How to take AI from vision to practice. Part 3

This conversation forward. Please ask questions, comment in the chat. Uh, we'd love to hear from you. So let, um, yes, we are sharing. We are recording this webinar, and we will be sharing the webinar after it is done, so absolutely you'll be able to access the amazing content that we will talk about today.

So let's start with thinking back to this school year, or actually just AI implementation in general. What are some of the most common concerns that leaders are having when starting to approach thinking about AI tools? And how are we addressing those? First part, second part, and are they different concerns than what teachers have?

So, um, Dina, why don't you kick us off?

Sure, thanks Danielle. So I think, you know, the first thing is to recognize. Stacy mentioned she taught her way through the COVID years, and I was a district math coach during the COVID years, working alongside teachers in classrooms. There have been so many changes, especially with COVID, especially with technology in classrooms. That I think anytime administrators take a look at the technology that they're going to use—that they're considering purchasing or implementing—they want to be very cautious because they don't want just another thing. They don't want something that's technology for the sake of technology.

Um, and they want to make sure that what they're using is really going to drive results and help teachers and be a support for teachers, not just, you know, that other thing that they've got to use that they need to try to add into an already overflowing toolkit. Oh yeah, overflowing toolkit.

And, um, some of the educators are coming in the chat. Teachers are worried, Stacy. So how are you approaching this, or how is our team or your team approaching this?

Yeah, well, I think on the professional learning side, there is a lot to acknowledge about how much time and thought it takes as a building leader, as a principal and assistant principal, to really train our teachers effectively and support them with what they need to bring AI into a classroom. It is a shift in how we teach. It's a shift in how students learn, and just doing a training on a Tuesday afternoon is not going to be enough. Teachers deserve and need training over time, and they need training that's responsive.

We need a feedback loop to where trainers know what it is that teachers need and can really design training that's customed to that because this is not one-size-fits-all. What we need in a small district in central California is going to be very different than what we need in a large district in Florida. Our trainers and our service providers need to be really responsive to that.

I also think that we have an obligation as solution providers to support building administrators. Bill was talking about in the chat this idea that teachers are worried about plagiarism and using AI to write papers for them. And as a principal, we have to think about what does that mean for our campus? Do we need to write policy, or do we need policy when a simple process will do? Right? If we can avoid policy and just have a clear process, that's probably the way to go as this stuff grows and evolves. So as solution providers, I think it's our obligation to be there to support administrators as they figure all of this out.

That's can I sure. So Sasha asked and submitted a question: how do you think AI will change our relationship with knowledge and evolve the skill profiles of our students?

I think one of the, you know, Stacy was talking about time. I think one of the big pieces with just relationships in general is that AI gives us the opportunity to enhance our own understanding, our own skill set, but it takes away all of that time we spend on administrative tasks. It helps us build relationships as leaders to sit with teachers, to work with them, give them the time to do some of the training because it will save them time on all of those administrative tasks. It will save them time and give them more time to sit with teachers, to work with teachers alongside them.

And then likewise, it gives teachers that same opportunity to be with students, to sit with students, to talk to students, and to listen and hear what they know and what they understand. Yes, and wouldn't that be wonderful if we had all the time in the world to do that? But too, I think both of you are saying it's important to make the time because as building-level leaders, you get the chance to choose the schedule that you implement in your buildings.

Speaking of that, Stacy, there's a question in the chat before we move on to start talking about implementation that I'd love for you to address. The question of plagiarism: what are some differences between process and policy? Can you speak to some of the examples that you've seen for that?

Yeah, I think, you know, I've been in a lot of these different seats, including a school board member. And I think that as we take inventory of this AI landscape, the one thing that Dena and I have learned is that there's a lot to learn, and we don't know what this is going to look like a year from now. So I think we need to be very thoughtful when we think about making policy for an entire building or for an entire district, right? When we make a policy at a school board level or at a district level, we are then locked into these really tight parameters.

And in this case, for a technology that we don't know where this is going to go, right? This is evolving so quickly and really causing us to sit back and learn and listen. So in the meantime, could this be something that teachers work through? When we think about plagiarism, could it be something that teachers put into place with students? "Hey, I want you to cite this if you use AI." That's great. Just tell me which tool you used and what prompt you used to get it.

Could it be something where teachers take the step of defining when AI can be used in the process, maybe AI can be used in the brainstorming and in the drafting, but in the final draft, I want you to sit and do this in class so I can see what you can do on paper. So I think process can be something that we formalize, and we do in our schools. But policy, being more formal, more structured, and more rigid, is something that we probably want to slow down and be a bit more cautious about as this technology evolves and as we learn together what it looks like to implement it.

