. I have no idea.

[00:03:21] Mary Loder: That is a weird concept. But yeah, we're excited to be here. I'm the manager of professional development and training for Arizona State University's department called EdPlus on the team that Ricardo and I are on called Instructional Design and New Media.

So there's three layers to understanding where we are at our very large university, but we're really excited to have been invited back. Thanks guys.

[00:03:41] John Nash: I get say it, "And you guys work together."

[00:03:43] Mary Loder: to my gosh you said that perfect

[00:03:44] Ricardo Leon: yeah,

[00:03:46] Jason Johnston: That's good. That's great. And John, I guess maybe we should introduce ourselves in case this is the first podcast that people are listening to. I'm Jason Johnston . I'm the executive director of online learning and course production at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. And this is our podcast, online learning podcast, "Online Learning in the Second Half." John?

[00:04:06] John Nash: Yeah, I'm John Nash. I'm an associate professor of educational leadership studies at the University of Kentucky and the director of graduate studies in that department where 95 percent all online instruction department, and I'm also the director of the laboratory on design thinking at the University of Kentucky.

Yeah, this is fun.

[00:04:26] Jason Johnston: This is fun. I love the fact that we're spread all over the place and we're coming from different institutions. This is yeah, I'm just really excited about this conversation. Starting off, I'm just curious about other than the fame and the fortune and the notoriety of doing podcasts.

We all know, we all share in that. We all understand how all that works. But other than those, aspects why did you either start the podcast or why do you continue the podcast? What is your why in this situation? And just a few sentences for each of you.

[00:04:59] Lee Skallerup Bessette: I'll go first. My co host Amy and I, we, there wasn't a podcast like that out there, like what we were talking about. Particularly with our context of two middle aged women in academia who got late in life neurodivergence diagnoses. And we thought, surely we can't be the only ones, but even if we are, it gives us an excuse to talk to each other for an hour once every other week or month, depending on when we can get our act together.

And we keep doing it because it has resonated with so many people. And it is not just about our experiences, but our experiences as educators, how our diagnoses has shaped and reshaped our pedagogies and how we're thinking about these things. And just to help people feel less alone, less isolated, less weird in terms of the, maybe the experiences that they're having or the struggles that they're having, even if they're neurotypical and dealing with neurodivergent students or peers and those kinds of things.

So the reception has been so positive and gracious, and that, that's really what keeps us going even when our lives are turned upside down and we have trouble finding an hour once a month to get together, let alone once a week.

[00:06:10] Jason Johnston: That's great.

[00:06:12] Ricardo Leon: This is flashing me back to the one time that I definitely lied in the interview when I came to plus they said, they make thousands of videos a year and he said, that's, it's a kind of a factory kind of a process. Are you, what are you going to do about getting bored? And I said, Oh, I'll find something.

So I guess I didn't lie. Cause I did find something. And so there would have been some iteration of this, because I just can't help myself. I think podcasts are great. And I think that, it's a wonderful way to, to do that knowledge share that that what do they call it?

When you go out and you share that knowledge as a, mary, help me out. What do they encourage us to do when we go to conferences?

[00:06:50] Mary Loder: I don't know the term for it. I know

[00:06:52] Ricardo Leon: There's a term for it. Yeah, Justin has something for it. Our boss. But, just that we're making a name for our institutions by the work that we're doing.

And there's an easy way to associate us with those things.

[00:07:03] Mary Loder: And I would say Ricardo's like the king of podcasting. I've literally said that on our podcast after correcting myself and calling somebody else the king of podcasting. But Ricardo's literally the king of producing podcasts. He's so good at it. And so we're really lucky that he one has capacity to fit this in where he does.

Cause we have the same thing, Lee, like, where are we going to. Do this. We really want to do it, but when and where are we going to do it in our existing work? But the

[00:07:26] Ricardo Leon: Thought leadership. Thought leadership.

[00:07:28] Mary Loder: Yeah, thought leadership! Good callback good. Yes Yeah. Part of the reason we started this podcast was I was already having conversations with faculty on the things they were doing that were working.

And it was like, okay, so it's great that I'm having these conversations and I can share with others when I meet with them, but what's an intentional way that we can package this to have a larger reach and impact. So a lot of the reason "Course Stories" exist is because there are lots of faculty doing amazing things.

And a lot of instructional designers doing amazing things alongside them. And so being able to package that in a way that's funny, because again, Ricardo is really great at creating a podcast that's entertaining. But in a way that's actually meaningful to the work that we do was the reason that course stories continues and why we keep on trying to push it through.

And we're lucky now we have a producer, Liz Lee, who's like amazing and helps us do all the things that became heavily tasked. Weighted.

[00:08:23] Jason Johnston: great. I believe deeply in thought leadership. I believe I'm part of thought leadership. However, and I'm sorry if this offends anybody, if that is your second thing in your LinkedIn profile running your name, that you're a thought leader I may or may not accept that invite. I'm just putting it out there.

I have a little bit of a, a thing about that, but I think this is what podcasting is about thought leadership. I think in a sense, that's what John and I were certainly about when we wanted to do this. We didn't feel like doing a, another paper together, but we wanted to quickly be able to disseminate not only answers, but also questions out there into the real world as we're talking about things that are happening in the online space.

