Events

�� Graduate School of Education kicks off new academic year in remodeled space

Brooke Donald — Mon, 29 Sep 2025 19:14:42 +0000

�� Graduate School of Education kicks off new academic year in remodeled space

Brooke Donald Mon, 09/29/2025 - 12:14

The Academic Affairs team welcomes new students to �� Graduate School of Education. (Photo: Ryan Zhang)

Students, faculty, and staff celebrated the opening of newly renovated school that creates a vibrant hub for teaching and learning at ��.

September 29, 2025

By Brooke Donald

Fences are down, and spirits are high. After three years of construction, the newly remodeled �� Graduate School of Education (GSE) opened its doors at the start of fall quarter, welcoming the community to new spaces filled with natural light.

The comprehensive project marked a significant consolidation of the school and included renovations of the historic Education Building, now named the Angela Nomellini & Ken Olivier Building (ANKO), and the Barnum Center, as well as the addition of a new four-story facility named the Patricia & Jeffrey Raikes (Raikes) Building.

"We are at the heart of ��, and for the first time in one place," said Dan Schwartz, the I.James Quillen Dean of the GSE, in an email to the community. "The spaces are designed to support the three C’s of collaboration, connection, and convening. I look forward to seeing how we use the spaces; how our community culture evolves; how the rest of the university is drawn to the heart of educational scholarship; and what possibilities start here."

During the first two weeks of the quarter, students, staff, and faculty familiarized themselves with the new classrooms and study spaces while moving into offices and laboratories. The school also hosted a festive all-community picnic. A formal dedication will occur later this quarter. Throughout the year, the GSE will open its doors to the off-campus community, offering professional development opportunities for teachers, discussions on critical topics in education, and research workshops.

The remodeled Angela Nomellini and Ken Olivier (ANKO) Building at �� Graduate School of Education opens onto a central courtyard. (Photo: Ryan Zhang)

The Forum of the ANKO Building includes a seating area and art installation, The Gravity of the Sun, by Jacob Hashimoto. (Photo: Ryan Zhang)

Faculty and staff moved into new offices as the GSE reopened for the fall quarter. (Photo: Ryan Zhang)

The Mary Bell Floyd Garden creates a relaxing space to sit outside the remodeled ANKO Building. (Photo: Ryan Zhang)

High-back chairs invite students and other to a quiet place to study in the Forum of the ANKO Building at the GSE. (Photo: Ryan Zhang)

The GSE hosted a welcome home event on the first day the new buildings opened. (Photo: Ryan Zhang)

Students, faculty, and staff got their hands dirty in an event titled "Planting Your Roots at the GSE," in which the community potted succulents to decorate their desks. (Photo: Ryan Zhang)

The remodeled library is two stories and filled with natural light. Books arriving soon. (Photo: Ryan Zhang)

The GSE community picnic was held in the new Penner Education Courtyard with the new Raikes Building in the background. (Photo: Joleen Richards)

At the GSE community picnic, staff, faculty, and students received t-shirts celebrating the opening. (Photo: Joleen Richard)

Students snapped a selfie at the GSE community picnic, days after the launch of the fall quarter. (Photo: Joleen Richards)

The Penner Education Courtyard, which includes the Kissick Family Outdoor Classroom, hosted the GSE community picnic welcoming students, staff, and faculty to the new academic year. (Photo: Joleen Richards)

Two GSE students at the community picnic, with the �� clocktower behind them. (Photo: Joleen Richards)

Faculty, students, and staff mingled at the GSE community picnic that welcomed them to the new quarter and celebrated the opening of the school buildings. (Photo: Joleen Richards)

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CTE

Digital literacy in the AI era (Part 1)

Olivia Peterkin — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 21:56:41 +0000

Digital literacy in the AI era (Part 1) Olivia Peterkin Thu, 07/17/2025 - 14:56

Events | Students | Technology

In this episode of School’s In, GSE Professor Emeritus Sam Wineburg discusses digital literacy and how to help students navigate the internet in the era of AI and fake news.

July 24, 2025

By Olivia Peterkin

As AI increasingly blurs reality online — generating lifelike images and believable misinformation — it’s essential that internet users learn to distinguish fact from fiction and spot reliable sources.

Sam Wineburg, PhD ’89, Margaret Jacks Professor, Emeritus, of Education at �� Graduate School of Education, says that it is incumbent on parents and educators to help students learn to be savvy consumers of information.

“Our students are living digital lives,” said Wineburg. “And it's our responsibility to help them navigate that terrain where they're spending so much time.”

Wineburg joins hosts GSE Dean Dan Schwartz and Senior Lecturer Denise Pope on the first live recording of School’s In as they discuss digital literacy in the school curriculum and the challenges and potential of AI in education.

“There's no place in the school curriculum for essentially bridging this gap between the lived experience of our students and what we teach in school,” said Wineburg, who is also the co-founder of Digital Inquiry Group, which conducts research and designs lessons for educators.

“What we’re trying to do with the Digital Inquiry Group is to create curricula that can be infused in all of the subjects of the school curriculum,” said Wineburg.“This is the only way that we're going to build a bridge between students' experience and how we want them to become informed citizens in a digital society.”

Learn more about our LIVE event and view the event recording on the Cubberley Lecture/School's In LIVE event page.

Transcript

Sam Wineburg (00:00):

Our students are living digital lives, and it's our responsibility to help them navigate that terrain where they're spending so much time.

Denise Pope (00:12):

Welcome to School's In, your go-to podcast for cutting-edge insights in learning.

(00:18):

From early education to lifelong development, we dive into trends, innovations, and challenges facing learners of all ages.

(00:28):

I'm Denise Pope, Senior Lecturer at ��'s Graduate School of Education and co-founder of Challenge Success.

Dan Schwartz (00:36):

And I'm Dan Schwartz. I'm the Dean of the Graduate School of Education and the Faculty Director of the �� Accelerator for Learning.

Denise Pope (00:45):

Together, we bring you expert perspectives and conversations to help you stay curious, inspired, and informed.

(00:55):

Hi, Dan.

Dan Schwartz (00:56):

Dr. Pope, it's good to see you.

Denise Pope (00:58):

It's good to see you too. I'm really excited.

Dan Schwartz (01:00):

Yeah. This is our first live recording in, in front of, uh, ��, so it's pretty exciting.

Denise Pope (01:05):

Yes. It is.

Dan Schwartz (01:07):

So, uh, it's digital literacy.

Denise Pope (01:08):

Ooh.

Dan Schwartz (01:09):

And, uh, I don't, I don't know what it is, so...

Denise Pope (01:13):

(laughs)

Dan Schwartz (01:13):

So...

Denise Pope (01:13):

Well, you're in the... You've come to the right place.

Dan Schwartz (01:14):

W- so here's my, here, here's my guess. I listen to Jane Austen digitally in my car, and so it's like, it's literature, which must have something to do with literacy, and it's digital.

Denise Pope (01:25):

Yeah. A-

Dan Schwartz (01:26):

Am I, am I there?

Denise Pope (01:27):

No. No.

Dan Schwartz (01:27):

No?

Denise Pope (01:28):

I... No. Uh, first of all, do you really listen to Jane Austen in your car? I don't buy it. I don't buy it. Do you?

Dan Schwartz (01:35):

I was a good humanities student.

Denise Pope (01:36):

Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dan Schwartz (01:38):

I was good. But my, my minor was English in college.

Denise Pope (01:40):

You-

Dan Schwartz (01:40):

You didn't know that?

Denise Pope (01:40):

I... You know what? I did know that your minor was... And your major was?

Dan Schwartz (01:45):

God, I forget. It j- it must have been important. I was, it was philos-

Denise Pope (01:46):

It was philosophy.

Dan Schwartz (01:46):

It was philosophy.

Denise Pope (01:48):

I know.

Dan Schwartz (01:49):

Yes, it was philosophy. Okay. Okay.

Denise Pope (01:50):

This is a very literate person.

Dan Schwartz (01:51):

Okay. Okay.

Denise Pope (01:51):

Although not digitally literate, I think, as we've just proven.

Dan Schwartz (01:53):

Yeah.

Denise Pope (01:53):

So it's a really good thing that we have an expert here today. So Sam, thank you so much for returning to the pod and especially in front of this live audience. And I wanted to get us started with just, what is digital literacy and how do we, how do we know when someone is actually digitally literate?

Sam Wineburg (02:13):

Well, thank you. First of all, thank you for having me. It's an honor to be back, be, to be back on the campus. So what is digital literacy? On, on, on the most basic level, it's the ability to go online and discern what is true from what is sham. So a couple ex- a couple of examples were, uh, in Springfield, Ohio, were Haitians, uh, grabbing their neighbor's cats and stringing them up and barbecuing them? Um, this is a claim that ultimately made its way to 67 million Americans. And so the ability to look at something like that and decide, no, I think I better check that out.

(02:55):

Now, let me say at the, in the same breath, more recently what's gone viral is the claim that Elon Musk turned the election using Starlink for Trump. And that actually, actually the winner was Harris. So again, this is the kind of thing that can be established if you know what to do. But if you don't know what to do, you become part of spread- spreading digital pollution. And so that's j- at a, at a basic level, given how much time and how dependent we are on our digital devices, it's the ability to have confidence in information about whether to believe it or whether to kind of hold off and say, "Mm, probably not."

