Dr. Geri Gillespy joins the podcast to discuss the transition from AI consumption to purposeful production. She shares her "three-legged stool" framework for change management and explores the emerging role of AI agents in independent schools. Learn how workforce development and human-in-the-loop practices ensure technology amplifies, rather than replaces, human creativity.

1. Microsoft Elevate for Educators, program designed to provide educators and school leaders with access to a global community, professional development, and resources to confidently integrate AI into teaching and learning.
2. Cyber Tabletop Simulation Game
3. Elevate webinars -- available to all? She mentioned “webinar I did yesterday”
4. Copyright gem
5. Mofongo, dish from Puerto Rico with plantains as its main ingredient
6. Fungo, special baseball bats used for training

Dan, 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 everyone, 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 are you today,

enjoying spring break and getting stuff done

when no one is in the building? Well, that's exciting. I don't

know if it's exciting, it's productive.

We're starting the pollen ing season here in

Virginia. So it's just unbelievable. It's no joke.

So I just thought you needed a haircut. That's all

pollen up and going on.

Yep, all pollen, the pollen

ing, okay, great.

The great pollen in here in Virginia. It

happens every year. I didn't realize how bad it was till I

moved down here and y'all, I brought a friend today, Ashley

on our team. Dr Ashley cross from ATLIS, hello, welcome. Good

morning. How are you today?

Hey, fantastic. Glad to be tagging along on this

episode.

So Ashley just jumped in because she

wanted to listen, because our guest is really exciting. And I

said, Well, you're here, so why don't we level out some of the

male female ratio that we have going on on this pod? So I

brought a friend today.

You guys, that's right, we're teaming up.

Just to be clear, it was level. It was 5050, you

just upped your game.

Exactly. The guest pushes it over the edge.

Now, before we jump in and introduce our guest, I do have

to say Hiram. I think I mentioned when we recorded last

that I was getting on a plane and heading to Puerto Rico. Oh,

you're right. I did go with some there are two CEO friends of

mine, very dear friends of mine, Tara puckey and Lindsay curry.

We all kind of came into our CEO jobs roughly at the same age,

and to have a couple of girlfriends to be able to just

go hang out at a beach house with is just one of life's

greatest gifts. She introduced me, or re introduced me to

mufongo. Oh yes, when we went out to a super local restaurant,

right? We went and stayed on kind of like the northwest side

of the island, which is very beach surfer y kind of vibes.

And we just sat at these restaurants like most people

didn't have shoes on. They had just come in from the water.

They threw their surfboards down and came in to grab a drink. And

it was just the most chill, relaxed. We stayed in the

Isabella area, and it was delightful. The food was

incredible, and I cannot wait to go back, but I did not have

Coquito because it is the wrong time of year for all

of that. I think it's never the wrong time for

Coquito. There were a lot of

margaritas happening, though.

Now I will share a fun story, since you brought up

mufongo. Oh, I loved it. What is it? What is it? It's crushed

plantains. It's plantains, yes. Essentially you're mortar and

Pete. So you crush the plantains, and then you could

put shrimp, you could put chicken, you name it. You can

put all sorts of great food in there, because

baseball wise, fungo is a bat, yes. So it's

like mufongo. I think you're like playing a sport now at

graduation to full Coliseum at William and Mary,

and I wanted to make sure that my parents could see me from the

ground where they were seated. So on my mortarboard, I wrote

mufongo on it, and they found me like that.

Hiram, this is the best story ever. Okay,

I'm gonna tell Tara and Lindsay. Tara had been there before, so

she's the one who was like, I dream of this mufongo At this

place. We must go back. We must have it. We ended up eating at

that restaurant twice while we were there. It was so great.

Which version did you get? Did you get it with the

shrimp?

Of course, shrimp, total shrimp, sheeted

steak. Yep. It was delightful.

You can also put cod in there, codfish in there

as well. And it's just, you can't go wrong. Oh, you guys.

So now I'm hungry and I want to go back.

Well, I want to go back for more than the mufongo, but I do want

to go back to Puerto Rico. Ashley, are you familiar with

this dish? Have you done this? Girl?

I lived in Miami. Yes. Many, many happy memories.

I miss all of the

amazing food. I love it, mufongo, chicharrones

totones, yes, poor Bill. Bill, maybe we

need to do a retreat, a pod retreat. We'll go down to Puerto

Rico, yes, and introduce you to some culture, because New Jersey

boy up there has no idea what we're talking about. Thank you.

Yeah, he'll bring his

bride along. Yeah, she'll love it. She's been dying

to go speak Spanish.

Definitely take her. Highly recommend. All

right. Well, with this, let's bring our guest in. So Dr Jerry

Gillespie, thank you so much for joining us on this podcast. The

floor is yours. Have you anything to say about mufongo or

Puerto Rico,

or otherwise, I'm gonna have to try mufongo. I honestly

have been to Miami because I work a lot, especially across

and visiting with different education customers and leaders

in that too. So I'm gonna have to try definitely that you had

me at beach? Yeah, I grew up in middle of California, outside

Silicon Valley, and get to the beach in 30 minutes. And so you

can take the girl out of Cali, but you can't take Cali out of

the girl. So soon as you said beach, I was right with you.

I love it. Dr Gillespie, I appreciate you

being here with us. This is exciting for us to have you on

the podcast, because you come from a really large

organization, but you also have really deep roots in education.