Thank you. Perfect segue into let’s actually talk about what it looks like to implement something like this. So, Dina, we have been working with districts for the past, well, for longer than just a year, obviously, but with AI and Conmigo specifically. So what are some strategies that our teams are thinking about with Khan Academy and the Khan Academy AI schools as we're supporting districts?

I think the first thing that we've really focused on is having a clear purpose. I want to try this isn't really, um, very concrete and doesn't provide great direction for teachers in what to do in the classroom. So having a clear idea of what you want to do. We work with a few very large districts, and the one thing that they have had in common is they've had a clear space and place where they wanted to try AI. For example, one of them wanted to support high school students with intensive reading, and they were laser-focused on high school with intensive reading.

And so what we did is then we worked on: okay, so what does that look like? Which tools are most aligned with the way that teachers are already teaching? Which content is going to be most supportive and most helpful? Another district was laser-focused on mathematics. They really wanted to support students to do grade-level instruction in their math class. So what that looked like is how do we leverage Conmigo to make sure that students are staying on grade level, working on their grade-level content, and how do we use it to either fill in those gaps or to put those scaffolds in place?

And so having that clear purpose and then communicating that to teachers so that teachers aren't saying, "Okay, but how does this apply to me? What does this do for me?" But being very concrete and saying, "This is what I want to do. This is how we're going to start," because it's a journey with any innovation. It's not a complete overhaul because, especially in education, it takes a little bit of time. We've got to have a chance to grow, to practice, to learn. So be clear with what you want to do, communicate what you want to do, and then in those districts, we tracked the progress. We would check in with them every two weeks, every week sometimes, and let’s talk about how it’s going. What are you seeing in classes? Here's what we're hearing from teachers.

How can we support? Do we need to make any adjustments, any pivots? Do you need resources? We've made pacing guides and scavenger hunts and all sorts of good things for the districts that we work with to make sure that they have what they need that's aligned to their goals, their targets, and the way that they want to implement AI in their classrooms. And so it's definitely a journey, but with one year in, I think we've learned a lot. But that clarity of purpose is my number one recommendation for anyone who's considering it, or if anyone is thinking about how to get the most out of what they're doing this next year, that's my top bit of advice.

If you’re all listening closely, Dena just gave you a master answer on implementing any Tech Tool in your District: clear focus, consistency, support. And I want Stacy—so let’s think about the support aspect of that. Um, give us some examples of how we approach that at Khan Academy and how we are really ensuring that teachers aren't scared of the AI as we’re working with districts.

Yeah, well, I mean, I think the first thing we have to say is that there are a range of emotions from teachers and from leaders, and we have to be okay with that, right? There's everything from enthusiasm and excitement to caution and some pause and that's okay because it’s all of those perspectives that are going to lend themselves to creating a really strong implementation. I'd add to what Dena said in that we also need to be intentional as leaders about creating a space and creating a dialogue that frames us as leaders as learners also.

We don’t have all of the answers and the solutions yet, and so teachers deserve to know that we, as leaders, are also learning and that we’re open to stumbling a little bit and going back and revising our process because we’re learning together. So from an implementation side, both success on Dena’s team and professional learning on my team, again, I know I said this before but it is not a one-size-fits-all approach. We can’t take a packaged offering and say, “Here you go, this is how you Implement AI, and this is what implementation looks like.” It’s very different in different communities or different areas depending on one’s size. There are lots of different things that have to be considered, and so I think from as a solution provider, having an open dialogue—Dena mentioned meeting weekly, sometimes bi-weekly, every couple of weeks—to look at what we're doing, look at what's working, look at what's not working, and to partner.

And then designing solutions for what is not working, that entire burden doesn't live with the district. As a solution provider, we are there to partner with you, and those solutions are going to vary depending on where you are and what your implementation looks like.

Yes, so I'd love to just unpack this a little bit because I know that you both have had experience with different types of implementation. So I’d love to talk about an implementation where you really need to go from the grassroots level to get the teacher buy-in. You have really excited leaders, but the teachers are hesitant. And then conversely, what about implementations where the teachers are super excited and the leaders are not as aware or checked in? So what are the two approaches that you found successful, and then how does that change with AI tools?

Probably not, but you know, uh, Dina, kick us off.

