We are live and recording, and people are gonna start to file in. Thank you everyone for showing up. This is so great. We've got, the amazing Annie.

Is it just pay?

Yes. Pay. Like, when you pay for the bill, pay.

Just making sure. Annie Pay here joining us from California. Really excited.

We will supposedly have Bill Selleck, but as director of technology, anything can happen.

Right.

So I totally get it. So, and we also have the amazing Tory here who will be jumping into the chat and having amazing conversations with all of you.

And Janet says hi. If you wanna say hello in the chat where you're from oh, there's Bill.

There she is.

Oh, hello. Just got home.

Hi, Bill.

Bill knows how to make an entrance, everyone, if you know Bill. Yes.

Imagine working?

Not yet.

I don't see my camera.

Why is it I don't want that one.

I see your picture.

Let's go to gear. My face on camera.

Mhmm.

There it is.

I see your picture.

I'm here now?

Yes? Nope. Still don't see your face. I mean, we see the picture, but we don't see a live image.

Weird. There you are.

Okay. I said to go off and on.

There's that handsome young man I know.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Let's see. We got so many great people. We got Alabama, Georgia. We've got San Jose, California.

We've got Taylorsville, Utah. Love it. May from Canada. Thank you. Robert from Jersey.

Excellent. Thomas from Jersey. Gabby from Florida. Thank you all for joining the chat. We have people jumping in here. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your end of the school year day.

I tell you, some of you might already be out of school, which is awesome. Some of you are very close.

Bill, Annie, how close are you guys to the end of the end of the school year?

Like Very close.

Three days.

Oh, three days.

Yep.

Yeah. The kids are all super focused and totally on task. Right?

Absolutely. Hundred percent. All of it because of PBL.

All because of PBL. That's a wonderful transition. You are the best.

We'll get another minute or so people here, then I'll do some introductions, and then I'm just gonna dive right into these questions.

For everyone that is joining us, again, thank you for joining us for connecting the dots, the SchoolAI digital, event. I'm really excited to host with two amazing educators, Bill, who I've known probably, what, fifteen years, Bill, easily?

Yeah. Absolutely.

Right around there. And Amy, who I just met, but Bill says is an amazing PBL teacher doing amazing things in her class. So, I am always always up for listening to, people talk about their PBL journey and what that looks like because it really looks like something different for all of us. And I think that's an important thing, that I hopefully will dive a little bit deeper into.

But the people that are attending today, I hope you are open to different ways to reach your students. And I think that's the biggest part of project based learning is that being open to a different approach to instruction, which can be very scary. But you're taking the first step, which is taking your time to learn a little bit, and I think that's super awesome at the end of May to choose to do that. I don't know.

If I wasn't working here, I don't know if I would be here That close to the end that close to the end of the year to be like, East Coast people, it's seven o'clock. We're like, that is not the time for me to be jumping on a webinar. So for my East Coast people, thank you very much. I sound a little raspy.

I'm on the tail end of, COVID. I got some congestion, but I got some tea, my Star Wars mug.

So I'm hoping that'll help clear things up. But, let us get some more people here.

We also have Chesca. Chesca is joining us, and she's also a community coach like Tory, and she will be in the chat connecting with all of you. Tina Hall from Taiwan. Oh, is she going from Trinidad and Tobago?

We got we got some international peeps. We got seventeen days to go for Thomas here. Excellent. Three days left for Janet.

Iowa's here. Excellent. Love it. I think Taiwan so far has got the furthest one out.

You know, occasionally, we have some Aussies and, Kiwis here. So if they join us, they might be the furthest one out. But I guess depends on which direction you're going, I guess, east or west, whether it's Australia or Taiwan. Right?

From at least for me, for Michigan.

So we're gonna dive right in. We have some, awesome things to talk about today, and I wanna be very respectful of everyone's time.

Hello, everyone. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Nicholas Provenzano. You might know me on the interwebs as the nerdy teacher. You can find me on all of them. Possibly still find me on Friendster if you're that old school.

And if you really, really were old school, maybe even find me on Google Wave, if you remember that back in the day.

Heck, yeah. Good shout.

Some questions. These will be similar questions that Bill and Annie will have a chance to answer. But my favorite cartoon growing up, you've heard this before. I apologize, but I love, Voltron.

I love Thundercats. I still have, Thundercat sleeping bag. Also, I have this here. I wanna show it because I made it.

It is oop. You can see it. So this is the Sword of Omens I three d printed, and painted and stuck it into a box, a brick of tiger wood. It's actually what it's called because I thought, you know, that's funny.

But this is the Sword of Omens I three d printed. Because there's some type of things you print when you have a three d printer all on your own. If you're like, what am I gonna print? A sword from an eighties cartoon is the answer.

My favorite food is, ribs, and my favorite AI trick is I love downloading large datasets of CSV files and uploading them, to SchoolAI and having it, parse that information for me quickly. As an English teacher, Excel sheets were never a thing that I loved at all and found confusing and was just too much for my neurodivergent brain to take in. To be able to dump that data into something to parse it in more accessible comps for me is a game changer. So I am a huge fan of that.

Next up, we have Bill. Bill, why don't you introduce yourself, Bill?

Yeah. Oh my gosh. I'm wearing the same shirt. This is incredible.

You are.

Hi. My name is Bill Selleck, he, him. My day job is director of technology at Hilbert School. We're an independent k twelve school in San Jose, California.

Favorite cartoon has to be a recent one that I watched with the kids, Gravity Falls.

Mhmm.

It's good stuff.

Favorite food has to be a drink I made this weekend with my fourth grader, Carl.

It's an agua fresca from the Danny Trejo Cookbook. Food, I'm still accounting drink as food. It's cucumber, jalapeno, lime, and you you blend it delicious. It it's unbelievably good.

And then you finish it with some club soda. So, Okay. Yeah. It it'll it'll change your life.

He has some amazing, And then my favorite AI trick, is a new one. It's actually the OpenAI Codex where you download the software in terminal, which for me always feels like I'm, like, a hacker on the TV show twenty four, like, I'm Chloe in the room.