So why don't I give you a minute to introduce yourself, and then

we will kind of dive in.

Yes, it's honestly been a roller coaster

in a crazy career, and how I ended up where I end up here.

You know, I am an industry advisor at Microsoft. I support

United States and Canada, and I often get asked that question

of, how did you end up here? Because I spent all of my career

in education. My oldest son turned 30 last year, and, you

know, I had him in May, and I was in a classroom, supporting

classroom, and working in education in that fall after I

had him. So it's been that long that I have been a classroom

teacher, I've been an instructional coach for math and

science, I've been a building leader, I've been a director for

instructional technology, and then I've been an interim

superintendent and stepped in. So I've got four degrees in

education, because honestly, if you asked me 20 years ago if

I've had him, I thought you'd be crazy, but I believe in failing

forward. And throughout my career, I have no problem of

trying to take some risk and going forward. And that's I kept

ending up back in school every time in that space, but that's

been my background. I enjoy conversations and meeting new

people and looking about how we can support learners the best we

can in communities always, which you could say been a square peg

in a round pole. So I've never really fit even when I was

teaching, I think I drove my administrators crazy

in good ways,

oh, in good ways and things of trying to do. I

mean, I took a whole class out into the ocean in the Bay in San

Francisco area because I turned them into oceanographers. I set

up colonies up in the mountains, in the Sierras, and even as a

building principal, I had school. We were in project based

learning, and it got involved in the city of health planning

parks, and I've just always been looking at ways that we could

push that envelope. And so that's what I'm doing now, still

in my career and helping other educational leaders and people

come and join the conversation.

So you have four degrees in education. That

might be a first in our space. Please describe my friends.

I bet you there's more out there too that are like

me. It just happens that way. So you can get your bachelor's. I

have a bachelor's in human development, emphasis in

education, went through and certification to become an

educator at that time in California, and then wanted to

become an administrator. So got a Master's in Education

Leadership, and honestly thought I was just going to stay there.

My first principalship, I inherited a building that was

what I call in testing jail. This was also during the

recession, early in the 2000s and so I had, you know, I got

called into the superintendent's office two days after I got the

job, and I figured, I cannot be in trouble yet. And they said,

you know, we are cutting nine instructional days. You've got

staff of 67 630 something students every program. And by

the way, we don't have a VP next year, and if we don't raise math

scores, the whole building will be reorged. So I went in, dove

into the challenge. A lot of times I talk about my career and

things happening as blessings and a curse, and being through

that experience and that too, I was happy to be there. I had

amazing, amazing teachers. I learned how to get them in front

of our students first. We changed how we did things in the

building. We implemented one of the first blended learning

programs across the state, and we climbed our way out and built

more than just trying to answer the test, but we built a

community that was career and college focus, even with these

elementary students, and we became one of the highest

performing schools in the district and in the state. So

with that, my superintendent said, Can you come do that at

the district level and the. That's how I ended up, honestly

with then my next degree, because I failed miserably when

I went to district office, I'll be honest, I tried to get too

caught up in, you know, the theory and the models. And

honestly, the educators I was working that just wanted to know

how to serve their students best. They just want to know how

it worked and how they can make that to help students learn. And

so when I went back for my Ed specialist, it was about system

and bringing that and learning about systems and how to support

that transition in systems. And then we did it again. We created

a district that became one of the fifth producing districts in

the country. And so it was more than that. That I was about the

community in the team I can't stress out enough. Leadership is

a role of empowering those around you to be able to be the

best they can. And I've been able to see that in my career

specifically, and then it just went from there to my doctorate.

So impressive, truly. And now you

are at Microsoft, yes. So tell us a little bit about that,

because I think that there's sometimes a perception that

Microsoft is kind of a corporate product, and so it's really cool

and interesting to and part of why we wanted to have a

conversation with you is like, talk to us about Microsoft in

Education.

Microsoft even made an announcement last summer

about how they have even reorged to address education even more

in K 12 around the globe, and community colleges here in the

United States, and now we are something called Microsoft

Elevate, and I'll get back to that in a moment, but I ended up

in Microsoft actually about was little over five years ago. It

was before the pandemic in early 2020, and I was looking for

change. I was just finishing my doctorate, and I'd been working

very closely with the customer engagement team in the

engineering EU product team in Microsoft. The most amazing

people that I've got the opportunity to work with. They

are passionate about what they do in supporting educators they

build. You know that the solution and tools they bring in

educator voice, we were part of many of their programs that are

there today. You can join our education insiders program.

There is a TAP program that leaders can get involved with

and have that direct contact and feedback. My dissertation work

was about shifts of practice, and how do we support

professional identity and educators and give them a voice

in helping them with that change management piece. And I worked

very closely with these teams about their solutions and

engaging our educators in that time into what was happening,

and that's how I got to know them very well. And so when I

was looking for a change in career, and things were shifting

at the district I was in, in leadership, you know, they said,

why don't you come give us a try? At first, I reached out to

some of my colleagues. You talked about your girlfriends

that you were able to go away with, you know, I have that

within my Ed Tech leadership family. And so I reached out to

them and said, I'm like crazy. I'm going to leave what I have

been doing in education. I just finished here, my doctorate, my

superintendency. And I said, No, you know you you've always been

that person to kind of jump in fields, right? And things happen

for a reason. So that's what started my journey at Microsoft.