Dan Schwartz (03:40):

So this, so this is really tangential. I love the expression digital pollution. Do we know, like, what percentage of the internet is digital pollution?

Sam Wineburg (03:49):

An awful lot.

Denise Pope (03:50):

(laughs)

Dan Schwartz (03:50):

Like, like, 45%? Like, my, the chances that I find something false are, like, really high?

Sam Wineburg (03:56):

Well, again, we can think of widely believed views that millions and millions of Americans are holding. And so clearly this is not a minor problem. This is a problem that affects us. It affects all of the subjects that we teach in school. There is no area of the curriculum that is not infected, if you will, by the kind of misinformation that is being spewed on a daily, daily basis. Now, let's just think about our youth. Our youth are spending... Today's teenagers are spending on average, stay in your seats, outside of school, eight hours a day online. 39% of teenagers in a recent Pew study said that they are on social media almost constantly. 39%. So our students are living digital lives, and it's our responsibility to help them navigate that terrain where they're spending so much time.

Denise Pope (05:04):

So last time you were on the pod, you did a little test with Dan and I, and we failed. And it was, how do you know... You know, if you, if you're looking at something, what's the first thing you should do to sort of make sure that it's true or make sure that the facts are correct? And the answer, and I took this with me and I do it, is to look at Wikipedia. Is that still the same answer? Is that one of the things that you would say to do? Or have we, are we beyond that now?

Sam Wineburg (05:30):

That's not quite... If you check the podcast, that's not quite the response that I had.

Denise Pope (05:33):

Okay.

(05:35):

See? See? This is what I'm saying. We failed. We failed. We're still failing.

Sam Wineburg (05:37):

So, so, so let me, let me-

Dan Schwartz (05:37):

It's, it's funny. You know, all, all, all, all I, all I remember is that I got the wrong answer. I have no idea what he said.

Denise Pope (05:42):

You didn't even know he... Y- okay, okay.

Dan Schwartz (05:42):

I have no idea what he said.

Denise Pope (05:42):

That's so funny.

Sam Wineburg (05:44):

Let, let, let me, let me provide a small gentle correction.

Denise Pope (05:47):

Thank you. Thank you.

Sam Wineburg (05:48):

What... I asked you a question, if you come across a website... And let me give an example, and you can, folks, take this one at home, theinternationallifescienceinstitute.org, it claims to provide vetted health information that has been approved by a scientific board. You look at this website, you see that there are scientific reports. You see that there's a peer-reviewed journal. And I said, "What do you do when you come to a website like this?" And you started to go into critical thinking and you said, "I will look at the about page. I will look at the scientific advisors." And I said, "Wrong answer."

Denise Pope (06:27):

Yes, I recall.

Sam Wineburg (06:27):

Unless you have all of the time in the day, if you are not already a specialist and you are not up on nutrition information... You have a limited amount of attention. And so what you should do is you should engage in critically ignoring. Rather than critical thinking, you should engage in critical ignoring. If you don't know what something is, what you should do is to use this incredible device that we have, an internet in which sources are electronically linked, and leave that and use the power of the internet to gain some context of what that organization is.

(07:04):

And within a few seconds, if you leave it and open up multiple tabs, a process that we've observed with professional fact-checkers, which we call lateral reading, you can learn through context that this actually is an organization that is funded by big soda, by big candy, by the agribusiness. And so Wikipedia is one among several sites... Particularly, you can go to Wikipedia... Now, again, what does Wikipedia provide? If it's a well-trafficked site, there are references at the bottom. And if you recognize something that there's... To the Wall Street Journal or to AP or to the New York Times, whatever news-vetted organization that you can kind of corroborate, that's your first move rather than devoting all of this time on a site for which you are not an expert about the topic.

Denise Pope (07:53):

So true. So true. And I have used that, by the way. I, I... It's a, it's a great tool. And I have done this, I've done my lateral reading, so thank you.

Sam Wineburg (08:00):

You get an A.

Denise Pope (08:01):

Thank you, Sam. Thank you.

Dan Schwartz (08:02):

So, so, but I, I-

Denise Pope (08:02):

I try for A's.

Dan Schwartz (08:03):

I d- I think I do exactly the opposite.

(08:06):

Right? So I, I look up something... I get, I get something from the doctor, and they, some result, and I started looking it up, and I'm basically searching for anything that confirms my belief that I'm about to die.

Audience (08:18):

(laughs)

Dan Schwartz (08:19):

Right? And, and as opposed to, like, saying the, choosing the credibility of the source.

Sam Wineburg (08:25):

Well, I mean, it, it...

Dan Schwartz (08:26):

Sorry. Sorry, Sam. (laughs)

Denise Pope (08:27):

There's, there's no help. There's-

Sam Wineburg (08:27):

Dan, Dan, that's, that's dark. I'm not going there.

Denise Pope (08:29):

No, there's no help for that. There's no help for that. Okay. But no, so now we have this little wrinkle, folks. We have AI. And I have fallen prey to believing a made-up video. I have listened to a voice on the phone that I thought was a famous person, turns out it wasn't. And I like to think that I'm sort of... You know, I'd like to think that I have a brain and can critically think my way outta this, but AI is really, really convincing. So how has this changed what you teach people to do, if at all?

Sam Wineburg (09:02):

Well, first of all, let's recognize that the, the ground is shifting under our feet at this very moment. So anything that I say and respond at this moment probably will not be valid in a month from now.

Denise Pope (09:12):

Fair.

Sam Wineburg (09:13):

And it might even be less time than that. Sure. I mean, our lives are about to be radically transformed by AI, if not already. And the teachers among us and the students among us know that you are using it whether it is approved or not. It has implicated itself into our lives. Any student, uh, certainly is using it. And there is an enormous crisis right now, a crisis of confidence in education. And so one of the things that's happening, particularly with the development of our ability to express ourselves in writing.

(09:49):

Now, this is a basic cognitive ability, right? The, the, the famous polymath, uh, Nobel Prize winner Herbert Simon said that what creates learning is what a student does or a student thinks. And if you use AI and you put a list of points into ChatGPT and it writes the essay for you, then what actually has happened? It's like, if we could come up with a machine that bench presses 300 pounds, um, why not sit in the corner of the gym and drink a smoothie while we're watching that?

Dan Schwartz (10:21):

(laughs)

Audience (10:21):

(laughs)

Sam Wineburg (10:22):

Um, but nothing really accrues if we have something doing the cognitive work for us, so that's clearly a problem. But in the same breath, there are huge, huge potentials of AI, and we have to be extremely cautious. Now, again, before we leave some of the, some of the challenges, let's just talk about the point that you raise, which is how convincing it is. So recently I asked, uh, I asked Chat about a topic that I know something about and that I've written about, which is this whole kind of question of did the atomic bomb have to be dropped in order to end World War II? This is a deep moral value, hard historiographic issue that's hard to contend with. But there is supposedly a quote saying that the Japanese were ready to surrender. And I asked Chat, "Please verify this quote." And it came back with this exact quote and said, "You can find this in the Japanese communications." And actually, I know that's not to be the case. And so I confronted Chat and I, I actually, I had to print it out because its response is so precious.

Audience (11:38):

(laughs)

Sam Wineburg (11:38):

So, so indulge me for a second while I read it to you. "You raise a very valid, important point. My demonstrated tendency to misrepresent information, particularly through inappropriate quotations, raises serious concerns about my suitability as a tool for high school history education."

Audience (11:58):

(laughs)

Sam Wineburg (12:00):

Now, we can use anecdotes like this, and yes, it is prone to errors. It can make up things. Is it better to go AI, to go to, to ask a chatbot about a, a historical fact or to consult a textbook? At this point, probably, I'm gonna go with a textbook. But in the same breath, there are unbelievable potentials for harnessing AI to develop the kind of intellectual capabilities that school since time immemorial has been trying to develop.

Dan Schwartz (12:30):

So I, so I have, uh, uh, an honest question. So a, a number of my colleagues say, uh, the fact that ChatGPT writes essays is gonna destroy critical thinking 'cause the way to learn to do critical thinking is to write essays.

Denise Pope (12:46):

Wait, can we define critical thinking before we even answer that question? Can I ask you to do... Because people always say, "What do we mean by critical thinking?" Sam?

Sam Wineburg (12:53):

Well, I think everyone in the audience can talk about the development of being able to take, uh, disparate ideas and to form them into a coherent whole that is convincing, that's persuasive, that uses evidence. The problem when we start to talk about technology is this automatic tendency to say, "Well, if kids are believing things that aren't true, we need to teach critical thinking." And, you know, we need to... Forget about 21st century skills. Let's go to 4th century B skill-

Denise Pope (13:26):

(laughs)

Sam Wineburg (13:26):

... BC skills with Socrates in the Agora. Now, the thing is that, that Socrates didn't understand search engine optimization, didn't understand-

Dan Schwartz (13:35):

(laughs)

Audience (13:35):

(laughs)

Sam Wineburg (13:35):

... metalanguage, didn't understand algorithmic bias, didn't understand the way that Google arrays search results. There's a great deal of information about this tool that we use, this internet, that all of us are driving on the information highway, and none of us has read the informa- the driver's manual, and we still are going crazy with it. And so there's a lot of knowledge about how the information that we consume comes to us that is, has to be added to our traditional notions of just being able to critically think through a problem. We need to know about the information environment in order to make thoughtful decisions about what to believe.