Anytime I open up terminal. But I only know terminal because, like, an AI tool will tell me what to type or paste. And with codecs, you give it a folder or a directory, and then you just tell it to do stuff. And I put it on full auto, and it wrote, like, an entire app for me with me just describing what I wanted.

Like, I didn't have to copy and paste any code. I just said, like, do it. And with this this software called codex that you install through, through terminal, it just, like, it did it. It was like wizard wizard status.

It was it was, like, magic.

I will definitely have to check that out. Yeah. If you drop that into the chat so people know what to to look for, I think they would love that. That's awesome. Thanks, Bill. And we have Annie Payne joining us. Annie, why don't you introduce yourself?

Here we go, Mike.

So, yes. I'm Annie Pei. I always always tell the students, p a y e, silent e, so my last name, Pei. Sometimes it's Sometimes it's hard to pronounce. It it looks simple, but sometimes it's not.

And, well, I've been a teacher for many, many years, and I've taught a little bit of different, things. I have taught from fourth grade in, Mexico. It was, I was a homeroom teacher, and I was teaching the English portion of it, every single subject. And then I taught high school. I was teaching Hispanic literature levels, one through, Spanish honors. And then I taught at a school, for students with dyslexia, homeroom teacher, fourth grade, kinda like a learning specialist.

And now I'm at Hillbrook teaching Spanish first through eighth grade. I don't know how I'm surviving, but I'm really, really trying hard.

Especially these days, it's just, you know, exhausting as an educator.

We give it all, and so sometimes we feel like we're not gonna make it, and then we're here. And we're like, you know, we we made it. And just to follow Belle's lead, I think my favorite food is lasagna.

And Mexican food, being from Mexico, Mexican food is definitely just my very favorite. But I'm gonna go with lasagna because it's funny. My my husband asks, what do you want for dinner? Oh, lasagna. That's my first answer. I'm not sure why.

And, for cartoons, I really like the Muppet Babies. I don't even know if you're familiar with them, but they were my dream. Every time I saw them, I would I would the ice cream that looked like them, and it was just so so good. And, as far as technology, I just have to say that I'm Bill's biggest fan.

He's always saving my life. He's always giving me ideas. As an older educator, the reality is that facing technology is not an easy thing. It's super scary.

And mainly because we don't necessarily have the time to to learn it. So, you know, through experimenting and using it with all my, projects that I've worked on, it it has become one of the main things that I always need close to me to survive.

That's awesome. Muppet Babies is phenomenal. It's it might be a top five for me. I had to put five together.

Muppet Babies might because of its connection to George Lucas and Spielberg, Henson, the original cartoon had all of those intercuts of live action Indiana Jones and Star Wars and things like that. So that was cool for one. Two, it is a show all about imagination and creativity. And we're gonna talk about project based learning.

Oh my goodness. We're talking about it. Like, this is like a perfect segue, Annie, into this. It's it's great.

The fun fact to this is that, you will not be able to find those shows streaming because they're tied up in rights, nightmare because of all the different shows and stuff that they took clips from that Spielberg and Lucas were like, yeah. Go ahead, Henson. You're our buddy. Well, now those relationships aren't the same, with Disney owning bits and pieces of everything.

So if you can find them bootlegged on YouTube, that's the way to go. But you can't purchase them, which is a bummer because, that's it's it's, a part of our childhood. And the mom or excuse me. The mom from Leave It to Beaver, that's the voice of nanny.

So that's the voice of nanny.

So Oh, you know that.

Is here. Nice.

I think her name is Florence Henderson.

I believe that's her name, but she's, the voice of nanny. And once you hear it, you're like, oh, of course it is. Yep. That's absolutely her.

So You can recognize it.

Yeah. You recognize it. So we're gonna dive right in. I said, what an awesome transition to talk about imagination, creativity.

It's primarily the main reason why I moved into project based learning as a teacher as I had an internal revolt against standardized testing as I saw what it was doing to my students and how what the tests were showing were not matching to what I was seeing in the classroom, in terms of engagement and, you know, understanding.

So my first question and, I'll start with Bill, and we'll go this way.

Bill, what do you think is one misconception about project based learning that you think people have when they hear about it?

Yeah. I think a lot of people think it's, like, just doing a project, and it's so much more than just that. It's really about getting, like I I think you can look at it at two ends, either, like, a really meaty question or, like, a really cool idea. And so for me, like, the the one project I always come back to is when I was teaching second grade, we ended up I was this was not the goal. We ended up making an entire music video, but it started off with just a song in GarageBand. So I was like, oh, I have all these music standards I'm supposed to teach in California, and I'm not.

I'm noticing, like, my kids were struggling with kinda with with kinda rhyme schemes.

In math, we're covering algebra, which is patterns, which is music and songwriting. And so I just kinda mashed all those three up. And so for me, it was about, like, checking several boxes at once in a in a more engaging way. We started writing a song, and then the kids are like, well, so we need to write the whole song.

And then we did that, and then they were like, well, so now we need to make a music video. And so for me, it was like following like, really giving students space even with, like, a at a school I was at where it was very, like, focused on the standards, you have thou shalt cover the standards. It was like, how can I cover it? And, actually, if I do more than one at a time, for me, that was actually the driver of how it could kind of get away with kind of PDL or project based learning.

And then as soon as I kind of cracked that open, it was following student curiosity, and it was really honoring student agency. And so for me now, you know, if we fast forward, like, ten, fifteen years, it's really like putting student voice and student agency at the center of the learning experience and then honoring their curiosities and their instincts. And then me as as the expert, whether it's tech director or classroom teacher or co teaching or co planning with someone, it's like, alright. How do we get this curiosity of theirs and, like, sue horn it into what we have to cover? You know? I think that's kind of the the sweet spot for me.

Do you wanna unmute yourself, Nick? Although, I actually kinda like you on mute.

Can we just You and my wife.

You and my what I was saying was a giant compliment to you, Bill, that I'll sell.

You should I mean, all the time then.

That, you know, it's more than just doing a project. I there that is the thing that I hear more than anything. It's just like, well, it's just kids doing a project. It's just a, you know, shoebox diorama. It's not. And if that's what you're doing, I guess if you're starting there to get your feet wet, okay. Cool.

