Brave New Words - Supt. Buffington, PhD, Tim Krieg, PhD, & Sal Khan

Hi everyone, s here from KH Academy and as some of you all know, I have released my second book, Brave New Words, about the future of AI in education and work. It's available wherever you might buy your books. But as part of the research for that book, I did some interviews with some fascinating people, which you are about to watch.

I have two very exciting guests today. I have Dr. Peggy Buffington, who's the Superintendent of the Hobart School District in Indiana and in the greater Chicago area, I guess we can say. And we also have Dr. Tim C., who's the Director of Secondary Curriculum and Instruction at School City of Hobart. Welcome to both of you!

Thank you for having us today!

So let me just start with a very basic question before we get into some of the things that we've been collaborating with over the last several months. When Chat GPT hit the scene at the end of November of 2022 or early December, and y'all started learning about it and maybe hearing the rumors that the students might be using it for essays or for other things, what were y'all's reactions? What were you all thinking about? What were you hearing from your teachers? Maybe start with you, Dr. Buffington.

Well, at first — and just to give you some background in terms of technology use — you know, I started reading everything that I could about it and making an account, figuring out the intricacies of it. And I’ve approached it in a sense that I would with any type of technology, which would be, “Wow, how are we going to integrate this, use it, and not be afraid of it?” And I think that that was the most important approach that I could take to it, just simply because this isn't something that — let’s just say when Google came out or when we first started introducing how to use the internet — people didn't really have a clue as to how they would integrate that with teaching or with their curriculum.

So I immediately started thinking about how we are going to help people see this as a tool and they can’t run from it. And basically what I really thought was going to happen is exactly what happened. Everybody turned to the plagiarism and, “Are we going to do something to block this?” And I was like, “Whoa, wait just a second here! Let’s try to figure out first of all we knew that you had to be 18 years old to use Chat GPT,” but we know that that doesn’t stop kids from making fake accounts.

And we knew that we were going to have this issue with it and we have to embrace this and start figuring out how we're going to use it. And quite frankly, what's really interesting is that I had a second grader that created his own recycled monster for a project, and his dad helped him go to Chat GPT to write a story about it. So if second graders are going to already be using this, we have to see that this is going to be a tool that kids are going to embrace.

So how do we teach them how to use it ethically? And it’s their voice and not run from it. And so that was our position from the very beginning. But I can tell you that the teachers were all like, “What are you going to do to block it?” until we started having this kind of dialogue. Why would we block something that could potentially help a student? We just have to learn how to use it right.

And how do you respond? Because a good number of those concerns are real. If you — I'm a humanities teacher and I'm used to assigning papers and now students might be using Chat GPT, and I think you can't detect it. I know there's folks who are claiming that they're going to create some technology but you really can't detect it if someone's even vaguely creative about it. What have you been telling those or have y'all started changing practice inside the district? Dr. Buffington, continuing that. I’m really curious, Tim, what how you feel about these issues?

Well, I mean I am going to say that there were some English teachers, you can imagine, those are the first to speak up and say “Wow!” They’re out policing. I ran this checker and it was very interesting to see their approach to it. One of the things that I really do believe is that we have to change the way we're assigning things to kids. You're going to have to show them and teach them how to appropriately use it because there has to be discernment. There has to be ethical use, is this your voice or someone else's voice and how do you prove that it’s true? How are you citing it? All of these things because it just makes us look at things differently.

Now I don't know how quickly you want to get into our experiences with Kigo but what I can say is that we started looking at — even prior to piloting Kigo — what would be an acceptable use of AI. Before they started piloting it, it was really about making sure that there's discernment, making sure that we're representing your voice and you're not just copying and pasting something. So we started looking at perhaps a rubric with no AI, a little bit of AI, and what would you allow it to be used for and then what does full-blown AI look like? Are you going to use that for discourse and debate?

So we kind of had started having that kind of conversation to not just completely ban it but to talk about what would you allow and then I think we'll get more into what we discovered with Kigo. But that's kind of the dialogue we started having with people.

Super helpful! And Dr. C, what's your point of view on both of those? What was your first reaction when you saw Chat GPT come on the scene and what have you been hearing from your teachers and others about how to navigate it?

It's a great question, and it's actually really interesting for me because Dr. Buffington had me leading a late start, which late start means for us all of our staff is sitting together, and the students come late so we can do collective professional development. I don't remember exactly what it was that I had the staff working on, but at the end one of our engineering teachers came up to me and he said — this was in November of 2022 — and he said, “Hey, I responded to the question”. He’s like, “What do you think about it?” And so I read it and I said, “Wow, very well done, Daniel. This is great.” And he goes, “I didn’t write it.” And I said, “Okay.”

