Jennie Magiera, Global Head of Education Impact at Google, joins the podcast to discuss her journey from classroom teacher to tech leader. She shares practical ways educators can use Google Gemini to support diverse student needs and save time, while also addressing critical data privacy considerations and introducing a brand-new hub of AI resources for teachers.

• Jennie on LinkedIn
• Courageous Edventures, discover your own version of innovation, using the limitless possibilities of educational technology
• Phillips Exeter Academy
• Google for Education Learning Center
• Get Started with Google for Education products
• Google for Education training, catalog of quick lessons and comprehensive courses to build curriculum
• https://ai.google/literacy, AI literacy resources and trainings that empower students, educators, and families to use AI effectively, safely, and responsibly
• Google NotebookLM
• KPop Demon Hunters
• Carnac the Magnificent, character from The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson
• Voltaire, French Enlightenment writer, philosopher (philosophe), satirist, and historian

NAIS, 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.

And now please welcome your host. Christina Lewellen,

hello and welcome back to talking

technology with ATLIS. I'm Christina Lewellen, the

President and CEO of the Association of technology

leaders in independent schools.

And I am Bill Stites, the Director of

Technology at Montclair Kimberly Academy in Montclair, New

Jersey, and

I'm Hiram Cuevas, the Director of Information

Systems and Academic Technology at St Christopher school in

Richmond,

Virginia. Hello, gentlemen, how is your

day going so far?

It's the 1000 days of September. It's a lot. It's

definitely a lot.

Back to School with Whack a Mole season. Oh

my god, I now know what it feels like when they use

the term, you feel like things are going nuts because your

inbox continually fills up. You clear out 100 emails and 150

come right back in. It's absolute sanity.

So it's like that meme of the guy that's

trying to mop the ocean. Is that sort of what you got going on

right now? Bill, it's what it feels like, Yep, yeah, pretty

much. Well, Hiram, I see that you're showing up today's

podcast, wearing your lucky Atlas hoodie, your shirt that

had to be replaced. So somewhere, somehow, you

misplaced your favorite Atlas quarter. Zip up, and I sent one

to you. So thanks for wearing that today. I appreciate that

you have that on.

Yeah, thank you again for sending it out my way.

I was really saddened when it disappeared.

It happens sometimes.

I just always want to thank Peter Frank for all the

T list merch that he makes sure everyone has Thanks, Peter.

Always appreciate that. Just big shout out to Peter. Right now on

that part,

yeah, we're gonna go ahead and cut all that

out. You get plenty of merch bill. You don't need more merch.

I can find you where you can go buy that merch. Tech people love

some good merch. I'll tell you what. So stickers. Good

stickers, nothing like a good sticker for your computer,

right? Indeed. Well, hey guys, let's jump into it, because I'm

really excited. I think that a lot of folks in the ATLIS

community know dr Ashley cross on my team, and she spends a lot

of her time focusing on the big issues that our independent

school tech teams are wrestling. Obviously, she spends a lot of

time on calls and on virtual meetings with you guys as she's

working through our crowd source resources, but she also has a

pretty extensive network of really impressive people that we

have no earthly right to be chatting with, and we have one

on the podcast today. So gentlemen, I need you to be on

your best behavior, because we are welcoming to the podcast.

Someone from Google. Can you be

good? We can try. That's all I can promise

everyone.

Please welcome to our podcast. Jenny

magera, Jenny, how are you today? Hi.

Good to meet you and good to see everyone.

I'm doing all

so you are the Global Head of Education

impact at Google. I want to give you an opportunity to introduce

yourself to everyone, but I would love to start with that

title. What does that mean in the Google family? What do you

do as the Global Head of Education impact?

So first of all, my background is I'm an

educator. That's how I know Ashley. So I taught in New York

City, in Chicago Public Schools building district leader, taught

pre service teachers in higher ed. So my existential identity

is educator, and they brought me on almost six years ago now to

Google to really help understand like, how are we Best Supporting

educators and students to use technology impactfully? That was

many like you my role in making sure when we were bringing in

tech into schools, ensuring it wasn't for the sake of tech, but

it's actually improving teaching and learning. It's actually

creating more opportunity that we're not just exacerbating. Not

so great things that were happening. Now my job is to do

that at scale. So we work all around the world with

communities of educators and education leaders. We create

programs to certify, support, celebrate, unite communities of

practice, everyone from a pre service teacher to a ministry

level education official, and then we also have started doing

that for students, as well creating some communities of

practice and training and enablement for them. So we're

online learning center with free courses in dozens of languages

for all things Google, from Gemini to Google Classroom to

Chromebooks. We have an entire network of education trainers,

of professional development partners, and then

certifications and recognitions to just celebrate educators. We

could never celebrate educators enough. So we have a ton of

amazing events and programs to celebrate folks. So I think I

have the best job. At Google, because I get to support and

celebrate teachers and students.

