Introducing Khan Academy’s Magical AI Tool for Teachers: Khanmigo

I am Deanna Klingman. I am a professional learning specialist with Khan Academy. Hello everyone, my name is Stacy Johnson. I lead professional learning for Khan Academy. Today, we are going to explore how Conmigo can support you and save you time.

So whether you already have Conmigo and are looking for some tips, or maybe you're just wondering what Congmigo is and how can it help you, we're here to talk to you about that today and we have you covered.

All right, so as we know right now AI is all around us. There are several tools on the market that are designed to support teachers. So you're probably asking what makes Conmigo so different. We keep accuracy, safety, and responsible data management at the forefront of every decision that we make. We're also adhering to those national and regional guidelines so that the learners, as well as the teachers, have the best experience.

More than that, the one thing that I really love about Conmigo is that it's designed to also work with the Khan Academy content. So now you as an educator have a comprehensive suite of resources that's going to support your lesson planning, data analysis, and just resources that are going to allow you to be able to tailor to the needs of your students.

Headlines, like we've all seen them, and so as you continue to see these headlines, we know that you have a wide range of emotions, as we just kind of talked about before, from excitement to apprehension. We want to acknowledge those feelings. AI has some exhilarating potential. It's revolutionizing fields like health care, communication, and education.

However, we do know that there are some concerns around AI—concerns about job displacement, privacy, and, you know, some ethical considerations. These are valid emotions. However, it is important to separate fact from fiction. So AI is a tool. It's not meant to replace that human interaction that we know is very important.

It's designed to assist, not to take over. Here at Khan Academy, the way we use AI, we talk about it as a way to support the teacher, not replace the teacher. It's going to help you, as the teacher, save time, help you tailor your lessons, and expedite planning so you can do what you do best, and we know that's working with students.

We are at the cusp of using AI for probably the biggest transformation that education has ever seen. We're going to give every teacher on the planet an amazing artificially intelligent teaching assistant. That is a quote directly from our leader Sal Khan. As a non-profit organization, we see it as our duty to explore AI's potential for education's future.

We believe AI can positively transform learning, but we're also aware of some of those risks, right? We're focused on ensuring AI's benefits, making sure that it's shared equally across society, and we're committed to those ethical and responsible development processes.

We also want to be very transparent in this presentation about costs. We know most of you are wondering, "Okay, well how much does it cost and who can use Conmigo?" Teachers, parents, adult learners, and school districts can all get Conmigo. On the screen, you do see some prices there, and at the end of this presentation, we're going to make sure that you get more information about how to access and purchase Conmigo.

We often get specific questions around Conmigo and so we want to address a few of those right now. First, we know that Khan Academy is known for providing a free, world-class education, but we do have to charge for Conmigo because we have to cover the fees that we have to pay for GPT-4. In order for a teacher to give their students access, the teacher must be a part of a district partnership as a way to prioritize student safety.

We'll have more information on the partnerships later in this presentation. If you are a homeschooling parent, you can only get access for your child only, and we would love to have a free trial for educators who would like to; however, we do have some technical limitations that prevent that option at this time.

So, you might be wondering where the name Conmigo comes from. We've combined our name Khan with the Spanish word Amigo, which now gives you a creative co-pilot that's going to work alongside you and it has a very welcoming and supporting presence available as you are going through your Khan Academy journey.

All right, so with that, it is time to jump into Conmigo. So I'm going to be working in the platform today, walking you through some of the things that you can see, experience, and what it might be like to use this with students in the classroom.

So I just logged into my Khan Academy account and this page is the first page that pops up. This is our AI activities page. There is a lot of stuff here and we're going to dig into a few of these in a little bit, but I want you to just first notice that there are activities here that support teachers.

We can look at how our students are doing in Khan Academy with a class snapshot. We can refresh our knowledge, co-create a rubric, even chat with ChatGPT-4. There are also some activities down here that allow you to take the seat of a learner, and we're going to dig into all of that, but there's lots of stuff here and I just want you to notice right out of the gate how much you have at your fingertips with Conmigo.

But we do have this AI activities page, but my favorite part, the real power in my mind of Conmigo, is using Conmigo with our courses. So I'm going to go up here in this top left-hand menu of our screen in Khan Academy. I'm going to open up the courses menu.