Okay. I think for teachers that are more hesitant, when you've got super enthusiastic leaders that they have the best of intentions and they're so excited about the opportunity and possibility, but some teachers are, do not share that enthusiasm and need a little bit more hand-holding and guidance. I think one thing that we have tried to do—and it could even be a building leader that needs a little more support and guidance.

Um, I think one thing that we have tried to do is to take the learning and take the implementation in bite-sized pieces. Start with one way that you can use AI in your classroom and try it. Try it for a couple of weeks; try it one time, try it three times. Just give it a try and see if this is something that you could possibly use. We are pretty good at recommending what that first thing might be based on the teacher, based on the subject area, because the truth is we have played with it, we have tried it, we are teachers, we are educators, we are parents.

Um, and we have gone in and we've tried it, we've written lesson plans, we've written lab reports, we have created activities, and we go in and we spend a lot of time as learners to think about what are the best ways to use this tool so that we can make recommendations that are going to meet teachers' needs and that are going to support them to get the most out of learning but learning in a way that's not too overwhelming.

Yeah, absolutely. Stacy, what are your thoughts?

Yeah, I—you know, I think that a lot of times when teachers are not, you know, banging on the door with excitement, it's not that they're not excited, it’s not that they don’t want to learn about this new technology, it’s that they have too much on their plates. And that's always been the case, but it is especially the case since COVID. So a big challenge for us as leaders is how if we're going to put this on their plate, if there's another tool, another technology they need to learn, what is it we're taking off?

And it could be that it’s something big or it could be that it's a series of smaller administrative tasks that we're taking off or that AI can help with to alleviate that burden. But I actually, you know, when we think about implementations, I actually want to just tell you a little story about a district where the leadership was very, very excited. I mean, they were like gung-ho, we are going to bring this in, we’re going to be leaders and innovators in the AI space. And I went to this District, I had the privilege of being the one to deliver the professional learning, and the teachers were not excited—y'all. They were tired.

They had been doing a lot, and you know, kids were fighting them a little bit as kids will sometimes do. And you know, these teachers were watching basketball on their laptops during training because they were just tired and they needed a moment. And what I think that this leadership team, with all of their excitement, did so, so well was they didn't push the timeline. They were excited, but they allowed teachers the time that they needed to play with the technology, to come around on their own.

And we’re now about 18 months down the road with this school district, and we now have some real champion teachers there that have had the time to develop their craft, their practice, and their belief about how AI can empower learners and empower the process. So even if you have that enthusiasm and that passion as a leader, sometimes it's about, you know, just tempering that a little bit and pausing it to allow teachers the time that they need to come around, to be ready to digest and put that into practice.

Yeah, a lot of this goes back to time, and I'm going to ask a version of what Sasha is asking in the chat because when we think about education and when we think about time and practice and shifts and change, I’d love for you both to comment on how are we balancing creating implementation strategies that are realistic for what's happening today, but also aspirational, knowing what changes might come in the future.

And as you both shared, AI is changing. I mean, even Saul's books—uh, which you all can get a copy of Saul's books on Amazon.com or wherever you buy a book—but he talks a lot about aspirational parts of AI. So how are we thinking through that both today, realistic, and then in the future? Dina, you want to kick us off?

Sure, I think right now it's really—where most educated—it’s really about comfort. It's getting comfortable navigating how do you ask questions, how do you blend ideas. And for so long, we have worked and we have Googled, you know, I used to Google one thing at a time. But now we have this opportunity to blend, to blend social studies with AVID strategies with mathematics. And we've always had this kind of pie-in-the-sky idea of what cross-curricular learning could be.

And I think the possibility for that—and understanding content in situations and themes—is the opportunity is greater than it’s ever been, and the possibility. And I think kids are hungry for that. So in terms of the aspiration, I think that interconnected learning is a big part of that. And being able to see the grand scheme. And we're not seeing equations in isolation; we're not seeing paragraphs in language arts that are one paragraph that we're trying to decipher with no context.

Um, social studies becomes more—we see how it applies to our everyday life and world, and we're able to really thread these themes across content is one of the biggest pieces that I'm most excited about. But it's baby steps. It's let's blend a couple of those things and get you comfortable, and when you're ready, let's go. So we are excited for, again, the journey. It's a journey, and everyone's path looks different. Um, a very wise woman that I've once known said that sometimes people need stairs to get where they're going; others need an escalator, and some take an elevator. And everyone is on their journey on their own.

So how do we identify the right mode of transportation and then make sure that you can get there along your way?