And so that was my first real iteration with Chat GPT that put it on the radar. Now, being one who is a former English teacher, I’d be remiss not to say at that point, what did I do? Right? Dr. Buffington talked about this; I like books. You can see books behind me; Dr. Buffington likes books, she has them all over. I started to research, right? And you know, quite frankly, I think there’s something crippling about what I like to refer to as acronyms. Meaning, you know, we have acronyms for everything and so, you know, dispelling this notion of like, “What is that? Chat GPT?” — or whatever the case may be. And you come to find out that, you know, all of this gets embedded into what's considered AI, right? Artificial Intelligence.

And so that then kind of took me down a rabbit trail, if you will, to looking at what is AI and is this new or is it in a different iteration? So I went from not having any idea what it was, to then reading articles about, you know, major school districts in the country, for example, that were going to ban this and so forth. At that point, I said to myself, “Well, you know, that’s understandable; it’s human nature, you know, survivalist to try to protect ourselves, right? And put up those hedge of protection.”

Well then, the more that you look into it, you know, as a former English teacher, I know that a lot of these terms that we use, like AI, for example, are a lot of times based in things that are science fiction related. I mean, you look all the way back at AI, and you know, it’s like the Wizard of Oz, you know, Tin Man, right? Like, is this possible, you know, that I could have a being, if you will, this created thing that can reason, right?

And so it’s so fascinating, like a heartless Tin Man, right? In the concept of artificial intelligence robots. And you look back and this isn’t anything new; it’s taken on a different iteration as technology has caught up. And so, you know, I started to look into it and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, you know, back in the 1950s this was being talked about,” right?

And so philosophers were trying to explore this and there was — I don’t remember the guy’s name, but a British mathematician that tried to create the possibility of, you know, is there proof of this? And it was like you see this all over fiction, you know, a little short story called The Most Dangerous Game, looking at animals and humans and the ability to reason as the differentiator.

And so, you know, the problem was as we all know, you know, technology wasn’t ready, you know, at the time. And so you see this whole notion of artificial intelligence that just went through decades of changes. It was like a roller coaster, up and down and all over the place. And so, that then obviously led to the current era we’re in where technology can keep up, right? And so now we see this really like societal shift where all of a sudden the engineering teacher is using this thing that I don’t even know what it is, you know, acronym Chat GPT, and what do you do? You put up your hedge of protection, right?

Like I don’t know what this is and it's scary, right? And so I think one of the most important things to that point then was, you know, as soon as we had that conversation, you know, then like Dr. Buffington, as the leader she is, she already knew about this. I was late to the party, right? But then we start to problem solve together and think and explore.

And I think what makes this district unique and why we value the partnership we have with Khan and why I think we're on the line with you right now, is just because, you know, think about Brave New Words. You know, Dr. Buffington's a trailblazer and she's not afraid to look at things in a non-binary way, right? Have or don’t have, good or bad. What about the gray areas, right?

And these are tools just like calculators. You look at the changes to the new digital SAT; you know they have a Desmos-infused calculator. There’s no such thing anymore for the new SAT of a calculator/no calculator section. Well, this is the reality of where we are and it doesn't necessarily have to be dystopian if we can, to Dr. Buffington’s point, work with our staff and students to be wise stewards of these resources because it's not going to change, right?

And so I think for me, you know, Dr. Buffington in her dissertation, you know, what do you start with? A definition of terms. And so when you start to research things, you start to realize are we even talking about the same thing, right? Are we defining our terms or are we just going around and around and around about things that we don’t even understand what they are?

Right? Can I jump in there for just a second? Because one of the things, as a technology user back in the day, back in the 80s, you know, I did my internship with Apple Computer on instructional design. And you know, you're trying to figure out how do you get teachers to embrace technology, not be afraid of it? And you really have to say to yourself, the number one thing that they want to know is that how is this going to make my job better? How is it going to help my students?

And if you can't sell them on that, you might as well forget it. And so then if you can sell them that it will make their job better and make achievement more accessible for their students, and they're on board with that, then you have to lay out a good plan to teach them how to use it.

And so what I really feel one of the first things that’s so exciting about it is when you start talking to them about it is just make an account, right? You want to know how to make the best carbonara, ask that question, right? And see what you get. And they're fascinated by it. It's kind of like using the search engine for the first time and you come up with all these hits and then you say, “Well, you have to refine it to get what you want.” So you can regenerate questions, right?

And so they find these little things to be fascinating, and then you take those extra little steps to show them things like how to generate an exit ticket, and then they're starting to see a little bit of use and they're going, “Whoa!” So, case in point, the engineering teacher that was talking to Dr. C, he comes up and he's like, “Wow! I just turned in my Hobart Educational Foundation grant, and I wrote all of it in Chat GPT.” And of course, he was awarded it.

He had to go in and tweak a few things and he’s like, “It was amazing.” And we're like, “All right, great job! You found a use for it.” My director of technology and my IT person, our student management system, something was not quite working right in a report that they had to do. They went behind in the back end — some code that they thought was wrong — and they put it in Chat GPT and then it came back and it corrected it and they said, “Wow!”