What you see here, if you're not already familiar, we have courses in mathematics, science, arts, and humanities. If you're looking for middle school science or high school history, we have courses that tailor to all of those needs. So Conmigo, what makes Conmigo different is that it partners with this already well-known, high-quality content to really create a comprehensive learning path and support for all students.

I'm going to show you what that looks like by jumping into our middle school biology class. I'm going to go into middle school biology and what we see here, we have all of these units on the left-hand side. This has the same sort of arrangement as a textbook. This is a course and each course is made up of a series of units. I'm going to scroll down here on this screen; we can see the units here too, and each unit is made up of lessons.

I'm going to jump into the first lesson here - cells and organisms. What we see here is that we have all sorts of content to support learners. We have videos, articles, and exercises. So I'm going to go into an exercise. I'm going to be working with my students next week on understanding cells and organisms and Conmigo is down here in the corner, so if I'm getting ready to teach this content to my students, I'm going to open up Conmigo and as a teacher it has several different prompts here that I can use to support my instruction and my planning.

The first that I want to do is how might I explain this concept to my students? What does it mean to teach cells and organisms and making sure students understand that? So I'm going to click here to help me explain this concept, open that up a little bit bigger so you can see it, and Conmigo is going to give me some ideas of how I might talk to my students about cells and organisms. Quite an explanation here.

So we started with like, "Hey kiddos, today how we're going to talk about something super cool - cells and organisms." But maybe I was looking for something a little bit different. I'm going to ask Conmigo, "Can you help me write a catchy poem?" Oops, about this for my students.

Conmigo loves the idea of the poem: "Cells, cells, that really swell in every organism they do dwell." So we can ask Conmigo for different takes on things, different pieces of information, so that we can present this to students in a way that feels relevant and tied to what we are already doing in instruction.

I love this because it really helps me not only think about what content I might deliver to students; I have that great Khan Academy content here, but I can use Conmigo to help me think about how I deliver that to my students. I'm just going to refresh this chat, go right back to the beginning, and maybe now I want to walk through this exercise.

So remember we're here in this exercise asking some questions, and I have this exercise that's just going to be presented to students: "What are all organisms made up of? A single cell, many cells, one or more cells?" I can open up Conmigo as a teacher and have it walk me through the exercise.

Let's see what it says. Maybe I'm working on making sure that I understand this; maybe I'm doing this with my kids in a whole class. It tells me here this is the example of what students see, here's the answer choices, and it tells me what the answer is. So maybe if I'm reviewing content that I haven't seen in a little while or I'm doing a math concept, I don't have the time to break out the paper and pencil, that's here as a support for me now as a teacher.

You have this little toggle up here; right now I'm in teacher mode and in teacher mode I'm going to get this support. It's talking to me like I'm a teacher, so I have this support of getting the answer, walking through exactly what's explained. But if I turn that off and I go into student mode, Conmigo is going to support me much more like a Socratic tutor, putting the ownership of learning back on me as the learner and the student.

In student mode, Conmigo is not going to provide answers. So I want you to think about this and if you have this in your classroom as a teacher, how might you be able to turn on student mode and maybe project this onto the whiteboard, pull it up on the smart board, and turn student mode on to engage students in a new and exciting way? Maybe something that they haven't seen before that might be exciting to them. We're going to talk more about that in just a little bit.

With that, I'm going to jump over and show you another one of my favorite activities. I'm going to go back to this AI activities page and I'm going to open up class snapshot. Before I do that, we already mentioned that using Conmigo alongside our courses and content, remember that's up here, so using Conmigo with Algebra 1, Algebra 2, middle school physics is really what makes Conmigo different and makes it stand apart from other tools on the market.

So if you're using Conmigo or you're interested in using Conmigo, students should also be working in Khan Academy and learning in those Khan Academy courses. You can set your students up with mastery goals and assignments so that they are working on content that mirrors what you're already doing in the classroom. If you haven't checked it out, definitely jump into the courses and find a course and maybe explore it on your own to see what's here.

But imagine for a second. We've already done that. We've gotten our kids set up, they're working in Khan Academy, and now as a teacher I have Conmigo. Rather than going in and having to look at how every single one of my students has done and what they're working on in Khan Academy, I'm going to open up class snapshot and I'm going to go into one of my courses.