Yeah, and I think that it's important to frame a vision of where we think this is going to go. Whether that's, you know, we have ideas in Saul's book and from leaders across the industry, but as a building leader, framing the vision of what we think this might possibly look like in two years, in three years, for our staff as well as for our students, but acknowledging that that is not going to be a straight line. We're going to, you know, veer off in different directions over the next few months as we learn and come together.

So taking the baby steps towards that vision and being willing to revise what that vision is over time is very important.

Yeah, I mean when you're thinking about change, right? Any change in education—it can't move that fast because it takes, if you all ever listen to the theory of change—listen, there's one theory of change—but if you've read about change or the research behind it, you have early adopters, and then you have people that sometimes drag their feet. But I love how you both are really talking about iteration, testing, tracking, tweaking, like listening to what the needs are.

And the future is exciting because what Dena even shared—and Stacy echoed—that is how are we blending and making things more relevant to our lives? Because I think a pitfall of school—and I think Sasha has been talking about this a little bit in the chat with the traditional school model—is very isolated.

And I think as just, you know, 2024, we're not isolated. We are a global—I mean you can get so much information so fast. So to be able to allow students to see how social studies and mathematics blend, like that's just a really cool next evolution of where we could go a little bit faster. But speaking of tools and speed of education, sometimes it can be overwhelming. Sometimes there are a lot of ways to get there.

And you were talking about a little bit of the teacher tools, but I'd love for you just both to talk about what is making Conmigo specifically different than other tools that might be out there, and why are, in your opinions, in your experience, teachers excited in embracing Conmigo?

Stacy, why don't you kick us off?

Yeah, I'll jump in. I think what's special about Conmigo is that it really is designed for an educational setting. So student safety and data privacy is core to everything that we do, and it is central to the idea of what it means to bring a tool into a school district, right? We have to protect our learners and ensure that the tools that we're using are designed for students, for teachers, in an educational setting, and that is the soul of the design of Conmigo. So students do what students might do sometimes and try to get off track and, you know, try to have a conversation about broccoli or whatever it is that they're talking about that's not math, that's not history.

Conmigo is always going to bring them back to the topic. It's going to take a very Socratic approach where it doesn't just give them the answer but it elicits their thought process and the way that they're going about learning, to really push students into not just getting the correct answer but into that metacognitive state where we're thinking about how we're learning and what that process looks like.

And that goes back to what Sasha was saying about we have to think about the way that we define assessment. And I think Conmigo is a step in that direction. A lot of the reason that, as an industry, we're going slowly is because K12 education is bound by the assessments that we take—the sumita of assessments—we are accountable to an assessment at the end of the year, and we teach to that. Of course, we do, right? That’s how we’re measured and how our success is measured.

But we can also start pushing against that and start focusing more on the process of how students learn, where they're getting that information, how they're taking that in, and how they're developing that final product, regardless of what the answer is. How are students learning, and what was their creative process? What was their critical thinking process? And that's information that teachers can get from Conmigo, looking at exactly the conversation that kids are having—it's like a little peephole into their brain to see how they're gleaning this information and where their confusion is.

So I think that's a very powerful part of the process that teachers can get a lens into when they're bringing Conmigo into the classroom.

Yes, um, I'd love for you to comment, and then also talk a little bit about our approach to mastery learning, if you don’t mind thinking about focus on learning.

I think a really good example of what Stacy was saying about it being the process is our writing coach that is coming very, very soon, where, you know, we see so many educators, and I’ve noticed it in the chat too, asking about plagiarism. How do we know that AI isn't writing students' papers? Well, we know because with the writing coach, you see the process. You see the outline that students have crafted, you see their brainstorm, you see as they're putting all of those pieces together, and then you see the process of their draft and their revisions.

Conmigo is very process-focused, very focused on conceptual understanding, and how are students putting those pieces into place to build their knowledge and build their learning. And so—and that really leads into the mastery learning piece, Danielle. We are all about students mastering the content that they should, and if they don't have something, we don't want them to get trapped below grade level.

We've seen all too often students get stuck, they're working off grade level, trying to fill in gaps rather than getting the needed scaffolds to work on grade level. So how can we use Conmigo, use AI tools to understand their thinking? Because maybe they're having trouble with this standard because there's one step that they have that's not quite right, that's not quite accurate. And if we can just make a little tweak, a little fix, they’ll be off to the races and they'll know exactly what they need to do, and we can keep them moving along with their grade-level content.