[00:09:04] John Nash: failed solo podcaster. And so I, I realized I needed a partner to work with. And that's where, because we each bring different strengths to the microphone, to the backend, to the production that are complimentary and don't really overlap too much. And then yeah, isn't it fair to say that you can't call yourself a thought leader?

People have to decide you're a thought leader. And then, so

[00:09:27] Ricardo Leon: you can have

you can perform thought leadership.

[00:09:30] Jason Johnston: Yes. Yes.

[00:09:31] John Nash: Say that one more time, Ricardo. I'm sorry.

[00:09:33] Ricardo Leon: Oh, I'm sorry. You can perform thought leadership.

[00:09:36] Jason Johnston: Just don't put it on your t shirt

[00:09:39] John Nash: I'm with thought leader.

[00:09:42] Ricardo Leon: Thought boss.

[00:09:43] Tom Pantazes: So for me, one of the reasons why I keep doing this, because we're in year two now, at this point is the joy that comes with being all in all the parts of the podcast. We started for the same reasons that Mary and Ricardo talked about in terms of trying to tell stories about the folks that work here at Westchester and the work that they're doing, that's cool and creative and different.

But I just, Every time we reach out to somebody to say, Hey, you want to be on the podcast? And they're just tickled to even be asked, there's joy in that. And then you have this hour long opportunity to just sit and listen to them, talk about something that they're passionate about or that they like to do, or that they're an expert in.

And there's joy that in getting to hear that story. And then as the producing side as well, the editing side of trying to take that. gift that they gave you and turn it around into less than 30 minute chunk of time to put it out into the world. There's joy in that part. And then the last part too, when it goes into the world and Derek Bruff likes and shares your social media posts about it, there's joy when you see that kind of thing going on.

Thank you, Derek. You can keep doing that. Every part of it for me brings joy.

[00:10:49] Josh Reppun: That's awesome, Tom. I agree. It is about the joy. It doesn't quite start out that way. It's very daunting in the very beginning, but for me, starting the What's Cool Could Be podcast, it, I actually work part time at Apple, which is where I get my health benefits from. And my podcast was launched in the back of the Apple store three years ago.

Right when we were closing the store a tech geek here in Hawaii, Ryan Ozawa was sitting in the back customer messing with his phone and he and I started a conversation about just technology and immediately discovered that we both wanted to start a podcast. I had the mission and vision. He had the technical expertise.

And we just went to a whiteboard space here in Honolulu and whiteboarded the thing out and launched it. So for me, very briefly, Ted Dintersmith produced the film Most Likely to Succeed in 2015. Then he went on his 50 state tour, which ended in Hawaii, and I was privileged to curate his visit here in May of 2016, and then he wrote his book, What School Could Be, and it was a real joy, Tom, to have a chapter at the back end of that book about his time in Hawaii.

It's going to be the only time in my life that I'm listed in the index of a book. And so the podcast was born because I wanted to figure out a way to make that chapter longer and longer. Because I knew that Ted wasn't going to write another version of the book. And so now about to do my 117th interview, it's just an absolute joy to do this work and I'm very privileged.

I sit in a privileged position because I'm underwritten by Ted. And that means that I can actually spend a tremendous amount of time researching my guests. And I know we're going to talk about this, Jason, a little bit later about the research process and all that but what a joy to do a two week deep dive into somebody's life and education and their life in general, and then to be able to craft that story and to, have an actual professional editor do the work.

Evan Kurohara, he's amazing, super creative guy, audio engineer. And then you get this episode and and it's amazing. People actually download the darn thing and listen to it. Go figure, right? So yeah, very much about joy, Tom, very much.

[00:13:06] John Nash: Josh was asking, did I see Amanda Bickerstaff's timeline that she put on LinkedIn the other day? Amanda Bickerstaff, if you don't know her, she's with AI for Education. She founded this group that does a lot of good work around thinking about applications of AI in mostly P 12 space.

But she put up a great year-in-ChatGPT graphic and I keep reminding folks that we're now we're 53 weeks in which is wild. And and so it would be good time to ask as we think about year in review. Yeah. What have been the impacts of AI from your perspective and what do you think is going to happen next?

Jason and I were talking about earlier we say, has anything changed? And I I surprised myself by saying no, I don't think much has changed, even though a ton has changed. But I'd love to, we'd love to hear what you all are thinking particularly from the, your perch of your podcast and your audience.

Lee, do you have thoughts on this?

[00:14:02] Lee Skallerup Bessette: In my job it's that same sort of thing. It's changed everything and also nothing in terms of just being able to say good pedagogy is good pedagogy. But been thinking about how that it could be an assistive technology. In particular, is thinking about it through the lens of disability and neurodivergence in terms of what students and even faculty and staff struggle with with ADHD, with autism, and, thinking through those sorts of possible applications for it.

What's it good at? What's it not good at? And how can it be used as an assistive technology and thinking through all the ways that also we throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater and a lot of times when it comes to new technological innovations for better or worse. Where it's horrific. And so we're in all of these kinds of ways. So we're just going to get rid of it, even though there is a definite benefit to certain subpopulations. In that sense, so there's, talking about the balancing act of like the horrific environmental destruction that goes through, but also could really help.