Our food service director, looking at something that they had to do for a federal report, went out and was doing some things in Chat GPT. Now, as we all know, it's not the end-all be-all; they still have to check things and have discernment, right? So the point is that when you're introducing this, whether it's terms or whatever, if you can't show some great benefit, you’re going to be turned off.

And then I think the other aspect of this is teaching teachers. Once they see that resource side of it, because quite frankly the resource side is really great for teachers when they start looking at it. How do I make assignments that utilize this type of technology? You know, and I think about that narrative, that essay. When I think about 21st-century skills with collaborating with a team and having like that discourse and debate over, you know, what is artificial intelligence telling you?

And then you regenerate and you get another answer and another answer and you're on that team and you're discussing and debating what's accurate, what's real, what's possible, and then you're starting to formulate some sort of hypothesis or a mathematical type of situation where you're going to expand on it. I think that it has great potential when we teach people just how to use it appropriately.

And we have to look to the future and say they’re going to do this. Our competitors globally are going to use this; why in the world would we ban something and then they're going to go out into the real world and use it? So it’s our job to use it, use it well, teach them ethical use, teach them how to strategically use it to get an end product.

So I think that our teachers need that type of help. And so you start off with how does it benefit me as a teacher now, how am I going to use this with my kids? And boy do I have, you know, I have some really great ideas on how we can use this with kids. Just with — I love the coaching aspect of it. I love the differentiation, but that's more on the Kigo side. And I know you're going to get to that with us because I do love Kigo!

I'm just saying, no, I mean I obviously I'm biased; I love Kigo, but I get more enthusiastic about it every time I talk to you, Dr. Buffington. And you know for those listening, several of the teacher features are direct ideas from Dr. Buffington so your feedback is definitely manifesting itself in our product.

But let's switch gears to that because Hobart was already a district that was pretty engaged, heavily engaged using — let's call it pre-AI Khan Academy. Then we showed y’all early demos of Kigo, and since March, y'all have been one of the first districts in the country, probably the world, to use Kigo in a systematic way, and it seems in a productive way. What were y'all's original reactions to Kigo?

What questions or aspirations do you still have for it? And what's been the experience like over the last several months? I’ll start with you, Dr. Buffington, and then go to Dr. C.

Well, I love the aspect of confidence in a student, right? So I mean anything that you want to read on student achievement has to start with building confidence that they have within themselves, that they know they can do it. And so our job then is to make sure that we're equipping them with the skills that they can manifest themselves and have this confidence level.

One of the things that I noticed with Kigo is that you just started to notice that kids really are not asking questions. They don’t want to raise their hand — and then you’re the teacher trying to pull, you’re soliciting, you’re coming up with hooks, you’re trying to engage kids. It’s difficult.

And yet I can go to an elementary school, and what do I watch kids do on a Chromebook or an iPad, whatever? They’re automatically going out, hitting the microphone, “Show me a blue snake and tell me why it’s blue,” right? And they love that kind of stuff. And so they're so apt to talk to their device, and they love the response that they get, and then it makes them a little more excited to ask it and get a little more specific with it.

So one of the things that I love about watching this with Kigo is just that tutor, that guide on the side, and kids not afraid to ask the device a question. And I think that it's ingenious because they'll sit and ask questions all day long. And if they have an assignment that is geared — and let’s just say it’s the writing essay — you know, when I first did the first talk with you, you're going to crack up at this, but you were talking about your son having to write an essay, right?

And so I only had five teachers that were piloting this, but yet I'm so excited about it, I'm talking to everybody about it, right? I'm like, “You would not believe what Sal Khan showed us.” And then I had a student that I was mentoring at the middle school, and she’s like, “Dr. Buffington, is that AI stuff ready yet?” Because she needed a writing coach, right?

And so then I'm like, “Well I’ll pretend to be AI, like kind of Kigo,” and I said I’d be your writing coach. And I was trying to pretend, like asking a question like I would think that AI would do. And not that I replaced your Ecom OS, but here’s what I can tell you: She wrote a six-paragraph essay on a mystery and it was beautiful. She needed that extra help just asking questions and getting answers and pushing her a little bit.

And it was beautiful. And one of the things that the feedback that our teachers told us, how great is it to have a tutor or an assistant or a coach when I'm not available? And they loved that because they see their — and these are high school teachers that said I'm not up at two in the morning when they're done playing Minecraft and they decide to start writing their paper and boom! They have a teaching assistant and they're asking questions and they come to school and they feel confident in their work.

And so I think that that is the beauty of this. Now I'm still going to come back as your educator and make sure that you have applied and it’s your voice and you are representing what I’ve assigned to you, but wow, the confidence level in kids is amazing. And that's what I like about it — anytime you can have a tutor right then and there.

And I think that that is the best part of it. I do think that the feedback that we've been able to give you, that you've made the program even better, is the whole chat history, right? So I can see how long you've engaged, what type of questions you're asking, and it's not just, “Quick, get this done. Copy, paste,” sort of thing. You really are out there using discernment, refining, and asking the right questions to turn in a great piece of work.