That's really awesome. And you are

speaking with three folks who are Google shops, so we have

tons of questions that we would just love to get into. But

before we do that, if we could go back to your background a

little bit, because I'm curious. You say you're sort of an

educator at heart. What did you teach? And I know that you've

sort of moved away from that. Do you have any opportunity in your

current role to be in a classroom once in a while?

So I started off like many of you, probably I

taught like, when you say, what did you teach? I'm like, what

year? So, you know, I started off kindergarten, then I taught

a self contained fourth grade. I taught intermediate math and

science. Middle School, literacy, again, I taught higher

ed. I taught pre service teachers, both graduate and

undergraduate. So I taught a lot. I think my sweet spot, they

used to call me math Jenny, because my graduate teaching

degree isn't mathematics education. And I got into math

teaching because I hated math as a kid. It was my worst subject.

I was terrible at it. I think I was stereotyped as a kid in

Central Florida that like you're Asian, you must be good at math.

So they gave me all these challenging math prompts. I was

like voluntold to join the math leads, and I hated it. I was

awful. It just did not compute for me. Pun intended. So when I

was a practicing educator and I had to go back and get my

master's degree, I was like, I should probably get a master's

in math education, because that's what I feel least

confident around. And so I did that. And then I realized, like,

actually, math is beautiful. Math is a creative art. I love

teaching math. And then I really got into math. And if you had

asked me two decades ago what my kind of area of expertise in

education, I would have been like, math, not tech. And then

similarly, I got volunteered to apply for a one to one grant in

Chicago public schools, because I was one of the younger staff

members, and they're like, you're young, you probably get

technology. So I applied for this grant at Chicago Public

Schools, got it, had no idea what I was doing. And then I

started a blog where I was just blogging like my failures at one

to one technology implementation, and being like,

I secretly want to, like, bury all my devices in the backyard

of my school and pretend they weren't missing. I hate them.

But, like, I think people appreciated the transparency and

the fact that I was just like, I have no idea what I'm doing.

Like, this app stunk. It was a waste of 99 cents. This app was

great. Hey guys, I found out you can't buy one app and sync it to

like, 30 devices. You're supposed to buy at times 30 what

is that? So, like, I wrote about all that, and then that started

my journey into, like, a Tech coordinator, a digital learning

coordinator, and all of that. And so in terms of your question

of, like, do I get to go back into the classroom? I do so I

still hold my teaching certificate. I am still licensed

in the state of Illinois to teach k8 I recertify every three

years. I turn in my PD credits, my clock hours, and I still have

my endorsement for middle school math. I will not let it go. I

refuse to, but I don't use that. But what I do in our communities

of practice is, you know, if I ever have a chance to go in and,

like, guest teach with one of our community members, I also do

it at my daughter's schools. I volunteer My home is like a

micro classroom, because I have a second grader in Chicago

Public Schools and a third grade Montclair student. And so I'm

always like testing Gemini props. And then I still coach

teachers informally when I can, so not as much as I'd like to.

It fills my bucket, but that's how I got here, and that's how

I'm staying fresh, but not as fresh as I'd like to be. I

really miss full time in the classroom. That was my happiest

place.

Oh, I love that. And you know, it's really

interesting how you talk about making math accessible, like you

tackled it as a challenge, right? Because it was not your

happy place. And I would be willing to bet that you've made

it a happy place for a lot of students. Similarly, with

technology, not necessarily, you know, being voluntold that

you're the tech person that happens to a lot of the people

in our ATLIS community who were the techie teachers who sort of

got pushed into these tech leadership roles and then

suddenly have to figure out how to make a network secure. And so

it's a big reason why we exist in the types of issues that we

talk about, but you tackling your own challenges probably is

pretty reflective in the work that you do now, right? Because

you're very aware, I would assume, of other folks who are

kind of wrestling their own challenges, just like the math

thing probably affected your teaching, I would assume the

technology experimentation probably affects the work that

you do today. Do you think that's accurate?

Oh, my God, 1,000% so my blog turned into a

TEDx talk, then that turned into a book, and it was really about,

like, when you're out supporting your colleagues, the worst thing

you can do is paint the rosy picture of the end of the

journey and be like, yeah, let me give you a 45 minute Keynote

or presentation about, like, all the best ways to use Google

Classroom, because then people are looking at that and they're

like, I have no idea how to get there, and you're making it.