That's not the end of project based learning is is giving them a diorama, assignment where you get thirty identical dioramas, and that's not bridge based learning because it's like you said, it's that curiosity, letting the kids have a hand on the steering wheel. And the older they are, the more control I think you give them.

Right? You know, because when they're younger, they're just learning. And I think, Annie, I'd love to hear from you, especially since you talked about a a wide range of grade levels.

Where what project based learning look like for you? Like, what's that misconception about first graders doing project based learning versus, like, you?

Yeah. Exactly. So, just to see it, to put things into perspective, even when I was a student, I remember sometimes we had projects. Everybody had to have the exact same poster, the exact same measurements.

Everybody had to have the picture of the history character and when they were born. And many times, there were so many things. I would go to bed, and then when I woke up, the project was made for me by my mom. Thank you.

So it had no meaning for me. And one of the misconceptions that I know is that people think that little kids are not able to do it, that they're not gonna have the ability, the capacity, or but, clearly, they don't have the knowledge. They don't even know how to read. They don't even know how to spell.

And then it's like, no. Actually, they do know how to read and spell more than you think.

And you just have to start small. You can't expect every single grade to follow the same steps. You just have to adapt to what they are very capable of doing. But we have to believe in them, and that's another misconception. This is not something that we're, necessarily teaching. This is something that they're learning throughout the process.

So you give them small little things, and then they don't even realize that they're learning something. And to give you an example, it begins probably with a little picture of of a person, and you're gonna describe the person. And then it turns out that that person is somebody who exists in the real world. Right? So we wrote little letters to kids in other parts of the world. So, basically, it's the same idea, but just, you know, it goes from smaller to to bigger, but they all have the exact same capacity and potential.

Yeah. Spot on. I I so many people, like, I teach first grade. I can't do that. Yes. You can't take the high school level project that I just did and give it to a first grader.

No one is saying do that. But as teachers, that's all we do is level work. Right? Like, that's the consistent part of our day to day job is like, oh, I'd love to get us my kids.

Oh, not this class, and I need to tweak it to make it more accessible. And that's all you're doing is making things more accessible. And for me, and I would love to hear Bill's thoughts on this, is how does project based learning make learning more accessible than, let's say, the traditional fit and get approach to instruction. Mhmm.

Yeah. I mean, for sure, I also have, like, the the stand directly behind me. I'm seeing all this. This is not like a a Zoom effect.

This is just whatever we've got. I don't know if I can block it. If I if I go like this, but then you get my hand, just, like, squish my head. I don't know.

Is that what we can do some forced perspective?

Which is best? We're just gonna go with the sun flare.

So I think, Nick, like, you're on kind of the heart of what is both the most challenging part of PBL.

And once you kind of crack that nut or, like, wrap your brain around it, it becomes, like, the easiest part is that, like, it it kind of auto scaffolds.

Right? So you like, here's whatever here's your goal. You have to make this thing. And as long as you're supporting students and you know your students and you're pushing them to do, like, their best work and it's an interesting thing, they're going to do that, and they're all going to work hard at their level.

And so for me, the longest part in kind of this journey of of moving from kind of, you know, like, textbook, the next page we're doing is the next page of the textbook to, like, how do we actually have a richer learning experience. It was almost like that like, the end of the original Matrix movie where, like, at some point, I just started, like, seeing everything, like, in code, and you're just like, oh, like, I don't have to follow the textbook.

And in some ways, that's really, really hard, and in some ways, it really can be really simple.

And so, again, like, it's it's both really hard and incredibly simplistic is that once you start doing this, your students that are like, you know, whatever metric you wanna use I hate saying kind of above grade level, but, you know, you have those kids that, like, are always, like, done with the worksheet. What's next? I'm done. What's next?

Right? You can keep pushing them on whatever activity, whatever project they're doing. And those that are really struggling are gonna be in it, and you're gonna help them and scaffold them. You know, like, the my go to right now is hopping in to SchoolAI, open up the, Sidekick.

I almost wanna say chatbot or something. Open up Sidekick, and then they have that one on one help. Right? And so you just have that Sidekick going for the whole class.

And whatever level they're at, they're getting that just right support.

And then the role is the of the teacher is just to to guide them, help them get unstuck.

And and, like, if you've if you've kind of set the, what's our food analogy? Like, if you set the meal out properly, you know, you just kinda turn them loose, and they're out there. You know? So as long as you have kind of a good premise and a good idea for a lesson and a good project, they're off to the races.

Well and you said one of those great keywords, that guide. Right? The guide on the side approach to project based learning where, you know, I found that effective project based learning actually had me busier in the classroom during class time than the other side where there's this belief that, oh, project based learning is the teacher just sits their feet up on the desk and rinse newspaper while the kids do the work. And I found when I really hit that stride, I'm bouncing from this table to that table and giving feedback and tweak this. And what do you think about this? Like, you are this cheerleader.

Right? This support factor to get them to where they need to be.

And I would love to hear, though, how do you deal with the type a kids who know how to do school and then you throw a project at them? And they're like, wait a second. Wait a second. This isn't what school's supposed to be.

Like, where are the worksheets? Where are the blanks? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I had a student at one point come to me in tears and just say, just tell me what I need to do to get an a.

Mhmm. How how does project based learning help those kids get out of that system?

Well, I wanna hear Annie's answer, but but first, this is why I loved teaching second grade the most. That's why it's still my favorite class, my favorite grade level because you don't get that question. Like, they for the most part, they still love school and love their teacher and love the idea of learning, and they haven't yet learned here's the least amount of work I need to do to get an a.

You know? So so in some ways, for me, the younger grades are actually easier for this type of teaching.

Mhmm.

What about you, Annie?

Yeah. No. Actually, Nick, I completely agree with you. And if anything, I think that using PBL is more work than because if you have a textbook, you have the textbook, you teach it, and there you go. Now you're gonna memorize it for your test. And if you get an eight, then that means you knew every answer.

For project based learning, there's so much so much research that we have to do. And to give you an example, my third graders just worked on a project where I want to connect them with communities. I teach, like I said, Spanish.

But I connected them with three schools in Mexico, and they wrote letters to the students. And I only did third grade this year, but the goal is to do it with many other grades next year. So I connected them, and I had to find the organization that I needed to work with. I needed to find, you know, the right place for them.