So both our platform and with the support of Conmigo, we are focused on mastery learning and ensuring that students have the opportunity to—maybe they need to slow down and practice a skill a couple of times—that's okay! We do that too. As adults, sometimes you've got to try something two, three, four times before you get the hang of it, but other times you get it right away and you're ready to keep moving.

So with mastery learning, you're able to learn and move at your own pace. You're not stuck being slowed down because you have to wait and you have to do something 30, 40, 50 practice times.

Um, but maybe after four or five, you know, practice exercises, maybe just sharing your thinking, showing what you can do, you’re ready to keep on moving.

Danielle, can I give an example of what Dena was just saying?

Yes, please!

When we think about that process, and Dena gave the example of writing coach, which is so powerful, I too was a math teacher, and I know Dena and I both really believe in the power of exit tickets and looking at student work, right? We cannot just look at whether or not they got the right answer. We need to look at how they're approaching a problem and identify where their misconception is or where they might be getting stuck.

But doing that every day for 120, 15 kids is a lot, and sometimes, honestly, it doesn't get done. I've taken exit tickets on field trips to my house with the best of intentions, and then nothing ever happens with them, right? So one of the things that Conmigo does is imagine we have students that are solving systems of equations, and they're having this back and forth and this conversation with Conmigo. What a teacher can do is get a summary of what students are talking about; that can help the teacher to very quickly identify, "Oh, they're getting stuck right here at this point. They're struggling with distributing," right? Or they're struggling with using substitution, whatever that is.

It does not take the place of looking at student work, but maybe we don’t have to do it every day, right? Maybe three or four days a week we can use Conmigo to help us analyze 75% of our exit tickets, and we just look at four or five students, and we cycle who those are. Nothing that Conmigo does replaces the invaluable interaction between a teacher and a student, but what it can do is alleviate some of that burden so that we don’t have to do all of it every single day.

I love so much what both of you are talking about, and all of the participants or people watching this video, I want you to take a minute and pause and think for a second. There was a little talk in the chat—if you’re watching this video, you might not see the chat—but there's talk in the chat about are we shifting from the industrial model of education to something different?

And what we're talking about is learning. I've seen this for the last, I think, 20 years in education—the revolution is focusing on learning. Just let that sink in for a second. It's not tests, like Stacy was saying. It's not assessments. How are we protecting learning environments for all of our students? How are we giving them time and space and the right tools for them to understand things, and they're not just being shoved along? Like, how many of you ever felt like you were shoved along in school? Or if you have kids, they're being shoved along.

This is the revolution y'all! And what's cool about this is that AI is helping to just shorten the time frame of the really essential work that humans need to do. So I’d love for you to comment on some human stories of potential struggle or potential triumph.

So you've been working really closely with teachers doing this essential work in the classroom for the—well, especially with AI—for the last year. But just focusing on mastery learning the last couple of years, can you tell us a memorable story of a teacher maybe struggling with Conmigo or even just Khan Academy content? What challenges did they face? Or conversely, do you have a triumph story or a challenge that turned into a triumph? Either one.

Well, I can jump in with a little bit of both. Great!

So one of the very first trainings that we did in Conmigo, I had a teacher that was just overwhelmed and in tears, feeling quite confident that AI was not only going to replace their job, but that AI could evolve to be this really scary technology that takes over, you know, the world. Right? And that’s powerful, and that's a very real feeling that’s out there. This is a teacher that was terrified for themselves, for their students, right?

It’s big feelings! Over the past 18 months, this is a teacher that has very slowly started to dip their toes into using Conmigo, and now has automated a lot of the work that happens on the backside so that they're spending more time with their students. This teacher, as we’ve seen in the chat, is not real super excited about using this with the kids yet. We might get there, but this is a teacher that has taken baby steps from deep fear to now having Conmigo help write student-facing assignments, write student-facing rubrics, to help write reports on what students are doing.

And so they've gotten more time in their day—right? I hope it's translating into more time with their family in the evenings because they're not stuck at school trying to write what this rubric looks like or what this assignment looks like. And during the day, less trying to sneak away to the computer to knock something out really quick and more time to sit with my kids.

And I think that speaks to the idea of allowing people the space and the grace to evolve in their thinking and their understanding of how this can support them and their time because we talk about mastery learning for kids, but it’s true of our teachers too, right? We have to give everybody the time and space that they need to embrace this technology and to figure out what it will look like for them so that they can evolve in what it might be five years from now.

Also, so it’s been a really exciting series of steps for this particular teacher and many others, but it’s a nice example of what can happen when we provide space as leaders.