And to answer your question, yes, there is amazing people

within this organization. And now, as I mentioned earlier, we

have this Microsoft elevate. We are now reorged under the

direction of Brad Smith, who has been looking over our tech for

social impact, our nonprofit works all of that piece within

the company. And what has happened now is we've now have

this organization that is completely aligned with these

mission driven organizations, and so I can now help connect

leaders to nonprofits that are out there, that are supporting

others within the community and being a building leader,

especially During recession time, the amount of times that I

spent with my community leaders to help create that atmosphere.

And even working with the district, we brought community

schools where we could bring medical services, we could bring

counseling services, we could bring Workforce Services. And

I've seen firsthand how we need to expand that and reach out to

the community. And now being able to do that within

Microsoft, elevate and be in that space is just been amazing,

and to see what's happening and impact out there, especially now

Awesome.

Well, again, we're so thrilled to have you on with

all of your different accolades. Can you tell us some of your

work and your recognition? I see that you've been a community

leader for ISTE and ASCD, you were recognized very early on, I

might add, as a woman in AI. And I think that that's really

fascinating, that you've been ahead of the curve for that at

the national level for a long time now.

So another one of my endeavors, I actually was on.

A plane to ISTE, and it was going to Philadelphia years ago,

and I sat next to someone who was a developer. He was a

developer early on with open AI, but he was starting a startup

around AI and education, and we were just talking about

education and learning. And he said, Well, why don't you come

help, consult and talk, you know, with this company, I'd

love to learn more from you, because I don't come from this

space. I know only the technology how to put this

together. And so that's how I got in early, early, into just

understanding about what AI is, but what AI is not also, and how

that may impact, especially when we look at education and

learning and the skills behind that, and then to see it evolve

and emerge in the ways that's impacting the business world.

That's been something that's part of my career, that's been

so important to me is, how are we developing these students and

these learners for the future? Like I have three children, and

my husband and I am so happy they're grown. My daughter is

the last one. She's 21 and our goal has always been to get them

off her paycheck. I mean, we love them, we want them happy.

We want them to be sufficient themselves. And every parent

wants that. Every parent wants their children happy, healthy

and part of the community. And so how are we doing that in

schools and taking that on? So AI, I see is that change, and

that shift in how those skills are going to align. So you

answer your question, Ashley, it was like jumping in again about

how can I help in that voice, in that collective and that's how I

ended up with that recognition in that book. So Jerry,

you share a unique space with all of us here, with

the exception of Ashley. Ashley has little ones. The rest of us

are all in the adulting phase of their children, so we definitely

get it. We'd love to get them off the paycheck, but sometimes

it just keeps on creeping back. Every once in a while, oh, they

do. I just found out recently that I'm going to be a

grandfather, so that's all exciting. Quick question, since

you mentioned your children and the work that you do, because I

know Bill and I have had these conversations about AI with our

spouses. Our spouses are both teachers, and sometimes they

make comments about they feel like they're cheating when

they're using AI. I think our adult children have expressed

some concerns about when to use it, when not to use it, how to

use it. Are you experiencing the same thing with your own

children, especially given the work that you do?

Yes, I am. In fact, I have grandchildren also.

My son got married a few years ago, and I have a bonus

granddaughter, and she's nine years old. She's a fourth

grader, and they just had a new baby. So congratulations to you,

because I also have a six month old granddaughter, which is so,

so exciting. But yeah, we have conversations in modeling too,

and they know what I do in the work that we have. And, you

know, I've modeled how to use AI, just as I did as them

growing up, my kids used to call it teacher talk like they would

tell me, we'd be out, mom. We don't want the teacher talk

right now, because you know, everywhere would be out. If you

say, Hey, do you know why the clouds are that color and the

sky is blue, and you'd be like, Mom, can we just be on vacation?

We don't need right so, but we're doing that again at home.