Seems so easy, and it's just not easy for me, so unsubscribe

instead. Let's start with the challenges. Like, how is it

hard? Where do you find time to learn about it? How do you

integrate with 35/5 graders and 24th graders? Like, I taught a

split grade math class for like, four years where I had 23/4

graders and 15/5 graders had to teach two entire curriculums at

Illinois State math in 45 minutes to like, almost 40 kids.

When do you want me to learn about Google classroom and how

to use a Chromebook to do that? And like, do they have a

protractor on a Chromebook? Because I think the plastic ones

pretty gosh darn good. So like, I don't have time for you tech

lady and your tech stuff. So instead of going forward, like,

use Google Classroom, my book, my blog, all of that was like,

what are you actually trying to do as an educator? I'm not

trying to use Google Classroom as an educator. I'm trying to

meet each student where they are. I'm trying to figure out

why this one student who I've had for two straight years and

have looped with still is like really struggling with basic

arithmetic or computation. How do I get into his brain? How can

I unlock that metacognition? And it's like, oh, wow,

screencasting can help with that. So it's not screencasting

for the sake of screencasting. It's screencasting so I can

finally get into that young man's brain of what is the

misconception or the cognitive dissonance, and then all of a

sudden the teacher is like, Oh, so it's not about the

screencast, it's about this thing that I've been like,

banging my head against the wall for the past 10 years. Yes, that

is cool. I'll sit down and listen to you. So this is how we

really approach it, of like, really empathizing with the core

mission and need from our educational community, and then

following with educational technology tools as a vehicle to

meet that need.

That's really great. And I'm very

pleased to introduce you to two such former educators, Hiram and

bill on the pod here. They are former educators who now serve

in technology leadership positions at their school, and

so I think that they also bring that similar perspective of not

tech for the sake of tech, but tech in a very teacher and

student friendly way. So I'm going to definitely unleash

their questions on you, but my last question for the moment,

and then I'll let them pop in, is for folks who are not super

familiar with Google's approach to education, can you zoom way

out and just give me maybe the party line? Because, you know, I

think that a lot of educators, especially in the States, are

Google shops just like us. And you know, we love it, and we're

raving fans of it. What are you guys talking about on the inside

to make us such big fans on the outside, what's the game plan or

the

goal in education, the internal mission

statement of Google for Education is like, transform

teaching and learning at scale. I love my job. I know that some

folks would have a dream job to work at Google, but for me, I

never wanted to work at Google. I love Google tools, but I was

really happy in the classroom, and then I was really happy

serving educators at scale in another role, where I was

working for this professional learning organization. When I

got the call from Google, the thing that really spoke to me

was the at scale piece, the idea that I could be someone with an

educator brain, with an educator heart, working inside Google to

like scale what educators need. And when I got there, I found

that they're really, really serious about that. I've never

been somewhere where they care so deeply about the end user, as

much as at Google, and that's like one of the core tenets of

the company, respect the user. And so everything we build and

everything we do is built on tons of data, of feedback. So

every single Google tool you have has a little question mark

on the bottom right hand corner. That's a little feedback button,

and you type in, like, I don't like the Google Classroom thingy

here, or like, I wish this could happen. There are human beings

who read every single line of feedback, hundreds of 1000s of

lines of feedback, and that all goes into how we build and

iterate on our products. Because at Google, they don't believe

that you can transform teaching and learning at scale for each

student, for each educator, unless every single decision we

make is based on the actual request from students and

educators and so I think with understanding the mission and

how the mission is executed, truly based on the voice of

educators and students, that was, for me, the reason that I

chose to come and the reason why I stay.

You said a lot of the work that you were doing, a

lot of the writing that you were doing was about process and

where things went wrong. I just want to applaud you for that,

because I think that is one of the best things that you can do,

because all too often, when you're looking for answers, all

you see are the positives. As you said, All you see is where

you ended up, and it's often hearing from people about where

they've misstepped, where they were struggling. In the things

that didn't work that can allow you the time to say, All right,

I'm not even going to go down this path, because it would have

taken me X amount of time to get to the point where I would have

uncovered what you shared, and then have to move on from that.

So I just want to applaud you and those that do that, because

it's almost as helpful as sharing the success stories

around all of that. You mentioned something that has

actually come up amongst a number of people here at school

recently, and that was testing out Gemini prompts at home and

what you were doing at home. I think it's been very

interesting, but also to some degree, I'll say, somewhat

confusing, as to what Google is now doing with Gemini for

schools, and what is now just part of the suite of tools. What

are the add ons, and what pieces may or may not be included in

that. And one of the questions I got asked, literally this

morning hours ago, was, Can I use Gemini now, if we are a

Google for Education shop, which we are to drop in information

that contains personally identifiable information,

knowing that it's not going to be used to train or to share, to

go out. Like, how best can you explain to all of us where we

now live with Gemini as educators and our ability to use

it at scale in our schools in a pre K through 12 environment?