I'm going to check out my Algebra 1 course, I'm going to open that up. I'm gonna give it a second, and I want you to take a look at what class snapshot can do. So it's pulling data for the last seven days.

Now my class has not been very active, but we know y'all are going to have much more active students. What you're seeing here is the activity and the performance of your class. So I'm seeing the activity of my students. I had a goal that they were going to work for 30 minutes, I'm gonna, they haven't done so well. They've only done an average of two minutes.

I see the assignments and how my class is doing— their average exercise performance, quizzes, tests, and how they're doing on their skills. So imagine my students are working through their Algebra 1 course and in a snap, I can open up Conmigo and I can get this snapshot to see at a quick glance how are my students doing? This is really powerful information that makes it a whole lot easier for me to get a comprehensive view of my class's progress.

I understand where my class stands in terms of learning objectives. I can identify areas where my students are excelling and maybe where we have some more opportunities for growth and extra instruction. So I love this because it saves us time by giving us a consolidated view of class progress. It totally takes away the need for manual tracking and looking at each individual student.

I can always dig in, right? I can always go take a closer look at a student, but this makes it really easy for me to dig in and get that nitty-gritty information about how my students are doing. So after we get the class snapshot, what I really love are some options for student grouping because it's one thing to have this data; it's another thing to know what to do with it and how we're going to respond and how that data is going to be used to drive instruction.

So we might ask Conmigo which students need to be celebrated for their work? We want students who need that pat on the back as much as we do. We might ask, who needs a check-in about their skills progress for the week or who's a little ahead of the curve and they're doing better than 25% on their mastery goal?

But what I want to show you is how we can group the class by their recommendations. So if students have been working on this content, how can we take those students and make groups? So I'm going to open up this tool.

Let's see what it comes back with. All right, check it out. Here's my students' names and a list of the concepts and skills that they need to work on. So I have Chelsea that needs to work on this set of recommendations and I have a whole group of kiddos that need to work on these skills here.

So what this has done, I mean in a world past I would have to look at every student, how they're doing on their skills, figure out where they are in those skills, make groups and this has done that for me, right? It's taking all of that data, it's allowing you to make student groups which is super empowering saving time, and now I know what I'm doing tomorrow. I'm going to grab those students, I'm going to grab Chelsea, pull her to the back, get some chart paper, and we're going to talk about relating division to multiplication and how those go together.

Okay, they didn't even go back into my class and assign that content again from those Khan Academy courses. So Conmigo and Khan Academy, they go hand in hand, and again that's really what sets this tool apart. It's not just a standalone AI tool; it's a tool that complements curriculum and content in a really powerful way.

All right, so with that we're going to jump into some of these other activities and I think you're going to be really excited because these are pretty cool. So I'm going to start by looking at refresh my knowledge. There are so many use cases for this tool, whether maybe we're a new teacher and we're still working on building that comfort to stand up in front of a group of students that can be a little bit critical and deliver content or I remember in my eighth year of teaching I was feeling pretty good about myself until I was given a brand new grade level and while I knew the content it had been a minute and I just needed a safe place to go and practice and not everybody has that safe space.

So Conmigo and refresh my knowledge can be there. So here we are to start off what topic and grade level would I like a refresher on. So I'm going to be teaching eighth grade gene mutations. Oops, it would help if I typed the number. There we go, eighth grade gene mutations.

So it's going to give me some major concepts related to gene mutations that are going on here and then I have a choice. I can practice and build my understanding and comprehension by being quizzed on the topic or maybe through learning through conversation and that's the one I'm going to go with today.

I want to learn through conversation, so let's see, can you explain to me what a gene mutation is and how it differs from a frame shift mutation? Actually, I want to understand the role of RNA in gene mutations. We got some typos here, y’all, but that's okay because we're human and it understands what is the role of RNA in gene mutations.

So it's able to help me understand that it's talking me through it and now not only is it giving me an explanation, absolutely RNA or ribonucleic acid plays a crucial role in gene mutations and I have this explanation, but now it's allowing me the opportunity to test my understanding. If a student were to ask me how does a mutation in the DNA affect the RNA, how would I answer it?