I'm modeling when to use it, how to bring it in, and honestly

trying to validate their fears and their questions, because

we're wired to want to do things easy, like when I look at my

brother and my sister and myself, we were the first remote

controls in our house. I mean, it was, get up, go, turn the

channel, come back. My dad later bought this VCR that had a wire

to it, and you could press the button and then the remote

controls right. You see you've got the ones. Now, the first one

we had had six buttons on it. You know, I had a power, a mute,

up and down channel shoot. You look at remote controls. Now, I

don't even know how to turn on the TV sometimes with

everything. So we're wired that way, so we have to be cognizant

that we're pushing back. How are we using AI in this space? In

fact, I just did a webinar yesterday. We have an education

series that started for Elevate, and we talked about how

applications, like we have an application AI powered that

search progress, and it actually addresses media literacy, which

are foundational skills that need to happen. And I think we

again, are trying to jump so far ahead, we're not talking about

the essential skills that are going to be needed for critical

thinking and problem solving that have been in education for

years since I started teaching. I taught middle school math. I

wanted problem solving, I wanted analytical skills. I wanted

critical thinking. Those were skills I was working on, day in

and day out. They're just essential now because of what

you just addressed. It's a way we cannot let AI just start

doing thinking for us. We need to use it almost as a source of

information the way that we used to look at primary sources or

secondary sources. We need to understand that it's another

source of information. Information that we're going to

have to validate. We're going to have to check where I have to

ask ourselves those questions. Does this make sense? This is

honestly feed up what I know. And so it's the conversations

that we need to have in the forefront of that, and we can't

let them get buried. And so when I'm talking with my children,

it's the same thing as adults too. We'll bring them in and

say, and in fact, my sister is also an educator. She's a

special education teacher. She uses copilot in and out, and she

knows when she's engaged with her students to check for

security spaces, to look for data privacy. She understands

all of that, but then I caught her just a few weeks ago on a

personal type of device and AI, and what she was asking and

bringing in this conversation, I looked at her and I'm saying,

hey, you know, you're feeding that model like, remember what

you know? So it's going to be a constant reminder on ourselves,

and we're kind of have to keep bringing this conversation up

absolutely

and I think it's so important too, to get back to

that human piece. I went to an event recently, and I was with

so many faculty, and they were really complaining, like I heard

it over and over, probably in five different rooms, from five

different people about how they were frustrated about the heads

of school using AI to email them or other senior administrators,

but it was one of those, it came off as such a canned, robotic

response, and it just didn't have that human touch. So I

think remembering to have that balance in even when we are

using it to help us with our work, it's something that we're

seeing in schools to model really well from the

administrators, from the senior leaders, so the faculty all the

way down to the students.

I want to go back to one of the things that you

said earlier. What you had said is, I think it was in the

conversation that you were having on your way to ISTE, it

came up with what AI is and not. It was probably a very different

conversation then than it is now. But I'd love for you to

unpack that piece where we are right now,

artificial intelligence. I mean, it's been

here for decades in different forms. I was even watching a

documentary. I travel a lot, and I was on the plane, and I always

wonder if people are watching what you're watching all of

doing. But it's my chance to kind of catch up on

documentaries and that too. And there was one about the deep

thinking, and about how they even brought up the forms of

artificial intelligence to play those games and in spaces and

not to in the work that they did in the UK. And it's more than

just the large language models that we saw once. You know, chat

GPT came out few years ago, and even in the conversations now

with these different models that are happening. And so when I

talk about what AI is not it's understanding exactly what

Ashley just talked about. It's not going to have the contextual

understanding and the reason it's not going to have those

human qualities that make us to be able to look at the

situations and what I call the gray area of us being able to

analyze and synthesize that information. It's going to have

that logical reasoning on data and patterns, but it's going to

be based on that data and patterns. If you have bad data

in if you're pulling from things that are not logical, that are

always going to be repeatable, you're not going to have any

kind of authenticity. You're not going to have anything that's

new out there, because, you know, another space that my own

daughter, My daughter, is very creative and artistic. She's a

marketing major out there, and she's very worried about the

artistic side of AI and what it's doing and replicating art

and music in that field. And so she was absolutely against AI in

the beginning. It came out like she would not use it at all

because of the integrity of what it was going to do to the arts.

And that's, again, another conversation that we had that

goes into what AI is not yet we see these images that are made,

but we need new forms of art. We need creation to happen because

us as humans are the creators. Otherwise, we're going to end up

with just clones and clones and clones of the same music, of the

same art pieces of that same piece. So I think those are the

conversations I'm talking about that we need to talk about where

AI is not that human base. Yes, it's going to help us with our

efficiency and our writing, but we still need to come back and

that human in the loop and be able to make those conversations

like Ashley, like I push back when I get something of my

writing and I use AI, I go back and I want it to be able to

polish something that I've written, I'll push back and say,

This is not me. I mean, I will literally say, this is not me. I

need more voice. I go back and edit. I make sure it's me. But

what it does help and saves me time is making sure that I can

get that information across, it's going to help me

communicate better. It's going to amplify the message that I

want. And I think that's what we need to continue to bring

forward, and how we're amplifying what that first

outcome was that we wanted, not essentially taking it over for

us. But how are we amplifying that work? And that's going to

be the piece that I hope we don't. Lose in having those

continued conversations.

Hey, Jerry, my daughter shares a similar

sentiment. She's an architecture student at Virginia Tech, and

she's seeing the impact of AI in the creative process and some of

the challenges associated with it. They're certainly places

where it's helpful, and others where the hallucinations become

so apparent. I'm also curious, what is your opinion on the

thoughts of the brain rot that we're hearing about the study

from MIT, for example, a lot of editorials out there, and now

even neuroscientists are getting involved, showing that there is

a significant atrophy of children who are engaged in not

necessarily just AI, but screen time in general. But there's an

association with more use because of AI.

Hiram, before I let you answer that

question, it bleeds right into my next question for you, so we

could probably do them together, which is you had mentioned that

you push back on the AI to basically say, this is not me.

This is not my voice. How will our new generation know what

their voice is right in line with what Hiram is getting

to exactly? We even talked about my education.

You know that first piece my first degree is in that human

development and focus like Child Development students learning in

that too in education. So it's always been the center of my

work, and where I come from, and I look at technology as a

transfer skill, and we have to remember that we've got to look

at how we're using this device and how it's being added as a

strategy, as a tool. It cannot replicate or be that educator,

cannot be that human or that piece. And I think the issues

that we're seeing too, is how technology is being integrated,

because it can be fast and easy, and, you know, it's easy for us

to just push out an assignment, but are we really explaining?