Yeah, absolutely. Dena, how else are we doing that? How else are we? I mean, have you actually—do you want to tell a time that we’ve supported leaders in either a triumph or leaders in overcoming a challenge to a triumph, right?

All of it!

Yeah! So I was working with a school site, a leadership team, and the question that they had asked is they said we—we are instructional leaders. That's our job. But we do not have a good handle on this AI Conmigo thing—so can you help us? Can you give us three ways that we can practice using this so that then our teachers—we can model this for our teachers and help them? And I said, “Yeah, let’s get started. Let’s go.”

And so we started with the first thing that they wanted to look at, was recommending assignments, and they wanted to see how Conmigo could recommend assignments for groups of students. And so we pulled up and we took a look at a teacher account, a teacher classroom, and we looked at what Conmigo could do to recommend assignments. And they were—they went silent. They were all totally quiet.

And I said, “Are we okay? Do you need any help? Do you have questions?” And they said, “We can actually make instructional adjustments after seven days, and we don’t have to give kids extra tests?” And I said, “No, you don’t! We can do it after seven days.” And they said, “But do you know—like we’ve always had to schedule kids for a semester in an intervention or a school year in an intervention. But if we can make adjustments after seven days, and we can pivot, and we can support, do you know how much we can—like how much we can adjust?”

And I said, “I know! I know! We’re going to do great things with this.” And they were so excited. And just the way that they were thinking about the impact on students and not having students stuck in an intervention that they didn’t need to be in but being able to make those instructional adjustments so quickly— that was one of my favorite moments, I think, over the past year is working with that group.

My other favorite moment—this is a leader moment, but I’m going to share it anyway because it was really fun. I was working with a group of teachers, and one of them said that she was pushing back on me really hard about having Conmigo write her lesson plans and how do I make sure this is right for my kids? And what about the English Learners in my class? And what about, you know, making sure that I'm connecting to good science content?

And we talked about using the Khan Academy content that was there for her chemistry students, and we were going back and forth. And I spent about 45 minutes with her, and by the end, she had a really good lesson plan done, and she was happy.

The next day, I got an email from her in all caps saying, “I just wrote 43 lesson plans, and I’m done for a month and a half, and I'm so excited!” And she was so happy because once she got the hang of it, then she was just off to the races! And I did share that with her instructional coach, and the coach replied back and said, “She’s never been positive after PD! I’m so excited about this!”

And so that was definitely a victory as well, and I think that it’s really, when you have the time—I think that’s the other piece that Stacy touched on, but I really want to emphasize—as you’re trying AI, take the time as a leader to learn yourself. Take the time to explore. Have a partner sit with you so that you've got somebody to chat with. Reach out to us, and we'll sit with you!

But really it’s about having a safe place to learn and ask questions, but give yourself the time to learn and give teachers that time because once they do, once they feel comfortable and confident, they're going to do great things, and they're going to be able to pivot and make adjustments after seven days and keep students moving, and we’re going to open up a whole new world of learning.

Yeah, that's a really fun thing, especially the teacher who is so excited to write 42 lesson plans. Like hey everybody, a teacher just wrote 42 lesson plans in a really short time! How long would that have taken you? Without those tools? I'm going to say for me, a long, long time.

So I want to dig into a little bit—there are some comments coming in through the chat. Can you all speak to a little more clarity on the goals and some of our implementation focuses? People are asking for more examples and maybe how we're supporting multi-tiered systems of support, how we're supporting diverse learners, how we're supporting English language learners, students with disabilities.

Comment just a little bit more on successful strategies that we are using in our implementations. Who wants to start that?

Uh, Stacy?

Yeah, sure! I’ll start with the second half. I just left a comment in the chat. I am very excited! I—my background is in teaching in historically underrepresented areas with a very high percentage of English language learners, and I wish I had Conmigo for my students!

And, you know, there are different populations of students that can use this idea of a safe space to test your ideas, to practice what you’re going to say and your thinking. There’s English language learners, we have students with anxiety, we have students that are just generally shy or uncertain—maybe they've had some academic trauma where they said something wrong out loud, and they don’t want to do that again because that was mortifying.

So I love the idea of Conmigo as a safe space to test your ideas, to practice your language, to practice the way you're going to articulate a thought before you have to say it out loud, whether it's to a teacher or to a class or to a group of students. Conmigo can be a place where you can put that idea out there, get some help with your wording, get some help with language.