Denise Pope (14:13):

So teaching students where this... How it works, where it comes from, about hallucinations. What else would you add to that list?

Sam Wineburg (14:23):

Well, again, you know, one of the things that we've seen... So we, we did a large study in 2021 where we had 3,446 high school students across this, across the United States hooked up to the internet and we gave them a series of tasks. And so here's one of the tasks. The students saw a grainy Facebook video that claimed to say that there was widespread vote cheating in the 2016 Democratic primaries. Now, this video was actually shot in Russia, a fact that if you know the right keywords and you open up another tab, you can find. Three students in 3,000 actually made it to the right place where that video was created. Now, there's clearly an issue here.

Denise Pope (15:13):

That's so depressing, Sam.

Sam Wineburg (15:16):

Three students in 3,000. So, you know, we have to do something, and the ways that we're going about it are not the right ways to go about it. Let's go back to the beginning of, of the, of the questions. You asked about digital literacy. Where is digital literacy in the school curriculum? Right now, if you find it, it might be in a single couple lectures by the school librarian, if there is one.

(15:41):

I wanna give you a statistic. We, with the Digital Inquiry Group, we count our downloads. So for our history curriculum last year, we had over a million downloads of our curriculum. We had 67,000 downloads of our digital literacy curriculum. Why? Because there's no place in the school curriculum for essentially bridging this gap between the lived experience of our students and what we teach in school. So what we're trying to do with the, with the Digital Inquiry Group is to create curricula that can be infused in all of the subjects of the school curriculum. This is the only way that we're going to build a bridge between students' experience and what we want them, how we want them to become informed citizens in a digital society.

Denise Pope (16:28):

Love it.

Dan Schwartz (16:30):

Good proposal. Good solution.

Denise Pope (16:35):

Sir, you have a question?

Live Audience Member (16:36):

Question is that you've, you've cited the study from 2021. As fast as all of these technologies are developing, do you worry that the relevance of that study diminishes over time as a result of the changes in the technologies and the speed with which people are beginning to get used to using them in different ways?

Sam Wineburg (16:59):

I would worry about it if the subsequent studies showed a fundamentally different result.

Denise Pope (17:04):

Mm.

Sam Wineburg (17:04):

Unfortunately, to my, to our great dismay, they don't. And so there's m- more recent studies, but I think that that leaves a kind of pessimistic sense that I don't want to hover above this room. What we've also done since 2021 is we have done studies where, uh, in... We did a treatment control, randomized control study in Lincoln, Nebraska public schools. And we showed that in less than six hours of instruction, students grew in, at, at a rate of 40% in their ability to make thoughtful choices about what to believe. Six hours is two hours less than the average amount of time a teenager spends online in one day.

Denise Pope (17:47):

Yeah.

Sam Wineburg (17:47):

So just imagine what could happen if this was put into the warp and woof of the way that, of, of the curricula tha- that we have. So again, we can move the needle. These things are not intransigent, they're not things that can't be taught. But they need to be taught.

Dan Schwartz (18:07):

So here, here's one I think people need to learn.

Denise Pope (18:09):

Okay.

Dan Schwartz (18:09):

Uh, so the new thing about the AI is it's really easy to make stuff, and it'll be very easy for students to generate fake news, so to speak. And so you need to teach them why you might not want to do that. Teach 'em to think about responsibility, ethics, right? So that, that seems different to me, the ability to, for the students themselves to produce things that would show up on the internet. Could...

Sam Wineburg (18:32):

I... No, I, I agree. I think that's, I think that's, that's part and parcel of it, of course. Absolutely.

Denise Pope (18:36):

Because we do such a great job teaching ethics already.

Dan Schwartz (18:41):

(laughs)

Denise Pope (18:41):

Right?

Dan Schwartz (18:42):

Right.

Denise Pope (18:43):

I mean, now we need a whole other curriculum.

Dan Schwartz (18:45):

So, so you guys are proposing we get rid of trigonometry so we can make space for this? Is that the...

Denise Pope (18:50):

No, I don't, I don't think it's an either or at all. But I do, I d-... You know, there are parents out there, there are teachers out there who just wanna know what should we do? I think downloading Sam's curriculum, great idea, right? I think teaching responsibility and making ri- good choices and not posting deep fakes and pornography and blah, blah, blah, whatever that's called now with the cyber sex. Um, great idea. Don't do that. Right? But I think we need more. Like I get... I'm getting duped.

Dan Schwartz (19:16):

No.

Denise Pope (19:16):

(laughs) Help me. Help me.

Dan Schwartz (19:16):

No.

Sam Wineburg (19:20):

So, so-

Dan Schwartz (19:20):

Wikipedia.

Sam Wineburg (19:22):

Dan, Dan, you said eliminate trigonometry. No, that's exactly not the way to think about it.

Dan Schwartz (19:27):

Okay.

Sam Wineburg (19:27):

The way to think about it is that we c-... It's not either or, it's both and. So, a, a, a, a student is, comes across, uh, the, uh, uh... W- what are the browsers of choice for gen, for this, for students in high school at this point?

Denise Pope (19:42):

Oh I know the answer to that.

Sam Wineburg (19:42):

They-

Denise Pope (19:44):

I asked that to, to a bunch of kids.

Sam Wineburg (19:46):

Okay.

Denise Pope (19:47):

Uh, the majority of this generation gets their news from, uh, TikTok and, um, uh, Instagram.

Sam Wineburg (19:54):

And one more.

Denise Pope (19:56):

Uh...

Sam Wineburg (19:57):

YouTube.

Denise Pope (19:58):

YouTube.

Sam Wineburg (19:58):

These are visual media. And so you come across a TikTok video claiming, um... Well, again, claiming, uh, that the Holocaust didn't happen. Claiming that there were 20,000 African Americans who were put into concentration camps by Union soldiers in Natchez, Mississippi in 1865. This is heartfelt claims. Now, there's lots of things that happened, particularly in our history, that textbooks don't report. So how do you know what's true? You're teaching the Civil War, you're, and you come across, a student says, "Did you know that hundreds of thousands of African Americans suited up in Confederate Greys and fought on the side of the Confederacy, fought for their own continued enslavement? Um, here's evidence."

(20:50):

Now, this, when you're teaching the Civil War, these are the kin-... How- if you are interested as a, as, as an educator in preparing students not for more school, but for the society in which they live, the information environment that surrounds them, then this is not an either or. That TikTok video has to be brought into the classroom. It has to be interrogated. And we have to teach students how to be able to discern whether that's something to belie- be believed, or whether in that particular instance, that is a lost cause piece of propaganda.

Denise Pope (21:25):

One hundred percent. One hundred percent. Why are you looking at me like that, Dan?

Dan Schwartz (21:30):

Uh, I'm, I'm-

(21:31):

... still trying to figure out what I'm supposed to do when that TikTok video shows up. I think I don't quite have lateral reading. So, like, so I see this, a student brings it, or I see it, I'm not quite sure. You know, my, my intuition is, well, let me rely on my common sense, and then I'll make up some facts that help me believe what I wanna believe. And, and... But you have a technique here that I don't quite know.

Sam Wineburg (21:54):

So, I mean, here's what's, here's... Let's, let's begin with a common thing not to do that is often, often used. A TikTok video of a guy who says, "You know, we ought to ban high school football, or we certainly need to regulate it, because there's all these kinds of problems with concussions." And you listen to it and you say, "Wait a second. I mean, this is fearmongering. This is, you know, kind of raising our heartbeat for something that's really overblown. Who is this dude?" And his name happens to be, uh, Chris Nowinski. And what do you do with that? You say, "Well, I r- it, it, it doesn't seem that convincing."

(22:37):

That's not digital literacy. Digital literacy is to be- is knowing how to use this incredible tool, really, that's at your fingertips, literally at your fingertips, and saying, "Let's find out who this dude is." Now, it happens to be a Harvard-educated Boston University PhD in neuroscience who wrote a book called Head Games that became the basis for the NFL fundamentally rethinking its whole policy toward concussions. And so, as opposed to some random person, like the video I referred to in Natchez, Mississippi, who just sees some kind of things... Actually, that particular claim goes back to a person who says they're an expert who is the head of a society of paranormal activity in Mississippi.

Dan Schwartz (23:23):

(laughs)

Denise Pope (23:23):

There you go.

Sam Wineburg (23:24):

So again, should we believe her? She kind of conjures spirits to know what happened in the past.

Denise Pope (23:30):

Okay, wait, I have a question. This might, this is, could potentially be very embarrassing in front of all these people. I thought that people don't necessarily use their real name. So if I see this person on TikTok, all I'm seeing is a handle, like a made up, like, Miss Piggy kind of handle. And then how do I google to see who the person is? Am I, am I wrong?