I love this — about this questioning, tutoring, confidence-building; that's all what we want for our students.

You know, I hear two really powerful themes there: one is the confidence-building aspect of it, which on introspection makes all the sense in the world. If the students can just get more confident, get their questions answered, they're going to engage more. And then the other one, which you just alluded to, which is the process over just the output.

And that AI, interestingly, I think gives us a lens into the process that we never had before because you're not going to see what a student is doing at two in the morning while they're writing their essay, and they might be getting their older sister to write it for them or something like that. And now you get a lens.

Dr. C, what about yourself? You know, what was your initial reaction to Kigo, especially visa your reaction to Chat GPT, and how's been the experience so far?

It's a great question. You know, frankly when you, you know that you can go to all different kinds of workshops and read books, you know, it's helpful; it gives you a spark. But you know it's like how do I take that spark in and really allow that spark to take on like an organic nature to it, to where it just becomes embedded in how you do things, right? We talk about culture; we talk about climate.

And I see things like you know equity and access, and you know we talk about learning loss and we talk about you know the Matthew effect, right? The Haves keep having and the Have Nots don’t. How do we get into that gap and truly provide opportunities? I was at a workshop yesterday with a colleague, and we were looking at the new digital SAT.

And my colleague, who’s an educator and an involved parent, she said, “Well, you know, I was working with my daughter and you know she didn’t understand this, that, and the other, and so I’m like well we can get you a tutor,” you know, and dah, dah, dah. And it really got me thinking about this again because it’s like what about Kigo? Well, we've, to your point and to Dr. Buffington’s point, we’ve been on the KH Academy track for a long time now.

I’ve used it from a student’s perspective, a teacher's perspective, and now through Khan districts, an administrative perspective. But what I’m seeing with Kigo is the ability to take the ideas that people have and really make it to where it’s systemic. And so I think as we move further and further away from rote memory, you start to see lines blurred.

I mean our students are creators; they're producers; they are songwriters; they are singers; they are podcasters, right? They’re curators; they're consumers of media and information, but they're also creating it. And so what does all of that take? It takes increased depth of knowledge, complexity, interacting with materials, right? Interacting with concepts, etc.

Well, the problem is, if you think about the Matthew effect and you know the ability of some situations socioeconomically and culturally, whereby they are able to fill gaps, identify them, and fund them, what about everybody else? What about those who don’t have access to such types of things? And even if they do, what if it’s not working?

And so we hear all about, you know, student apathy and lack of engagement and you know, whatever the case is. And this is a question I’ll ask. I’ll say, “Okay, let's just say we do get your students’ attention. You have a captivated audience. What are you gonna do with it?” Let’s flip the script on that, right?

And so I think what's exciting to me as we use this data mode of Kigo and as we're observing with it, you're seeing students interacting with knowledge and concepts in a way that's increasing the complexity of what they're doing. And it’s not just a transaction, right? It’s not just, “Okay, I need this; you give me that.” It’s an ongoing relationship whereby students are interacting with new material or challenging themselves or expanding what they thought was true.

And that reignition of learning is what we're all passionate about, right? So we talk here a lot about, you know, how do we find ways to marry up passions, purpose, possibilities, etc. And so when I look at Kigo, to Dr. Buffington’s point, if I’m a teacher, it's not teaching for you, right?

But what can it do? It can help refresh knowledge; it can create and partner with the teacher to create hooks, right? It can help the teacher by creating exit tickets with them; it can help with lesson planning. It can give, you know, there’s even a neat little feature where you could take an entire lesson and it turns it into a fun little poem, right?

You can co-create rubrics, learning objectives; use it as a tool, to Dr. Buffington’s point. And then on learner engagement — I mean like some of the most exciting things during the pilot that they were finding out that you could talk to a literary figure. Oh my gosh! Or you could talk to someone historically, and then you’re — it just put them in the moment and it just brought learning to life.

And so it's so engaging! You know when I think about for years, we've said differentiation, you know, that was one of the biggies on KH Academy — and as you have said and as Dr. C have said, we were using KH Academy; we were early adopters. I loved it. We had our own — we even made our own KH Academy dictionary; it was pretty funny, on how to use it.

But what did I like about that? I liked that there was differentiation; there was that guide on the side, some extra help, right? And I see Kigo as exactly that, but I also see it as totally engaging. So I can look at it — wow, differentiation. And as an educator, I really didn’t have to do that much to provide that differentiation.

And it is a guide on the side, but on the same token it’s not something that kids don’t want to do; they like it. Now, one of our English teachers — and I totally cracked up at this — is that one of the kids said, and he was interacting with a historical figure with Kigo, and the kid said, “This is more fun than TikTok.”

So, you’ve made it — it’s more enlightening than TikTok! And when kids tell you that, you know you got something there. But anyway, I think that that's a big plus with this — this is not where I just have to get my assignment done. They're actually out there and they’re engaging with it and they’re taking it to new levels.