Yeah, so first of all, these are all really

good questions. And for us, safety is paramount, and

understanding, like, how our tools are used intentionally,

and making sure we're doing it in a way that is causing no harm

is critical. It's really helpful, as you're thinking

about this, to understand that, like, if you're in the workspace

environment, you're signed in environment that your school is

providing, Gemini is part of what we call a core service. And

what core services are at Google is it has like, all the data

protection and security that adheres to, like, the highest

level of data security and data protections. So in terms of PII,

in terms of not sharing, in terms of like models that are

built on our Learn LM, which was built with learning pedagogy and

learning sciences in mind, that's what you're getting, and

it's free. So if you're at I know this is an independent

school podcast. I went to an independent school, actually,

for my last two years of high school. I went to Phillips,

Exeter, awesome. Shout out. Exeter.edu accounts and there

are workspace. I should know this actually, I don't know, but

let's just assume, Hey, Pete, if you're not sign up

for Google, call Jenny. We'll be sure to tag

them in the podcast notes.

Yeah, but even like it's Exeter, doesn't pay a

dime to Google. You can get what's called workspace

fundamentals, Google for Education fundamentals. And in

that you have Gemini. So I'm J McGarrett exeter.edu I log into

the free Gemini app on the free workspace that has all the data

protection in it. Obviously, if you pay, you just get more. You

get, like the supercharged Gemini and like more prompts and

all the things. But even at the free version, as long as you're

logged into your workspace account, it's fully protected.

And Jenny, it's interesting. You mentioned that

because we've had that conversation, we are opening up

Gemini to our students momentarily. In the next couple

of weeks, it's been opened up for our faculty. We've been

taking the line of regardless of what system you use, you should

really avoid using PII, because I think when our worlds end up

crossing over many times, it's, oh, I'm here, and only your most

I would say technically savvy users are going to understand

profiles really, really well, so that they know that they're in

their personal versus their school account. We feel like we

need to exercise that extra caution, just with AI in

general, because of that, we're so excited to be using not only

Gemini, but notebook LM with our students this year. I can't

express our gratitude that it's now part of the core services

and that it does have that walled garden in the event that

someone does make the error of introducing PII into this

environment, we do know that it is safe, yeah.

And I think the interesting thing about when

you're working in this space and you're trying to think about,

what are the differences? And so again, there's like education

fundamentals, which is the free version, and it still has

everything safe, everything great there. But then you could

also use Google AI Pro. Google AI Pro for education is that

upgraded version that gives you workspace with Gemini. And then

there's a side panel where, when you're in Google Sheets, you're

in Google Docs, you're in Google Classroom, whatever you can

like, pop it out and like, interact with the data in your

drive. I want to name two things that I hear you saying, Hiram

and I agree. Data literacy is really. Important for educators

and parents, actually, and I very much champion that as a

Googler, as a parent, as an educator, and our Learning

Center has trainings around that to understand, like, how should

we do this? I'm also my daughter's Girl Scout troop

leader, and so, like I did like a data literacy and digital

literacy badge with the first graders to be like, we have

little cards, like, should I give out my name? Should I give

out my home address? Because keeping your data safe and

secure is something we should always understand. We should

always be ensuring we're making the choice about whether or not

to share that information with that being said, understanding

what is the value of sharing any information. So I don't want to

get to a point where it's like we can never share the

information. There are safe ways to share it that can up level

our practice. So again, when you have Google AI Pro for

education, you have workspace with Gemini. So as for example,

a classroom teacher, I might want to go into a Google sheet

that had form responses for an assessment that I gave in my

grade five math class. And I might want to go through and map

that response with our NBOA MAP test to understand how like the

RIP scores with like that daily check in correspond to create

differentiated math groups and then decide, like, how I'm going

to use Google Classroom to put them into groups. I can pull all

of that from Drive and then have Gemini analyze it and give me

suggestions for the Google Classroom groups. And there's a

ton of PII in there. There's student names, there's their

scores, etc. And so I think that like, the informed decision. Of

like, is this benefiting me and my students, etc, and is it in a

safe environment where I control the data, I can delete the data

whenever I want to. It's not going beyond these garden walls,

it's not being sold, it's not being trained. So I think

something that is to be said about training faculty at the

start of the year, of like, what is PII? How do I control it? And

then when are the right and wrong types to utilize it.

I really love that, because I think that

where new technology emerges, our gut reaction, our knee jerk,

is don't do it right for some especially with the headlines

that are being made. And so I love that you just gave us this

example of how you could do it in a safe and considered

environment. Jenny, do you have any other examples that you

point to as, oh, that's cool, like, in terms of, like, seeing

or hearing educators use in particular, I think we're

talking about Gemini. But are there examples where you're

like, oh, that's kind of a cool use beyond the one that you just

mentioned.