Someone with ADHD gets started on a paper because that's notoriously something that people with ADHD have difficulty with. But is it worth all of that? Really taking a step back and being able to think through those things and thinking about specific populations and how it can have an impact.

[00:15:28] John Nash: Yeah, I like that a lot. And this notion of take a step back. And of course, we're at the end of a calendar year now. And so everybody's doing kind of a year in the review or taking a step back. But I feel like even in the middle of this calendar year, say, in the summer, July, educators, people like ourselves were even saying, then how do we take a step back?

Because how is this, different. How is this the same? Josh, that's a theme that you've been talking about the last little bit. And I know we're going to talk more about it next week, but this idea of taking a step back, what do you feel about that?

[00:16:02] Josh Reppun: Yeah, Lee, I'm struck by first of all, I'm deliberately choosing not to get into the weeds with the folks that I'm interviewing, educators, education leaders around AI, because it feels almost a little bit too early. To do something like that, but I'm, I am conscious of our position as podcasters, as producers and hosts that we have an opportunity to, as John described, to lift ourselves up to that kind of hot air balloon level and be able to comment on what's happening.

And John, you and I have had a conversation at a different time about how when EdTech emerged for all of us, in the mid 2000s, everybody just went gaga over the devices. And I remember I went nuts over the iPad. I thought it was the second coming. And then slowly, but surely the whole EdTech world righted the ship and went back to the pedagogy again.

And I think it feels to me like AI is very similar. That we're all going. Bonkers about the bots and in indeed, even the individualized bots that can do things that are in the field of Neurodivergence. And this is what Amanda is doing at AI for Education, is that she's having these very specific conversations around AI and special ed, AI and this and that and the other.

So, slowly over time. I think that we're going to go back to just thinking, what is the most engaging teaching and learning? What is the most learner centered, the most student driven and real world? And then we're going to look at the tools that are coming out of AI and say, how can we use them? And that's what I'm looking forward to in 2024 with my guests is to have those conversations that are both at the meta level and then in the weeds about how the tools are actually being used.

Yeah, it's going to be an interesting year coming up for sure.

[00:17:54] John Nash: For sure. And I like what you said there about you alluded to it as well, Lee, this idea of getting back to first principles around pedagogy. I certainly noticed when the pandemic forced a lot of our colleagues to move their courses online. It laid bare a myriad of instructional design holes in their approaches.

And I think that to your point, Josh, it was a an awakening Oh, we just need to good instructional design turns out is just good instructional design back in early 2000s. I was hanging around people who were concerned about these horse race studies about whether online learning was better than in person learning.

And, I think that's been settled. It's just all about good instructional design. But that sort of takes us to the online learning space. Mary, what are you thinking as we come 52 weeks into our friend Chad and Claude and Bard? How are you feeling?

[00:18:48] Mary Loder: Probably overly confident, to be honest. So like you said, it exposed what was already there, right? So the fear laid within the framework of things that already really weren't working well. And it was probably a really hard shift for a lot of people. And so what we did at Arizona State University this summer is we created this course of teaching with generative AI, like really intentionally learning how to use it because that's the first step and then getting curious into what that means for your classroom and framing it around your learning objectives.

And then how can you leverage it in interesting ways that not only help you be intentional in the inclusion, but help create a space for your students to be literate in the technology, right? Because that's probably a primary responsibility that the fear's not gonna help us with.

So jumping in is a good thing and we've seen so many people jump in and we just celebrated over a thousand faculty registering for that course. So that's really good. We were at a place where people were intentionally avoiding generative AI last year to intentionally seeking out opportunities to improve their experiences to help improve their students experiences. So I'm feeling very confident because we have such good energy around it now in just one year. And it has been a journey for a lot of people, right? But some of them already were really excited too, because we're very lucky to work with some extremely innovative individuals who, like this summer, Andrew Maynard had a course where he taught students how to use ChatGPT, which is great, because if you're not taught how to use it, you might think it's not a great tool, but if you learn how to write a prompt properly, you've increased your efficiency in so many places.

Riccardo, I don't know if you know this, but I'm going to try to figure out our podcasting timestamp-like issues with so many people by feeding all of our transcripts into ChatGPT and then asking it to do some things for me. But I think there's some major efficiencies that can happen when you know how to write a proper prompt.

And by all the additional plus options, specifically in ChatGPT with being able to feed in websites or feed in PDFs or, whatever you need. And to what Lee was saying, like being able to reframe and redefine. education as a person who doesn't get it because of how it's being worded through a system like that, through a conversation.

What an amazing opportunity for access for someone to really better understand the environment that they're in and then be prepared to interact in that environment.

[00:21:15] Ricardo Leon: Oh, Mary, where can we hear more about this ChatGPT course?

[00:21:19] Mary Loder: Oh, It's funny you should ask. Season four, "Course Stories", episode two, one? I don't remember. It's on our Teach Online page. Yeah.

[00:21:29] Lee Skallerup Bessette: Put it in the show notes. Put it in

[00:21:31] Mary Loder: Yeah, we'll definitely

[00:21:32] Jason Johnston: It'll be in the show notes. It'll all be in the show notes, bit of it.