I needed I even needed to find classes that have the same number of students that I had because then they started saying, oh, but I don't wanna write a letter to it. They they were thinking that they were not gonna have somebody to write the letter letter to, and it's a lot of work. And then just thinking, how is everything gonna look like? Because I don't know if it happens to you, but as a teacher, it's really scary to lose control.

And to know that, okay, I'm gonna have different things, different kids working at different paces, asking questions. One of them is gonna get frustrated.

So I always begin by telling them this is collaboration.

This is not about who knows more, who knows this is about what do you know, what interests you, and then that's what you're gonna share with the rest of the of the class. But I I use rubrics, but then they use rubrics where they assess, evaluate the other students. So what did you learn from whatever student or whatever student? What do you think you would have liked to learn?

So that's where they can see that the grade is a little bit more tangible. But at the same time, those students and I do have them, and I have them all the time. No. But I want to see.

I I even call them, oh, you want the busy work? You know, the worksheet that you just fill out and okay. Why don't you do, like, a little, script? That's what one of them did.

It's a little script. You're gonna you're you're the one that's gonna create the sheet. So you have the script, and then you have the fill in the blanks, and then you give it to your, the the little the members of your team, and then you're the one that's gonna decide whether they did it right or wrong or not decide, but you know the answers.

If they understand what you have, that what you want them to do, that's gonna be your grade. So that's just one example. And it's worked, for the most part. And other students simply want to have a worksheet, and it doesn't bother me at all.

I just give them the worksheet that they want. As long as they're being part of a project, as long as they're doing you know, as long as I see that they're actually collaborating, the the worksheet doesn't affect me. It makes them happy. So it it really doesn't matter.

I just love having these conversations with people that also, like, love and do project based learning and, like, similar things. Because you hear, like, the buzzwords that that people might see as buzzwords, but they're not. Like, when you live it, they're not buzzwords. They're just what we do.

And you talked about control. And this is, you know, control and power are two very interesting things in teaching that I've sort of evolved my thinking on in terms of what does control look like, what does a power structure look like, even how we set up our classrooms. You know, where is the teacher set up? Is that the set it's like the position of power.

Right? The class revolves around the teacher desk. Right? So I've always found that one of the reasons people fear project based learning is because it's actually giving up control.

It's giving up power. It's decentralizing the power of the teacher and say, okay. I trust you guys as the students to explore the areas that you wanna explore. And I always try to say the word trust when I'm connecting with teachers because it is about trust.

Like, the kids trust you implicitly that you know what you're doing. Like, that's a really weird thing when we think about it. It's like a kid comes in and you tell them anything, and they'll be like, okay. It's the teacher said so.

Like, it's just like there's this trust. But it needs to go the other way. And I think the vast majority of students are people you can trust. And if there is a student that you feel you can't trust, there's probably more going on there than just, oh, I can't trust.

I can. It's usually something else. Like, maybe they've never had anyone trust them before. And they actually do not know how to respond to this level of trust.

And so it's scary to say, okay.

For me, thirty two of you, pick your project topic and go explore, and I'm gonna bounce around because I would hear from staff members. What if they choose something that you don't like? I go, well, I don't have to like it. I just have to know that they're following these steps to research it, to write about it, to present on it, to own, to create the artifact, to choose what the artifact is gonna be, and then the assessment.

How are you gonna assess thirty two different projects? Well, you learn how to create rubrics that are focused on the skills and not what they did to demonstrate those skills. Right? Like, you could write a song, you could make a clay pot, you could draw a comic strip, and they're all demonstrating the learning in different ways.

And one of the things that I look at about AI right now is that you can now use things like school AI spaces, and kids could actually build their own rubrics instantaneously in ways that I love it.

Unthinkable.

Like, it was just not even like, I would by the end of the year, my high school students could build their own rubrics because we've done it all year and say, hey. This is your final project. I want you to assess yourself. I'll approve it. But they had a year worth of rubrics to look at and go, oh, okay. Provenzen is always focusing on these things, and my project's gonna have these things. So my question for you guys, and and, Bill, you can jump on this one first, especially as the, director here.

How has technology and you definitely dive into AI as well. How has that changed, enhanced, possibly hurt project based learning, as it's evolved?

So I think it supports students in ways we could only dream of.

There we go. I'll just do this and block this much of my light. Sun ray, there I am. Sun ray, there I go.

We're just gonna chase the the sunset in this time.

So the first time I ever used Sidekick in SchoolAI was actually with both my parent hat on and my tech director hat on. I was just playing with it when, like, kinda first came out in my head at least. I was like, this is really cool. And then I get this email from my then third grader's teacher that was like, hi.

Please help Carl get five facts about hedgehogs.

And I was like, this is the strangest email I've ever received.

Like, how do I what? Five facts about hedgehogs. That's what we were doing.

And so I'm, like, like, backward lesson planning. I'm like, are we doing, like, informational writing? I think that's what we're doing. Okay. Like, I can do that, but I need to hedgehogs and, like, there's no book about it. There's no just we're doing great. We're doing hedgehogs.

So I get the email. It's one of those days where, like, we get home late. By the time we get everybody, like, showered, it's time to get food. By the time we're done with food, it's, like, almost time to get to bed.

You you've had these nights. Right? And so then Carl's like, I need my five facts about hedgehogs. She's like, oh my gosh.

Like, are we gonna just Google, like, facts about hedgehogs? Like, that's not that's not gonna be helpful for a three way level. So I'm like, Sidekick. Right?

So I'm like, you know, through grade students, informational writing, that was a guest that ended up being right. You know, support them. They're probably gonna pick topics they don't know, so give them the answers when they're stuck.

Go went live. QR code. Just copy and pasted it. Gave him my phone.

Put away leftovers.

Ten minutes later, and he's, like this was, like, early kind of in the, you know, kind of generative AI era. So, you know, he had never really interacted with it. I'm like, we're cool. You know, we're safe. He goes, I get the pasta away or whatever it was, come back. I'm like, what'd you learn about hedgehogs?

Fact, fact, fact, fact, fact.

It's like, that was amazing.

I'm taking notes on my notes app, printed on our little black and white printer that's right over here. Take it to class. Done. And I was just like, oh my gosh.