And we found with some of the kids that were part of the pilot, they were doing things that were not part of their assignment. They were out creating things — creating like companies and putting in these scenarios. It was just hysterical; we didn’t ask them to do that. They just really liked it!

And so I think that that is what we want for kids. We want them to wonder; we want them to innovate; we want them to be problem solvers and go out there and take the information and do something with it. And that's what really happened with this.

I do think again that beauty of just going back and looking at as an educator the chat history, so I know what they’re doing. I can see safety; I can see their work, etc. That’s really important to educators. But I think this has opened up a whole different meaning to engagement and what are they wondering and what do they want to know more about and what do they want to do with it.

And I do find that the kids that we serve today, I do think that they have a heart for other people and they are problem solvers. I do think that they have an entrepreneurial being that they want to make things and they want to be successful at it; they want it to serve other people, problem solve, and they want to be successful with what they've made.

This is just such a game changer with equity, and I think that Dr. C said that pretty well. I can take an English language learner, which we piloted with our E-teacher, and they are a game changer for them.

I mean, their primary language is not a stumbling block for them. They’re on par with their classmates, and that's pretty awesome. One of the things too that, you know, we’re talking to our AP Chemistry teacher and also a dual credit Early College teacher, just looking at some of the equations that they were doing in chemistry.

And, you know, Kigo wouldn't give them the answer, but it was probing them to how to get the answer. And so our teachers loved that. You know, if you’re at home trying to solve that problem and they can’t help you, Kigo was there to assist them. Now I will tell you that they all said that sometimes the kids started bullying AI because they just wanted the answer.

And it wouldn't do it. So, that made the teachers pretty happy, just to let you know. There's some feedback for you; there was a little bullying going on at times with Kigo, and you know, it just kept prompting them and said, “I’m not going to give you the answer.”

Yeah! Like that part of it, I think the Golden Rule should apply to AI: treat the AI as you wish you were treated yourself.

I mean, just continuing on that feedback lens — and I wasn’t joking when you know, our last meeting we have several features on Kigo that directly came out of that meeting. So I'm going to continue to pick y’all’s brain; you know, some of the things that we are working on above and beyond what you’re already experiencing: we’re working on giving the artificial intelligence, giving Kigo a sense of memory so that it knows the tone that a teacher or student prefers.

It remembers previous conversations; it can pick up where you left off. We're adding things where teachers can assign through Comigo both traditional KH Academy activities and AI activities, and potentially fine-tune the activity instead of saying, “Talk to historical characters,” like, “Hey! I want you to talk to Benjamin Franklin and figure out the following.”

And so we’re going to be doing things like that. We already have a little bit of this, but we're going to have more on reporting where Kigo really acts as a teaching assistant. You mentioned English language learners; we just released that it now works in every major language.

So a student could be doing their math or their chemistry in English, but they could be getting their help or their tutoring in Spanish, Portuguese, Hindi, or whatever language they might need. And then the other thing that we are hoping to do, let’s call it in the next six months, is have the AI have activities that are multi-user, facilitate collaborative learning amongst many students.

So you can imagine instead of having a debate with the AI, maybe the AI could facilitate a debate with several students or run a Socratic dialogue with several students or do a simulation or a game with several students.

So I’d love y’all’s thoughts; are there any ideas on what already exists or of that list that I just talked to you? Maybe you’re extra excited about? Any ideas on how to tweak it? Any concerns? And on the risk side, what would you like to see more of? Have you been seeing problems that you want to make sure that we can address to just make things go smoother?

I'll start with you, Dr. Buffington.

Well, I think one of the things that we gave feedback on, obviously sometimes we pick up on things that are safety concerns for us. And I think that you addressed you know immediately — you started digging into like how can we make sure that if there is some sort of risk to a student or to other people, with just what we — there’s an indicator system.

And so we appreciate that you took that feedback because a lot of the times we’re able to pick that up in class or in some work or a body of work that — or if a student has been talking to another student or a teacher, we're able to pick up some signs of things that where a student may need extra help because they're going through a very bad time or there is just some potential there for, you know, wrong application or something to that effect.

And so I think that you took our feedback pretty well in terms of us having concern for kids that may need some extra social-emotional support or if their safety is being compromised in their home or with other people. I think that that was one of our biggest concerns when we first started the pilot because we have things like that in place right now.

And I see kids using Kigo more than — I mean I just think they’re going to use it a lot! And so if they’re going to use that a lot, I like that you have built in some safety measures. That was really important to us in terms of going forward. I think engagement is really important and communicating with other people.

Thank you so much for the language portion that you just created because I think that is vitally important right now. And I would just say one of the things that I think is really important — and I think this goes back to the age-old question and we get this from middle school kids more than anyone — like, “Why do I have to learn that?”