[00:21:36] John Nash: I can vouch for that episode. I listened to it and it was great. Yeah.

[00:21:41] Jason Johnston: Yeah,

me too. I was quite interested in that. It was yeah, really interesting to hear the approach and what you're doing. Yeah. I was curious about those podcasting this year, John and I started our podcast this year in February in some of the fervor of ChatGPT really hitting the people hard.

And so I think we had four podcasts where we said, "Oh, we'll move on to other topics next podcast." And then it kept getting stranger and more advanced. And we kept talking about it and talking about it. And then we dropped into kind of getting a little more organized about what we're doing.

And so we started talking to people still with. AI as part of the conversation. I'm just curious about other people that were doing podcasts. I know, Tom, that you had a couple of podcasts this year that were more around the theme. Did you find it it ebbed and flowed this year or what were you finding?

[00:22:32] Tom Pantazes: We actually stayed away from it for a little while, mostly because we were spending a lot of time trying to understand it. And it gets to what Mary was talking about. I found a great quote from Seth Godin. He said, "AI is a mystery to many, it's a threat. But it turns out that understanding a mystery not only makes it feel less like a threat, it gives us the confidence to make it into something better."

So we spent some time just trying to get our heads around it. One example of that is Planet Money did a great three part series on " Can AI take our jobs?" I highly recommend that three part listen if you haven't listened to it yet. They, in the way that they do a great job of telling that story and exploring like what it might look like for AI to take their jobs as podcasters.

And I'm not going to spoil the ending, you have to go listen to see what they ultimately settled on. But we did just recently, I think last week and the week before that, did our first episode with some of our local experts here about AI and got them to speak a little bit about how they've seen the impact happen in their, classes as folks who are going to be comfortable using it, and they found the students were mostly using it to ask questions about things that they weren't particularly clear about from class that they had experienced, which the instructor thought was pretty interesting, and he would love to get those chat logs as a way to better understand where his students were struggling.

So that's where we've been. We haven't stepped into it too hard yet somewhat intentionally in order to get our heads around it a little bit better than we had in the past.

[00:24:01] Mary Loder: I

will say, guys, I loved listening to you guys try to figure it out in your first episodes. They were really entertaining, Jason and John. It was fun to listen to you guys figure out things that were working or Jason, I think you got kicked out because you were having a mental health conversation.

There was just some really fun From parts of your episodes.

[00:24:19] Jason Johnston: Yeah, ChatGPT broke my heart at one point.

[00:24:23] John Nash: Yeah, it was fun working in that time period, particularly as Jason was noting. I couldn't believe we kept talking about AI. I thought we really thought we would move on. Surely there's more to online learning than this. And then it just kept pushing us into the breach as it were.

[00:24:40] Josh Reppun: John, can I just, I'd love to share a quick story. A couple of weeks ago I attended our 16th annual Honolulu based Schools of the Future conference. And there were about, I think, 1400 educators and education leaders who were there at our convention center. And on day two, Our lunchtime keynote was Kevin Roos, who's the co host of the hard fork podcast, which I'm completely obsessed with.

I, I listened to every episode. And lately, as with the whole business of Sam Altman going to Microsoft and coming back to open AI. Kevin was actually sitting at his table 10 minutes before his keynote and there were a bunch of us in a group chat iMessaging each other, and that's when the news broke that Altman was out, and Kevin was literally writing his column 10 minutes before he went up on stage to deliver this really broad and beautiful overview of the whole last year of AI to these, 13, 1400 educators. And it just really struck me that it must be bewildering for a lot of educators to look at the kind of national global landscape and wonder what the heck is going on here, right?

Because it just seems very chaotic. And I know that's something, John, that I would love to talk to you about in our upcoming event that we're going to have just about the design of AI and how it's unfolding for educators and how it must be traumatizing in some way because it's just upset their normal procedures in much in the way that iPads did as well.

Yeah.

[00:26:18] John Nash: Yeah I'm wondering how many how many of the stripes of educators that are in a system have been affected and at to what level? I'm going to talk to some superintendents next week at their statewide convention. And some of my early forays into talking to those participants suggests that a lot of superintendents still really aren't using AI or have used it once or twice, and so they're not really thinking about it. So I think there also is a conversation to be had about to Mary's point. I think there's opportunities for leaders to be thinking about what they're doing with it as a leader, but also how are superintendents and others thinking about managing this change at the teacher level?

I think it's, yeah, I think it's different. I think this is, this goes back to this point of so many things have changed, but yet some things are not changing at all.

[00:27:09] Jason Johnston: I don't know if we explain this or not, but we did a previous podcast episode like this at OLC. You can look it up. Those that are listening in the spring of 2023, that we called podcast super friends.

It's just a name that came about as we were talking about how this is like those crossover episodes where people are coming in. And so we're calling this Super Friends II. And these are definitely podcast super friends here. But one of the things I was thinking about was, how podcasting is a form of translatable research, as we're all dipping into these different fields and then coming together, and here we are coming together as this podcast, and I was thinking about getting divergent views.

We had a couple podcast interviews that were side by side that really had different views about AI. We talked to Kristen DeCirbo from Khan Academy. Obviously they're pushing out this whole Khanmigo chatbot and they basically scrapped all of their plans for the next year to put their development efforts behind that.