Conmigo is fully supported in Spanish and Portuguese, so having that space to where you can stay up with content, you’re not falling behind in content, and you’re simultaneously acquiring English confidence in that space is invaluable for kids, and it's not something that I had when I was teaching. When I was teaching, the best I could do was go up and kind of pull up right next to a student and say, “Just tell me in my ear really quick what you think you're going to say” and let them try that before they said it out loud.

This is even better, right? This—they can do that, and then they can practice with you as a teacher or you as a leader and then say that out loud. So I think Conmigo as a safe space is really an invaluable tool for students across the spectrum of confidence and ability.

I'll let Dena maybe talk about some of our focus areas or reasons that we might be bringing Conmigo in for adoption.

I'm going to start, Danielle, you mentioned MTSS, and that is a big space where we work in many districts. A lot of districts are looking for something that can be an MTSS resource, but with Khan Academy, you've got the opportunity with on-grade-level content and mastery learning. You’ve got the opportunity to scaffold because you have access to our full library of content, plus you have Conmigo that's very targeted and can help with an individual exercise, with a specific skill, with vocabulary, which we know is such a huge blocker for a lot of students.

They might be able to perform the steps or they might know the procedures, but just understanding what a question is asking them to do sometimes is the first obstacle. And so as an MTSS solution, we really work with districts to say, "Okay, what is the pacing that you're looking for? Where do we need students to be at different, you know, what are our kind of mile markers that we're tracking toward? Where do we want students to be, and what skills do we want them to have at this point in time?"

And so it’s hard to give very concrete examples because we really listen to The District and tailor that MTSS plan to what they're doing. Most often, it's in mathematics. We actually do have a lot of language arts content. I always hear, “Wait, but you’re Khan Academy!” We are Khan Academy and we do more than math, which is great!

But really supporting students where they are and helping them grow and giving teachers the resource to be able to make those adjustments, to make those small groups, to craft assignments, to be able to differentiate for groups, to level text. All of those pieces work to support students at different levels, different tiers, and to be able to show growth.

And we have, you know, we have a ton of efficacy studies on our impact page. If you go to Khan Academy, um, and at the bottom there’s a link for our impact studies, we’ve got 50-plus studies that show that efficacious usage and really focusing on skills is going to make a really big difference for students.

So I’m going to ask another question that kind of bridges on that based on—um—a couple questions that have come in for the Q&A, thinking through if leaders are watching this, knowing there are so many free tools out there, there are so many—there seems like there’s a new AI tool every two seconds—how do you start as a leader in your opinion to evaluate what is a safe and responsible tool?

I’m kind of back to what Sasha was talking about with policy versus procedure. So, so how—what are your recommendations in thinking about evaluating tools? And then why did we create our District's program? And talk about how we are trying to set ourselves apart and what’s kind of included in our partnership if schools are interested. If they choose us, why would they choose us, and how do we support them?

That's like a several-part question. You’re welcome!

All right, I'll start. Thanks!

Jump right in!

Sure. So first of all, um, I'm gonna start with the district program and then we’ll go from there and make sure we answer all the parts of your question, Danielle. I think there might have been three in there, four.

Um, but yeah, we, as a district offering, we really want to work closely with schools because we know the importance of AI, and we know the importance of having high-quality resources to support student learning. But there are so many tools out there. There are so many resources that knowing what to do, knowing how to do it, and really having a thought partner on the best way to make it happen can be—it can be really challenging, it can be really difficult.

So that's what our District Partnerships program is: our content has and always will be free. Conmigo for students—we want students to be able to practice in a safe space, so that's one of the features of our district partnership, is to make sure that students can interact and they can try Conmigo, they can try different AI tools, but they're safe. And we've got moderation, we've got guardrails, we've got all of the pieces in place to make sure that they have a great experience.

Um, and then we offer professional learning from Stacy and her fabulous team that really guides educators through the process of adopting technology, of learning how to use it well, of coaching along the way. Um, and the professional learning is really— it is meant to be a series. It’s not meant to be drive-by professional learning where, “Here, we’re just going to show you something once, and then we’re out of here.” That's not how we do this.

Um, we have regional specialists that will support the implementation and that will support educators along the way. You have a member of my team, a district success manager, that’s going to help you—that’s going to look at analytics, that’s going to guide district administrators, that’s going to help you think about, “All right, what are the resources do you need? Do you need a scope and sequence? Do you need pacing? Do you need tools? What does your data look like? What insights can you gain? Where are we seeing success? Because wherever that is, let’s go look! Let’s go together! Let’s go into a classroom and see what teachers are doing!”