So let's say I'm not sure. Can you give me some tips? So it gives me a sample answer. So we have this very constructive back and forth where I'm building maybe my understanding of the content because I'm new to it or maybe just how I'm going to explain it to students. You know, often it's one thing to understand the content ourselves, it's a whole other thing to be prepared to explain it to students at that foundational level.

So refresh my knowledge is a great tool for that and just like I showed you earlier, you can even say, "Can you write that as a poem?" and it can do that. You could ask it to write a more thorough explanation to expand or to make something more concise, so it's really nice to have this safe space to get that comfort and get that confidence before we deliver content to students.

Now let's say I've got that, I'm feeling pretty good about my comfort, my knowledge walking into that I'm ready to start planning my lesson. I want to create a lesson hook for an activity that I'm about to deliver. In this activity, Conmigo is going to help us come up with some ideas for lesson hooks to spark our students' interest in our lesson at the beginning of class.

What grade level and subject am I teaching? So I'm going to shift just a little bit, and we’re going to go into teaching seventh-grade two-step equations. Okay, so it's going to come up with some lesson hooks. Let's see, we've got one: "The Magic Number Box."

We would start the class by showing them a decorated box, tell the students that the box contains a magic number. The only way to discover the number is by solving a two-step equation that we've written on the board. The surprise element of the magic number will pique their curiosity and they'll be eager to solve the equation.

It's one idea. We have another idea—there's two. Now let's say, you know, I really wanted something more in tune with my students' interests and more in line with something that's going to grab their attention right out of the gate. My students, being junior high, love Fortnite.

So I'm going to ask, “Can you write lesson hooks that are related to Fortnite?” Let's see what we get. Ah, Fortnite. Now that's a game that gets kids excited. It sure is! So we've got a "Fortnite Loot Drop," "Fortnite Battle Royale." You know about Fortnite Battle Royale; it's a big thing.

As soon as I put this on the board, as soon as I tell students we’re going to do a battle royale—now they’re listening to me, right? Now I’ve grabbed their interest; this is something that they’re interested in. Whether you were looking for a lesson hook about Legos, video games, Pokémon, whatever the thing of the day is, right? Because it’s always changing, it’s really nice to have this alignment—something that students are interested in, so it grabs their interest and keeps their interest in the lesson material.

So we've got our lesson hooks. Let's think now about how we're going to close the lesson. We've taught our lesson; how are we going to know whether or not students really got a solid grasp of this material?

So we’re going to write some exit ticket questions. What grade level and subject do I want questions for? Let’s stick with seventh-grade two-step equations. All right, what is a specific learning objective? Let’s see, we’re going to be solving two-step equations with rational coefficients.

All right, let’s see what we get. So we had a few sample exit ticket questions there and what I want to point out is these aren’t super complex. You could have made these, right? We can always go and make our own exit ticket questions; we can go curate some examples from the internet or from our textbook.

But saving the time to do that, having this done and at our fingertips is really where the power of this is, right? So that again, as Deanna mentioned at the beginning, we’re trying to take the time and the burden away from those more arduous tasks so that you can focus on the students.

What if instead of curating this material, you're sitting at the table working with a student or you're actually working through these with kids? That’s what we want to make sure you can do. So we have five examples here of what exit ticket questions might be, but I think the most powerful part of this is it’s not just about the procedural fluency to be able to answer these questions.

What's almost more important is not just that we have the competence but that we have the confidence in this content. So we're also given a couple of questions that gauge students' confidence and understanding; on a scale of one to five, how confident are they feeling? Are they ready to take this forward? Can they explain? That's critically important.

So having these questions again available and at your fingertips is super important. With that, we are going to shift back over here and take a look at what it might look like to use Conmigo with students.

So I want to really reinforce one thing: unless you are part of a district partnership where your school district has said we are working with Khan Academy and all of our teachers are working as part of that, then your students will not have access to Conmigo on their own—meaning they're not going to be able to open their laptop and have Conmigo there on the screen.

Now, should your district choose to explore a district partnership with us, which we do have, it does come with comprehensive robust support for setting you as a teacher and your students as learners up for success with lots of PD that actually looks a lot like this. But that may not be where you are right now. Maybe you're just looking at what would it look like for me as a teacher to use this tool in my classroom if I'm the only one that has it.