So another example is, I told you, I taught

a split grade. I also had a lot of students with IEPs in my

classroom in 504 plans. So I had a lot of students who had

diverse needs. And, you know, their IEP said, like, they get

one clock, stop the clock break for every assessment. And one

was, like, really intense. It was like, you get a stop the

clock, scratch paper, a snack, a sip of water. I mean, it was

wild. And I had at one point in one class of 32 students, seven

students with individualized education program plans. And I

was like, Oh my gosh, I'm one human. How am I supposed to do

all this in 45 minutes? And so I was talking to one of my

colleagues who was still teaching at that building, and

she input all her students IEPs into Gemini, and she said, This

is what I'm trying to teach. This what I'm doing. How do I

meet all these accommodations and modifications in this time

in a respectful way? And it gave her all of these different

schedules for her 45 minute math class. And like groups of like,

make sure you get these three students at this time. And made

it really reasonable for her again, a lot of PII there. She

had to be really intentional with what she was uploading. She

asked to, like, think about when she's going to do data deletion,

etc. But it saved her, not only a lot of time, I think that's a

pretty low level win. It allowed her to meet those students in a

way. After 22 years of teaching, she's never been able to before

she said it was the first time in her career, she has 100% met

all the expectations of every IEP in our classroom. She is an

expert master teacher as someone who had to do it myself. There

was just no way, and now it's allowing us to see the ways and

like create that beautiful

picture.

So Jen, I have a somewhat of a practical

question. May seem very obvious when I ask it. I'm assuming that

if I'm signed into my Chrome browser under my school account,

when I go to the little checker board, when I see all of my

tools and I hit Gemini there, I'm going in and I'm going in

under my school account at that point, because I still see that

my name or my photo that is associated with my school

account means I'm in there. But if I'm in Safari, if I'm in some

other piece, the only way I know that I am definitively in there

is by signing in. Because I think what happens is is a. Lot

of people will just launch a browser and they'll go and

they'll be like, Oh, we're a Google shop. We have Gemini, but

I'm accessing it either on my phone from a Safari browser or

from the Safari on a Mac, because I'm a Mac shop here,

yeah, you know, or you might be in Firefox, or you might be in

some other thing, you explicitly need to be logged in and use the

check board to go into it that way, or click the Sign In. And

if I sign in for my Safari browser using my credentials

that are tied to my domain, then I'm in and have all those

protections, correct,

correct. And a couple of tricks I give folks

because to your point, it's sometimes as hard is use a

different avatar profile picture for your Gmail account and your

work account. So if I work@exeter.edu I might have,

like, a very professional headshot with a different color

background, like, make it super obvious. So like Exeter, we're

like maroon red, right? So maybe I'll like change my background

to be like, it's a picture of me in front of a maroon red with my

hair down. And then, like, my personal Gmail account might be

like me with my hair out in a beach background, and that

literally is at Google. My work account has, like, a very

different profile background than my personal Gmail account,

and I do that intentionally, so even by color, by quick shape,

but like, I can see I'm not in my work account right now. So

I'm always like, check your avatar. And then in terms of,

like, a muscle memory, I tell my friends, my colleagues, folks

that I'm training, think of whenever you're interacting in

AI, like you're standing at the ATM. I think people like, know

when you're at the ATM to be kind of like, look left, look

right, like, Who's behind me? Like you kind of hide your pen.

Maybe no one goes to ATM anymore, because no one uses

cash but me, I do. Well, okay, thank you. So me and bill go to

the ATM still. But when I do like, I'm not just like, here's

my pit everybody, or, like, just like, pulling the cash out and

weaving it around. I'm very aware of my surroundings, and

that's how I am when I'm in Gemini. I'm really thoughtful

about, like, which browser Am I in? Which avatar Am I signed

into? How is this being saved? Sometimes I delete my searches

because I'm like, I don't even want the next time I go into

Gemini, when I'm training for someone to see like I was

looking that up. Maybe that was my personal business that I'm

super obsessed with. K Pop, demon hunters. I don't need the

world to know that.

That's a great example, though, you're

right. We just need to take that physical awareness that we've

been raised with now into our digital presence.

Yeah, for us, I think it's important because,

like for instance, we've done a lot of work this year around

calendaring, and it's neither here nor there in terms of

germane to this conversation. But what happens is, as people

are like, signing into their calendars or trying to add

calendars to their profiles. I notice I'm looking at people,

and they may be signed in under themselves, but when they're in

different tabs, they've got different Google user accounts,

their personal one, maybe one that's like the departmental

one, and then their work one, and they don't know which one

they're in. So that's why I want to thank you for clarifying that

and giving that example, because as soon as we start talking

about how we're going to be using AI and where we're going

to be putting school data, having that ATM approach, I

think is a fabulous example.

