Transformative Principal

Welcome to another episode of Transformative Principal! In today’s episode, we have the privilege of speaking with Dr. Brett Jacobsen, the CEO of The Mount Vernon School, Mount Vernon Ventures, and Mount Vernon Online – The Global Online Campus. With over 15 years of experience leading Mount Vernon through a transformational period, Dr. Jacobsen has gained a national reputation for innovation in education.In our conversation, Dr. Jacobsen shares his insights on creating a venture to fund your school. He discusses how Mount Vernon School, established in 1972 as a PK–8 school, has embraced an innovation mindset, even though they have been around for a long time. Driven by a desire to be known as an innovative school, Mount Vernon has experienced significant growth over the last decade.Dr. Jacobsen introduces the concept of the Blue Ocean Strategy, emphasizing the importance of shaping your school’s narrative and brand. Rather than trying to compete with other schools, Mount Vernon Ventures focuses on consulting with other schools and developing accessible products and tools. They have also ventured into business development with Mount Vernon Online.Dr. Jacobsen explores the challenge of separating funding from the backs of their people and finding alternative markets to support their initiatives. He also highlights the importance of creating multiple pathways for students and implementing an inquiry-based, competency-driven system.Portfolio of three different areas1972 school establishedPK–8 SchoolFelt Like a startup even though they’ve been around for a long time.Giving more tours than serving our own community.Over the last decade school has grown by 60%Blue Ocean StrategyCirque du Soleil is it high art or circus?Didn’t want to be known as a traditional school.Didn’t want to be known as a progressive school.how do you shape your narrative around your school’s brand?Wanted to be known as an innovative school.We would lose every time if we tried to compete with othersMount Vernon VenturesConsulting with other schoolsValue proposition - current practitioners leading change.What is your innovation intention?Ventures work on developing products and tools that are accessible.Business development as well - Mount Vernon Online.Multiple PathwaysR&D Report around AIFunding is generated from Mount Vernon VenturesTraditionally generated from Non-tuition generating activities.Externally, how could we reinvest back into the school?How do you separate from funding being on the backs of our people?Find another market that funds things.How do we create multiple pathways for our students?Learning outcomes explored in an inquiry model - assessed based on proficiency.Inquiry, Competency-based system.Lego-bricking courses - systems takenMod System is based on 9-week time periods - students take four courses during a mod.They have to have more math courses at the backend of their high school course.Did a lot of open share when we started.Agnostic about things they implement with schools.Ventures are about birthing opportunities that expand the Mount Vernon Ecosystem.Training and investing in professionals in schoolIdentify market segments - creating more pathways for students.Would look very different from the three we’ve talked about today.About Brett JacobsenEntering his 15th year, Dr. Brett Jacobsen is CEO of The Mount Vernon School, Mount Vernon Ventures, and Mount Vernon Online – The Global Online Campus. Leading Mount Vernon through a transformational period since 2009, the School with 1,250 students strong, has gained a national reputation for innovation in education, As a result, Dr. Jacobsen launched a Transformation R&D consulting company known as Mount Vernon Ventures, partnering with schools throughout the world. Most recently, in August 2022, Mount Vernon Online, Mount Vernon’s online high school, welcomed its first cohort of students to the School. Outside of overseeing a portfolio of business units, Dr. Jacobsen frequently shares his journey of innovation and entrepreneurial impact at national and international conferences. Dr. Jacobsen was recognized by the Atlanta Business Chronicle as one of the 2017 Most admired CEOs in the education category. He is also a proud member of Leadership Atlanta, Class of 2013.LinkedinThe Mount Vernon School | Mount Vernon Ventures | Mount Vernon Online We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:Simplify and streamline technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove student performance on state assessments🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Perhaps large language models could solve some challenges in schools. Teacher attrition - how can you build excellence if you can’t keep teachers?Time is not enough to do deep work, which is required for effective planning. The AI can’t do everything (nor should it). Source it, shape it, share it.AI as a creative collaborator - Lesson seedLook at generative content like a sculptor would look at a block of marble. Elaborative explanation is a best practice in education. Prefer to pull methods from cognitive sciencesStudents engaging in essay evaluation rather than essay writing. Artificially intelligent tutors - Khanmigo and others. Training against chess bots. Chess is a closed system, so perhaps not the best idea. Proficiency vs aptitude vs Hard to get quality feedback - What are the parameters you need to be in to access the highest level of success? Embedding best practices into our One-shot prompt vs. leading the language model into learning. Unit plans - 4-6 weeks of instructional planning. Distributed & interleaved practiceAssessments & quizzes. AI lowers the cost of evolution. Open Educational Resources compared to Teacher Pay Teachers. Things open up in ways you couldn’t imagine simply because you did something.Foundational models are not particularly useful in their basic form for what we’re trying to do in education. Having granular control that teacher can make changes in the workspaceHow to take Smart NotesObsidian note taking appYou learn in relation to what you already know. The intersection of Ai, instructional design, and backend classroom administration—opportunities and tradeoffs.The limits of the technology, boundary conditionsBroad institutional implications - Foundational flaws in educationLudwig Wittgenstein - blue and brown books. The Wittgensten Reader, the tractatusAbout Thomas ThompsonThomas Thompson is the founder and CEO of eduaide.ai, which boasts over 100,000 users. Eduaide is an AI tool to help eliminate teacher burnout and make high-quality teaching resources universally accessible.Thomas has a Master in Educational Technology from Johns Hopkins School of Education and is still a teacher in the Maryland area. Martin Gurry - Public2001 data produced more in one year than we’ve every produced before.  