Are we connecting? Are we getting where we need to be,

especially with younger students, and making sure that

we're making those connections? When I'm talking with educators,

I talk about, we need to connect the dots about what we're doing

already in classrooms that are going to help support and build

those and develop those skills we need. Artificial Intelligence

is about conversation. It's about discussion. So we do that

in very, very young grade levels, like we do that in pre

primary and preschool. In primary grades, you know, we are

talking about questions. We're talking about conversation.

Students learn. Children learn through language. We're trying

to develop those language skills. We're trying to develop

all of those different types of conversational skills that lead

into those deeper level thinking skills. We need to then pull

those out in the teachers and tell them, hey, this is also

supporting what students need to know later. And I think that's

even more essential, that we infer too much. We infer that we

think that's just happening and that transfer is just happening.

We need to point that out and say, These are essential in

these skills. We need to continue this, and we need to

look at this and as educators and leaders as a whole, I

advocate when I'm speaking with groups, especially if I'm doing

keynotes, or if I've got a large group of educational leaders in

front of me, I almost pretty much beg them to come to the

conversation, the discussion, because we need to have these

voices of their experience, their frame of reference, and

what we seen, what's happened in our school and across

institutions, to have and bring these questions in, because

children need time to discover who they are, what they know,

what they don't know, before we start bringing in these types of

models in AI we talk about, especially at Microsoft, we have

like these learning accelerators we talk about, AI powered that

then builds into where we want with workforce skills and how

that develops. What that means is they're managed, and they're

completely supported by that adult human and then it helps

amplify what it is that you're trying to build on, or the

skills and that with students, it doesn't take away the pieces

that we're talking about as far as students being able to have

that complexity, to be able to struggle a little bit, because

that's what learning is. And if we take that struggle away, to

go back to that question about brain rot in that space, if

we're always at that low level of questioning, that low level

of taking in information, and if we're always consuming

information and never producing anything. We're going to see

that. We're going to see that happen. And I'll even push back,

because I talk about this too, also when I talk with educators

in that in key notes, this all happened when we've got the

smartphones that we love. I mean, we got used to having all

this information and technology at our fingertips and in our

devices, we want to be able to access every type of file

information that we have in one place, and I'm guilty of that. I

mean, I wouldn't be lost without my phone, which has changed over

the decades. However, as we look at that, it also rewired our

brain to be more of a consumer versus a producer. I. Grew up in

Silicon Valley, like right outside San Jose. So I remember

when technology was about production, like I grew up with

all those, you know, back then was we called, like the IBM kids

and that too, right? So it was about the production that was

happening with technology. It was, how are we using these to

produce things? And somewhere along the way, we have turned

into complete consumers, and now with AI, it's essential that we

avoid the brain rot. We avoid not having that voice in our

students. We have to figure out how to make them producers again

of information before we put them into some of these models

too soon.

So when we're talking about these lower levels

and easy ways to use AI, we've seen a shift with particularly

the adults, again, not necessarily talking about

student populations right now, but with the shifts of using AI

and a little bit more of sophisticated ways this year,

it's been a big year for agents to come on the scene and for our

listeners, if you're not as familiar with those, they're

really great way to get started with your faculty. You give them

a set of instructions, you can give them a set of sources, and

then it will remember those over time. So we talk about it at

ATLIS, almost like a template. But Dr Gillespie, I'm curious,

have you seen any interesting cases, or even with yourself, or

from schools of using AI agents?

Yes, yes. Agents are, to me, the way that is

going to honestly resonate, mostly in an education, because

I always talk about being intentional and purposeful,

especially when we look at what we know works. You know, we want

to be purposeful with our learning outcomes. We want to be

clear and concise of language, what it is that we want our

learners to be able to do, and that's all levels, right? It

doesn't matter where you are, as far as if you're at a university

or a collegiate level, any level of instruction, you want that

clear focus of what you want your learners to be able to do

at the end of the day with the information that they're

learning and how we want them to apply that in real life. Agents

is a way to make that intentional task and focus on

what the work that you want to be done. I've seen it used, for

example, in a way where there were multiple agents built in a

grant writing process, what used to take me days and hours to be

able to research and find grants for a need that we were trying

to fulfill, to be able to see if we match or aligned with the

requirements, and then to go through and then fill out the

applications gather information. I've seen now happen, you know,

in processes of 30 minutes to an hour where you've got agent to

be able to go find those resources that does that task,

and then an agent to be able to analyze based on your data if

you fit or meet those requirements. And then an agent

that's specific to grant writing to be able to produce, and then

you're able to then go forward a particular example that I'm

thinking of, there were 10 grants that ended up finding as

a resource for someone who was looking for a digital printer

for some of their programs that they were replacing, and

honestly, they had 10 different grants by the time they were

done, and then they ended up with two that they went through

and applied just because of the process that went through with

these agents. Now that's a meaningful way where we seen

that with a particular way of use that save time, it's going

to help them with their resources at the end of the day,

and it's an intentional place. I've also seen and been working

with districts that are looking at a school improvement process

when we're looking at accreditation, all of these

processes take time in resources. When you look at

schools that are identified as low performing, if we can be

more proactive and be in that front line that saves time. It

saves resources. It's things that education institutions have

on their plates today that they honestly need help with in the

changes that they're struggling with. These are meaningful ways

that AI is helping and especially from the agent use

cases in that space, we've seen agents being able to use in

various ways with learners, especially within our higher ed

institutions, and being able to be specific and support those

types of concepts that need more of that background information

and knowledge. So I think it's also a place where you can be

more direct and with agents to say, hey, put more of that

cognitive love. Put more of that thinking on the learner. Don't

just give them the answer. I think it's a way for us to try

and bring in some of those precautions that we've just been

talking about in this conversation. So I cannot stress

enough that this is the next level of that building block of

resources, like around artificial intelligence that you

want to be able to learn more about. But it's a progression.