Sam Wineburg (23:49):

Well, again, if there's, if it's anonymous and they're talking about Natchez, Mississippi, and they're talking about the Devil's Punchbowl, and they're talking about eight- uh, 1865, then you've got some keywords.

Denise Pope (24:00):

So that's what you meant by keywords.

Sam Wineburg (24:01):

And now, now let's, let's-

Denise Pope (24:02):

I gotcha.

Sam Wineburg (24:03):

... let's talk about AI for a second.

Denise Pope (24:04):

Okay.

Sam Wineburg (24:05):

Let's put this into Chat. Let's put this into Claude. Let's put this into Perplexity. Let's put this into Gemini. And if you s- and you ask for sources, you ask and you give the kind of prompts... Not just say to your chatbot, "Is this true?" But in addition to that prompt, and this is where we have to start to think about the new kind of education that our students need. How do we kind of think like the large language model and prompt it for the kind of solid answer that we want it to produce? So we ask not just, "Is this true?" But provide the sources for your information and preferably provide academic and scholarly sources. You get a very different answer and a much more thorough answer than if you just say, "Is this true?" Now, if you wanna then look at a source, then you go back to the source and say, "Is Breitbart a, uh, uh, uh, a solid source I should believe? Or is, um, something that is published by �� University Press more of solid ground to stand on?"

Denise Pope (25:11):

I'm not gonna answer that question. That sounds like a trick question. All right. So, um, tell... You, you're, you're a mom, you're a dad, you're a parent. What do you want the parents to know? Do you want the parents to be sitting with them and saying, "Hey, don't be spreading around TikToks that aren't true"? Do you want the parents to be teaching? Like, what, what's, what's the parent's role in all this?

Sam Wineburg (25:36):

So let's think about a hierarchy of harm.

Denise Pope (25:42):

Okay.

Sam Wineburg (25:44):

So what are the things that are most potentially harmful that our children are doing that we ought to know about? And there was a report, an exposé, in the April 26th Wall Street Journal about, uh, sex bots on Meta, uh, Meta AI, where there are user-generated sex bots. One of them is named Submissive Schoolgirl. And the Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz, over a period of months, created scenarios where they, where he played the role of adolescents. And essentially what this chatbot engaged in was providing a menu of sexual and bondage fantasies and drawing adolescents into this kind of world.

(26:38):

So let's just be clear. There i- there are ever present dangers out there that if we don't know what our children are doing, it is, it's, it's not an easy environment to be in. So let's talk about that for a second with AI. Now, if our student is circumventing all of the assignments in school and using ChatGPT for them, then we need a kind of heart-to-heart, come-to-Jesus talk about what's the purpose of school and how do you develop that muscle? And do you wanna kinda send a robotic chat ch- chat into, into the gym to do the, the, the bench presses for you? And what will happen if you do that? Will you grow? And so there are a lot of things that we need to do as parents. Uh-

Dan Schwartz (27:28):

Sam. Can, could you make a TikTok video of that speech?

Denise Pope (27:31):

(laughs)

Dan Schwartz (27:32):

I think it would go viral to everybody who wants to be able to make that speech to their kids.

Sam Wineburg (27:37):

Onl- only if people then look up who I am-

Dan Schwartz (27:40):

(laughs)

Denise Pope (27:40):

(laughs) Ah.

Audience (27:40):

(laughs)

Sam Wineburg (27:40):

... and whether I am qualified-

Denise Pope (27:41):

That's so good. That's so right.

Sam Wineburg (27:43):

... to give this particular opinion.

Denise Pope (27:44):

That's so right. That's so right.

Dan Schwartz (27:45):

Very good.

Denise Pope (27:45):

Oh my god. Well, we could go on forever, uh, with this kind of talk, but we do have a panel, uh, coming up after this, so we could go on forever. Dan, I always put you on the spot for some takeaways for our audience.

Dan Schwartz (28:00):

So it, it's a little surprising. Digital literacy, if I've got it right, is knowing to track the source, figure out where it came from, which is quite different than sort of understanding different genres of digital media.

Denise Pope (28:12):

Yes. Hundred percent. Sam?

Sam Wineburg (28:16):

The takeaway that I want all of us to have is that our eyes deceive us. That there are, there are forces out there that wanna dupe us, that, that have a lot of money behind them, and to... If something looks good, the classic, if it quacks like a duck, if it walks like a duck, if it smells like a duck, it might be a duck, but it might not be. So the idea... We are called upon to make all kinds of decisions as a citizen, for things for which we lack the requisite background knowledge. Friedrich Hayek, the economist, said that the mark of a developed situation is being able to benefit from knowledge we don't possess. Now, the internet allows us, if we know how to use it, to be much smarter than we actually are. But we have to know how to use this incredible tool that's at our disposal.

Denise Pope (29:15):

I...Sam, it's so important. Thank you so much for that. I, I'm, I'm gonna leave here walking away not just with my Wikipedia from last time, but with this knowledge that I am- I can't possibly be an expert in everything I'm going to, uh, see. And so I've gotta do my homework, legit, to figure out what's right and what isn't right, and to really go deep and check the sources. And that means, that's time and energy. But my gosh, if we don't do that, we're gonna end up being duped as, as, uh, you know, as we see many, many people being.

Sam Wineburg (29:47):

Can I alla- allay your fears for a second?

Denise Pope (29:49):

Yes, please.

Sam Wineburg (29:49):

And go back to the example that I started off with, the International Life Science Institute. Denise, 30 seconds. 30 seconds. I mean, we tend to think of sources as in an environment of scarcity. We're in a very different environment. We're in an environment of overabundance. And so our critical thinking ability, the first step of critically thinking is to determine whether the object of thinking is worthy of thinking about. And in the case of, of so many things that establishing whether you should stay on that website or whether it's better to find, quickly find a- another source is a half a minute of your time if you know what to do.

Denise Pope (30:34):

I love that. Sam, that gives me hope. You've just given me hope in this crazy world. I thought this might be a depressing topic, but actually I leave here very hopeful. So Sam, thank you. Thank you for being on the show again, uh, I would love to have you back. Thank all of you for joining in this episode of School's In. It was so much fun to do. Be sure to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or wherever you tune in. I'm Denise Pope.

Dan Schwartz (31:00):

I'm Dan who does not have enough time Schwartz.

Denise Pope (31:02):

(laughs) But that was allayed, Dan.

Dan Schwartz (31:03):

(laughs)

Denise Pope (31:04):

We allayed your fears. 30 seconds. 30 seconds for the truth. Thanks again, folks. Really appreciate it.

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Faculty and Research

Faculty mentioned in this article: Sam Wineburg

�� education students share research, build community at AERA conference

Olivia Peterkin — Tue, 20 May 2025 23:13:17 +0000

�� education students share research, build community at AERA conference Olivia Peterkin Tue, 05/20/2025 - 16:13

Announcements | Events | Research and Practice

From helping attendees navigate the conference, to sharing research, four GSE students share their experiences at the annual meeting.

June 2, 2025

By Olivia Peterkin

The �� Graduate School of Education (GSE) and the American Educational Research Association (AERA) have deeply intertwined histories; both revolve around the betterment of society through educational research, both began within a year of each other, and more than 15 GSE faculty and alumni have led AERA’s board as president.

At AERA’s annual conference — a meeting where educational stakeholders connect, collaborate, and disseminate research — this year another chapter was added to the history between the two as several GSE students were there to attend and present, and GSE Professor Maisha Winn officially began her tenure as AERA’s newest president.

“One of my priorities as AERA president is to work closely with the incoming executive director on creating a 10-year plan for the association and doing a deep dive into how we envision the future of AERA,” said Maisha Winn, a GSE professor whose tenure as president of AERA began at the end of this year’s conference.

About 14,000 attendees including more than 4,500 graduate students were present at the conference this year and GSE students presented on topics ranging from drawing connections between social emotional learning in K-12 schools and civics education, to preparing teachers how to best support multilingual learners. The GSE also hosts an annual reception for alumni, faculty, and students to connect, exchange ideas, and reunite with their cohorts.

Working behind the scenes to help graduate students navigate the conference

“I’m actually on the AERA Graduate Student Council as program chair, so I was involved with creating and promoting all of the graduate-facing programming at the conference,” said Marjorie Hahn, a doctoral candidate studying Curriculum Studies and Teacher Education. It was really an amazing experience.”

“I got to run the graduate student welcome orientation for the first day, and there were more than 200 people there getting ready for the conference, and my role involved giving tips and apprising them of resources that would be available for graduate students throughout the week, chief among them was the graduate student resource center (pictured above), where students could go with questions,” she said.

(Photo courtesy Marjorie Hahn)

Connecting with familiar faces in overwhelming spaces

"While AERA can be an overwhelming space given the conference's size and the many interesting sessions to choose from, I have come to see the conference more like a class reunion, or even a family reunion, with some of my closest scholar-friends," said Darion Wallace, a doctoral candidate studying Social Sciences, Humanities, and Interdisciplinary Policy Studies (SHIPS).

"I remember feeling lost in the sea of scholars during my first in-person AERA, but this time around I saw so many familiar faces at every turn of the conference. Sharing new and emerging ideas at AERA has traditionally been an enriching experience, as it has pushed me to think differently about my research questions and affirm the significance of my interventions in the field," he said. "I departed from my conference experience this year knowing that my cup overflowed with gratitude, connection, and intellectual stimulation."

