This episode features Jamie Britto from Lakeside School, discussing their proactive adoption of AI, including student-led initiatives and policy development. The conversation also explores the evolving landscape of cybersecurity and leadership strategies in independent school technology.

• Lakeside School
• Leadership and Technology at Independent Schools: A Handbook for School Leaders in Administration, Technology, and Academics, book by Albert Throckmorton, Jamie Britto, Tim Fish
• Partnerships in Technology and Learning, episode of Talking Technology with ATLIS featuring Tim Fish
• Source Code, Bill Gates memoir
• Helping Independent School Educators Use AI to Teach, episode of Talking Technology with ATLIS featuring Eric Hudson

Alex, welcome to Talking Technology with ATLIS,

the show that plugs you into the important topics and trends for

technology leaders all through a unique Independent School lens.

We'll hear stories from technology directors and other

special guests from the Independent School community,

and provide you with focused learning and deep dive topics

there is no need to adjust your internet. This is a talking

technology with Atlas takeover. My name is Peter Frank. I am the

Senior Director of certification and operations at ATLIS. And I

am Bill

Stites, the Director of Technology at

Montclair Kimberly Academy in Montclair, New Jersey, and I'm

scared for my life that Peter is in charge,

and I'm Hiram Cuevas, Director of Information

Systems and Academic Technology at St Christopher school in

Richmond, Virginia. And I am not fearful at all.

You should be.

Thank you, Hiram. Saying, Hiram has all the

confidence. Kristina has all the confidence. We're doing

something different today from the normal thing. Kristina,

sorry she can't be here. She'll definitely be back for our avid

listeners, but we're going to try something new, and that's

fine. I've been behind the scenes, and now I get to flip

the mic on for once, so we're going to have a good time here.

We've got a fantastic guest. We're looking forward to that,

and this all made me think about people relinquishing control. I

think naturally, as humans, we have drivers and we have

passengers where we're more comfortable. So I'm curious

Hiram and Bill, where you both fall. I know that I was born a

natural I'm more comfortable driving, but I was very

fortunate when I was in my 20s, I had a couple mentors. I

learned from them the value of being comfortable as the

passenger, and that has served me well throughout my life. But

I'm curious about you guys, are you more comfortable driving or

more comfortable being the passenger, either figuratively

or literally? Well,

I'll tell you, as a New York driver, I am always

likely to be the driver rather than the passenger, because I

just very little tolerance for poor driving. But

professionally, I would say it's an evolution. You know, you kind

of would like to be in charge, but sometimes you've got to

wait. You've got to prove yourself, and it's good to often

be the passenger, and then that grows. It's leading from behind.

And then eventually you can start doing some of that driving

on your own. But there's also nothing better than bringing

along new folks on the team that are passengers. And then all of

a sudden you can put it on cruise control, and all of a

sudden you realize that they are actually driving the ship and

doing a great job.

I'm king of the road trip. Hiram knows this

quite well. Is every summer we take our drive down to Florida

to visit the mouse. We'll stop and see Hiram and I do that

drive with my family, but I'm the only one that's driving

because a I do enjoy the drive. I always like to keep moving. So

I'll get off the road and try different things. If the path

that was laid out isn't the path that's working or it's getting

backed up, I'm willing to take detours. My wife is always the

good navigator on the side. She's there helping out and

trying to find different ways. And I think it's a great analogy

for the work that we do in that I think for any of us that are

in these types of positions, we've probably gotten here

because there's been that desire to drive, but again, having the

good navigator, having the person who can be by your side

to help direct you along the way, is always helpful. And when

you get tired, you need to be willing to pull over and let

somebody else drive and know and trust in them that they can get

you where you need to be. And I think while I may not do that a

lot in my personal life, when on the road, I think we all need to

put ourselves in positions where we can sit in that passenger

seat and let somebody else drive, or particularly when we

are engaged in new ideas or new ventures or in something that is

going to require The work of a larger group, understanding

where you are in that role and that you know you're going to

get your time behind the wheel, but a lot of times, you're going

to have to be in the van with everyone else and listening to

the tunes and enjoying the ride as you go when you're not the

one behind the wheel. So

we have someone who's been driving for quite a

while in this space. We are honored to have Jamie Britto

from Lakeside school here. Jamie, welcome to the podcast.