We can still look at what it might look like to use this whole class, again think about projecting onto the whiteboard or pulling it up on a smartboard—that's our frame of reference for the next few minutes. So think about what it would look like whole class, one computer, and we're working together.

When we are talking to students about AI, when we're working with students in AI, it is critical that we frame the role of AI in our classroom. It is a tool, not a crutch. It is a tool amongst other tools we have in our classroom—manipulatives, notes, wall charts, rulers. We have so many tools and we choose the right tool for the job.

But the most important thing is that our brain is our first supercomputer and we have to reinforce that with students. Conmigo is a tool to support our thinking, to support our learning, not replace it. It's not something that we're going to go to every time we have a question. Our first line of defense is always thinking critically for ourselves and using Conmigo as one of the tools in our toolbox.

So let's think about what it might look like to use Conmigo whole class. I want to go back to what it would look like to use in one of the courses. So I'm going to go back to that middle school biology course. Go into one of the units. Let’s see, let’s pick a different piece of content—let's go to cell parts and function.

So here, if I open up, we're going to do this activity, we’re learning about cell parts and functions in class, and I open Conmigo up. I have it in student mode. Imagine that we asked Conmigo to help us solve this.

Now remember this is up on the smart board or on the whiteboard and Conmigo is now talking to your students because they can all see it. Sure, the goal is to pick the true facts about the cell membrane. Do you know what a cell membrane does? So now let's imagine I asked my students, "What does the cell membrane do?"

We have some hands pop up. What do you want to say to Conmigo? I have a friend back there in the back row that says, "The cell membrane keeps out the bad stuff." So I say, "Okay, I'm gonna type that in. The cell membrane keeps out the bad stuff."

Let’s see what it says. "Yep, that's part of it. The cell membrane does help keep out some things, but does it keep out all things or just some?" Again, you can ask your students what does it do? So a student might say, "I think it lets some stuff in and some stuff it keeps out."

We can keep going back and forth. Now could we have the same discussion whole class without Conmigo? Absolutely. Could we read about this in a book? Absolutely. But we’re always looking for new ways to engage students, right? If you pulled this up on the board, how might your students react to this, to having this back and forth and to having a tool where they can contribute to a class discussion?

And Conmigo can have that back and forth dialogue with your whole class. We know how important it is to change up the voice, right? Maybe we're looking for a different perspective—not listening to our colleagues anymore, looking for a different voice than the teacher. Conmigo can be really powerful for that and it enables you again as the teacher to take that guiding and facilitating role, which is the most powerful role for you because you're leading that instruction.

So that's one possibility. I'm going to go back to the AI activities page. I'm going to scroll down here. Below our teaching tools, we have some student tools. Again, remember your students don’t have this one-to-one on their laptops, but I want you to think about how this might fit into your existing instructional routine.

So do your students ever have to craft a story? Do you have high school students that are working on admissions essays? Or maybe they need to check for problems in their admission essay debate? What about historical figures?

Let's say that we're in history class and we are learning about World War II. I'm going to open up historical figures and let’s see—we have Winston Churchill here.

I'm going to open up Winston Churchill. Again, we’re on the smart board. We’d love to meet Winston Churchill. History is not every student's favorite topic, right? A lot of times we’re stuck reading history out of the book. Now we know this isn't really Winston Churchill and of course we're going to reinforce that to our students, this is Conmigo speaking as if it is Winston Churchill.

But now we're bringing history to life. So, "Ah, splendid choice!" Conmigo says. "I am now about to become an AI simulation of Winston Churchill." So let's see. I might ask, "What was your opinion of D-Day?" Oops!

"A pivotal moment in the course of the second World War." So we can have that back and forth, right? How might this bring topics to life for your students? What is this going to do to the engagement level in your history class or in your history lesson?

If you're in a self-contained classroom and I want to go back up, look at all the different historical figures that you could bring to life in your classroom and engage students in a brand new way in a way we've never been able to do before. What about the same thing for literature? We might talk to a literary character.

Maybe we want to talk to Jay Gatsby and ask, "So what's that green light really all about?" Right? Always chasing the elusive green light. "Now what brings you to my humble abode? Is there a particular topic you'd like to discuss or perhaps a question you've been longing to ask?"