(Photo courtesy Darion Wallace)

Seizing opportunities to share research

"This was one of the first years where being around the people at the conference, I realized that I couldn’t have gotten the experience I did if I hadn’t gotten on a flight and come out here," said Jan Weiss, a doctoral candidate studying curriculum studies and teacher education, who presented on preparing teachers to support multilingual learners.

"I also didn’t realize that editors and publishers attend AERA and are reaching out to different researchers like me. But there was a whole room in the convention center with 20 to 30 publishers and after my presentation an editor approached me about writing a book," she said. "So I would tell graduate students wanting their research to be seen, known or published that AERA is a really good networking experience because editors are there with that in mind."

"I think if I had just published my paper on this topic and not presented it at AERA, it might not have gotten the attention that it had."

(Photo Courtesy Jane Weiss)

Building a community of scholars

"It’s interesting how people from different places come together to build a community that is outside the university or organization they’re embedded in," said Tom Nachtigal, a doctoral candidate who presented on connecting the line between social emotional learning and civic education.

"I think some people are hesitant to go to AERA because it can be a heavy lift, but for me as a young scholar, being exposed to these kinds of spaces is very helpful to see what other people are working on, what they’re thinking about, and how they’re responding to your work," she said. "I think this is a very important part of our growth and development."

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Faculty mentioned in this article: Maisha Winn

Schools have a role in helping students navigate AI and fake news, �� panelists say

Olivia Peterkin — Wed, 28 May 2025 21:21:07 +0000

Schools have a role in helping students navigate AI and fake news, �� panelists say

Olivia Peterkin Wed, 05/28/2025 - 14:21

Denise Pope (left), Dan Schwartz (center) and Sam Wineburg (right) host the first-ever live recording of School's In as part of the 87th annual Cubberley Lecture. (Photo: Ryan Zhang)

Events | Technology

The �� Graduate School of Education’s Cubberley Lecture and School’s In crossover event focused on strategies for helping young people become responsible and curious digital citizens.

May 28, 2025

By Olivia Peterkin

Schools have a unique chance to equip students with the skills to handle today’s digital landscape, said Sam Wineburg, PhD ’89, Margaret Jacks Professor, Emeritus, of Education at �� Graduate School of Education (GSE), during the 87th annual Cubberley Lecture on May 21, at Hauck Auditorium.

“Our students are living digital lives,” Wineburg said. “And it's our responsibility to help them navigate that terrain where they're spending so much time.”

A crowd of nearly 300 teachers, students and community members gathered for the event, which included the first on-campus live recording of the GSE’s School’s In podcast hosted by Dean Dan Schwartz and Senior Lecturer Denise Pope, ’88, PhD ’99, on the topic of digital literacy. Sam Wineburg served as the expert guest.

“Education must play a role in helping students become critical thinkers who can sort fact from fiction, or engage in honest debate using trustworthy sources,” Schwartz said. “This is something that is now more urgent than ever.”

The live recording was followed by a panel discussion moderated by Pope, and included panelists Alvin Hong Lee ’25, a �� political science student; Janine Zacharia, a journalist and lecturer in ��’s communication department; Valerie Ziegler, a teacher of history, economics, and politics at Abraham Lincoln High School in San Francisco; and Wineburg.

Pope helped guide the conversation by elevating the concerns and challenges of students, parents, and educators.

“There are parents (and) teachers out there who just want to know, ‘What should we do?'” said Pope, who is also co-founder of Challenge Success, emphasizing the importance of responsibility, ethics, and understanding in navigating the internet.

The need for digital discernment

With attention spans shrinking and online information that is vast and varied, Wineburg said it’s more important for internet users to spend time first verifying a source’s authority before consuming information and later trying to determine if it’s true.

“We're in an environment of overabundance,” Wineburg said. “The first step of critical thinking is to determine whether the object of thinking is worthy of thinking about.”

Wineburg suggests a source can often be verified in less than 30 seconds by leaving the page or site in question and checking other websites — a process called lateral reading, commonly used by professional fact checkers.

“If you don't know what an organization is, or where its information is coming from,” he explained, “use the power of the internet to gain some context.”

This ability to determine trustworthy sources extends to news, especially since young people are increasingly turning to social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram for information.

“I think that it's an urgent national priority that people understand how credible, fact-based news works and how to identify what you're seeing in the news,” said Zacharia, who teaches journalism skills and techniques for understanding the changing news environment, during the panel.

“In terms of identifying credible information, if you look at the sources, as opposed to reading everything that captures your attention, or echoes your confirmation bias without caring who they are, we’d all be in a better place,” she said.

Bridging the gap between students’ digital and educational lives

With American teenagers spending an average of eight hours per day on the internet outside of school, Wineburg says that it’s incumbent on educators to create a link between student experiences in and out of the classroom.

“What we’re trying to do with the Digital Inquiry Group is to create curricula that can be infused in all of the subjects of the school curriculum,” said Wineburg, whose research has been used to create classroom materials used by over half of American history and social studies teachers.

“This is the only way that we're going to build a bridge between students' experience and how we want them to become informed citizens in a digital society.”

Another way educators can equip students is by becoming familiar with AI, creating discussions around its use, and incorporating it into classrooms.

“I think the first thing is that, as educators, we have to practice what we preach, and use these tools,” said Ziegler, who was a California Teacher of the Year in 2010.

“What's great is that when you put a bunch of students together to ask AI a question and they're all doing it … and they all get different answers on the same topic, at the same time, then you have a conversation,” she said. “You then have this ability to say, why are we all getting different answers? What does that mean? How do we go look at these sources? How do we ask the questions in the right way to get where we want to get?”

Panelists offered another tip for teachers: tap into students’ existing knowledge base.

“I think Gen Z is better equipped than other generations in navigating the complexity of disinformation online,” said Lee, who is founder and executive director of GENup, California’s largest youth-led education policy organization. “But I think by and large, we still really need to hammer in the importance of digital literacy very early on in our public education systems to make sure that we're really addressing this crisis.”

Panelists also suggested that parents and other caretakers have a role.

“Model good behavior,” Zacharia said. “Ask [your children] how they know things …Or ask them to show you the TikTok [they're watching]. ‘Oh, what is that?’ ‘Oh, who is that person?’”

Using AI as a learning tool, not a tool in place of learning

One of the biggest concerns with using AI in schools has been the temptation for students to use AI chatbots to generate answers for them, or to write essays that don’t reflect their actual understanding or skill.

During the Q&A, Ziegler shared a colleague’s story about a student who had been excelling in class assignments until they were prompted to write an essay as part of an exam that did not allow them to use the internet. The student “bombed” the assignment and admitted to previously using AI generated materials.

“She told the student, well here we are — you can’t write because you haven’t had to,” Ziegler said. “There’s content that’s learned in high school, but there are also skills. And our job as educators is really to equip students with the skills to be successful outside of the classroom.”

Educators can also encourage the thoughtful use of AI without neglecting the act of learning, Wineburg said. "I do not want to convey the sense that we should ban large language models."

Wineburg emphasized that these new technologies have the potential to sharpen our critical reasoning — but only with the right guidance. “The internet allows us, if we know how to use it, to become much smarter than we actually are, but we have to learn how to use this incredible tool that's at our disposal.”

Attendees network and congregate at a reception before the lecture begins. (Photo: Ryan Zhang)

The night opened with a live recording of School's In, a podcast hosted by GSE Senior Lecturer Denise Pope (left) and GSE Dean Dan Schwartz (right). (Photo: Ryan Zhang)

Nearly 300 educators, community members and educational stakeholders were at the 87th Cubberley Lecture. (Photo: Ryan Zhang)

Following the School's In recording, a panel that included Valerie Ziegler (left), Janine Zacharia (center), and Sam Wineburg (right). (Photo: Ryan Zhang)

Following the live School's In recording, a panel moderated by Denise Pope (far left) featured Alvin Hong Lee (center left), Valerie Ziegler (center right) and Sam Wineburg (far right) on the topic of AI and digital discernment in education. (Photo: Ryan Zhang)

Attendees at the 87th annual Cubberley Lecture included students, teachers and community members. (Photo: Ryan Zhang)

A community member asks the panelists a question during the Q&A portion of the event. (Photo: Ryan Zhang)

A high school educator asks panelists a question about how to handle AI in schools during the Q&A portion of the event. (Photo: Ryan Zhang)

The 87th Cubberley lecture centered on helping young people navigate the digital age of AI. (Photo: Ryan Zhang)

The entire crew of hosts at the 87th Cubberley Lecture included (from left to right) Alvin Lee Hong, Janine Zacharia, Denise Pope, Valerie Ziegler, Sam Wineburg and Dan Schwartz. (Photo: Ryan Zhang)

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Faculty mentioned in this article: Dan Schwartz , Denise Pope , Sam Wineburg

Designing with learners in mind: GSE students create tools for the future of education

Olivia Peterkin — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 01:08:03 +0000

Designing with learners in mind: GSE students create tools for the future of education

Olivia Peterkin Wed, 08/07/2024 - 18:08

LDT student Brent Johnson shows guests how to interact with his project Quizeo.ai. (Photo: Joleen Richards)

Events | Innovation | Technology

The 2024 LDT cohort produced projects with solutions to issues in classrooms, workforce development, and the hackathon space, among others.