First of all, thanks for being here. Glad to be here. We

appreciate it. And one thing that we'd like to do, we assume

that you don't have a bachelor's, master's or

doctorate in independent school technology leader, because most

people don't, because that doesn't exist, usually. So we

love to hear people's stories just briefly, about how you went

from whatever you were doing before to you found yourself as

a technology leader at independent schools. What's your

story? Yeah,

and to look at the metaphor of dr. And traveling

that kind of connects, I think, with my origin story. Way back

in the day, I thought I was going to be a French teacher,

and my first job was teaching English in France. So the travel

metaphor is, I think figuring out how to get from point A to B

in Europe largely doesn't involve a car. So I like that

kind of navigation of the experience where you don't have

quite the same control of it's your car, and you go when you

want to go and you stop when you want to stop. But how do you

navigate the terrain and the options? Over my career, I've

taken a lot of trips internationally with students

from independent schools, and navigating those groups through

different cultures and transit schedules and missed flights and

those types of things has been its own adventure too. But I

think part of that control issue was so I thought I was going to

be a great French teacher. I taught in France for a year. I

collected all kinds of real Yeah, has, you know, it was

described at the time. I got back to Northern Virginia fair

Bucks County, and I applied for a French job, and the woman who

interviewed me was like, You have great skills. Happy to have

you get this job. But let me tell you, our projection is that

we have far more French teachers than we have need for French

teachers. So I recommend you not pursue this career and in the

way that things unfold and you figure something else out. They

did, however, have a high need for English as a second language

teachers, which I had just kind of done in France, and so I

began teaching ESL, you know, and has happens with new

teachers. Sometimes the department gave me the sections

that they didn't want to teach, which was largely, there was a

class of kids who arrived, had just arrived in the country, and

they spent two hours a day with me, you know, one point, 13

different languages, a range of different schooling backgrounds,

and so again, navigating that and responding to the classroom,

I think that has helped me be adaptive and kind of responsive

to the environment I'm in. The other thing that the teachers in

the teachers in the department didn't want to do is deal with

technology. So when they got a computer, they gave it to me and

said, like, figure this out. And I watched some students who, you

know, I had fairly small classes, but I watched some

students who were reluctant to talk to me or to the group, kind

of open up when they were doing some verbal processing. I was

writing some hyper card programs to use in my class, and I

watched some kids do better in that environment than with me or

with their classmates. And so I kind of saw that happen, and

that was a big moment. And then I kind of saw that so I was in

the beginning of that part and worked for Fairfax in the state

of Virginia, a bit on technology before a friend of mine had

moved to independent schools, Tim fish actually worked with me

in Fairfax County. We shared an office briefly, and he moved to

McDonough, and he was like, Hey, you have a young family. You're

in this situation. You should check this out. You should look

at independent schools. And then I moved over to Cape Fear

Academy in Wilmington, North Carolina as the tech director,

and that's kind of the story,

nice. And there you go. And we've had Tim on this

podcast before, so the small, independent school technology

world here, right? Bill and Hiram that story, we've heard

lots of people's origin stories that all sounds pretty familiar,

I'm sure, to you guys. No,

without a doubt, it's rarely the person in this

position that went into independent schools thinking

that this is what they were going to do, particularly in the

age group for which we're talking here in particular. I

think now you may see that a little bit more, but definitely

in the early to mid 90s was definitely not one of those

things.

And actually, Jamie and Tim, you guys did a

workshop in an AIS workshop after you published your book.

It was really the foundation for my career launching, because

your work actually predates my work here at St Christopher, so

I thank you for that, that first building block. Yeah,

that was a good time. It was a good

collaboration and figuring it all out. And again, you know, I

think part of that workshop you're remembering Hiram was

based around 12 questions. So again, posing questions rather

than providing answers, and seeing this community respond

based on where they're coming from and the different resources

and sizes of their schools. So I've enjoyed being part of all

of that. You've taken me down this car

metaphor, Peter. So I've got all this stuff in my

head, and it's interesting only in that both Hiram and Jamie are

two people that when MKA was in the process of looking at

different information systems, when we were thinking about

making a pivot from where we were to where we are now, both

Hiram and Jamie were two of the people in two of the schools

that I actually went and did a site visit with to kind of see

what was going on, to see their schools, not only to get a

handle of what they're doing at the schools, but to understand

how they were using their different information systems.

If you want to talk about who's driving the car, who's in the

passenger seat, you know it's. Like, who's driving me to the

different dealerships, so I can look at the different cars and

the different models and the ways in which they're doing

things. And I think when it comes to leadership and things

that each of us have done in this area, I think opening

yourself up to have other people come in and see what you're

doing and share directly with them is some of those things,

Jamie, the book that you wrote, and Hiram, thanking you for

that. I thank you and Hiram as well for opening yourselves up.

Because I think without doing that, we as other school

members, as other tech directors, we don't have the

opportunity to learn and grow in the ways in which we might if we

were never outside of our

own building, certainly. I mean, one thing, as

someone who's come from outside this community, one of the

quickest observations I think I made watching y'all work

together is how much sharing and how much people contribute for

the common good and to keep moving things forward. That's

definitely a factor that I see in this community. It's part of

what makes the Atlas community and the community at large, so

valuable and so special. I definitely see that, Jamie, you

mentioned throwing someone at technology and saying, figure it

out. And I understand that you've got some people that have

been at your schools and that you've worked with some pretty

high profile people that you might have some insight about.