And I think having experts out in the field — if we could, besides the AI portion being that expert, when you're saying that they can communicate with other students, I would love to see a database, or besides the AI expert, I would like to see experts out in the field.

Because a lot of the times with college readiness, and thinking about these are going to be our next leaders, you know, talking to people and understanding what they do for a living and how it might be changing, and just the whole concept of AI.

Let me give a case and point. So, right now when you think about computer science and we’re talking about coding and just trying to get kids to go into coding and computer science, it's going to be different now. AI gives it a whole different flavor, and I think that they need to be talking to, besides the AI expert, who are those people out in the field?

Like your people, how does this work behind the scenes? And wouldn’t you want to do this for a living? And if you really enjoy it, it’s really not even a job. But I think that there needs to be more of that. And so, you know, there’s software out there that you can meet up with an expert here, an expert there.

But giving kids a real flavor for it — and then, I mean, you can still, if you're going to allow them to meet with other kids, I’d like to see them meet with other experts out in the field.

It's a fascinating idea. I think you all know we have another sister nonprofit that I started during the pandemic called schoolhouse.com and give folks free live tutoring via video conference. And the way we knew that is by leveraging volunteers. Many of the volunteers are high school or college students, but many of them are professionals.

And when we launched Kigo, we started to think, well, maybe Kigo could be an interesting bridge between traditional Khan Academy and maybe something like Schoolhouse. Do-world where you actually have real people showing up. And so, Peggy, your idea — I’m almost thinking of like, what if schoolhouse.com — most parents when they go home, they want to tell their kids about their job and their kids aren’t interested — but the kids might be interested about other parents’ jobs, which tends to be the case.

And so there might be a fun way where you can show up on these, say, a Schoolhouse and then Kigo can say, “Hey, you were wondering why this matters? There’s a session that’s happening; so-and-so is showing up who’s a AI researcher or who's a doctor or who's a lawyer who can talk about wanting — you go to that and you'll learn a lot more about why this algebra is useful.”

So I love that idea! Dr. C, more ideas; keep them coming. We can’t — fears and risks — because those are also ideas that, you know, opportunities for us to make it better!

So, quite frankly, to go right off that note — I remember as a student, I didn’t understand why Shakespeare, for instance. And you know, in college when I was in undergrad and grad school and whatnot, I started to have a different appreciation for it. But ironically, to Dr. Buffington’s point, what really started that was this short little video that I stumbled upon where there were actors and actresses who were talking about why Shakespeare.

And for the first time, I started to view the theater, for example, not just in its own silo reality, like, “Oh, this is theater!” but as a bridge, if you would, like you mentioned, to all sorts of other occupations. And when you get to see and hear how things are hybrid now, right? Things aren’t siloed anymore. You can be in a subject and apply the concepts, the principles, the experiences to not just other things that you’re doing currently, but the possibilities are endless because we really don’t know how that’s going to come up later on, right?

We’re not even always consciously aware of it. And so when I think about the current activities for students inside of Khan through Kigo, I would encourage you to continue to look at ways to break silos down. And by that, I mean, you know, it's like modes of writing–modes of writing for far too long were taught in a way that was singular.

So it’s like, “This is expository writing, this is argumentative writing, this is narrative writing.” But, you know, research shows that the writing process of our most successful authors mirrors those of small children prior to going through a traditional K-12 education system because of exactly what we talked about before: curiosity!

Is it a discipline? Sure! Read Stephen King on writing; he will tell you it’s a discipline; it’s a science. But there has to be that passion. And so for me, I think about what’s the difference between what we have done, what we are doing, and what we could and should do?

What we could do and should do is break down the walls between classes, break down the walls between in-school and out-of-school. Dr. Buffington could tell you that our most successful things going on right now have been organic, and they then become systematic where the engineering teacher partners up with the business teacher who partners up with the teacher in biomedical —

Why? Because they’re aligned to passions; they’re aligned to things you're interested in. So if I look at something like craft a story, understanding when you go out and read and listen to podcasts, part of argumentation is storytelling. Writing is messy; the writing process is nonlinear; everything evolves and changes.

So to Dr. Buffington’s point, two things here: one, applying these topics in a way that makes it more and more seamless. And that's why I love your comment, Sal, about having the journey be something that is building upon itself. And if the AI capability is such where it allows the learning progression to continue, that’s a game changer.

I had one of my best composition teachers in grad school talk about how, you know writing should ultimately be assessed not if these little you know like, “Oh well, you took this class and earned an A or that class and earned a B.” It should be where did the students start and then where did they end up at the natural end of a segment?

And it’s about that growth. Well, that growth is such that you start to understand, oh everything is rhetorical! Right? You go back to Plato, to Socrates, to Aristotle, whatever the case is — everything's rhetorical.

Well our students now are presenting to a world that is gigantic, but it can also be niche, right? How can we take these things that they’re learning about, history, technology, engineering, you know, the human body — all these different things — and say, this could apply to fields that don’t even exist?