If you don't know what we're talking about right now, and

you're saying, Oh, this sounds way far beyond me. Remember,

this is a progression. So it's always about that awareness, and

what is it that I need to know now and then? How can I move

through to get to this stage, to be able to use it in this

capacity?

So I have an example that we have yet to

deploy. Our librarians are really diving into this right

now. But we we found our community struggling with issues

of you know, the concept of copyright, fair use, trademarks

and how to ensure that we are providing the correct

attribution, whether it is music performances in the arts, walk

up music for athletics, and we actually created an agent where

the teacher, the coach or the administrator, can actually type

in what the scenario is, and the agent will come back with a red,

yellow, green, about the challenges with the particular

event or use case. Then it will provide you the legalese that

will tell you what you need to be concerned with, and it gives

you advice on who to contact within the community, whether

it's an academic technologist, it's a librarian or

communications office, so that they can actually make sure that

they are within compliance with those three areas. And right

now, our librarians are stress testing that to see if it does

what it needs to do, and we were really surprised when we finally

got it built of its capacities right now, really helpful tool,

at least in its beta form.

I just want to say like, that's an amazing use

case, and that's kind of that point too. Of coming back where

I've seen what you're bringing to this space is that

institutional knowledge that we can't replace, especially in

education, and so being able to use that in when you're pressed

for resources and where we are, especially, you know, across I

cannot think of any of the educational leaders or

institutions or districts or spaces that I'm working with now

that are not pressed for budget constraints and not and looking

at how they're using their resources to the best of their

ability, and that's a perfect example of that, and how they're

preserving that institutional knowledge and supporting

themselves.

I'd like to jump in with one more just quick

example, and this will be added to the show notes for our

listeners, but a really cool agent. It's a cyber table top

simulation. So a lot of times people struggle with, how are we

going to walk through the simulation and the injections

and the prompts? And you can actually bring this to your

senior leadership team, maybe gather them in a conference

room, throw it up on a screen and hit go, and it will walk you

through the entire process. And it's a game, and so it's a

gamified way to have that really high level discussion based

great context for your school leaders. So that's another

example that I'm going to drop in the show notes.

Yeah, I appreciate those types too,

because when I leave, every time I come, and especially if I'm

working for the workshop or anything, when I've got

educators or any practitioners in front of me, I always want

them to be able to lean with something that they could use

tomorrow or try time is the most valuable resource we have. If I

ask any educator around the globe, I'll say the one resource

you need more of, they'll say time. So I'm, I try to be very

honorable and validate that, and make sure that we're, we're

using that to the best that we can, that they can leave with

something like that. And so I always go away with something

that we have called prompt coach. And it does exactly,

actually what you're talking about. It teaches you how to

prompt. It gets you the prompt that you need. But it does two

things at once. It allows you to learn more from it, and then it

also gets you engaged in being able to get something useful out

of it. And when you talk about your use case, that's what it

remind me to of how we're using agents to be able to do both,

build more of our understanding of what AI is, but then also be

able to get that end result that we're looking for.