Like, the ability to pick an obscure topic, scaffold it to any grade level we want, and then just kinda turn them loose in a way that I can trust as a teacher or a parent or a teacher slash parent, is kinda magical. And so, like, I continue to to be so, so excited that it's not something that a teacher has to have any expertise in or the teacher needs to spend time prepping websites or whatever for it. It can be just like, hedgehogs? Sure.

Here you go. And they're, like, you know, sidekicking it and learn all about hedgehogs at their level.

And for me, that like, how does that not change everything about education right now, really? You know? Like, I'm kinda dancing on this idea, but, like, really, that that fundamentally can and should change every moment of how we spend time with kids.

Because, suddenly, they can learn anything, and it's safe, and it's at their level. And as long as we get kind of that prompt right and we were overseeing, like, the big topic, and once we have that, we're just, like, keeping them, you know, like, bumper bowling. Just too far this way, too far that way. You're way off topic. Let's get you back. You know, using that expertise to, like, move them forward.

But sure that, like, they can kinda learn anything and kinda do anything. It's it's magical.

Well and I think it goes back to that power structure again. It's like when the Internet happens. Right? When the Internet became available, all of a sudden, the teacher with the teacher's addition was no longer the gatekeeper of information.

Like, that was it. Like, if you wanted to learn as a student, you had to listen to your teacher because unless you have the Encyclopedia Britannica, which was outdated the minute it went to print and was in your house, You had no access to this information unless you went to a public school, public library, and you try like, you know, it's not nearly as accessible. The Internet happened, and all of a sudden, the teacher didn't have all of the answers. I could go to a thing called ask Jeeves, and Jeeves could give me all the answers.

Or I could Alta Vista that and get those answers. Like, you could go to these things. And then it became, I can now watch a video to teach myself how to play piano. Yeah.

My niece taught herself to play piano, but she stopped going to lessons. She's like, I can just watch this over and over again and learn how to do it.

Okay. Like, all of a sudden, now you take that next level with AI, and it does not replace teachers. It repositions us to be the support that they need to understand how to utilize these tools and be successful at them. And it's like you said, Bill, like, you put in the guardrails, you say, hey. What do you wanna learn? For project based learning, I would've just killed for sidekick or a space that I could design that says, we just read gothic literature. My students need to create elements that represent the different kinds of gothic literature.

They're gonna ask questions, provide examples of different stories they can read, and possible topics that they can like, so many of those kids that sit there staring at a, you know, a a a a a flashing cursor on a blank, you know, screen, and they have no idea where to start to to be able to say, hey. I could help you, which is what you do as a teacher, but also sometimes they're not looking at that screen until eleven thirty at night, and I can't help them. I'm not I'm not answering email. I'm off.

I'm asleep. But to have something like AI that you as a teacher's program to support them where they are, when they need it, that's a game changer. For me, that opens a giant it closed the giant gap of inequity, you know, by saying, hey. You can now get the support when you need it because you're working a job to support your family, and you don't get to go home, do homework like the traditional sense.

You're going to work, putting in six hours, and then doing late work. You now can have a personalized tutor, a support system, and I think that's huge. And he said you're a veteran teacher.

How has, how has technology, AI changed the way that project based learning, especially in a foreign language class? I know that's what a lot of teachers, they can even okay. How could you use it in a foreign language class? I know I get a lot of those. So how has that changed the way that you do your class or interact with your students?

So it's really interesting. One day and I am loving technology. I was so afraid of it. I really didn't wanna face it until Bill said you can do it, and I did it.

So, one of my students said, you're using AI, Maestro Annie, to do that? And I'm like, yes. Of course. First of all, because I don't know it all.

I learned from you, and using AI doesn't mean that I'm cheating because she saw it like you're cheating. And I was looking for, for ideas, for driving questions for one of the projects they were going to work on. And what I was doing was I had the idea. I just didn't know how to put it on paper.

So AI gave me five different ways of asking the exact same question. And they all had to do with the project that I talked about before, which was the connection between our students and students in Mexico in rural schools.

And and and some of them were like, how can we learn from students in those communities? The other one was, what can we give to the students in those communities? So very, very, similar ways of asking the question. But for them, they thought I was asking different questions until they found the one they connected with.

So, another thing that really has helped me a lot is creating rubrics because many students want to see why because I think this is a very typical question. Why did you give me a b? Why did you give me a an f? Well, I didn't give you an f.

This is and and then the rubrics help you show them. This is tangible. Right here, you can see I'm asking for five elements of whatever whatever. Do you have the five elements?

Well, no. Actually, I only have two. Oh, there you go. So that's part of of, you know, the points that you're getting.

If you wanna see where the points are are coming from, that's where they're coming from. So it goes from very simple things like what I just said, looking for, a way of asking a question to making this amazing rubrics. I mean, I was very impressed when I literally just said, can you please make a rubric that analyzes blah blah blah? It gave me the whole thing in a matter of seconds, including the format of a rubric, and I literally just had to print it.

And at the beginning, I I do have to say that I felt like I was cheating, and then I thought, no. Well, I mean, there's a reason why we have AI. There's a reason why we have to understand why it works, how we have to use it. We have to be responsible with it, and we have to teach our students, you know, by example.

So, going to your question as to how we do it in in, a language class, well, it's the exact same. Sometimes I include directions in English and in Spanish.

I really want to find that, happy place where I can use only I would love to have, like, an immersive classroom, which here, it's not the case only because we see the students only twice a week, and it's only forty five minutes when in reality, it's probably less than that between them getting ready and all set up. But what I'm trying to do right now is precisely using AI. Can you please use the words blah blah blah blah? And I give it a list of words that I know that my students know, and then they can read the directions in Spanish because that's vocabulary that they learn. It can be as simple as, because sometimes I say, how do you say I really need to put the pencil in my pencil case because that's too much? Would you be able to say that?

How can you find ways of saying it? Try to use, you know, try to use AI to to let you do that. But can I use Google Translate? No.

Let's go let's go beyond Google Translate. Let's try to find different solutions. Let's try to use our critical thinking. And it's happening.

They're they're going on Sidekick, and they're, you know, school AI just has so many different tools.