This could end up applying; it could be sticky, right? That’s how our brains work; we need to stick information onto things that we already have frameworks built on in such a way that now I’m combining something I’m doing in class with the side hustle I have, you know, a shop that I do on the side or whatever, and also at home in my own personal and preferences and whatever the case may be.

So for example, if I listen to podcasts about, you know, sports related things, that may then change the way that I do a recorded, you know session for staff because I like the way that they introduce this or that, you know, use voice inflection there and whatnot.

So my encouragement would be twofold. One, continue to break those silos down to show how all this stuff fits into other stuff, right? And then two, there's a little bit right now in Kigo as it relates to navigating college admissions and financial aid, you know, and then also like the career aspect.

So I would say I would encourage you to continue to connect students and what they’re learning about or could learn about with then what. And when you think about like the state of Indiana for example, a lot of what Dr. Buffington, I, and our team are doing here is helping align what students are doing now with stackable credentials of currency, showing future employers, scholarship committees, etc. that they have mastery of something or proficiency in something or experience in something.

We see this even with digital badges and things of that nature. So when a student sees a career path, it’s intimidating because the language that’s used to characterize it might not have anything to do with really what the occupation entails and/or the future occupations I may use these things for don’t even exist, right?

And so how can we try to marry those worlds up to connect students present with their future, in the shorter term as well as, you know, the opportunities that exist thereafter that we don’t even know of yet?

I love that — this kind of theme of breaking down barriers between subjects which I think is now more doable than ever and then also between school and the real world. One last question for you, Dr. Buffington. Let’s fast forward, I don’t know, two, three years— it doesn't have to be a long time, but things are changing very fast.

Do you think everything we’ve talked about is going to somehow fundamentally alter what school is like? Including, we didn’t even talk about things like assessment which we are starting to think about on our side. Or do you think it’ll just be a nice supplement on top of the existing architecture? Do you think in some ways it changes the classroom fundamentally?

Dr. Buffington, well, I mean Tim will know this— Dr. C, I mean, I had the philosophy that during COVID the landscape was forever changed, right? I mean it’s already changed! If I don’t want to come to my public institution and sit all day, I can choose to go to an online school and you know, maybe that works for me.

I think that when I look at this, I don’t want to view this as supplemental; I want to view this as a tool that is usable now, but it's also able to help us in the future. You know, when I think about things and I think about college readiness and you know right now, I can let a kid get out early, graduate early, and you know I have kids that are graduating with Associate's degrees in our high school right now.

What do I see potentially happening here? I see what people want with the kids that are graduating from high school now— they want them to be problem solvers; they want them to be able to collaborate and work on a team; they want them to have ethical practices behind them. And I think that you already have the potential with this!

Now, the interesting thing is, how do I give a student an internship? And maybe in Kigo there’s an internship aspect of this and it counts for their day, you know? So I’m all about reinventing high school and what that looks like.

And you know, I think that funnels down to, you know, middle school, elementary. I think there are so many different aspects of this AI that I could explore. You know, when I think about kids want to have fun; they don’t want to dread assignments.

I already see that that part is cured. I see kids going on there just because they want to and they like asking questions and that's what we want as educators! We want them asking questions and they're fascinated by it.

And so I want to take that fascination and build on it. And if that means redesigning the way we do school, then we have to do that, right? And so we already have some redesigning and reinventing our high schools with early college.

And you know, you can get industry certifications— one year of college, two years of college. You don’t necessarily need to go five days a week; you don’t maybe need to go a whole day. Yeah! Because you can have a different opportunity.

And if that opportunity presents itself in such a way, you're credentialed to graduate and perhaps even enter the workforce or enter postsecondary to further explore what we’re trying to achieve with, you know, some postsecondary credential that contributes to the world.

And so I’m all about are there better ways, more efficient ways, or more exciting, engaging ways to reinvent things that we’re doing? And I think that, like anything that’s been new to education, sometimes we are the last adopters. And so why?

And I think we started talking about this, they’re afraid of it. And you can't be afraid of it; you have to embrace what the future is. And so I think there’s going to be some adaptability when you're talking about supplemental, right?

I mean, like so right now, you’re going to have early adopters that are going to basically take something that they have in their curriculum app and say, “How does AI help me? How might I use Kigo?” And then you’re going to start seeing some trailblazing where it’ll be like, “Whoa! I’m not-” it’s not a replacement.

And you’re going to see them start using it in a way that enhances even more and it's not replacing like what they did and it’s pushing kids to grow and learn and perhaps come up with an idea that they might cure something, you know?

I love the fact that this is a generation that likes to problem solve and they’ll say, “What about this or what about that?” And I think that this has the potential to do that!

So if I have a student and you know to talk about what we were talking about, we will put kids in a biomedical class and then we will have them butt up with the engineering program because they're thinking about one thing and these people over here that can really build it for you or help you with your calculations or whatever those barriers are broken.