August 12, 2024

By Olivia Peterkin

About one in five adults are neurodivergent, meaning their brain works, processes, and learns information differently. Additionally, about 40% of those people are more likely to be unemployed or underemployed than their neurotypical peers.

That’s why Christine Irish, a student in the Learning Design and Technology (LDT) master’s program at �� Graduate School of Education (GSE), wanted to develop TryTo.Ai, a platform that uses artificial intelligence to empower neurodiverse job seekers through interview practice and online learning modules. The platform, which she created along with fellow GSE student Mary Allison Steel from the International Education Policy Analysis program, was Irish’s master’s project for the LDT program.

“Even when you control for job qualifications, the interview process is a big barrier to hiring for neurodiverse people, since they tend to struggle with things like maintaining eye contact and making small talk,” said Irish, who has ADHD and runs the platform with a neurodiverse leadership team.

“One of the things I love about designing a project in the accessibility and disability support space,” she added, “is that when you build tools that are more accessible for people with disabilities, you’re building tools that are better for everyone.”

Irish was one of 17 students to present her project at the annual LDT Expo, which was held at the Center for Education Research at �� (CERAS) on Friday, Aug. 2. The event gives students the chance to share their capstone projects with the broader community.

“A lot of people have passion, which is great, but it takes a lot to turn that passion into real actual products,” said Karin Forssell, LDT program director and a senior lecturer at the GSE.

“This event just brings home to me every year just how amazing it is when you set people up who are passionate, interested, smart, and dedicated, and they get to pursue their dreams.”

An emphasis on human-centered design

An integral part of the project for LDT students is ensuring that the solution they’re creating is human-centered and useful. Students survey and interview members of their target audience and adjust based on feedback.

For Ana Marini and Anchal Sayal, this process led them to change the focus of their project completely.

“When we started interviewing U.S. parents for our project, which was originally going to be about building children’s English literacy skills in the home, we came across a very different problem,” said Sayal, who is originally from Gurgaon, India. “We met a parent who told us that while he had no problems with English, he was running into problems teaching his child his native language.”

“We met another parent, Ellie, during a forum and she told us about how she and her husband wanted to teach Spanish to their child, sharing a lot of challenges with us that inspired us to design a tool that could fit into their routines and interests,” said Marini, who is from São Paulo, Brazil.

Marini and Sayal used the feedback to pivot and create Hi! Langee, a website and app that promotes discussion in a native language by providing parents with conversation starters based on their child's interests and routines.

The app evolved as the pair sought out feedback at different forums and events from parents wanting to raise bilingual children.

“We were convinced that this was a problem worth solving, and we wanted to figure out how we could create a tool that could help parents continue to maintain their native language at home through simple strategies,” Sayal said.

Making technology more accessible

Another key part of using technology to design for better learning outcomes is finding ways to make best practices more accessible.

For his project, Brent Johnson combined his international classroom experience with a love for innovation to create Quizeo.ai, an assessment tool that uses games and computer vision technology to make learning fun and accessible.

“While gamified learning experiences have been shown to improve learning gains … they’re not accessible, because everyone in the classroom has to have a device,” said Johnson, who is originally from Minnesota.

When playing quiz games on Quizeo.ai, students use hand gestures to indicate their answers to questions, rather than using a smartphone or tablet to respond.

“The U.S. is one of the only countries in the world with a 1:1 student to device ratio, so most other countries can’t integrate existing platforms within their classrooms,” he said. “But if you have computer vision, all you need is a laptop and everyone’s fingers, or whatever they’re using to signal their response to questions.”

To further differentiate Quizeo.ai from its competitors, the platform allows users to compete against other classrooms, and teachers are able to create quizzes by entering information in an AI tool.

“I really enjoyed building Quizeo.ai and integrating all of these technologies into it,” Johnson said. “I would love to get it into classrooms and see what the response is.”

A community linked by a love of learning

At the center of the LDT cohort, in addition to a strong desire to better education, is a culture of support.

“I think one of the best things about LDT is that it’s a built-in group of folks who love giving each other feedback and supporting each other’s work and testing each other's products,” said Irish, who says improvements in TryTo.ai were influenced by her peers.

“The cohort is the best part of LDT,” Johnson said. “Everyone is super supportive of each other, we’re a really close group, and we all know each other’s projects inside and out. We’ve done so many usability tests with one another, had mock interviews, and helped one another with connections.”

Together the 2024 LDT cohort produced 13 projects that provide solutions to issues in classrooms, workforce development, family caregiving, and the hackathon space, among others.

“One thing I’ve learned here at �� is that although we have this massive structure and all these resources, I think that in the end it’s all about people,” said Marini, who is a Lemann Center fellow and intern at the �� Accelerator for Learning.

To view all 2024 LDT master’s projects, visit the project page.

The 2024 LDT cohort gathers for a group photo before Expo. (Photo: Joleen Richards)

Christine Irish explains TryTo.ai to guests at Expo. (Photo: Joleen Richards)

Ana Marini (center right) and Anchal Dayal (center left) present their project at Expo. (Photo: Joleen Richards)

Guests interact with a project at Expo. (Photo: Joleen Richards)

Guests mill about checking out projects at LDT Expo. (Photo: Joleen Richards)

Two guests high five at Expo after successfully using a project. (Photo: Joleen Richards)

Community members and guests interact with student projects at Expo. (Photo: Joleen Richards)

LDT director Karin Forssell shares closing words at Expo. (Photo: Joleen Richards)

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Faculty mentioned in this article: Karin Forssell

��-led DREME network celebrates a decade of progress in early math

Carrie Spector — Sun, 19 May 2024 20:55:42 +0000

��-led DREME network celebrates a decade of progress in early math

Carrie Spector Sun, 05/19/2024 - 13:55

Deborah Stipek (right), director of DREME, leads a panel on building early math into state policies at a conference celebrating progress in the field of early math education. (Photo: Marc Franklin)

Early Childhood | Events | Teaching

A national network led by GSE Professor Emeritus Deborah Stipek has advanced the field of early childhood math with innovative tools and research.

May 23, 2024

By Carrie Spector

Ten years ago, Deborah Stipek set out to assemble a team of scholars who shared her interest in research into how young children, especially preschoolers, develop mathematical skills. As it turned out, there weren’t many.

“So we had to create some,” said Stipek, a professor emeritus and former dean of �� Graduate School of Education (GSE), who was working with the Heising-Simons Foundation to build a national network of researchers focused on early math learning.

“We turned people who focused on literacy into ‘math people,’ ” she said. “[And] we convinced people who studied teaching and learning in elementary school that they needed to stretch down to littler kids.”

Their efforts worked — and soon the Development and Research in Early Mathematics Education (DREME) Network was born, with members and affiliates from 12 universities around the country. Over the past decade, led by Stipek, the network’s scholars have advanced the field with basic and applied research on early math development and innovative tools to promote math skills in young children.

“Early math is now on the map,” said Liz Simons, chair of the board of the Heising-Simons Foundation, which has supported DREME since its launch in 2014. “We’ve seen a huge push to develop curricula that is rigorous but developmentally appropriate and culturally responsive…. We’ve seen math show up in classrooms and playgrounds and books, in cultural settings, in communities. It’s just really exploded.”

On May 3, DREME celebrated the progress in the field at a conference hosted in collaboration with the �� Center on Early Childhood (SCEC), one of six initiatives of the �� Accelerator for Learning. The event also marked a transition in the life of the DREME network, which is scaling back the volume of research it initiates.

The free conference, held at the Li Ka Shing Learning and Knowledge Center on the �� campus, drew educators, researchers, policymakers, community advocates, and others working in early childhood from around the United States and beyond.

From playful strategies to state policy

The day featured panels on a variety of issues in policy and practice, including helping families engage young children in playful math activities, broadening and deepening the ways in which math is introduced in the classroom, and supporting the professionals who prepare early childhood educators.

One panel focused on ways for school districts to address the disconnect between preschool and the early elementary grades, bridging the gap between what have historically been two separate systems. Creating continuity in learning requires more than just adding a preK space to an elementary school campus, said Cynthia Coburn, PhD ’01, a professor at the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University, who chaired the panel. “It’s also a task of aligning these different systems so they’re not competing against one another – that they’re mutually reinforcing and supporting teachers in teaching kids as they move across the grades.”

The final session of the day, led by Stipek, explored ways to build early math into state policies, given their influence in determining student learning standards, teacher credential requirements, how resources are allocated to districts, and other issues that affect how children learn. Panelists discussed the development of California’s new pK-3 teaching credential, the state’s recent rollout of universal transitional kindergarten, and ways to ensure accountability and effectiveness once state policies are implemented.

Ted Lempert, a former California State Assemblymember and current president of Children Now, emphasized the importance of advocacy from stakeholders at all levels. “[When you] leave this conference, you all can make a huge difference,” he told attendees. “It’s not just who you elect…. That one email you send to your legislator saying ‘Prioritize early math’ can make a lot more difference than you think.”