And Jenny, what we've done here, we're a bring

your own laptop model, and so we have a mixture of Windows

devices and also apples. I tend to advise folks to use different

browsers as well for schoolwork, stick to Chrome, because that's

what we do, and then you could switch to Safari or to Firefox

for your others. This way, there's no doubt what

environment that you're in based on the browser that you're

using. I would love to take a step back. You mentioned

something when you were discussing that master teacher

with the litany of different IEPs that they were trying to

organize and work through. You had made a comment, and it was

when she was going to do data deletion. And I was kind of

curious what you meant by that when you were talking about data

deletion, especially if we're talking about the Gemini. Is

that walled garden component,

yeah, so it exists in the space, but at

least at Google, we're very much about like, don't keep data that

you don't need. So it's like, this very more like Marie Kondo

methodology of data, like, if it's not bringing you joy in the

meaning of like, it's not bringing you some kind of need,

we shouldn't just keep it around for the sake of keeping the

data, because that data doesn't actually, like, even if I'm the

classroom teacher, that data doesn't belong to me. It belongs

to like, the 35 students that I'm serving. So sometimes I work

with IT administrators at schools, and it's like, do we

need to be saving this data for years and years now? There's

sometimes you need to for trend, for student records, etc. But I

think it's getting into this, like, data hygiene methodology

of like, do we really need to keep this around at Google? It's

required. So I have to delete data every like, X time, and

when I even, like, collect PII, there's rules internally about

like, I have to submit a whole thing a form that's like. I'm

going to send a form to Christina, Bill and Hiram to ask

them, like, what their favorite candy is, and if your email

address is in it, I have to fill out a form before I can send the

form to you. And then I get a message. And if I say I'm going

to save it for 17 days, I get a message in 17 days, being like,

do you really need this data anymore? Lead it, if not. And so

it's not about, like Google having the data, but it's just

about again, data literacy for educators. Because historically,

we've always been stewards of student smallness, safety and

learning, but in this digital and AI era, as emerging

technologies are coming faster and faster, we're also digital

stewards for our kids. So I think it's just a muscle memory

that I like to talk to educators about as well.

So Jenny, what's interesting about that? When

many schools moved over to Google, as opposed to using on

prem outlook, for example, as their email system, we ended up

with a massive attic to store things. And I think schools have

gotten accustomed to just keeping everything in Google,

and since then, Google has put some more restrictions on the

quantities. But do you anticipate that Google may

actually insist on additional data deletions for data hygiene

purposes within domains

I can't speak to that I don't work on, like

the engineering and the side of the house that creates those

agreements with schools when they get into signing up for

workspace. From my perspective, it's more about again, like for

my role training educators in best practices. I will say that,

like just storing things, you look at a number and you're

like, I have five terabytes of data that's infinite, and then

you quickly get to it. I'm like that about Google Photos. Like,

my family stores all our photos on Google Photos, I take 8000

pictures, 8 billion videos of my seven and three year olds, and I

didn't delete anything. And, like, I quickly hit the storage

limit, and then I went through and I was like, half of them

were, like, blurry pictures that my four year old took when she

got hold of my phone, of like, the back of my head, like I

didn't need all those photos taking up storage. So I think

part of it is the storage piece for sure, but part of it is just

like, do I need to have this data out in the world? Is this

important?

So if we're talking to primarily a bunch of

tech teams across the country at independent schools, they're

definitely wrestling all of these issues with their

teachers, and here we are back to school. A lot of teachers are

feeling fresh, energized, ready to tackle another school year.

So where would you recommend we start again? You know, primarily

the tech team supporting educators. Some educators are

definitely going out there and finding this information on

their own, but let's say that we are trying to guide them down

the path of both experimenting and leveraging the Google suite

of tools and Gemini in particular, but also being

careful with it. Like, where do we start that conversation?

Are you asking? Like, how to start

having the conversation as IT leaders in the schools with your

colleagues, or are you asking, Where do you go to learn?