Can you talk a little bit about

that? Yeah, so I'm currently at Lakeside school,

and Lakeside was fortuitous in terms of all those things coming

together, that the parents association provided a computer

to the school, and Paul Allen and Bill Gates happened to have

been students at the school when they did that, and they

encouraged them to explore the computer. And so Bill has

recently released his first memoir. It's called source code,

and is speaking a lot about his time at Lakeside. I was here in

Seattle, I was at a different school, and I was here for the

NAIS conference, and I did the site visit to Lakeside, and they

have a little I call it the shrine, you know, where, like,

the computer that they used is in case, behind glass, and there

are photos of them and some statements, but one of the

things that was the prevailing vibe is the adults got out of

the way, and that took some trust, and that was in the 70s,

and that's obviously a different environment for independent

schools and whatnot, but the taking that risk and providing

the most recent, up to date tools to kids, and trusting them

to figure it out alongside us or in front of us is something that

I've you know, as well as being part of the community and

learning from others like Bill and Hiram, also learning from

kids very early on, my first job, Cape Fear Academy, I you

know, had hired a student or a student came to find Me, and was

helping me, like, move furniture around, and listening to him

talk about technology was as good as a graduate course. And

so I think that schools and independent schools are in a

better position, perhaps, than some public schools, to take

those chances and trust kids when it necessitates it or when

it's possible. And that was transformative for the school,

for the country, for the tech industry, and so I think we

honor and remember that, and are willing to lean into the messy

parts and the uncertain parts and not having control all the

time.

So Jamie, do you think that was the first

iteration of a disruptive moment in quote, unquote, Ed Tech.

It's interesting. Yeah, I don't know exactly all

that came before, but I watched this Netflix documentary a few

years ago called the brain of Bill Gates. And the couple of

the episodes go into detail as to what Paul Allen and Bill

Gates were doing with the computer. They were scheduling

the classes. They were figuring that out, and it was all, you

know, on a line. They had ran a telephone line from Lake sides

campus to the University of Washington, because it was

centralized computing. You know, it was punch cards that they

were using. But they figured out a billing system for the

Washington State utility company and were processing bills for

the state utility when they were in high school on this computer.

And so that kind of blows my mind. You know, in all of those

ways that they achieved such competency and understanding of

the technology that one, they were helping with the scheduling

of the school, but two, also branching out and doing these

projects. So I think so. And I think that you know the stories

of Paul Allen going to Harvard and talking to Bill about the

computer being released, and you know that they needed to go and

write the code like that. It encouraged them, I think, to

take those chances, big chances like drop out of Harvard and

start coding, and so I think that's disruptive. It certainly

was an early one and a big one, and particularly for schools to

do that. I've been in schools where to the driver analogy,

they would prefer to be in control. Much of the time you

know that the chance of someone throwing something wrong or

whatever, you know, like, how much. Free time do we give

students? How much exploration time do we give students? So I

think that was part of that different time and the different

culture that was helpful.

Jamie, what does student involvement at Lakeside

look like now, if they gave that to them at those early stages,

now that you're there, what does that look like?

One of the things that I've taken with me at each

of the independent schools I've worked at, including that story

of the student who came in to help me move furniture. You

know, my first year is to hire students to help us with the

summer work, and it gives us a chance to connect. Gives us a

chance to help with some of the repetitive work that helps, I

think, independent school students, to get a an hourly job

that they show up and work at. And 80% of it is kind of the

grudge work of unpacking boxes or putting stickers on things

or, you know, hitting a certain sequence on key tabs and

cleaning projectors in classrooms and all of that. But

it facilitates, over time, relationships and encouraging

kids in technology. And so, you know, we've had a number of kids

come through that summer program. And right now, where

that's really exciting and manifesting itself is that a

group of students, the core who had done that summer work were

really interested last summer in AI, and they had been working in

kind of the 20% time, like 80% you're supposed to be on packing

boxes, and 20% we try to give you something a little more

interesting. In that 20% time, they started to build a computer

to host local models on, and they really kind of caught fire.

They collaborated with members of my team who had interest in

background and how to set up those types of computers. And by

August, we were four weeks into the project, we were ready to

share that with the administrative team, and their

pitch was to host what they call the Andromeda server on campus

and provide access to the local models and all of the different

models that they could possibly explore and load, as well as

some APIs into the paid versions, like Chat, GPT and

others. So it's kind of like a buffet of AI that you can go to

and to go through the process, not just of the technical piece.

I always like the phrase people process and technology. You

know, they figured out the technology pretty readily, but

then to figure out what was the process to be able to make that

sustainably available to other students, and how did they

navigate leadership and different questions and faculty

and all of that was great. And so to see those kids, they're

called the Andromeda captains. Now there's a club. Clubs are a

big part here. Two hours a week are given to clubs. They've

created a club where they have like 10 regular members come but

another 1530 come in, and they are building models and talking

about how they can be used in

classes. Jamie talk to us about those models.

What exactly are they developing and creating so that folks have

access to.

Yeah, so I think they began with the open source

model, so a lot of the meta llama stuff and working on, how

would they train those models for different things? But

they've expanded into just about everything. You know, we were

looking at this the other day, and I would say they have 20

different models available, which includes some of the API

connected models. And so in this instance, students are given an

account to the server, and they've also designed a way

where it tracks all of the conversations they've had. So

you know, if there's a question around the use, there's a log

file that shows exactly kind of what transpired on that server.