And then we had a great conversation with. With Brandice Marshall, who is much more of a, I don't know what you'd call it, maybe John have a word for this, but, or somebody else does, but we're almost like a-- even though she's deep, like she knows so much more about coding and about data and so on than we do, but she's almost like a reluctant technologist in some ways when it comes to AI, trying to take a slow approach to AI and being skeptical about its abilities and about what it is that we should be putting our hopes and dreams into here.

Have other people found with their podcasting that they're able find divergent views or views that maybe have challenged you in this regard over the last year?

[00:28:45] Ricardo Leon: I was going to keep quiet because I'm not a fan of those kinds of AI solutions. I think it's really not good enough yet to be using it as much as we're using it. Yeah, I just, I'm just not a fan of that. Mary's Oh, I'm going to use ChatGPT to do this or that. And I'm like cause already our transcripts are run through our editing software-- creates a really rough transcript. So Pedagogy is going to come up as "Purple Monkey Dishwasher." You know what I mean? And then we're going to use AI to, use that, to, to leverage that "purple monkey dishwasher" to create this or that. And, so that's, I think that there's there's been a lot more excitement or interest in AI rather than in human capital.

I think that, sometimes you just have to do the sifting through and I know it's painful and it's time consuming, but I do, we just had a hack day where we look to solve a problem and at the end of it, you have a presentation.

On my team, we had me and one of our designers, really great designer, Ron, and we were able to just put together a video with a, with an interface, aspect of it that was really well designed, and I was really happy with that, and I see some of the other teams, they didn't have that human capital they, and they're using AI to develop some of their slides, and I can see, the characters on the slides having multiple fingers, things just not-- so that's so distracting to me to see that, and maybe it's just in the creative stuff for me at least it just drives me crazy, it's not good enough, and I think that we rely on it way too much, and that, that really, of course we're gonna try to eliminate as much human capital as possible, but those are, I think, still really valuable things until we have these, perfect dream machines, I think it's great. It enables a lot to happen, it makes everybody a jack of all trades, but there's another half of that idiom that you're a master of none. And so I think that we're gonna lose out on a lot of that stuff if we rely on these technologies too much.

[00:30:39] Mary Loder: We are the divergent views on the podcast. I'm just kidding. Actually, we don't usually disagree, but we do disagree there. I can't wait to prove you wrong with my amazing prompt.

[00:30:48] Ricardo Leon: I can't wait for the "purple monkey dishwasher" podcast episode.

[00:30:52] John Nash: Ricardo, I appreciate what you're saying, and it goes back to what Brendice Marshall wrote in Medium, which I still gush about, which is there are these things that are un-AIable, and I think, I was hoping you'd also say, was it a hack day, or what was it? Yeah. Did you win?

Because I think those skills that you talked about are the ones that we still need in great measure to do great creative work that AI can't do.

[00:31:33] Mary Loder: we'll know what timestamps go where.

So he can quickly go timestamp to this one, timestamp to that one. Oh, that's the spot. That's the spot. And just like splice them all together. So I'm hopeful I prove you wrong, Ricardo, and we improve some of the experiences for you. Cause what you do is time consuming, although highly necessary and totally creative as well.

[00:31:50] Tom Pantazes: So I'm running a little experiment right now where we did the recording already. I grabbed the transcript, threw it into Claude and said, where would you cut this down? Like, how would you bring it down? And then it totally butchered the timestamps, but I held on to that and I'm going to do the edit myself.

I'm going to do the work I can normally do, but then I want to compare the two when I'm done to see if what it spit out actually would have helped me. And we'll see what we get. And I'll try to share back about that at some point.

[00:32:17] Mary Loder: Yeah, please email me and let me know if it works. Maybe I'll hold off on writing my prompt till I see her outcome.

[00:32:23] Lee Skallerup Bessette: But I think that this is where we have an opportunity, like I was saying, I've said this a lot that I think we not necessarily here in this podcast, but we within higher education and elsewhere having the wrong conversations.

In terms of how we're free, how the discussions are framed. I'm going to use that passive voice. And then one of the things that I've really enjoyed is in in podcasting and talking about it is getting to have that reframing. Getting to say, okay we're talking about it like this, but why aren't we talking about it like this?

Would it be more, would it be more beneficial? Would it be more generative and generous to talk about it in this kind of way, which is again, why I'm very. I've been very big on thinking about it as an assistive technology, because I think that's a way to reframe it in a way that it's it's not going to take over.

It's not going to Grammarly is an assistive technology, right? My alarm is an assistive technology. My calendar notifications are an assistive technology. In what ways can this be an assistive technology? and say, and thinking about what is it good at, what is it not good at, and then if we think about those affordances, like any digital tool, right? We go through this with any digital tool that comes out. What are its affordances? What is it good at? What is it not good at? Then how do we use it in our teaching and learning or in our lives? And so to be able to use these conversations as opportunities for reframing and rethinking and, having those moments of friction. I think that's the real power of it because, even, and I'm a writer, I love writing, but there's an immediacy to the podcast that, putting something out on the web now, particularly with, the, what formerly known as Twitter has gone downhill. tHere used to be an immediacy in those kinds of conversations that I think is being picked up again in podcasts when, as you're saying, people want to come on and have these conversations, and listen to them as well, because there's an immediacy to it that I think is really unique generally about podcasts.