We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:Simplify and streamline technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove student performance on state assessments🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Priten Shah is the CEO of Pedagogy. Cloud, which provides innovative technology solutions to help educators navigate global challenges in a rapidly evolving world, as well as founder of the civics education nonprofit United 4 Social Change. His book is AI and The Future of Education: Teaching in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, published by Jossey-Bass (Wiley).In this episode, Ross and Priten discuss:The cloud of rumors, confusion, and fear surrounding the rise of artificial intelligenceDefining AI and machine learningWhy it’s important to get not only to accept but embrace these technologiesEthical concerns to considerWhat should schools do around teacher training? How AI can either solve or widen the achievement gap depending on how schools proceedWhat can teachers automate and make more efficient?The potential of AI that most excites PritenFind AI and The Future of Education: Teaching in the Age of Artificial Intelligence at https://prtn.me/book Visit https://bepodcast.network to learn more about the Be Podcast Network for educators.About today’s guestPriten Shah, M. ED, and B.A, Harvard, is the CEO of Pedagogy. Cloud provides innovative technology solutions to help educators navigate global challenges in a rapidly evolving world. He is the author of Wiley’s Jossey-Bass publication, “AI & The Future of Education: Teaching in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.“Priten is also the founder of United 4 Social Change, a civics education nonprofit that focuses on helping teachers integrate interdisciplinary education into their curricula through animated videos, lesson plans, and innovative classroom activities.Connect at instagram.com/pedagogycloud and linkedin.com/in/pritenhshahAbout the hostRoss Romano is a co-founder of the Be Podcast Network and CEO of September Strategies LLC. He is a leadership development and performance coach for professionals in a range of industries and consults with organizations and high-performing leaders in the K-12 education industry to help communicate their vision and make strategic decisions that lead to long-term success. Connect on Twitter @RossBRomano and LinkedIn We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:Simplify and streamline technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove student performance on state assessments🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Teens can use artificial intelligence to help them rock their homework. AI shouldn't be something parents and teachers are afraid of, and I had a great conversation with Transformative Principal Jethro Jones on how teens can use AI to TERMINATE their homework! And by terminate, I mean complete it. Obviously.--See what Jethro is up to at www.jethrojones.com--Register for my new Drop-In Coaching offer for this fall semester by going to www.joeymascio.com/drop-in-coaching--Follow me on Instagram! www.instagram.com/sidekicktohero We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:Simplify and streamline technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove student performance on state assessments🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Generative AI offers many advantages for educators, for use in and out of the classroom.When I prompt for images of "a focused student," the first three are boys, two are white, the third is an Asian boy, and the fourth is an apparent high school female.If my anecdotal examples haven't convinced you, try for yourself, or refer to a respected resource on this subject, which characterizes how bias is becoming a more obvious concern while producing these realistic images.In essence, this makes collected information static, yet dynamic in how AI returns the content.In the first example, I added one word, "diverse.""Write a song that promotes understanding and empathy between people from different walks of life." We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:Simplify and streamline technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove student performance on state assessments🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Mary Howard is a Nationally Board Certified Teacher and teaches 6th grade ELA and Science in Grand Island, New York.  She has found success using digital tools that not only make learning fun for her students, but encourage critical thinking, collaboration, and create a life-long passion for learning.  Whether the digital experience is related to Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics or promotes literacy, Mary believes passionately in the potential that technology has for reaching and engaging ALL learners. In pursuit of this passion, Mary has spent the past 15 years presenting at dozens of technology conferences including NYSCATE, STANYS and, ISTE among others.  She has become a globally recognized speaker on the topics of augmented reality and virtual reality and the Next Generation Science Standards and shares her strategies through her blog, yoursmarticles.com.  