Because we want to highlight that; we want to celebrate that, and we want to replicate that. So how can we support you, and how can we support what's happening in the classrooms?

Yeah, and I would add to that when you're looking at the landscape and trying to choose the right tool for your district, for your school, y'all, I cannot stress this enough. You got to read those data privacy agreements, you got to read those contracts because, you know, sometimes we all have legal teams, and sometimes we read them a little more closely than we read others, and this is not a time to skim.

Um, you have to think about who you're partnering with and what they do with that data. So, you know, this is evidence of student learning; this is a peak into a student’s brain—this is intellectual property. What’s happening to that? What is that service—what is your service provider doing with that data? And what happens if the service provider isn’t with you anymore, right?

What happens if they go out of business? There are a lot of things out there where you’ll see, “Oh, we don’t—we don’t share your data unless we go out of business.” That’s scary, right? Because we have a new technology here, and, you know, there’s a lot of providers on the market right now; they’re probably not all going to be here in five years. So who are you partnering with? You also want to think about that partner that you choose; who are they partnered with?

Right? If they're working with somebody else that to provide a secondary level of service, what's their data privacy agreement? Right? We cannot stress enough the importance of knowing who you’re partnering with and what happens to that data.

So really being aware of what's in those agreements, what happens if you go out of business, right? If we don’t meet our profit margins, if any of those things, right? This is a place where we have to think about confidentiality and student privacy in a way that we never have before.

Thank you both for mentioning that. And there was some chatter in the chat about data privacy agreements. We do have data privacy agreements, and I know that we just put the link in the chat. If you're interested in learning more about District partners and where we're working in, you know, around the world, reach out to us. We'll be happy to partner with you.

So we are right at time, so I just want to have each of you share some final thoughts about where you see AI education headed and what you're excited about for the future.

Yeah, I'll jump in. You know, I think I am so excited about the power of AI to support teachers. I said it at the beginning, but our teachers are tired and overburdened for so many good reasons, and they deserve support and more time with the kids, which is why they went into this profession.

So I am tremendously excited about what AI, what Conmigo can do to support teachers, to give them more time with their students, more time with their families, and more time to be the best teacher that they can be. Um, this is not a technology we're going to get away from. You know our kiddos already have it in their pocket; they got social media, they got Google, they’ve got AI, right?

So I think it's about how we are embracing it and just thinking critically about how we're bringing this into our schools because we're not going to get away from it, so we need to do it intentionally.

Yep, and I would say I think, you know, there’s so much of education that has become administrative tasks, so much paperwork. And what I have always—so much!—and what I have always loved as an educator, as a math teacher, I always—I want to play with math because I love it. I think it's incredible. I think it's beautiful, and I want to share that joy with everyone I know.

And if you’ve ever worked with me, you know that's the case. Um, but I think the opportunity to see content not as dull and boring and to be able to have these great rich conversations with your teachers because they're not bogged down in the administrative tasks. Because you're opening up this whole world of why we need to learn this equation and how it applies in different contexts, how it can support students— uh, I think that the focus, as you said earlier, Danielle, on the learning—we're really getting to a place where I love to learn, and we’re getting to a place where we can all learn together.

Well, I hope from you watching this live, watching, participating in the chat, we appreciate all of you for adding your comments, and I hope you could see that at Khan Academy we are focused on learning. And we want to really help you and your leaders and students and teachers be able to implement a safe and responsible tool, again focusing on learning because, everyone, the educational revolution is not going to be televised; it is happening in our classrooms each and every day as long as we can continue focusing on what matters most: how are students learning, how are they progressing in skills, and how are they closing gaps moving towards proficiency and beyond?

So we appreciate you paying attention to us for a little bit. We appreciate your participation. Continue to—uh, there are a bunch of links in the chat. We will be sending this video out. You can also access—we have two other videos that we created as part of the series, so we’ll give you access to all three videos. Thank you, Stacy and Dena, for your time and your expertise and your knowledge, and thank you for everything that you do with districts.

Oh, thank you, Danielle.

All right, if you want to stay in touch with us, you can click on the link—um, there’s no link. You can actually take a picture of this because, you know, technology! Everybody, this is a QR code for partnering us with districts. If you're interested in learning more, getting a trial of Conmigo, please reach out! You can have your educators reach out to free tools right now. You can get all of most of our AI tools for free, and you can click on—and I’m clicking the link or—oh my goodness, what day is it? Thank you! You can have the link in the chat, the QR code, but I just thank you all for your time, and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day! Thank you so much.