And it's I'm not gonna say it's easy to incorporate it mainly because as a teacher, you have to know what you're doing. But it's definitely possible, and it happens faster than you know. By the time you are doing it, you're like, no. I can't live without it.

And and that's just the reality. I don't know how I would do it right now without my little prompts that I asked for. And, so I think it's a matter of practicing, of facing that challenge. And as teachers, we're constantly learning.

We're literally learning every day. I remember one time I asked the teacher, so what are some of the challenges you have faced throughout your years of teaching? And the answer was, like, I've never really had any challenges. And I was like, I have challenges challenges every ten seconds.

So, you know, that's why AI comes handy. All of those, human mistakes, all of those human clouds that we have sometimes can be solved in a matter of minutes. And then you just adapt it to your own style to what you need in your classroom because you don't have to follow it exactly the way it is.

Actually, most of the time, you're gonna have to tweak it. Right? So, one thing that I did with my class in talking about the the the projects was I began with a mural, and this was for Cinco de Mayo celebration. So it's a mural which was actually pretty big.

Each one of the students got a little square, and they had to color it. But they all had to agree on the colors because in the end, it was the image of, two peep two, dancers. They were dancing, traditional a traditional dance in Mexico. And they realized that if they didn't use the same colors, if they didn't use the same shade, it was not gonna look good.

And that's how they came to the understanding of, like, oh, we have to collaborate.

And using AI helps us collaborate even more.

So that's Andy, you just nailed it.

I can't even say that any better. I mean, that was, so phenomenal. I mean, it was so great. It it had me thinking in particular about what you're saying in regards to saving yourself the time.

And it's not cheating if I you know, it's making our lives just a little bit easier by doing some of those things. Like building a rubric could take you an entire prep period. Like that that's like not out of their realm. Anyone's had to build one of the ones in the boxes and you're trying to make everything online and easily a prep period.

Like I said, now you can have it in five minutes. The more that you utilize AI in those tools, they'll get even faster as they start to learn. Oh, you teach this class. You like your rubrics looking this way.

You always here. So it'll start to give you more what you want the more that you use it.

I'm gonna drop this into the chat.

I built for a foreign language teacher. One of the things I remember in foreign language is, like, the standard assignment was pair up with someone, pretend you're at a restaurant, and, like, write practice your language ordering things.

Well, that's not great if both people at the table both are struggling with proper pronunciation of that. So I built a SchoolAI space where the space will be your partner. And the level in which it'll interact with you, it asks you at the very beginning. So one, you choose language.

Two, let's say you beginner, intermediate, or advanced. Advanced, only in that language. Like, that's it. The whole conversation is the language of choice.

Medium, it'll give you some hints as to what you're talking about. And beginner, it'll give you the language and in English. So you're seeing both pop up. So you're learning and doing both.

So it's up to the person. But, like, I was to remember, like, when I was struggling in Spanish in high school and I would be paired up with someone who was also struggling. I'm like, we both don't know what's going on. How is this helping either one of us at this moment?

But now with AI, you can now have someone that speaks the language, and you can click speak. You can listen to it. You could hear pronunciation. Like, those things have gotten so much better over the, you know, six months, eight months.

Right? The the exponential growth that we're seeing in AI training is huge. And and I love that, you know, it's not cheating for us to do it, then it's not cheating for the kids to do it. And it's a a thing, you know, Bill, you've definitely heard this, at many other conferences we're at.

If Google can do your worksheet, Google will probably do the worksheet.

Like like, if that's what you're giving them to do, the path of least resistance is, oh, you just want answers? Okay. You know, my kid has brought worksheets home, and I was like, dude, he I'm like, just just Google, and we'll get this through. I know you know it.

You know you know it. You need to fill in all of these twenty questions. I'm like, okay. Boom.

Let's Google it. Let's open up Chat JBT. Let me just drop these in here. Let me take a picture of it.

I can just take a picture of it and say, answer these questions, and it will. And it'll give me links to where I can find the information if I wanna verify. I go, no. It doesn't sound right.

Because if that's the assignment you're getting, that's the work you're gonna get back. And I think what I've loved about project based learning is that there is no Google's going to do this for you. Like, project based learning like you said, Google could technically write the letter to that school in Mexico. I mean, it could, but you'll know as the teacher can know right away that that was written by like, because it's not hitting some of those benchmarks.

Like, when I want this type project for my students, I have found kids will engage in it because they're like, oh, yes. This is I don't want worksheets. Like, that's the thing. Kids want to be engaged.

They do not want packets of worksheets. They do not want fill in the blanks. And I get there's a place in the educational system, unfortunately, for that, That that is a skill set that we have to prepare them for in some degree, multiple choice tests, filling in bubbles on scantrons. Like, I get it. So I live in a reality.

But I had some, like, sort of rough data that showed my kids that were in a project based learning ELA class performed just as well, if not better than the other classes of the same content that did the standardized testing when we took the standardized test. So my whole argument was, why not do it the fun way?

Why not do it? Like, if the grades are equitable or higher, it's not that my kids are smarter. It's just that they can remember. And I have kids I haven't taught in a decade that if I run across them, they'll say, hey. Do you remember when we did this in class?

And I'm like, yeah. I remember we did that in class. I remember your project. And then they're like, oh, is that so much fun?

But if you ask any of those kids, hey. Do you remember that math test you took? Other than remembering fear and anxiety, they won't remember what those things were. And I think that's what project based learning does is that it creates memories.

And I think too often people dismiss that. Almost that if you're having too much fun, you're not learning.

Right. Right.

Well and so, like, if and also if you're having too much fun, you're not teaching or you're not a good teacher. Right? All this and I still remember the way you're describing it, Nick. Junior year in high school in the in the nineteen hundreds as my own kids call it, I got to write a song. It was, like, right when when multiple intelligences was, like I'm sure that's when, like, the range came out. And because the my, my fairly progressive junior English teacher was like, you can do these twelve ways to demonstrate your learning of the Glass Menagerie.

Like, write a song? Yes, please.

So I wrote a horrific song, and Josh, who was behind me in English class, sang the horrific song. And two friends that had instruments but couldn't quite play them played with us. And I still remember all about it. It's called bump on a log, and we wrote it in the nineteen hundreds.