I think that primarily what I'm looking for

is that there's just a lot out there right now, and there's

also a lot of what I consider sort of like the sex appeal

headlines, like there's a lot of trash in the media about AI sort

of taking over the world, and so it's overwhelming. So if the IT

leaders in our space are trying to help educators walk this path

and take advantage of these tools, but they're overwhelmed,

and they do have a million things going on, what's a good

place to start? Google has a lot of resources and education for

educators, but in a lot of cases, our tech teams like Bill

and Hiram try to sift through that first so that they can kind

of Cole it and take it to their faculty in a really disciplined

way that also kind of matches the needs of what the school is

working on

Absolutely So again, going back to the

conversation we had earlier, and in my book, I talk a lot about

we want to talk about, like getting people to go on the

journey with us. There's the old adage of, like, you can take a

horse a watering hole or whatever, you can't force them

to drink. And so I'm like, but even before that, you need to

make the horse thirsty. We need to make them thirsty for this to

want it. So I think before the conversation of like, where to

start on the training, what articles to read, what courses

to take, it's like creating the desire and the understanding for

the why, and so if I were still a practicing it leader in a

school, what I usually do with my staff every year is I had

them either fill out a Google form or if we had staff

development time, which was rare, but if we did, I'd have

them all in like the Media Center at the Library with a

stack of post it notes. And I'd be like, just tell me, what are

the top three, top five goals or challenges that you have this

year? Like when you go to sleep at night and you're thinking

about the 2025, 2026, school year, what's top of mind for

you? And I got a gamut of things. It was like everything

from, like, very high level, like, I want to increase my math

scores by X percent. Message, or I want to reach this one kid, or

I need to refresh my science curriculum, or whatever, to

like. I want to be able to Pete at least once a day. I never get

a second like I literally had someone write that in a post

it notes. I mean, that's using technology

for a pretty creative purpose, right?

And I loved the authenticity and honesty

coming from my colleagues. When I was a one on one coach, I

would meet one on one and I'd sit down with Christina. And bit

Christina, I hear you want to Pete, what I'm unpacking from

that is you want more time in your day. You're overwhelmed.

There's too much on your plate. Here's how we can use Gemini to

save time. Oh, hey, Bill, I see that you want to refresh your

science curriculum. So great. That seems really daunting.

Here's how we can use Gemini to, like, feed in all your old

lessons and make them new. Now, if I'm not a one on one coach,

and I'm a one to many, like, when I was in my district, role

surveying many, many buildings, then I wrote a newsletter with

like, ideas and tips. Like, here are some things that I'm hearing

from you. Here are some ways to use Gemini, and then it's like

opening people's eyes that, ah, this is not just death by

initiative from my school again, of like, here's another tool

that I need to learn, and another curriculum. This one

actually will help me. So now we've developed the thirst, the

hunger, the want, the why? Then the next step is I would send

them to our Learning Center. So I put in the show notes our free

Learning Center. We have three free courses around AI. One is

Gen AI for educators, which is just like baseline, foundational

AI literacy. Like, what do we mean when we say AI? What isn't

it? What should you be scared about? What shouldn't you very

high level. Then we have two more, like, how do you actually

use Gemini? And one is getting started with Google, AI for K

12, which I think most of your listeners will be using. But we

also have getting started with AI for higher ed. So for anyone

who is an adjunct or teaching in the higher ed space or maybe a

full tenured professor, you can use that one. And then in the

Learning Center, when you see those, we have an entire library

of AI use cases from real educators like you, where it's

like, this is how I use Gemini in this class. This is how I use

Gemini for this and like their lesson plans, their slide decks,

their Google Docs, are all there that you can go and make a copy

of.

I love the AI use case approach, because it

can be overwhelming to consider all of AI as this big thing that

teachers now need to figure out, but then you actually just show

how other teachers or trainers are using it that can be really

helpful and eye opening and make it less intimidating

with all these resources. Like, where is the

one stop shop for all this stuff? Like, literally, as we're

talking, I'm like, Googling some of the things that you're

saying, the list of like responses. I'm not even sure

where to click to go. That's what I often find. Is work is

finding out where just to go to get my answers. So where should

people go

for these Okay, so something was launching

today, breaking news, breaking news. This launched live minutes

ago. If you type in AI dot, Google slash literacy into your

browser now your browser of choice. I hope it's chrome. Go

to AI dot, Google slash literacy. It is our one stop

shop for all. Ai literacy for educators. It's right now live

in English only, but in the coming months it's going to be

expanded to multiple languages. But if you scroll down, you'll

see it there's for teachers. The three courses I just named are

right there for higher education, for high school

students, for families, for parents, and it's all right

there for you. So we were responding exactly to that

question, of like, we don't want to link farm you to death. We

don't want to just send you a Google Doc with 800 little, tiny

links. Hopefully it feels very clean and not overwhelming. We

spend a lot of time building this with all of you in mind. So

would love your reactions, but everything's there.

I love this. It's breaking news here on the

pod. We've done it a couple of times, but How funny is that

bill didn't even know that when he asked his question, so we fed

right into

that. What a great resource, fantastic resource.