[00:34:28] Josh Reppun: Ricardo, I, what you said really resonated with me. I, again, from a privileged position of having the time to do it, I spend two weeks getting ready for a guest, and I've developed a very kind of intricate Google Docs process of creating raw questions that come from information that's provided via an intake form.

And then I, once I have the big giant bank of raw questions. I start to move them over into a final script that I'm going to use in the interview. And last summer I find that process extremely humanizing for me. It's I'm like a huge fan of Warren Berger's "A More Beautiful Question," the book and it's just such a beautiful process to go through creating a beautiful question and last summer, just on a lark, I asked ChatGPT to create a dozen questions based on a short bio of a guest that I was about to do, and it just 20 seconds.

It suddenly did all the work that I would take two weeks to do. And I reared back from that like I just saw the devil. It was just horrible moment where I'm like, I'm not going there because it's going to take away from me my very human process of getting to know somebody. So what I think what you're saying is ,I writ large, I feel like we're in a moment where we have to have these conversations about where the humanity remains and where the technology becomes helpful to us.

And in podcasting, it's just a great medium to be able to have those kinds of conversations. So appreciate what you said.

[00:36:03] Jason Johnston: Yeah, I

appreciate that as well.

[00:36:06] Lee Skallerup Bessette: I think another thing that, that this also like in, in this moment that we're having is what are the systems in place that make it so We would want to use ChatGPT to save time,

[00:36:20] Josh Reppun: Yeah.

[00:36:21] Lee Skallerup Bessette: right? And that, like you were saying, the luxury of having two weeks to research and have those questions to be able to go forward.

But there is still this pressure of time, of efficiency, of whatever there is that, you know, that If I have a choice between two weeks and going through this very humane process and humanizing process versus five minutes with ChatGPT what are the systems that are informing my decision to pick one or the other?

This is pre tech, but when I was teaching at one point I got a TA and so the weekly quizzes that my students did, I could give that to my TA to grade. It was this huge class that was extraordinarily time consuming.

The trade off was, is I didn't get to know my students very well that semester because that was the way I did it. But , I was a PhD student. I had a dissertation to write. And so ChatGPT again is exposing a lot of these inequities and these pressures that have always been there and it's just really highlighting them and bringing them to the forefront and again, it's that thinking of reframing the conversation around generative AI to be able to say, okay what is this telling us more largely about our work practices, about work life balance, about our strategies about our values about all of these kinds of things.

And so that just to be able to blow that up and have again, those larger conversations about the society in which ChatGPT is growing and being adopted. And then also the nitty gritty of what is it good at? What can it do? Why is it doing what it does? And those kinds of things. So I think that there's that, that really great spectrum that we can hit on in this medium.

[00:38:00] Josh Reppun: Lee, I would add, there's I'm becoming aware now that there's a company called Magic School which is experiencing explosive growth. And basically Magic School is a tool that saves teachers time through generative AI. Awesome, glad there's explosive growth, but what are you doing with that time that you're now freed up to experiment with?

Like, how about you take, dip your toes into design thinking? How about if you dip your toes into real world assessments or deeper learning, assessments for deeper learning, right? That's the reframing of the conversation. If we give ourselves time, what do we do with that time? And that, that's what I think we can do as podcasters in 2024 is to start having those conversations with people about what they're going to do and how they're going to be more student focused.

[00:38:49] John Nash: The AI doesn't know what else you could do with your time because you decided to use AI and that's part of the problem. And I'm also appreciating all y'all's comments about the tireless and, generout list of questions that ChatGPT can give you -- it robs you of that Process by which you've decided to ask the question And it's that thing that we're always talking about is like how do we better humanize what we're doing in the presence of all this technology

[00:39:20] Ricardo Leon: And we're just this current generation of that too. I think about the students, the younger students who are coming along and this is just going to be. Ubiquitous. It's just, so that, that is really the, for me, the bummer is that the next generation of people where we're finding out ways to what are they going to be doing?

It's, what is work going to be in the future

[00:39:42] Jason Johnston: Yeah, my kids don't know a world without internet or even a world without cell phones. They will never experience what it is like to be wandering a country having to ask people for help.

[00:39:57] Lee Skallerup Bessette: Physical maps.

[00:39:59] Jason Johnston: or physical maps. It's interesting. It's...

[00:40:01] John Nash: hitchhike! Can I throw that in there? They're not going to know what it's-- man, I had to hitchhike in Ireland because they're like, how am I going to get back? I don't know. Put your thumb out. Oh,

[00:40:18] Jason Johnston: as we're seeing this kind of transition. And I think what intrigues me about AI is not. because I'm so enamored by it, but because I have a sense that this is a internet Gutenberg press kind of moment in time, there will be a before and afterwards and things are shifting in a way that we need to have our eyes open.