So,

Jamie, it's fascinating. You were talking

about in the past schools discovering technology and

throwing it at the students and say, y'all figure it out. And

fast forward to now, and it's a very different environment. The

technology is different. The nature of the technology is

different. The power that it possesses is different. So we

understand, but we've had several guests come on. We

always get around to talking about AI, and there are many

different positions people have taken, and there's often just

simply uncertainty, or, yeah, we're holding back, or we're

restraining a bit, but your school has just gone all in with

the AI. So I'm fascinated, you know, people worry about the

challenges. I'm curious what challenges have already arisen,

and how are you tackling that? How are you approaching those

things?

Yeah, great question. You know, I think as

we look at the different aspects of our community, or components

of our community, we have faculty, we have students, we

have leadership, we have families. I think what surprises

me in AI perhaps more than in other places, and maybe it's not

a surprise given you know how big it is, but like the

emotional response that people have to it is greater than the

introduction of a smart board. Or the introduction of an LMS.

So there are a wide range of like, from very enthusiastic

people to people who feel like this could be the beginning of

the end of humanity. You know, that have concerns about

copyright and the impact on the environment and the impact on

other people of society. And like, you know, where is some of

that training happening in other parts of the world. And so we're

having all of those conversations. We're having the

difficult conversations about, what does it mean to teach and

learn and work in the world of rapidly changing AI and one of

my favorite moments the succinctness of students.

Sometimes there's another group that is called the AI advisory,

which is a less technical group, more interested in these

societal issues and advising the school on how they should

approach it. From a student perspective, a panel of five or

six students from the two groups came and sat before the Upper

School faculty and answered questions from the faculty and

Lakeside is really rooted in the Harkness table model and the

Socratic method, and so there's a very strong culture of

students and faculty engaging in that type of dialog. Teachers

kind of kept hitting on certain points about inappropriate use

of AI. And where is that line and the concerns? And I think I

inferred in that the concern about, well, I've learned how to

do this job really well. I have, you know, 2030, years of

experience doing this job, and this is upending that. And one

of the students after that, and some back and forth about, like,

you know, what's the difference between a Google search and an

AI search? And those types of discussions said, you know, at

the end of the day, I think you're just gonna have to change

your assessments. And I thought, like, yeah, that's a succinct

statement, and that is a challenge to us about if we're

doing that, then we're gonna need to change that. And then

the parent group we were talking about that, and a mom who was

working in one of the tech companies here in Seattle said,

Soon extrinsic knowledge will be at our fingertips. What we do

with the intrinsic knowledge? How we cultivate intrinsic

knowledge will be the challenge to schools. So how do you do

that? And I've been having that play over my head frequently,

because in my life, you had to get the extrinsic knowledge

first before you could then develop intrinsic knowledge. And

so, you know, it's a cognitive shift for me to think about how

you could begin building intrinsic knowledge without

having acquired the extrinsic knowledge. So I think those are,

you know, uncomfortable places to be there aren't ready

answers. You know, Eric Hudson is has a phrase something like

fluency with AI before policy. And so we have a very succinct

policy. It's two sentences, really, for kids. And I think,

you know, we need to keep getting fluent with it, and it

changes so quickly. That's another part that's different

than other kind of adoption pieces for us, that where we

were 18 months ago is not where we are now. So I think, you

know, being able to not be too attached to any particular

insight right now is important.

One of the questions I have for you, and I

was thinking about this because you mentioned fluency, and it's

one of the things that I think we've been talking about are

like all the different tools that are out there, and how do

you use those tools, and which tools do you choose, so on and

so forth. And I know that you've kind of gone all in on Chat GPT

at the school, which gives you the one tool to focus on. How

did you come around to that? What were the discussions like

leading up to that? How have you launched that in the way that

you've had to be able to provide that level of access to the

community? Yeah,

great question. And again, what I appreciate

about the leadership of the school chi is chi by name, is

the head of school and the board and the general administrative

team is the idea that we're going to have to plan in much

shorter time frames. And so what drove our move to open AI and to

Chat GPT was probably three fold. One was that it was

considered kind of the Swiss Army knife, of all of these

tools. You know, that it was a well received model. It was

powerful. It did different things. It was evolving. And two

that we needed to have equitable access to the community. And so

we knew that some families and some students were having paid

versions and different versions, and some families were not

receptive to AI in general, or that they were just using the

free models. And so the step this summer was, or this spring,

rather, that I'm kind of calling the AI sprint, was to provide

access on an opt in basis to any faculty member five through 12

were middle and upper school, so any faculty member five through

12 and any upper school student whose parents opted them in and

so behind the scenes with that decision was. So we worked with

the school lawyers and with open AI about if we're going to be

providing accounts to students who are under 18 years old, you

know, kind of in the 13 to 17 year range. What did we need to

do? And so we crafted an opt in language that said we understand

that the school is providing this tool to our child and that

they do not have the ability to monitor or regulate its use. And

again, we offer that to teachers as well. And so the idea was to

kind of level the playing field, and say, for the fourth quarter,

and teachers have had it since February. But like, what do we

have to learn from having access to this model? And, you know, I

think AI is a bit of a horse race that people the pack shifts

around open. AI has certainly been in the top three most of

the time, but we're recognizing, you know, that we need to be

able to pivot to something else if need be. So this is a

commitment through the end of this school year. We're looking

at summer school as a second iteration, where courses may be

like more deliberately AI oriented, where that's a clearer

message. Summer School is a great environment, I think, to

do that, you know, because you're there kind of all day on

the topic. We will let that dust settle, we'll review what we've

learned, and we'll come back and see what we should do for the

fall. So a lot of quick changes around that too, and a certain

agility in the institution.