Finding energy and motivation

The conference also featured exhibits on research and tools supported by DREME, such as the DREME Math Observer, a mobile app to help coach teachers in early math; play-based math activities to support math and executive function skills; and storybook guides to help parents and caregivers talk about math with their children while reading together.

Attendees spoke of the value of DREME’s research and tools in their own work, many having traveled some distance to attend the one-day event.

Yusuf Koç, an associate professor of mathematics education at Kocaeli University in Turkey, said he regularly looks to DREME for resources and welcomed the opportunity to gather with fellow scholars and practitioners — even thousands of miles from home. “I design and implement [professional development] programs for practicing and preservice teachers, and early math is my passion,” he said. “I met new people, and found energy and motivation here,” he said.

Phyllis Nakama-Kawamoto and Stacie Kaichi-Imamura, colleagues from the Office of Curriculum and Instructional Design at the Hawaii Department of Education, have also long sought out DREME’s resources online and were eager to learn about new research at the conference.

Kaichi-Imamura, who also serves on the board of directors for the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM), was particularly drawn to the event as the NCTM develops a position statement on early childhood. “Everything that’s been shared here solidifies our thinking about how children should be engaging in mathematics,” she said.

At the close of the event, Stipek reiterated the need to work at all of the levels the conference addressed, from families and classrooms to school districts and state government. “We can’t just work at one, because one level can undermine — or support — whatever we’re doing at another level,” she said.

While she pointed to great progress in building attention and access to early math over the past decade, improving the quality of these math experiences remains a steep challenge, she said. “We had a lot of conversations today about how we might get there — working with teachers, working with parents, developing state policies, district systems and reforms,” she said. “We have some work to do to put what we learned today into action.”

Recordings of each session from the conference are available on the DREME website.

When Deborah Stipek set out 10 years ago to build a network of scholars focused on early math education, she found there weren't many. “So we had to create some,” she told attendees at a conference celebrating progress in the field.

Liz Simons (center), chair of the board of the Heising-Simons Foundation, and Philip Fisher, GSE professor and director of the �� Center on Early Childhood, look on as panelists discuss challenges in early childhood math education. (Photo: Marc Franklin)

Kendra Davey of Pima County Public Library in Tucson, Ariz., discusses strategies for bringing early math concepts into library storytime. (Photo: Marc Franklin)

From left: University of Denver professor Douglas Clements; Linda Platas of San Francisco State University; and Susan Levine, professor at the University of Chicago, discuss ways to deepen and broaden math teaching in the classroom. (Photo: Marc Franklin)

Dale Farran, professor emerita at Vanderbilt University, discussed the DREME Math Observer, an app to support math instruction in the early grades. Also pictured: Diana Zaragoza (left), director of the UC Davis Mathematics Project, and Angela Turrou, senior researcher at the UCLA Department of Education. (Photo: Marc Franklin)

From left: Steve Kellner of California Education Partners; Abigail Stein, postdoctoral researcher at Carnegie Mellon University; Kristin Whyte, a visiting assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; and Cynthia Coburn, a professor at Northwestern University. (Photo: Marc Franklin)

From left: Ted Lempert, president of Children Now; Stephen Propheter of the California Department of Education; and Mary Sandy, executive director of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing. (Photo: Marc Franklin)

Bethany Elston, a researcher at Northwestern University, shares her team's exhibit on how districts can move toward greater preK-3 alignment and continuity. (Photo: Marc Franklin)

Allison Monday of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research shares work on "math moments," ways to incorporate math in any setting throughout the day. (Photo: Marc Franklin)

DREME Network members and affiliates who appeared on panels or hosted exhibits gathered after the event on the �� campus. (Photo: Marc Franklin)

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Faculty mentioned in this article: Deborah Stipek , Philip Fisher

�� event explores the unfinished legacy of Brown v. Board of Education

Olivia Peterkin — Thu, 16 May 2024 19:00:14 +0000

�� event explores the unfinished legacy of Brown v. Board of Education

Olivia Peterkin Thu, 05/16/2024 - 12:00

�� Law School professor Rick Banks (far right) moderates a panel on legal strategies to promote school integration and educational equity with panelists Kimberly Jenkins Robinson, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law (middle right); Robert Kim, executive director of the Education Law Center (middle left); and Myron Orfield, professor of civil rights and liberties law at the University of Minnesota. (Photo: Christine Baker)

Events | Poverty and Inequality | Race and Equity

On the 70th anniversary of the landmark court decision, the conference delved into ways to support integration in U.S. public schools.

May 16, 2024

By Olivia Peterkin

It’s been 70 years since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that “in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place.” But school segregation has increased steadily over the past three decades.

A May 6 conference at �� explored the legacy of the historic court ruling, bringing together scholars, educators, policymakers, and legal experts to chart a path forward.

“We held this conference to take stock of where we are now, 70 years after the historic Brown v. Board decision, in terms of school segregation and equality of educational opportunity in the United States,” said Sean Reardon, the Professor of Poverty and Inequality at �� Graduate School of Education (GSE) and faculty director of the Educational Opportunity Project at �� University.

“We want to honor the progress that we've made, but also assess and interrogate the challenges that the promise of Brown still faces and the work we still have to do.” said Ann Owens, a professor of sociology and public policy at the University of Southern California, in her opening remarks.

The event, organized and led by Reardon and Owens, was co-sponsored by the GSE, the Educational Opportunity Project, the �� Institute for Advancing Just Societies, �� Graduate School of Business, �� Law School, and the �� Center for Racial Justice.

What schools look like 70 years after Brown

The conference featured three panels on the effectiveness of school desegregation and what courts, school districts, and states can do to support it, bookended by keynotes looking at the current state of segregation in U.S. public schools and the road ahead.

In the opening session, Reardon and Owens presented new research findings on racial and economic segregation among schools, which has grown steadily in large school districts over the past 30 years. Researchers on the joint �� and USC project found that segregation between white and Black students has increased by 64 percent since 1988 in the 100 largest districts, and segregation by economic status increased 52 percent between 1991 and 2019.

“While we would say that we're not back to pre-Brown levels, the rise of school segregation in large districts that serve students of color is still troubling,” Owens said.

“The best current research on the consequences of segregation demonstrates unequivocally that segregation has significant negative long-term consequences for black and Hispanic students,” said Reardon, who is also a senior fellow at the �� Institute for Economic Policy Research. “And our new research shows that segregation has been increasing in the last 30 years in large school districts as a direct result of educational policies that have abandoned the goal of integrated schooling.”

Owens and Reardon’s research found that the dissolution of court orders focused on integration and the prevalence of policies favoring school choice over integration have played the largest roles in increasing racial and economic segregation in U.S. schools in recent decades.

“Those two things together entirely explain all of the growth in school segregation since 2000,” he said. “If we don’t do more to create racially and economically integrated schools, we will be perpetuating a system of unequal educational opportunity.”

During the conference, Reardon and Owens also announced the launch of the Segregation Explorer, an interactive website from the Educational Opportunity Project at �� University that provides searchable data on racial and economic school segregation in U.S. states, counties, metropolitan areas, and school districts from 1991 to 2022.

Why integration is important

During each of the panels, researchers and faculty from �� and other universities discussed the importance of integrated schools and strategies to increase integration using different systemic and organizational levers.

“Integration is not about just the assignment of children to schools, but is fundamentally about school resources – it’s about funding teacher quality, access to multicultural curriculum, and access to college preparatory curriculum,” said Rucker Johnson, professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley, in a panel moderated by GSE assistant professor Michael Hines that discussed evidence on the effects of historical and contemporary school integration efforts. “These are the pieces that get undermined with segregated schools.”

Johnson shared data on the effects of desegregation efforts showing improved academic and life outcomes for students who had early and continued exposure to well-resourced schools, including increased wages and a significant reduction in the annual incidence of poverty in adulthood.

“Moving from desegregation to integration means moving from access to inclusion,” he said. “It means moving from exposure to understanding, and those things don't happen overnight.”

Reasons for hope

In the closing keynote Prudence Carter, a professor of sociology at Brown University and former Jacks Family Professor of Education at the GSE, and Catherine E. Lhamon, assistant secretary for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Education, discussed the need for perseverance, collaboration, and hope to reverse patterns of segregation in U.S. public schools.

“As we know, we as a nation have infrequently and inconsistently achieved the Brown promise to make education available to all on equal terms, beginning immediately following the Supreme Court's decision and persistently thereafter,” Lhamon said.

“We have lived a long history of unequal schooling, even since Brown, that persists now, punctuated periodically with beacons of hope and confirmation that inequality is not in fact inevitable,” she said.

Lhamon shared a commitment on the federal level to champion nondiscriminatory education, describing investigations and enforcement actions that her office has carried out over the years since it was established to uphold civil rights legislation.

“Thomas Jefferson is famous for having said that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance,” she said. “And we know – and our history has confirmed again and again – that the struggle to offer equal schooling on a nondiscriminatory basis requires just that vigilance.”