, one of the things about talking to different people with different perspectives, and even I appreciate what you're saying, Ricardo, and within my own team my media, more creative types, have a different approach and thoughts about this and then my instructional designers do. And I appreciate hearing all of those and it's giving me pause for both what I'm chasing after but also the way in which I speak about such things because it's helped me hopefully at the end of the day and I'm still growing and learning, but hopefully at the end of the day, it's not just about using the thing, but it is about me being more human and me being more empathetic and understanding about how all of this is affecting everyone around me and the people that are within my own touch.

[00:41:25] Mary Loder: I have one more gem to share from ASU. Sorry, Tom, I'm going to be fast. It's the Academic Risk Reduction Guide. So I'm going to give that to you to put in the show notes because we created that, and I don't say we, like me, I mean Deanna Soth, Tamara Mitchell, with the guidance of the Office of the Provost, created this awesome pedagogical guide.

And it's not focused on generative AI, but it helps to address generative AI through just good instructional design and pedagogy. So I just wanted to put that out there.

[00:41:54] Jason Johnston: Wonderful.

[00:41:55] Tom Pantazes: I was just going to point out that what I'm hearing is the not least the human aspects in it. As we move into these generative AI tools and their use, and I am reminded of those things that I've seen floating around. I may have even been from John, you may have posted one of these, but they're like AI writes the questions and then the AI answers the questions and there's no human work or understanding or labor that takes place in that scenario.

And I've seen lots of variations of that. So, how do we help folks, or at least in my role, how do we help folks create situations and scenarios where we're using AI as that? assist and not in a way that removes the humanity and the situations in the work that we do.

[00:42:35] Jason Johnston: That's good. Yeah. And how do we work at our own communities, whether it's our podcasting community or working community to help, as you were talking about, Mary, bringing together some guidelines to, to help that we can form together. So it's not just one segment of the population. And as you brought up, Lee, which I so appreciate, we're thinking about how this impacts multiple kinds of learners and And also, Ricardo, in terms of different workers and different aspects of what our work looks like I firmly believe that we can form ethics that are objective, meaning that there are ones that we.

We form together as groups of people and we can fiercely defend and fiercely move forward to help guide us during these times. And I think that if we can't do it in our educational circles, I don't know who's going to be able to do it really. So we can't depend on the ed tech folks to do it.

We can't depend on the AI companies are not going to bring up black box transparency and things like this, right? So I think that we are some of the people that need to be doing that and as well using our platforms to help move that forward. They're

[00:43:50] Josh Reppun: if I could add Mary to your comment I think one of the things that I've been thinking about partly as a result of all the work of doing these episodes over the course of 2023, which is a fantastic learning curve that any host would be on been thinking a lot about how maybe a little bit worried about the potential for uneven presentation of professional development around AI.

Very similar to what happened in EdTech, very similar to what happened with project based learning. When that became a word or a phrase for people, there were lots of entities that jumped into the arena to offer professional development around project based learning, but a lot of it was really uneven, and a lot of it really wasn't student focused, and I worry a little bit now, and I think, is that going to play out with AI, and who are the entities that we really trust in this space who are going to deliver the professional development that is student centered and is focused on learner centered pedagogy.

That's something that's been on my mind and something I'd like to keep on my mind as I go through episodes in the, in 2024.

[00:45:01] Tom Pantazes: I trust these guys on this podcast called "Online Learning in the Second Half."

[00:45:05] Josh Reppun: Good place, great resource. Absolutely.

[00:45:09] John Nash: I've met those guys. They're not thought leaders.

[00:45:12] Mary Loder: I

[00:45:13] Jason Johnston: More question leaders than anything else. I think those guys have. fewer things to say and more things to stir up. Yeah,

[00:45:20] John Nash: Yeah.

[00:45:20] Lee Skallerup Bessette: But it brings up a good point though. And I think you're I think you're really right on this is that this is a space where I think podcasts can really fill a gap in that sense where it, I know, I'm at Georgetown now we are very well resourced, we are, our center is very well staffed, we are doing all the things to support faculty in teaching and learning with AI and a myriad of other things.

I've also worked at regional comprehensive public institutions where there isn't a kind of robust support for faculty and staff around any of these things. I think project based learning again, I think that's a, that's an excellent example where, these podcasts like this become a way for.

the dissemination of knowledge and the dissemination of discussions. And that was, it was one of the things that being at a regional comprehensive, I found most difficult was this sense of isolation. Who else is thinking these things? Who else is having these conversations? Nobody, again, the time factor, everybody's on 4, 4 or 5, 4 course loads.

How are we, how can we deal with any of this stuff? And to be able to listen in on conversations, participate in these conversations know that other people are having these conversations and thoughtful ways that we'd hope to be having them on our own campus, being able to bring them to our colleagues and peers.

I think again, that's one of the strengths of having podcasts like these and having these conversations is again, providing. prOviding resources and hoping those resources get to places where they wouldn't have typically gotten in the past.

[00:47:00] Mary Loder: I mean, for instance, thank you for the ability to plug again. At ASU online, we have these webinars. They're open to anybody. They're free. So educators, please go to asuonline. eventbrite. com and join our instructional designers and our faculty in the conversations and presentations around learner centered pedagogy.

[00:47:18] Jason Johnston: great. Yeah. And I think we're all in agreement. A hundred percent of the those surveyed, I think, say yes to what you're saying there, Lee, about the, some of the strength and purpose of podcasting. And at that, why don't we, why don't we spend a minute to go around and just let us know how we can find your podcast as we are wrapping things up here.