So Jamie, just curious, I imagine, with Bill

Gates as one of your famous people, you're probably wedded

to a lot of Microsoft products as well. Where did copilot stack

up? Yeah,

we have used a lot of Microsoft products

historically, copilot did not stack up very well. We were

excited by the possibilities, particularly our current focus

right now is on teaching and learning and less about

productivity. But at the time when copilot came out, you know

the idea that was going to help you handle your inbox better,

you know those were all important questions. And so we

looked at that, we got a few accounts, we sent someone to a

conference. And one of the things that the member of my

team that went to the conference came back with was like, like so

many things with Microsoft, you have to structure your data

ideally, specifically, you know, with SharePoint and OneDrive and

the different stores for it to work, and it required kind of a

monolithic commitment to these Microsoft products. But we use

Google Drive, you know, we have other places. It's not that kind

of one experience that way. And so we saw the cost of admission

was going to be so high on getting people to do that, and

the benefit uncertain that that fell out of contention early on

in the race. And I'll say like Microsoft is a big contributor

to open AI too, so I like to feel like we're honoring that

part of our legacy with open AI as well.

Sure. No, absolutely. Well, at least to

the question of, you know, are you looking at a data warehouse

versus a data lake in terms of the modeling that you're talking

about there as well? Yeah.

And I think again, like the gut experience that

people have Chat GPT is what's captured the imagination,

largely. And so we want to be current with those discussions

as well. Yeah,

Jamie, I want to back up a little bit because you

talked about the plan. So you've got the this semester plan, next

semester plan, multi stages when you were developing all of this.

I'm curious both how involved were students in developing the

plan and what themes emerged as we're definitely going to have

to deal with this, and we'll definitely have to deal with

that. I'm curious about those things, you

know. I guess it's easier to look back than it

would be to have looked forward, you know, and kind of see, like,

what happened. I don't know that it was intentional all the time.

The way things unfold, it right? Like that metaphor of like, you

thought you're going to take the train, but you had to take a cab

instead. The student groups that I mentioned, the Andromeda club

that works on the hosted model, and the Advisory Council have

been part of the dialog for the last eight months, 10 months,

and so they've had that perspective, and they've been

advocating, you know, like this, again, this local model that is

available to everyone that has different access, So that,

again, as an equitable access. But on campus, we also began

conversations with the faculty about that and how they would

like to use it and support it. Then we, you know, we had micro

grants available for the last two years to faculty where they

pitched a particular instructional use or

productivity use for themselves, and they tried it. So we were

having that dialog of, what are we seeing with these tools, and

how does that inform policy? And I would say my inference is that

the head of school thought that we had reached a tipping point

and we were ready to take this chance that there were enough

people, there were enough early, promising developments. And

societally, i. You know, that's another piece that schools

think. One of my quotes, another quote I like, I think, was from

Will Richardson, and he said, schools measure time with a

calendar and technology with a stop watch. And so the idea that

schools can control that timing sometimes is delusional, perhaps

a bit. And so I think like seeing how the outside world was

responding, or how it was developing outside of school,

equally influenced us or encouraged us to step into that.

So head of school went to the upper school department heads

and had a conversation about it. They then had conversations

within their departments. We had some general meetings. We

informed the students who had been helping us with this, and

they started they started to help us craft this. And it was

also like, what can we try right now? You know, like, it was less

about the master plan, about, like, what can we provision? How

can we work it out? How can we get this experience this spring,

so that we have something to build on. So I like that design

thinking model of what can we try now, and I think that

probably drove a lot of it, rather than the perfect 18

months, three year plan. So

Jamie, one of the questions that always pops up in

terms of that fluency piece, you know, how do you develop that

fluency? What is your professional development plan

been like for working with faculty to help build that

fluency. How does that shape up? What does that look like?