She has published numerous educational technology articles and has provided webinars on Virtual Environments, Virtual Reality, 3D Design, QR codes and digital engagement strategies.  Mary’s accolades include recognition as the 2018 International Society for Technology in Education’s Virtual Pioneer of the Year and 3 Silver Presidential Volunteer Service awards.  She was a New York State Teacher of the year finalist for 2018 and 2020 and is a New York State Master Teacher.  When Mary isn’t elbows deep in her technology initiatives, she is a mother of 3 boys and devotes her free time to refereeing youth hockey and volunteering within the hockey community.  She is an avid runner, Adirondack 46er and recently cycled across New York State on the Erie Canal. Mary is a newly published author with her new release, Artificial Intelligence to Streamline Your Teacher Life: The ChatGPT Guide for Educators.Key Takeaways:AI is a tool that will help give teachers more time, reduce burnout, and improve teaching.Technology is about amplifying teachers' ability to reach all students.Reluctance to integrate technology doesn't come from a place of fear rather a place of this is, "one more thing".The more we streamline teachers' everyday tasks, the more we can get them in front of students and spending more quality time facilitating student learning.ChatGPT still needs to be checked once the product is finished.We need to make sure we follow age and privacy concerns because ChatGPT is collecting data on the users.Education still has to focus on thinking rather than retrieval of information. This will help the integration of ChatGPT as a useful tool rather than a tool used to get good grades.The perfect classroom still has a teacher who is helping guide rich discussions through the Socratic method and collaboration with AI helping streamline that in the background.Leaders need to celebrate every little success individuals have to continually build positivity.Stay Connected:Artificial Intelligence to Streamline Your Teacher Life: The ChatGPT Guide for EducatorsYour SmarticlesTwitter We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:Simplify and streamline technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove student performance on state assessments🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Episode adapted from this article The use of AI chat tools has rapidly increased this year.AI chat tools have a difficult time with voice since they lack the emotional context that humans can interpret through the nuances of tone, pitch, expression, and most of all, uniqueness.More significantly, AI chat tools cannot express a person’s point of view because they lack the complex beliefs, values, and opinions that form a person’s consciousness.Educators should make this clear to people accessing AI chat tools in their schools.While AI chat tools have some limitations such as capturing voice and eyes, it has remarkable productivity opportunities educators can leverage while navigating around imperfections to increase their efficiency and effectiveness. We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:Simplify and streamline technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove student performance on state assessments🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

AI Edcamp for facultySchools are opening and AI looms as a BIG  question mark. How will teachers and administrators use it? What about students? How can we start to understand the complexity of AI in schools? This brief, chock-full episode offers a prescription for busy administrators and teachers. Use the simple formula of an Edcamp and bring the expertise to your school community today!Concepts adapted from my book:Radical PrincipalsMore info:How to run an Edcamp virtually Listen to Mike, a principal, author, and podcaster, share quick, actionable strategies, bite sized solutions that have sustainable impact. Each episode gives you a take home approach you can use today. You'll hear about a study, a story, and a strategy that are linked together. Educators face more challenges than ever. Stop spinning your wheels and listen to refreshing answers backed by 25 years of experience, interviews, and research. Take the journey with Mike today and start helping children now!Mike's overarching goal: If I can help one child and one adult, this was all worth it! We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:Simplify and streamline technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove student performance on state assessments🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Vriti Saraf is the CEO & founder of k20 Educators where she builds metaverse spaces for learning. She is also a co-founder of the first community organization on blockchain for educators, by educators, called Ed3 DAO. Both organizations aim to reimagine learning.Vriti has served as a teacher, a professor, a dean, & a director in public, private, & charter schools both locally & internationally across K-12 & higher education.Join us for this conversation about Web3, what it is, how it is transforming education, and why we should embrace it.IN THIS EPISODE, WE DISCUSS:Web3 and how it’s shaping the future of education. How blockchain allows us, instead of institutions, to own our credentials. Decentralized credentials and flexible learning paths. Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO) allow for democratic school environments. Fears and concerns about Web3.When educators should use virtual spaces or the metaverse.The benefits of hybrid learning.AI, ChatGPT, and how they’re teaching us what skills our students should learn. We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:Simplify and streamline technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove student performance on state assessments🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.