Laura is lame. Amanda is a pain. Is it are these the lyrics? And that boy named Tom thinks that life is better game.

And in the chorus, you'll love this ELA teacher. She got snow friends. She got snow job. She sits around like a bump on a log, and we got an a.

And I still remember it. I remember it now, good lord, thirty years later.

Right? Like, it makes learning sticky.

And I'm sure I'm sure the other thing we will add, and and this is my way to shoehorn it into this story, is that as a teacher, I love grading these projects so much more than reading long essays. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Right? Like, how much better was it for my junior English teacher to be like, let me hear this hideous song for a minute and a half instead of, you know, reading these five page papers.

Well and I think what and exactly what you're talking about is that you had a passion for writing music. Like, you were like, I can tap into something I like and do a thing. And it it's funny because there's, like, the pop culture narrative that kids are all mean in school and that they none of them likes learning except for, like, three or four kid. It's fundamentally not true.

Like, from all the teachers I have talked to across the country, I've been lucky to go and visit and work with. The average kid is like, hey. Can you just make school fun? I wanna learn.

Like, I wanna learn. If you can just make it a little more interesting, I'm sold. And even most of those kids are still like, okay. This is school.

I get it. Like, let me just do the thing. You know, when you can make it something memorable like that or when I was allowed to be in character for my disc my book report on, Jurassic World, the sequel to Jurassic Park in high school. Like, I got to show up and I got to dress up in character and my my English teacher knew I needed to be engaged in a different way.

So when I proposed so I wanted to be in character and I went and she's like, okay, Provincetal. You're actually participating right now. Absolutely.

The dyslexic kid was like, I have an idea. And she's like, do the thing. And then I became an English teacher. So I really don't understand why I was, like, cutting from bondage.

But, like, I remember the kids you talk about writing songs. Kids love writing songs. You have kids in every class that you will teach that wanna write music, and I love it. And I had kids like, mister p, we wanna write we wanna write a rap about Gatsby.

And I was like, oh, no. Okay. And I was like, why? And they're like, we think we have it.

And I was like, okay. And then there was a girl in the I was like, do you sure you wanna hit your wagon to this train wreck? She's like, it'll be fine. The kid wrote all the beats, divided it up, gave them the character that they're writing the lyrics for, and they dropped a hardcore beat.

And the class went wild. Like, it was just this moment of connection.

And again, there were, like, inside jokes based on class discussion. Like, things that could only have been in the song if they were participating in the class and, like, paying attention. Right? Like, those were things and and and I'm sure you guys get this too.

You know, how can you how can you assess that? Like, right? Like, how do you assess a song? I go, well, it's I think people outside of education think that projects are a competition that, like, I'm assessing this versus this and they're not.

Right? And ultimately, you don't have to understand it. I do. I need to look at this and go, do they know the things I want them to know?

And ultimately, that's all a rubric is. Like, we talk about how complex they are. They're just saying, know these things. How well do you know?

And as the teacher, you're just going check, check, check, check. They knew these things. And I would tell kids, like you said, do you have five? No.

You have two. I always tell a kid to go, if you have to explain your essay to me, you're proving my point.

Like, if I read your essay, this is what it is. You have to explain it. The whole point of the essay is that you don't have to explain it. That's why you're writing this.

Just like the whole point of the project is I should see it. If I don't see it, it's not there. And I think what it does is that I believe it makes learning more clear as opposed to multiple choice tests where it's everything is black and white. It's this is the answer, this isn't the answer, or did you show the work or didn't you show the work?

And I think what we're doing and, again, Bill, you writing that song is a wonderful example of it. You're empowering kids, and I would love to hear what your guys' connection to this. But I found that when I did my project based learning, my biggest champions were the worst resource room ladies. All of my students that had IEPs, all of my students that had five zero fours, they loved having students in my class.

Because when you have very specialized students with specialized needs and plans, project based learning is actually the most equitable way to engage them. Do you guys have any experience with that at all? Amy, I'll let you go first.

Yes. Absolutely. Especially the the school where I taught before. Like I said, it was a stew school that was specifically for students with dyslexia. We had a combination dyslexia, ADHD. And so, yes, definitely.

You have to understand that as an educator, you can't expect the same thing from every single student because they all have different needs, different likes.

And and that's why it becomes such a big challenge. Right? And I feel like that's the reason why we have that passion of, like, I I need to find a way, and I know I will find a way for each one of them to feel like they're getting what they need. I remember, thinking, oh, I wish I could teach the way that I wish they would have taught me, if that makes sense, how how I'm saying.

Somebody said no. You should teach the way they want you to teach them. Because the way you wanted to learn is probably not the way they want to learn. So when you give them all these choices and all these different things, then they say this one resonates with me.

This one really doesn't really mean anything to me. Right? So I have a student here specifically who says, I don't like drawing. I don't like reading.

I don't like writing. Well, guess what? He loves creating. And I said, okay. So what you're gonna do is instead of doing, so one of the things that we were doing was talking about restaurants.

They were working on a restaurant project, and she said, I wanna build the food. And I said, that's great. And then you're gonna learn the vocabulary as you're making the food. And then she made, like, a three d project.

Other kids wanted to do it just on paper. They colored it, and they cut it. But in the end and then she said, at the end, they had to learn about, Mexican money. And she said, I want to be the banker.

Sure. And he was the banker. He was the one that was giving the rest of the students the money and, like, you have a hundred dollars that you can spend, actually, pesos that you can spend if you go to the restaurant. And he was helping them.

If you have a hundred, but then you spend sixty, this is how much you're gonna get back. So he was combining his math with the Spanish vocabulary that he was learning. So, that's that's, I guess, one of the challenging things for teachers and for educators. You that that fear of losing control, like, I want them to finish this, and sometimes whatever you prepare doesn't happen the way you thought it was gonna happen.

So we have to be able to improvise. We have to have a ton of flexibility.

And I don't I feel like that wasn't the case before. There's even now, there's so many teachers that are like, nope. Either you do it this way or it's wrong. Either you follow my lead or it's wrong. Either you fill in the blanks or it's wrong. And, you know, standardized tests are the perfect example of that.