Well, since that email went out from the academic

dean two years ago, you know, we've been encouraging people so

we have made accounts available. We've been willing to work with

folks. We had a full day developed to AI for the faculty

two years ago, and I think some of the things that were

successful on that day was one, we created a couple of places we

called playgrounds, where we had all the different AI models

available for teachers to try and there were guides there to

help them, including some students. But the part that I've

always liked in this job is finding the teacher who has used

a technology or has a specific story, you know, like the

critical friends model of giving feedback to teachers, where

they're sharing their story and it's about teaching and learning

and they're talking to other teachers. So that PD day, we had

had, you know, probably 15 to 18 different sessions where

teachers were talking about how they had used AI in their

classroom with students or in a productivity model. And so I

think that was important, and making those connections and

then supporting people who might be interested in that. So, you

know, in math and computer science in particular, there's a

disposition to looking at this, and it certainly changed in some

pieces. So, you know, one of my favorite examples was a math

teacher who teaches a B calculus, which is kind of not

the most competitive math at Lakeside. And so he was saying,

for non math majors who have access to this tool, what is it

that I want them to know and be able to do when it comes to

calculus? So that's a fascinating thing that he has,

and kind of, again, gets to that you're gonna have to change your

assessment question or statement, like, if non math

majors are taking calculus, how can he structure a lesson where

it assumes that they have access to open AI? And so that's

fascinating to me, and that power of that narrative and his

exploration is there. So I think it's encouraging those flowers

to bloom, while also providing the right structures throughout

the year and through summer workshops and grants to people.

So, Jamie, you mentioned mathematics. I'm

curious how you all have made the pivot from a curricular

perspective in computer science. I mean, the whole coding

landscape has been turned over on its head in terms of what

students and just general users are capable of now creating as a

result. Yeah,

so the computer science department was early to

this party, and we were providing different accounts for

them to experiment with that and see how that would change how

they wrote code. And you know, that's been a quick change. We

have members in our community who are in that area, and

they've been sharing their perspectives with the school as

well. So I think accepting augmentation in computer science

classes with AI is just happened, period. And I think

GitHub is another place that they've used freely to kind of

look at those types of things. And so it's kind of, again,

providing the professional grade tools to kids about what that

is. And you know, some of the students who work for us are

interested in being programmers, and they're saying, kind of like

me and teaching French like, I don't know that they're going to

need as many programmers as they did when I was a sophomore in

high school, you know, and so that's kind of a rapid change.

Is there anything else Jamie, that you want to

talk about as far as your AI project before we move on to

other things? There's so much we want to talk to you about.

I'm excited to hear from the community broadly.

I'm looking forward to sharing these types of updates from time

to time, be it through some website. And so like, the

questions that we should be thinking about, the questions

you might have, like, what would you like us to know at the

different times? Like, you know, what might be reasonable for us

to conclude or observe in the spring and in the summer and in

the fall? Love to hear your thoughts today and over time as

well. So

Jamie, one of the things I want to do, actually,

is pivot slightly, and I want to go into the way back machine,

sure, because I think about where I heard of you, and what

was the thing that introduced me to you had to do with cyber,

cyber security, cyber risk. I'm curious on a number of levels,

but my first question is, since that point in time, where do you

see things right now, from an area of cyber risk, just cyber

awareness, from where you were to where you are now? Because I

think a lot of things have changed, and a lot of things

have stayed the same. So I'm really curious as to your take

on it.

I have two kind of milestones along the way that I

think about and the first one was the first cyber incident

that I experienced and survived. And, you know, wrote about an

NBOA, and kind of led to that chapter of my career where I was

helping the Independent School community think about that. But

in that call, you know, it was in 2014 or 15 and prominent

member of the leadership team's email had been compromised. You

know, this is before MFA was really a thing, and it just spun

out. And the web that came out of that was remarkable to me in

terms of the abilities and motivations of a criminal

element to exploit that data and that they were in our systems.

They weren't on our campus, but they were menacing, and they

were out to steal and do harm. And when that happened,

eventually, I got on the phone with a lawyer, and I got on the

phone with a cyber forensic investigator, and we started to

figure out what we needed to do when an incident happens. Now,

there's typically an equal number of lawyers involved in

the conversation as there are technologists. And so I think it

is largely shifted to be a risk management question as much as

it is a technology question. And so I think, you know, like, what

is reasonable to do? How do we demonstrate that that we've been

reasonable? My CFO barrage has used a metaphor of, like,

building codes for fire inspection have led to the kind

of systematic approach of, how do we handle safety in

buildings? And while, you know, we all have to do the fire drill

and we have to check these different things that they have

largely reduced loss of life and property to fires. So she uses

that as an analogy to say, this is kind of where we're headed

with cyber as well. And we're establishing a legal framework.

We're establishing the insurance framework that decides what's a

reasonable risk, and how do we mitigate that? So we're never

going to be 100% but are we reasonable, and are we managing

risk relative to our resources, relative to the way that we do

work, and relative to the time and energy we have to spend on

it, you know? And I think that's the constant, is that

independent schools, even well resourced schools, there are a

lot of things competing for our attention, and so like, how do

we figure out, what is that right, risk tolerance? And one

of the takeaways for me is like, have you gone through the annual

assessment with cyber insurance, and did you get insured? And

that is like, a base level risk management, like, whatever

they're saying. And you know, those questions have changed. If

you filled out those surveys, like year to year, they'll

change, and we don't. Again, we move with calendars. We don't

move with stop watches. So when those things are coming up, it

can be a challenge, but I think that is the litmus test for what

is appropriate risk management.