Maybe starting with Lee, tell us how we can find you and listen.

[00:47:41] Lee Skallerup Bessette: It's all the things ADHD. It is available if you just search all the things ADHD on just about every podcast distribution service. Wow. I can't even think of the word for that right now. What is it? Platform. That's it. Syndicators. There we go. Or you can go to allthethingsadhd. com where we also have every single one of our episodes. That's where the RSS feed is generated for all of the other platforms. And you can find me online as ReadyWriting on literally all the socials. I just went through and claimed it on all of them. And I'll, I also share the podcast there when we do actually get around to recording it every once in a while.

[00:48:21] Jason Johnston: That's great. Mary and Ricardo?

[00:48:24] Ricardo Leon: We are "Course Stories". Or you can listen to us anywhere that you find podcasts. Also I, like I said earlier in the episode we, I am producing a program called "Space for Humans," which can be found on YouTube starting in January. And that is a weekly show. It's about us designing it's a partnership with the Interplanetary Initiative. And we are talking about how we design space futures and that are inclusive and accessible.

[00:48:51] Mary Loder: And if you want our show notes, which has like bios and all the links to all the things people share, that's at teach online forward slash podcasts forward slash course dash stories. We need a better website for that, but you can just go to teachonline. asu. com. And we're under podcasts.

[00:49:09] Jason Johnston: And we'll put all these in the show notes as well. Tom?

[00:49:13] Tom Pantazes: So oddly on air, oddly spelled O D L I when you're searching for it in your podcast provider of choice, but you can also catch our episodes and our links from our wcu -tlc. org website.

[00:49:28] Jason Johnston: wonderful.

[00:49:29] Josh Reppun: Yep. And so you can find the What School Could Be podcast and all of the podcast platforms, including Apple and and everything else. You can also go to whatschoolcouldbe. org and in the nav bar at the top, just tap on podcasts and that'll take you directly to my podcast website.

And Mary, just feedback on what you said in terms of learner centered, student driven learning at whatschoolcouldbe. org. If you go to the NavBar and tap on Innovation Playlist, that's another awesome resource for student driven learning.

It's really nice. That we're all working now a little bit more deliberately in these spaces where students are the center of the conversation.

And Jason, I guess this is the right moment to mention that you and John and I have been working on a project here. Which is something called the Network of Education Podcasters.

And when this episode goes live, there will be. An NEP group on LinkedIn, and we invite anyone who's podcasting, hosting, producing in the education space or related spaces to join us on LinkedIn, and we'll just keep this conversation going. Lee, I loved what you said about how, if we as podcasters are all talking to each other, there's no possible way that we can all listen to each other's episodes, there's not enough time in the day, right?

But when we have these kinds of conversations, we actually can. Move the thought leadership forward over the course of the next couple of years. And I love that idea and it puts fuel on my tank and makes me want to just keep right on going. Network of education, podcasters on LinkedIn, join us and we'll start working together.

[00:51:11] Jason Johnston: Sounds great. And we are found at onlinelearningpodcast. com. You can find all the show notes that will include all of these links, as well as information about each of these fine people that joined us today in our show notes. So please find us there or on LinkedIn. I think everybody's on LinkedIn.

You could probably find us and hit us up there as well and make some connections because it's not just about for us. And I think all of you. It's not just about the one way dissemination of information, but also about creating community and connections and getting your questions and your feedback. We'd love to hear what you think about this podcast and others.

So right.

[00:51:46] John Nash: Yeah, absolutely. And I'm grateful to you, Jason, for helping us put this all together. It's like you're the Gary Shandling and I'm your Hank. I think that's how.

[00:51:56] Jason Johnston: I have a vague idea of what that means, but not completely.

[00:52:02] John Nash: Yeah, that's right.

[00:52:03] Lee Skallerup Bessette: We lost anyone under the age of 40 just right now. That was it. Anyone under the age of 40 is I don't know what is going on at the moment.

[00:52:10] John Nash: We'll put a Hank "Hey now!" Gif in the show notes.

[00:52:14] Tom Pantazes: That would help me out.

[00:52:17] Jason Johnston: It's a positive thing though, John. That was a positive thing?

[00:52:20] John Nash: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you're, yeah, you're glib and interesting and I just go, "yeah, that." So

[00:52:25] Jason Johnston: Oh, I see. So it was a little self depreciating. That's not the case at all. But yeah, for sure. Oh, that's good. Thank you, everybody. It was great to talk. This was a great conversation. Appreciate all of you. And we'll see you out there in the In the podcasting world someplace.

[00:52:41] John Nash: Yeah,

[00:52:42] Josh Reppun: Thank you, Jason. Thank

you,

John.

[00:52:43] Ricardo Leon: Thank

[00:52:44] Lee Skallerup Bessette: you so

[00:52:44] Tom Pantazes: for having us.

[00:52:45] Jason Johnston: Yeah.

Outro

[00:52:48] Lee Skallerup Bessette: I love how even when we record podcasts, we all wave like

[00:52:51] Mary Loder: I literally, yeah, I couldn't even help myself. Yes, absolutely.