And I see high school being totally reinvented with giving kids the opportunity to apply this in a real-world setting. And so I think that there’s room for this. And I'm just going to give you a concept here of, you know, Indiana is doing something with career scholarship accounts — they’re called CSAs— and it’s really meant to put kids out into the workforce and work-based learning and internships.

And they're already on the cusp of what would a high school diploma look like with a kid that we give this CSA to? And is it really the traditional like you have to have 40 credits of this and that and that? And they're starting to see well, maybe they don’t need that!

And maybe, just maybe, they’re going to be somebody that I put out in the workforce that has some know-how with using technology in an appropriate way and come up with a solution for something that they've been struggling to find.

I think the potential is there for that! I think you're going to see early adopters supplementing, replacing, and then finding new things. And then I think you're going to see kids be like, “I could do this, I could do that!” and we're going to have to relook at the way we're delivering to allow growth, if that makes sense?

Makes a ton of sense! And, you know, I could talk to both of y’all for hours, especially about this topic, because it’s so fascinating. But I love that final push where, you know, break all the boundaries. And actually, we always get our ideas from activity ideas from you, Dr. Buffington.

And you kind of reinforced something that we were brainstorming, which is what if there was an activity for students or for teachers or for anyone to solve big problems in the world? You know, you need to tackle climate change; how can I, as a student, start to tackle climate change?

How can I, as a student, start to tackle cancer research? How can I, as a student, start to tackle I don’t know, whatever issue in the world you think needs solving? A lot of students want to, but they don't know where to start — where do they?

So I like that idea as well. Well, thank you both.

Can I just mention, in terms of what you just said and how important it is, and they try to solve things that are so important to them. So during COVID, one of my students was trying to figure out how to have a better check-in system with symptoms in the emergency room.

And why? She wanted it to notify them that you have to reprioritize who's in your emergency room because your grandfather died from COVID. So I had this little entrepreneur innovator, and we have maker spaces here.

We do, you know we do maker fairs, we have and we have STEM spaces everywhere. And her creation was, and she worked with the engineers at the hospital on symptoms and where they're at and how to reprioritize who you’re going to see first, because it was so real to her.

And to you, you know when you're saying climate change, the things that really matter to them, they will spend all day — that is the type of student that won't go to bed because they're out there trying to figure out where’s the information, what type of tool, what kind of instrument. She’s in the biomed class, goes down to the engineering class, and they’re creating a handheld that’s going to sync with watches or whatever at the hospital to change the priority of like, “Who do you need to see now?”

And I just think that our kids have that potential, right? And so guess what? That didn’t happen in her classroom; that happened outside of her classroom but she brought it into the classroom. That there has to be a better way, right?

And so I think that this opens up all kinds of avenues of questions or problems that they want to solve and it gives them a good start, and it will make them want to keep going after it, you know what I mean? And I think that’s the beauty of it. It’s so engaging; they don't want to stop!

100%! If I may, just on both of our behalfs, you know, thank you for, you know, you — that’s what you did right. You started by identifying a problem, a need, right? That was personal to you and familiar, and you ask a lot of questions and you trailblaze and then, you know, here we are right now!

And so what our hope is, is that as passionate as the three of us are, for example, about education and, you know, Kigo and just different ways to try to help our students be on mission to be able to pursue their passions, if they can have that same kind of passion about things that they're interested in, and we’re marrying up the possibilities where they can pursue them, then you know education may look different, but the fundamental, you know, true North Star remains the same, right?

And then we just go about it in different ways, you know, but the why is still there; the denominator is still there and that’s our kids, that’s our students. And so just thank you— I think on both of our behalf for championing that.

No, well thank you all for being part of this and taking time out. Yeah, this was the best thing ever. I mean, I'm not kidding you; I could sit and talk with the teachers and the kids that were using this. I could sit with them all day, and they were sending me things that they were creating out of Kigo.

I was loving it and I have other work to do, but I wanted to read what they were doing with it. And, you know, I think just kudos and thank you for including us in the pilot. I think that we will be trailblazers with going out and talking to people about how to break the barriers and how to use it.

But you can't do that without giving people an initial start, right? And you did that, and I’m just telling you it’s fascinating to sit and talk to these teachers about how they think they're going to use it next.

And so thank you for that. You've taken something that I think that they were so afraid of, especially the English teachers, and they’re not afraid of it. And so they know how they're going to approach it.

They did talk to our Secretary of Education, Katie Jenner, which is interesting because you talked to Katie Jenner and she’s like, “Hey, I want to talk to those teachers.” And so we lined it up and she was fascinated by it too.

So, you've taken something and given us a really good tool to use in education, and for that, we're grateful for it. And I can’t wait to see the next version!

No, we’re excited! I think this is going to be one of many conversations over the next few months and years as we go on this adventure together. But thank you because, you know, obviously we can do all this work, but if we're not serving the needs of school leaders and teachers and students then why are we doing this so it means a lot to be able to partner with y’all?

Thank y’all!