One of the questions I actually had kind of

pivoting off of the AI piece a little bit here, I'm going to go

back again to something that you talked about earlier, talking to

people about helping them with shifts in practice and change

management. I'm curious as to how you are talking with schools

now about that, and it could be about AI, but I think there's so

many other things, and it's really a topic I feel very

strongly about in terms of, how do we make these shifts, whether

it is with AI or it's with something else that we're trying

to do, and how you get that across the line? Because I think

one of the things that we struggle with immensely. All

schools do is time. There's never enough of it, and we seem

to always be adding and never taking anything away. It leads

to burnout. It leads to heads popping, and I just can't do

this anymore. You're asking too much of us, and it depletes our

teaching pools. It's not easy to find people that want to come

into this field. So when you talk about this idea of change

management, of helping people shift their practice, what are

those conversations like? Who are you having those

conversations with, and what are

you talking about? A great question, because

that comes up a lot, and it's where I spent a majority of my

time in my career and my research, because of that exact

question of, how do I support my staff, my team, without having

to add more to their plate? Because again, even what we're

talking about today, it's one piece of the puzzle of what

happens in education, in a classroom, in education as a

whole, and especially when you have as a building leader, you

know, I had all these amazing people that worked for me, but I

was in my office or running around the school. They're in

their classrooms. There has to be an element of trust that

we're all going the same way, that we're on the same page. I

was very fortunate in my career early on, when I was in

California, I was early on into the work with professional

learning communities, and learned about how to bring

together that ideal of the collective, about mission and

vision in those conversations, and how do you come together and

honor that which I think is really rooted into professional

identity, and that's important to educators. You know, you come

into service industry, and you come into education because of

that impact that you want to make, and it becomes more of who

you are as much as what you do. And so we have to honor that

professional identity along the way, as we come through it, and

with that comes a sense of beliefs and values. So when

you're talking about transformation and the change

management that we are, especially in this space right

now, you have to look not only at the external factors, those

things that we're looking at, as far as access and having that

technical readiness and have that systems, you know, because

the security and the data security and the privacy right

now, which is a whole other ball game and aspect that happens

with artificial intelligence, that has to be there in that

space. You've got that piece, but you also have to take into

account the internal factors. And if you are not listing off

and building up the internal factors and the mindsets and

values and those pieces along the way, you're not going to end

up with the shifter or where you want to be. And part of that is

getting educators to rethink the way that they're doing their

work, because everybody's working hard, everybody's got a

lot that they're doing. So it's rethinking how we're taking

that. And so I always say, just as we do at our learners you're

taking in your first line is you need to be able to find those

leaders, find those champions, and not leaders by role, not by

the title. It means it's your student leaders, your community

leaders, your staff leaders, your anyone there that is there

that is helping to drive that shift. They're going to be your

drivers, that staff change. That needs to happen. That's where

you're going to take the entire capacity. That's going to be the

scale of what you need to bring. And you need to have checks and

measures along the way. And I've always done that, and we

developed a system when I went through all these spaces. And

I've worked with my craft children on this. I work with

very large school districts, you know, from all different sizes,

and I've seen the transformation happen multiple times. You know,

I just helped with one of our customers with one of the

largest co pilot rollouts, over 20,000 licenses here in the US.

And we followed a lot of these change management practice and

these surveys that we're talking in the questions that you're

asking along the way is you need to not only ask about their

efficacy, meaning, like, do I know how this works? You know

the function of the tool, but you need to ask core questions

about, do you even believe this fits here? You know, we brought

up Ashley, like these questions, and even in these conversations

earlier, like that pushback of, I'm not even sure how this feels

like, feels like cheating. I don't even know if a bit here,

because those are different conversations, and those are

different types of PD sessions that need to happen, versus this

is how you do it. And then you also need to look at, are they

actually changing practice, and how you need to intervene that

place. So I've seen surveys go out. I've seen people put out

different types of questions within this space, but if you're

not asking those three different things, you're not yourself. The

driver of the change, going to be able to create those

intervention create those supports, or those programs, to

actually be able to interact, or be able to intervene or or

address what's happening in those different changes. Because

if it's just that you believe that this should fit, and you

want to use it, but you don't know how I can get resources

there if you don't believe this fits. That's a deeper

conversation of understanding the why and meaning you where

you're at, and understanding that piece and then how it's

going to fit in that space going forward. And the last thing I'll

say about that is you also need to look at your system and your

building too. I always call it like a three legged stool. No

one wants to sit on a wobbly stool. You need to have

something that have balance of three different types of pieces

in that shift of practice, you need to have one where you have

those opportunities for direct instruction, you know, direct

training. It could be virtual, it could be in time and place,

but it has to be some kind of connection that you're saying.

This is what this is, and this is what. It looks like, then you

need to have some self guided resources where people can dive

deeper themselves, so that when they see what it is, they have

an opportunity to go in and try it for themselves and deep in

their own knowledge. And then the third critical piece, which

I see is missing a lot of times when we're talking about these

shifts, is you've got to have the point of need support that

can be a community, it can be an office hour, it can be a summer,

it could be one of those champions that's in the

building. I can say, hey, this isn't working. Why isn't this

working? We built a system in the district I came from where

we even empowered our students, and we built courses where

students could take as electives, and we had students

at every hour to help the teachers on PrEP periods, on

times, to be able to come to them for those kind of questions

and point of need. And so if you're looking at all those

three different areas, and you're going to be able to help

support your educators when they feel more supported in the shift

and change. Nobody likes change. That is my cheese, all these

books that are around there, right? So everybody struggles

with change, but it's how supported they feel in that mix.

And then the last piece that's critical. I know this was a big

question, but the last piece that's critical is validate and

recognize that this is a progression we developed scales

off of, kind of like deep learning. And pieces is, you

know, Microsoft has a version called crawl, walk, run, we

built all our work off of in the district I was we called it

walk, jump, leap because we wanted transformation to feel

different. We don't leap into our room like right until we

wanted to feel different. But what that did was our educators

that were struggling with this and felt overwhelmed, we'd say,

Look, this is our baseline, where we want all of our staff

or faculty, everybody in our organization, to be just at this

level by this time, and it kind of gave a load off. Okay? I

understand what my outcome is. I know where I need to be with it.

And then there was a progression where people who needed to go

further, who wanted to go deeper, could those that wanted

to go at a certain pace, could understand it. And then we could

align all of our trainings, all of our discussions around those

different areas, so that people felt validated and their time

was honored because they knew exactly what they were getting

and they understood the conversations they were going to

be in that space.