And and there's so many students that that show super low numbers, and then you see see them in the classroom. And I wanna go specifically my my students with dyslexia. The level of creativity that they have is it's just incredible. It goes beyond what anybody would ever think.

And and they other kids sometimes see them, and they're like, you read so weird. You why can't you write this? It's so easy. Well, guess what?

We we all have different things that we struggle with. I was terrible with math, and I never had the teacher that that actually made me understand math. Right?

So that's why we have to to learn that there's all these different types of learners, and and we are the ones that are responsible of making sure that they actually feel heard and they feel challenged and everything that comes with, you know, all the all the different challenges for us too.

Annie, I don't think anyone could have said it any better. I think, like, you are, like, honest honest to goodness. Like, you know, it it just speaks volumes to your experience, and I think working with so many different level of students, you know, grade wise and dyslexic students. Okay.

As someone with dyslexia, just hearing you say that, I just it makes my heart glow because, yes, like, I wish I had people see me as a creative person and not the lazy kid who doesn't wanna do the reading.

Right? I mean, that is the standard thing that I heard over and over. He can't sit still. He's lazy.

He just needs to try harder. Like, those are the things that made me feel stupid. I didn't feel smart until I was diagnosed by my college English teacher said, anyone ever tell you're dyslexic? I'm like, what's that?

And all of a sudden, the world made sense. I'm like, oh, I'm not dumb. I just assumed I was dumb. Like, that's what kids think.

And so because I was given very few opportunities to learn a certain way, I just assumed I wasn't good at it. Right? It's the whole goldfish climbing a tree thing. You know, that whole concept of, like, I couldn't.

And then my son brought that home to read, and I was like, okay. It's me. It's me. It's me.

It's me. It's me. Like, it's me. Yeah.

We are up at the time, but I wanna give one last thing for people, to maybe noodle on. Bill, what advice would you have to give someone, quickly in a nugget if they want to get started with project based learning? Like, how or where or what do they start?

Well yeah. And so this actually answers your question too.

Public audience having some way to share it broadly gives it a focus and makes it so that the teacher isn't the one with the pressure because there's an actual audience. There's a performance. There's an exhibition. We're recording and sharing this.

And then can I do a next level one?

Yeah. Go ahead.

Go ahead. If you're, like, if you're ready for, like, actually needing to rely on each other. So, like, if you're making a movie as a class to where, like, you have one person that's only in charge of wardrobe, and all they're looking for is day to day, that person forgot their hat, like the continuity person. Right?

And so that helps those students who are like, well, I'm not an actor. I didn't write the script. You know? Like, I don't see myself as a writer.

What can I do? Like, how can I show up? Like, oh, you're like the fashion, like, the fashion person actually we need for this project so that it's consistent. Right?

And so coming up with those ways, a more advanced way of, like, how do you actually need each other to be able to complete this project? And not just I do this section, you do that section, but were you, like, really almost like that's what I love about playing in a band so much. It's like I can play bass, but if you had guitar and drums and a vocal, suddenly, it's a song. It's a band.

There's this magic where, like, it's greater than the sum of its parts. Like, looking for moments like that in projects, I think, is, like, the the next level way where you truly need the people in your group.

That's awesome. I love that. It's a great tip. Annie, how about you? Any advice to someone who's just starting with project based learning, where to start, what to do?

Start small.

Don't be afraid. And the way I see it is the final product is not the dessert.

That's the main dish because you have to have the whole thing together. That's the whole process to finally get to to what what you can show to people. So if you are still new to it, you can even start with something as simple as how do you want to connect with the kids next door? With the kids, we have a school next door, for example.

Right? And from that question, you start getting answers from students and some of the answers you never expect. And and you think, oh, wow. I haven't thought about that.

And and I promise you, you're gonna hear more than five different ways that the kids are gonna tell you. Oh, I would connect this way. I would connect. So start small.

That's I love that so much.

I love it. And that's been perfect. And for those of you who are still like, oh, I I have so many ideas, this is where I recommend going into SchoolAI, go to co teacher, go into the project based activity assistant, and just dump your ideas into there and say, how does this work as a project? And it'll break it down for you.

And the more that you noodle into it and say, hey. What about this? What about this? It'll build it for you.

It is scary. There's nothing worse than doing a lesson and having that bomb in front of thirty kids. We've all been there, though. Like, it is the ultimate stand up comedian is a teacher.

Okay? We have our set list and sometimes we get in front of our audience and it is a bomb. Other times, we are the funniest, most intelligent person in that room, and it feels great. That high, when you leave that class, you're like, I'm the best teacher ever.

Like, oh my goodness. Like, these third graders love me. And then there are other days where you just get crickets, and you have to be okay for the crickets because the crickets lead to those awesome things. And so I think all the advice we got from Bill and Andy today were just tremendous.

Definitely, reach out. Bill, if they wanted to find you on the socials, can they find you on the socials?

Yeah. And Bill Selleck on all the things.

Bill Selleck on all the things. Annie, are you, are you on any socials at all? It's okay if you're not.

I must confess that I'm not on all the socials. You.

Listen. I wish.

I I really, really wanna say it. I don't want to spend three hours on Instagram or Facebook because I have so many other things to do, but you can definitely find me at hillbrook dot com, and you you can see my email.

Hillbrook hillbrook dot org, actually. They can't find you at hillbrook dot com.

You're totally right. Bill, thank you. See why you are my biggest girl.

Well, if you really want to know more about what Annie is doing, you can definitely, reach out to her through the hill work dot org or ping Bill, and Bill can, connect you if you have some really cool questions about that as well. Definitely also check out Bill's podcast.

Yes?

Is that my plug?

Bill Selleck Talks? Because my name is Bill Selleck, and the podcast is me talking.

Bill, Annie, thank you so much for your time. I'll shoot you guys an email later this week, again, to thank you and wrap all of this up. For everyone else, this is recorded, and it'll be posted on the community, shortly later this week. And I I thank you all for taking the time. So, again, Bill, and enjoy the rest of your, you have a whole evening to go to, so enjoy that out there in California. To everyone else, good night, and I will see you on the interwebs. Take care.

Do we stay or do we leave?

I think the stream is ending in two seconds.

I bet Nick's gonna pop back.