You know, generally, when those policies

come up, I just dealt with it, so I know exactly what you're

talking about, but it's one of those things where, when you

read through that, and strangely enough, this morning, I was

having a conversation with our director of HR, and having to

explain what's in those policies, I almost wish more

people would at least read the questionnaire that you've got to

figure out, because I don't think there's enough of an

understanding throughout the school, in the different areas

in the school, just to what degree we need to be prepared

when it comes to risk, and how many different areas that plays

out. And you know, why do we do fishing exercises? Why do we

need certain checks and balances around anything that has to do

with financial interactions, and just an email isn't going to

survive, and all of those pieces, I think building a

greater level of understanding around those things. And I think

that's what committees do you have in the school on risk, and

who's on those, and how do you share that? I think it's just.

So something I know we need to explore a little bit more. And I

wonder how many other schools are in that same situation.

Yeah,

I could talk about that a little bit. You know.

Again, I would say the schools I've worked at have been very

different in terms of their risk profiles and their resources.

But one thing I've always thought was important was to

never let a crisis go to waste, and so when something happens to

be ready to engage the community around that, because there's a

receptiveness at those moments that will fade. The other is

what might be called the call to expertise, and they sometimes go

hand in hand. So we've had an incident. Now let's have someone

explain it to us, but I have worked a long time going back to

that first incident at collegiate with the group that's

now at ancora. And so having in my second year here, I think we

had a large engagement with them, and they came on campus

and they interviewed people. And so it became like, you know, I

wasn't the one having the discussion head to head. It was

this expert coming in and interviewing people about their

process and raising that awareness that then allowed us

to kind of move forward. And so, you know, we continue to go back

to that. But their expertise, their ability to talk about the

flows and to be responsive to the concerns that people had,

have helped change that culture so that it's a broader

discussion, like you're saying. And here, the cyber policy is

largely handled by the controller, who oversees risk in

general, and she and I work well together on those pieces, but it

is understood has another aspect of risk that the controller

manages and that we work on together.

It's such an important thing I remember this

is I'm about to start my fourth year at Atlas, but when I first

started, AI was not nearly as significant a topic four to

three plus years ago, and it was all about cyber security and

data privacy. That was the big thing. You know, so much of our

content was dedicated towards that. So I was learning, oh,

cyber security is the big topic. AI has come along, man, I've

seen how it's just so quickly, not brushed it aside, but almost

buried. Cyber security, data privacy, like all those problems

still exist. And on top of that, we've got the AI. I think about

the people I've met that they're the only person at their school

that has to contend with these things. I really liked your

example of things like using cyber insurance application and

and your cyber insurance policy as a baseline ways, and you can

help mitigate that. Could AI itself help with that issue of,

what about cyber security? What about data privacy? Those are

still concerns. Plus, we've got AI to deal with now, perhaps AI

as much of the problem of overshadowing these other

things, perhaps AI can actually help with some of those things.

Yeah, I can give you a couple examples where

that's been the case, and I would also add, so we're insured

through Beasley, which I think is a great insurance company to

be with. I've been with them at different times. I appreciate

the resources and responsiveness they have, but one of their

webinars maybe a year ago was on how AI is going to also just

increase the skill and threat of cyber attacks that the same

things that we can do in schools, the criminals are doing

now. They're able to write more compelling phishing emails.

They're able to provide background dossiers on public

figures. They are accelerating this in a big way, and the

ability to automate things is going to also come from Ai. One

of the things that we've done with the risk mitigation

profile, and that it is an ongoing process, the floor is we

get cyber insurance every year, whatever it takes to get that.

The ceiling is finding some other framework. And we're using

the CIS 18, where it allows us to kind of have a reporting

structure, to board into governance and to show where we

are. And it's, you know, 18 different categories. You get a

green, a yellow or a red, you know, we ended up with like, six

reds on our initial scan. So teachers don't like that.

Schools don't like red. So, like, we had to think about,

like, how are we going to move, you know? And one of my phrases

that I took from the Cubs that won the World Series, their

mantra that summer was, suck less. So, like, we're not going

to be great, but if you can suck less, maybe you win the World

Series. So it's about being better at second base with

whatever they were doing, the tags or whatever. And so when I

look at those CIS 18 and I'm thinking, like, yeah, we're not

going to be great. We don't need to be great, but we can suck

less. That's what I say to hire them all the time.

Brutal, man, I was gonna say the Phillies, but you

know,

there we go. So one of the things where AI has

helped me specifically is CI s 18 and these different red

zones, or red area scores, you needed to write policy. These,

you needed to have policy to check the box or to get that

score, and you need to be able to write policies that you're

following. And so to have an AI assistant help me and say, you

know, this is the standard. This is what I'm doing. Help me craft

a policy and then be able to kind of revise it and revise and

revise it without it taking my mental power or knowledge to do

that and get to a policy that I can then bring to the people

that it's going to impact, or to, you know, and core, or to

the cyber insurance people. That has been a big catalyst for me.