I love it. This is great. So Jenny, before

we let you go on with your day. One of the things I'd love to

know from you is, as school leaders are listening to this

podcast, what would you say are the opportunities that we should

be brave enough to take as we look at this school year, the

next couple school years, there's a lot to juggle. So

where would you love to see schools, independent schools,

but schools in general, being brave.

Don't be afraid of AI. AI is here whether

we like it or not, and it is something that the young people

that we serve are going to be engaging with out of the

classroom today, or if not definitely, out of the class.

From tomorrow. And as educators, our job is to prepare them to be

the most successful adults as successful humans in their

communities as possible, so we can't ignore AI. And the best

way that we can equip them to be thoughtful, intentional,

informed users of this very powerful technology is to engage

with them in the classroom. To do that, we first need to

understand it, like Spider Man's uncle and Voltaire said, With

great power comes great responsibility, and we need to

find a way to grapple with it. But just like one to one

computing decades ago and before that, like graphing calculators

and overhead projectors and all the things, there's always these

new waves of technology, and you don't have to jump in

immediately into the deep end. Take a small bite. Try it

yourself at home, try it in a place that you feel comfortable

and secure, and bring it in piece by piece. But even taking

the first step is critical. We owe it to our students to engage

with them around AI in an environment where they know that

they have safe, secure adult attachments so they can make

mistakes, try new things. And that's not always going to be

the case for every learner. Everywhere outside of the

classroom, the classroom is the one place that we know there is

an adult who cares about them, who's going to hold their hand

and help them see when things maybe aren't the right choices,

and because AI is such a powerful and new emerging

technology for them, we really owe it to them to be helping

them through this time. Take time yourself to learn. Be

gentle with yourself, give yourself space to fail forward,

and we're all doing it with you, even at Google. It's my job to

train educators worldwide on AI. I'm figuring it out as I go to

and just like I said at the beginning of this podcast,

taking in tons of feedback on how to iterate.

I love that. I know Bill and Hiram are

experimenters. We at ATLIS are as well. And like you, I

probably don't want everyone knowing what my Gemini What do

you think, Bill, what's your last Gemini search?

Mine was like, how do I write this script to use in

a Google sheet to do some work for me? And that's where it was

great. So no, I'm not hiding anything.

Nothing nefarious, no, nothing.

Mine was after reading Dan McGee's email about

Google gems and how we know what's up with the rollout on

Google gems and sharing the gems. And it's like, I'm pretty

sure I read something about that. I could place my finger on

the article for

it. We are huge gems fans here at ATLIS,

like, even with this podcast, we have custom gems created that

basically we just write, execute and everything we need from the

marketing end is all handled. It's really cool. We're big

fans, big experimenters of the gyms.

Oh, I love that. I love hearing that. Are

you using notebook LM as well?

You know, it's interesting, because

everyone's a raving fan of it. I think that we've experimented

and played with it a little bit, but it's funny, because we're

already sort of getting sort of getting locked into the things

that we do and the things we like, so I haven't played with

it too much, but it's on my list. I have a lot of travel

coming up in the fall months, and I definitely have, like, a

list of things I want to play with in my downtime, and that is

definitely one of them.

For what it's worth, they just released

reports in notebook alum, which is really great. So you can

create full reports now from all of your resources. So for those

of you who haven't seen notebook alum, you can upload hundreds of

sources, PDFs, audio files, Google Docs, etc, website links,

and you can first create an audio overview for podcasts. I

was recently at the OECD, and I didn't have time to read the

late dozens of reports that the OEC had come up with. So I can

all in I listen to a 20 minute little podcast in the cab on the

way to the event. They do video overviews. If you want to watch

something, you can create mind mops, but now you can actually

create a full report. So I could say, like, give me a financial

report on all of these documents.

Love that we're starting to use notebook LM for

our auditory learners. They can take all of their notes and they

can throw it in there and listen to their notes, essentially. As

a podcast.

See, it's creative stuff. Well, Jenny,

we're going to have to have you back, because it seems to me

like you just being in our virtual room here with us today.

We've learned new stuff. We have new approaches. We're feeling

pretty optimistic about this. Some breaking news about new

stuff coming out from Google to help us get this done. So thank

you so very much for joining us and for sharing your perspective

on this. It's been really helpful for me, and I think that

we're just at the beginning of a really cool journey with our

relationship with Google. So thank you so much for sharing

all

this. Yes, my pleasure. Thanks so much for

having me on and as a graduate of an independent school, really

happy to give

back Go Team green bubble.

I was waiting for that one.

I got my Pixel. I got my Pixel.

This has been talking technology with ATLIS, produced

by the Association of technology leaders in independent schools

for. More information about ATLIS and ATLIS membership,

please visit the atlis.org if you enjoyed this discussion,

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