I'm gonna ask, "How did you really feel about Daisy?" Oops! Daisy, old sport! So even talking like Jay Gatsby again, think about the engagement with the text. We’re gonna read the book, right? We need to work our way through one of the greatest pieces of literature of all time, but now we can really engage and get students thinking more deeply and more critically than they would have otherwise because we're pulling this tool up on the smart board, up on the whiteboard, and engaging with students in this brand new way.

Lots of other tools here — word architect, word safari, or even ignite my curiosity. Students have curiosities, right? There's lots of things they want to know about.

Let's see, my students want to talk about igniting our curiosity about movies because like movies, everybody likes movies, right? Let's explore something related to movies—like the art of storytelling or the science of sound and light. I want to know about the history of cinema.

So imagine bringing these topics to life. There are really so many different possibilities and ways that you can do this, but as a teacher, you not only have access to those teacher tools, but you also have access to the student tools, and there are ways, even if you're not part of a district partnership, to again engage students whole class.

And that is important to think about because if we are engaging students whole class, we're maintaining that safety. We are never putting AI in the hands of students where we don't have those safety mechanisms in place and those safety protocols that are very much a part of a district partnership.

And we will give you some information in just a few minutes about how to explore those district partnerships. One other thing I want to show you is that you can also, as a teacher, chat with GPT-4. Now we’ve all heard about GPT-4, but in Conmigo it’s specifically designed to engage with you as a teacher.

So let’s say with ChatGPT-4, I need a letter to parents introducing my new unit of study on eighth grade gene mutations. It's going to help me draft that letter. Now I have some students in my class and their parents’ first language is Spanish. So I'm going to ask, "Can you rewrite that letter in Spanish?" And there we go!

I can even, I can go back, I can have it back and forth. I can make modifications. Let's see. I'm going to ask it to—how powerful, right? The letter is already done in Spanish, so I'm opening the door to my families no matter what their first language is, English, Spanish—they are now empowered. And this is fully designed to support students in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

So let's see, can you add a note about a group project that is, oops! That is due on November 1st? It's going to do that; I’ll get it to put it back in English in just a second. But we see that we can have that back and forth and then all I have to do is copy and paste and it's done.

How long would it have taken us to write that letter otherwise, right? It's done and it's really empowering to have that time saved. You write this in English so we can go back and forth and we have it all at our fingertips.

I love this because again, the objective here is to take some of that day-to-day planning and prep work off of your plate so you have more time to focus on instruction and to focus on students. You can see here that we do have that note; the project will be assigned on the first day of the unit and the due date will be November 1st.

So now all I have to do is copy this; I could paste it into a Word document, make a couple of changes if I wanted to, and my letter is done in less than five minutes. So with that, I know we are still working through the Q & A. If you have questions, post them in there.

I'm going to go ahead and turn this back over to Deanna.

Thank you, Stacy! So after hearing all that amazing information, if you want to learn more, we highly encourage you to visit our Khan Academy website, where you are going to find our Con for Educators course.

Inside of the Con for Educators course, there is a unit that talks about Conmigo, and so Stacy is bringing that up as well. You will find it, as I said on our Khan Academy website. There’s also a course that we have called AI for Educators. You can also learn more by going through that course as well.

So we highly encourage you to check both of those out. I'm going to add this course you guys; it is fantastic and it only takes like 30-45 minutes. These articles are super easy to read, really empowering, and gave me a lot of great ideas. So we really encourage you to do that.

As we wrap up, just think now. Imagine having a co-teacher at your fingertips 24/7. You know, sometimes I used to be up late planning and my colleagues were not there, and so Conmigo will be there to help you with that.

If you want to track your students' progress, as Stacy showed you, Conmigo has you covered. If you need help in your lesson planning, Conmigo has a wide range of activities, and Stacy only hit on a couple of them. So you are able to have that as well, and then Conmigo just adapts and grows with you.

So what you see here on the screen is there is a link there on how you can try Conmigo, but don't worry about trying to get that link. After this presentation, there is going to be a follow-up email for all of you that have registered, and so you will receive an email with this link as well as a few more resources.

So with that, we definitely appreciate your time. If you have any questions, as Stacy said, make sure you put them in the Q&A. Thank you for your time. Thank you everyone! Have a great afternoon. We're so glad you came.