I like this analogy of like, you have to know enough about the

problem at the beginning, and you have to know what good is at

the end, but AI can help you get from like step three to step

eight or nine much more efficiently. And I find that

there are certain times where I'm cognitively sharper during

the day, like I can do that type of synthesis. I can manage AI at

my lower cognitive levels, because I'm talking with it, and

it's helping me too. So I think that's a big one for me, is when

we look at this broader piece, how can it help us develop those

policies? That's fantastic.

I think that's really helpful to people,

especially those one person shops where they're the only

person they have I'm definitely aware of when I am sharp is

which is definitely early in the morning, and in the morning,

I've not thought about AI filling in. From that

perspective, that's really great. That's

why Bill's on AI all the time.

He had to get that in. He needed something there.

He needed to come back at me with something Well played,

Hiram. We'll put one on the board for Hiram,

just trying to suck less

well. Jamie, this conversation has been fantastic.

We can kind of bring it home with being the driver, being the

passenger. You're reaching the later stages of your career. So

thinking about continuity, allowing someone else to drive,

I'm sure is on your mind, so curious how you're managing the

continuity for whomever is going to step into your shoes next,

and those kinds of things could share with us.

Well, you know, one of the things I say again

and again and again is it's people, process and technology.

Also a significant focus for me has been being able to be

aligned with and talk to leadership. That was an up for

school head for a while, and I think that was a helpful

experience for me to understand the broader perspective. And so

where will the school need to be, where the schools

intentions, and what are the processes that we can put in

place now to kind of make sure things are stable. I believe

that your service desk, your ability to help people, your

ability to be seen as productive, is the number one

job a tech department has, and once you have that platform, you

can start to build into some of the other pieces. So I think I'm

not quite ready to sign those papers yet, but as I think

through those things like, am I developing members of my team,

and giving them the opportunity to take over pieces of

responsibilities, you know, where they're leading and I'm

consulting, is an important part that making things transparent,

figuring out a good process around just the stuff that has

to happen with technology, you know, and getting that built.

And so like at a previous school that I left to take a job here,

figuring out what the renewal process was going to be to

maintain equipment and the budgeting for that, and making

that transparent and getting agreement on all of that, that

was a key part of a leadership transition, because, again, to

have that sustainable base, It was important to have that thing

taken care of. You know, you have to build foundationally.

And then I think it's kind of the discussions, the candid

discussions with leadership, about, where are we not

performing as high as we might, where the opportunities an

exercise that I've done frequently, geez, I guess it's

coming up on 10 years now, like, in terms of, like, how things go

is to develop a series of questions that we pose to the

leadership of the school. So at Lakeside, that's about 18 folks

that are on the directors group, and it's 10 areas of technology

with the one sentence description that asks them, what

is your priority for these 10 things, and what is your

satisfaction with these things? We do the same thing with the

tech department, and we see where the alignment is. And

again, that's a leadership transition piece. That's a

leadership piece in general, but that exercise has been very

helpful to helping both sides understand it. And you know,

sometimes the director will say, Well, I don't know what this is.

I can't do this exercise. And so I work with them to say, well, I

this is basically what that is like. I need you to answer each

of these things. It's 10 things. So you have to have that base

knowledge to be able to rank them and give me your

satisfaction. But I think when you have that culture. Or an

experience, then it allows it to be more of an external map, like

we have a score card, and did we do those things? One of my

favorite pieces every time I've done that survey, Wi Fi is the

most important priority for everybody. And for three years,

I was like, You got to be kidding me. You know, there are

so many other things and like, look, this is a big campus.

You're going to switch buildings. It's not going to be

like your home, you know, it's not going to be the same. So I

was trying to persuade people that Wi Fi shouldn't be their

top priority. And eventually I came around to the fact that,

well, it was their priority. And I needed to figure that out. I

needed to address it. I needed to make it suck less, and I

needed to kind of see where we are, and like when you return

that you find the areas that are annoying, that's a high

annoyance level, and you work on them that helps build that

culture and helps with that transition too. So hopefully,

when it's time for me to change schools, or when it's time for

me to move into a different role, in general, the muscles

will be built up, the processes will be built up, the people

internally will be built up, and that collaboration and

communication with leadership will be there. And so whenever

there's a role change, be it at the head of the department or

within the department, hopefully that makes it more seamless and

less kind of of the tussle that sometimes has happened in my

career between a certain priority, or, you know, this or

that or the other thing,

fantastic. You've piqued some interest. I think

with the 10 question survey in that process, perhaps we can get

our hands on a sample of those documents. I think a lot of

people would be interested in that. Yeah, sure. Jamie, thank

you so much for sharing your time and your insights with us.

This has been a fantastic conversation. Thank you for

putting up with Bill and Hiram. We really appreciate that. I

just had to get that in there point for me. But in all

seriousness, thank you so much for doing this for us. Our

audience really appreciates it all the sharing that you're

doing here. Thank you. You're welcome

and thanks for having me.

This has been talking technology with Atlas,

produced by the Association of Technology Leaders in

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