Jethro Jones is interviewing Kiran Athota, CEO of FocalPoint Education, and Dr. Wendy Oliver, Chief Learning Officer at FocalPoint,K12, Inc. The discussion centered around the transformative potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in education and its impact on student engagement and personalized learning.Athota and Oliver delved into the distinction between AI assistants and human teachers, emphasizing the importance of teachers in catching plagiarism and guiding students. They acknowledged the fear surrounding new technology but highlighted the benefits of AI in understanding student knowledge better than ever before.The conversation also touched on the role of AI in assessing student progress and skills. Athota and Oliver stressed the need for authentic and personalized measures of growth, moving away from traditional assessments. They emphasized the importance of partnerships in education, with teachers and students actively involved in the development of AI tools.ChatGPT vs. Generative AI. Georgia Tech’s ExperimentStudents not know the difference between AI assistant and professor. Any student can plagiarize The best tool is the teacher to catch plagiarism Teachers and students should know how to use it. We are afraid of new technology. AudioPen AIDiscussing plagiarism and how to make choices around it. How FocalPoint is using AI. Giving teachers back time for their work. Using ChatGPT for scoring Multi-dimensional score Building a learner profile and informing the personalization of education Student engagement Standards work has already been there. How to make it more engaging for kids. “I already know the student is struggling, how do I get them from here to here?” Generative AI is giving us engagement Technology is at a point where we can understand what students know better than ever. AI can pull in questions/assignments/activities/etc. for growth that are aligned to kids’ interests and skills. Ugh, another diagnostic… We need to find other ways to assess students Parents found that they have a voice and choice in education. We need partners, not vendors, in education. Developed with teachers and students in mind. If we have a good authentic way to measure student progress and skills, you don’t need the assessment. - Starting to see trends and growth in policy and procedure in Education.About Kiran AthotaKiran Athota has always been at the forefront of edtech innovations. As chief architect for GADOE’s longitudinal data system, he won national attention from EdWeek and the Data Quality Campaign. He subsequently was the first to introduce single-sign-on to K12 education. As co-founder and CEO of FocalPoint Education, he led his team in groundbreaking developments in an xAPI-enabled adaptive learning platform, and assessment platform and overcame education data silos with FocalPoint’s proprietary data-interoperability model. Most recently, he and FocalPoint have introduced blockchain student credentialing to serve the CTE segment and national trade and professional credentialing associations.About Wendy Oliver, Ed.D.With more than 20 years of experience in digital education, Dr. Wendy Oliver, a Tennessee teacher and administrator, thrives when implementing innovative learning models and creating amazing learning experiences for students. Throughout her career, Wendy has had the opportunity to develop and pioneer a district, TN’s state-wide, and international digital learning programs.  She served as the Chief Learning Architect for Arizona State University’s digital charter network of schools and recently launched a network of private, for-profit schools.  Wendy created Oliver’s Frameworks for Blended and Online Instruction, and subsequently, a software that allows teacher to self-assess their knowledge of instruction in each respective environment, a software that has been implemented in multiple districts and states. Her leadership expertise, experience as a certified scrum master, hands-on knowledge of digital learning and curriculum design, paired with her expertise in assessment and evaluation, are leveraged to design innovative, learner-centered solutions in her role as Chief Learning Officer at FocalPoint,K12, Inc. We’re thrilled to be sponsored by IXL. IXL’s comprehensive teaching and learning platform for math, language arts, science, and social studies is accelerating achievement in 95 of the top 100 U.S. school districts. Loved by teachers and backed by independent research from Johns Hopkins University, IXL can help you do the following and more:Simplify and streamline technologySave teachers’ timeReliably meet Tier 1 standardsImprove student performance on state assessments🚀 Ready to see why leading districts trust IXL for their educational needs? Visit IXL.com/BE today to learn more about how IXL can elevate your school or district.