Thank you for that. That's a really great

and very comprehensive way of looking at the change management

piece of things, and I think that's going to be important,

and at least to my next question around workforce development,

because there's a couple of different aspects. I think it's

getting a lot of headlines right now, especially we all work in

the independent school space, and there are demands,

expectations from our consumers, our students, our parents, in

terms of what these kids are going to be able to go out into

the real world and do so. I think that workforce development

headlines are kind of landing in independent schools at I don't

know it's necessarily a higher rate, but it's certainly

pronounced. But even before we get to figuring out what it is

our kids are going to be doing for work and for jobs, there's

the moment that we're living in right now, and that anxiety from

the teaching profession is one that we talk about, because

teachers are struggling with the change management side of what

you're talking about. There's also some questions as to how

programs are preparing teachers. I have a senior in college who

is going to be a teacher. She's student teaching right now, and

she's not learning a lot about AI, well, she's learning about

it from me, but she's not learning about it at college,

which is really interesting. She's not necessarily learning

about it from her mentor teacher. So I think it's really

interesting. We have a couple different angles of workforce

development here in the education space, and because you

follow at this intersection of Microsoft, big company, and 30

year plus educator, I wonder if you can just kind of share with

us your observations about that

it is and it's been so important, because I

honestly think that's a big reason I'm sitting here. My mom

was a stay at home mom, my step dad passed away. I was 14, and

my mom had to go back in the workforce. Had accounting degree

and was learning something at the time that was new, called

Excel out of office, right? I learned along with her, because

I needed to have a way to put myself through school. And I was

supporting, you know, accountants at 19 years old,

because I learned along, and I believe in these workforce

skills, and had that experience too to come through and but

educators, a lot of times, do not have that outside industry

experience or beyond the education that they know. And

educators make up at some statistics from like 2024 I

believe UNESCO put out there worldwide, it was like 2.8% of

the workforce, you know, globally, of educators, but when

we have our students and our learners in our classrooms,

those are 100% of the workforce. So how are we preparing our

educators to help in that space, like right now, with AI in that

place too, and they are feeling overwhelmed and what this looks

like, I think that. That's where we need to look at how we have

programs like right now, we have an Elevate program for educators

that they can come in and join these conversations. And I think

it's the messaging that even ourselves need to get better at.

It's, you know, from getting to pre service teachers and

educators, ways for them to dive in deeper, to be able to get to

that. And then I think it's a partnership that has to happen

between what's happening in K 12 education and these institutions

that are preparing teachers that are coming into practice. There

are so many silos that happen across education from what

happens at a federal level, if I just you know specifically

around us, because that's where my frame of reference is, from

being in policy in those places, down to the state level to then

the independent school level, to all different variances

depending on how schools are out. But when we talk about AI,

we've got to recognize where those silos are, because we do

have this issue where we have people feeling unprepared to

understand what's happening, especially in AI and the data

security pieces that come along with this. How do I

functionally? How do I use this in practice? And then I'm going

to have to be at a space to be able to use this with learners.

And we talk about Skilling and that too. And it comes to the

point of what you're talking about with your daughter

specifically, too, is we need to understand that when we are

working with professionals like educators and anyone too,

because even if you're an educational leader, it's

different than when I come in and I teach someone how to do

something for their particular job, like their workforce, what

they are, because they just need to be able to how to understand

this from my level. How do I get the best out of this and build

capacity for myself? Where educators are is the whole point

and purpose of what it is that they're doing is they are trying

to share and facilitate their knowledge and just support and

guide learners, which is another level of bringing these skills

on. So there's a certain place of understanding that needs to

happen for them to feel secure, to be able to do that. And now

I'm not saying you need to have all the answers. I know we've

said that we can learn from our students, we can engage, but in

honesty, when you come in practice, there is a feeling of

some sense of understanding or a level of foundational

information that I understand as an educator to help guide or

facilitate in this conversation. And if, if we're not giving that

to pre service teachers, to educators that are in there and

then expected them to come on and do this, that's where we're

seeing this fear and these questions and this coming on,

because they need to have that extra further support as part of

that change management process. And too, I

think that makes a lot of sense, and I

appreciate you addressing that. We just have a few minutes left.

But I also thought I would just leave an open ended question for

you, in terms of, if there was kind of like, the one thing that

you would want to leave our audience, primarily being tech

leaders and tech directors at schools, is there any one bit of

advice or any kind of encouraging words you'd like to

leave them with as we wrap up the pod.

I think looking at this, I'm a systems thinker,

and honestly, where that came from was at a necessity, because

I was in a space where I didn't have the resources. We had

budget constraints as we all face in education. It doesn't

matter where you are in the roles that you are. You have

that pressure where you need your learners to come, where you

need your staff to go. There's that community expectation of

what we want, because we want the best for that community,

especially the learners that we have in front of us. Is to step

back and look at how you can integrate this as a system. Look

at what the pieces of what you already have. Are you building

on that piece and coming together as what we do best? As

educators, come to the discussion the collective, reach

out, ask questions, how do we come forward and share what it

is that we know about this space in our experiences, our frame of

reference? Because if we don't help, come and join the

narrative. It's going to be written for us. We've got to

come in and ask these questions. I don't have all the answers. I

love to learn from other people, but I am just taking what I've

gained across. But I'm open for discussion. I would love to

continue on as we go through but I need more of these voices in

this collective discussion to add

to this. That is fantastic. Dr Jerry

Gillespie, thank you so much for joining us today. We cannot

thank you enough for your time and your perspective. We

appreciate you.

Thank you. This was fun. I'm gonna go try again

in the fungo, right? Can't go wrong.

I'm telling you, it's worth it. Seek it out

in whatever city you're living in listeners, it is delightful.

This has been talking technology with ATLIS,

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