USC professor Ann Owens (left) and GSE professor Sean Reardon (right) co-led the event. (Photo: Christine Baker)

University of California at Berkeley professor Rucker Johnson (left), Texas A&M University professor Kalena Cortes (middle), and Tufts University professor Elizabeth Setren discuss the effects of school integration efforts. (Photo: Christine Baker)

Attendees look on during the conference commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling. (Photo: Christine Baker)

A �� law student poses a question to panelists during the conference's Q&A portion. (Photo: Christine Baker)

Columbia University assistant professor Marissa Thompson presents on how parental choices drive policies that affect segregation patterns. (Photo: Christine Baker)

University of Virginia law professor Kimberly Jenkins Robinson presents on legal strategies to promote school integration. (Photo: Christine Baker)

Marissa Thompson (left); Irene Lo, an assistant professor of management science and engineering at �� (center); and Tomás Monarrez, a senior research fellow at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, discuss school and state policy strategies for integrating schools. (Photo: Christine Baker)

Catherine Lhamon, assistant secretary for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Education (left), talks about hope and the path forward with Brown University professor Prudence Carter (right). (Photo: Christine Baker)

Attendees converse with Prudence Carter, a former professor at �� GSE. (Photo: Christine Baker)

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Faculty mentioned in this article: sean reardon , Ralph Banks

Author Bonnie Garmus shares her recipe for more gender equity in the sciences, at �� GSE event

Brooke Donald Gorlick — Mon, 06 May 2024 01:31:08 +0000

Author Bonnie Garmus shares her recipe for more gender equity in the sciences, at �� GSE event

Brooke Donald … Sun, 05/05/2024 - 18:31

Author Bonnie Garmus was the featured speaker at the 2024 �� Graduate School of Education Cubberley Lecture. (Photo: Ryan Zhang)

Events | Parenting | Science and Math Education

Novelist says passion, education, teamwork, and even anger are necessary to create more inclusive spaces.

May 4, 2024

By Olivia Peterkin

Bonnie Garmus, bestselling author of Lessons in Chemistry, says she wrote the first chapter of her novel on the heels of a presentation meeting gone awry because a man in the room claimed credit for her work and no one said anything in her defense.

As she stewed, Garmus — who was a copywriter in tech at the time — thought about the many other women who felt invisible or ignored. For her, writing the book was a way to use her talents to give voice to women experiencing inequity in male-dominated occupations and spur change by connecting people to a shared message.

“When I was writing this book, I was writing my own role model,” Garmus said to a crowd of about 500 on May 2, at the 86th annual Cubberley Lecture, a series hosted by �� Graduate School of Education (GSE) that tackles important topics in education. “We really have to change this idea that women are less.”

“I think over and over again, it starts with education,” Garmus said. ”My book, I'm very pleased to say, has been adopted into a lot of schools – high schools and colleges – and it's been adopted in London into a whole bunch of boys' schools.” She says she regularly hears from children and others about its impact.

The fireside chat was moderated by GSE Associate Professor Christine Min Wotipka, AM ’99, PhD ’01, and touched on writing, parenting, and issues pertaining to gender, science and education, among other topics.

“Tonight's program is about exploring ways in which we can change the world to make it more inclusive and respectful for our teaching and learning environments,” GSE Dean Dan Schwartz said at the beginning of the event. Noting that authors are frequent guests at GSE events, he added, “We know books are means of scaling experiences and stories that help create change.”

This year’s lecture was co-sponsored by the �� Storytelling Project, the Clayman Institute for Gender Research, and the Program in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at ��’s School of Humanities and Sciences.

It starts with a spark

The main character in Garmus’s novel, Elizabeth Zott, is a 1960s chemist turned cooking show host who, much like the author, channeled the anger she feels into a positive platform for solutions.

“If I could give one piece of advice to an aspiring writer or agent for change, it would be to use your bad mood,” Garmus said. “If you’re being discriminated against, anger is something that’s necessary to fight a good fight.… I wanted Elizabeth Zott to be credited for being mad and doing something about it.”

Covalent bonds

Garmus went on to share that passion and conflict aren’t only good for introducing characters in a story, it’s what galvanizes people around a shared goal.

Integral to any sort of societal change, whether small or systemic, is cooperation from people on all sides and of all different backgrounds, Garmus suggested. Cooperation is something she believes women can bring into any room, and something that’s needed in order for societal norms around STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Medicine) to move forward.

“It's important that we listen to everybody's voice, because we have a myriad of problems to solve and we need the best minds on all these problems,” Garmus said.

In the book Zott, like Garmus, rows for exercise. The sport, she says, highlights what can be done by a group of very different people moving toward a collective goal.

“Rowers know you may not like a single person in your boat, you might hate everybody's guts in your boat, but the minute you get in and you're in a race, you work together,” she said. “If you're a rower, you want to win, and winning requires cooperation.”

Testing a new hypothesis

Guests in the audience, which included �� students, local residents, parents, and educators, were invited to ask their own questions during a public Q&A. An eighth grader from Marin asked about the inspiration for a character’s name. A postdoc from �� wanted to know Garmus’ ideas for increasing the pipeline of women and girls going into STEM.

In response to a question about how educators and parents can support students in becoming anything they want to be, she said simply getting out of the way will do a lot to remove limits on what they can accomplish.

“I know that there is a huge amount of pressure to make sure your kid gets a job,” said Garmus, who has two daughters. “And I know the job market right now is not fun for kids, but I'm kind of living proof that if you just keep at your passion, it will bear fruit.”

Garmus also shared the story of a young woman in Harlem, who wrote to her after reading Lessons in Chemistry.

“Her mother was a crack addict, she didn't have a father, and she never graduated from high school,” Garmus said. “She wrote to me saying that she always wanted to be a lawyer, and asked what Elizabeth Zott would tell her to do.

“I said, I want you to go down to community college and I want you to enroll,” Garmus said. “Long story short, this young woman went to the community college and she so impressed the faculty that within a year they got her a full ride at a four-year college, studying pre-law.

“This book has given me this huge gift of hearing from people all over the world, every single day, but her story is special because it shows that in the end, the only one who's not letting you achieve your dreams is you.”

Attendees take pictures of their books before the 2024 Cubberley Lecture with author Bonnie Garmus. (Photo: Ryan Zhang)

GSE Dean Dan Schwartz welcomes guests to the 2024 �� Graduate School of Education Cubberley Lecture. (Photo: Ryan Zhang)

Bonnie Garmus (left) sits with Professor Jo Boaler (center) and Associate Professor Christine Min Wotipka (right) at the 2024 Cubberley Lecture at ��. (Photo: Ryan Zhang)

About 500 community members inside and outside of �� attended the conversation between Associate Professor Christine Min Wotipka and author Bonnie Garmus. (Photo: Ryan Zhang)

Associate Professor Christine Min Wotipka and author Bonnie Garmus take questions from the audience at the 2024 Cubberley Lecture at ��. (Photo: Ryan Zhang)

Women clap following the discussion between Associate Professor Christine Min Wotipka and author Bonnie Garmus. The annual �� Graduate School of Education Cubberley Lecture is a public forum for important topics in education. (Photo: Ryan Zhang)

Author Bonnie Garmus signs her book at the 2024 �� Graduate School of Education Cubberley Lecture. (Photo: Ryan Zhang)

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Faculty mentioned in this article: Christine Min Wotipka , Jo Boaler , Dan Schwartz

�� teams up with The Tech Interactive and Bay Area school leaders for inaugural National AI Literacy Day

Olivia Peterkin — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 18:18:49 +0000

�� teams up with The Tech Interactive and Bay Area school leaders for inaugural National AI Literacy Day

Olivia Peterkin Tue, 04/23/2024 - 11:18

GSE Dean Dan Schwartz addresses the audience before a panel during National AI Literacy Day at The Tech Interactive. (Photo: Eloisa Tan / The Tech Interactive)

Events | Innovation | Technology

One of three events held across the country, the first annual day of action promotes AI literacy through education.

April 24, 2024

By Olivia Peterkin

Some educational technologies are those that schools choose to adopt and implement, like interactive whiteboards and tablets in classrooms. Others come in on their own, like ChatGPT and other generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots — leaving school leaders scrambling to establish policies and best practices that bolster the learning process.

On April 19, more than 100 educational stakeholders gathered at The Tech Interactive in San Jose for the inaugural National AI Literacy Day, to collaborate and strategize around a learning tool that’s taken schools by storm. One of three in-person events held that day (the other two took place in New York City and Washington, D.C.), the summit raises awareness and creates solutions around literacy in AI.

“A literate student needs a meta understanding of AI — its personal and social policies, as well as its capabilities, implications, biases, and use,” said Dan Schwartz, dean of �� Graduate School of Education and faculty director of the �� Accelerator for Learning (an academic partner for the event), who opened a panel discussion on the use of technology in classrooms. “We need to help students learn this, and we need to do better than we did with social media.”

Around 1,100 students on field trips visited The Tech during the event. (Photo: Eloisa Tan, The Tech Interactive)

Schwartz went on to say that getting ahead of AI in the education space means figuring out how to teach and learn using the tool to co-create strong bodies of knowledge, integrating it into curriculums, and thinking beyond just applying AI to existing educational methods.

“The other side of literacy is more about the future, rather than making sure we can maintain old strategies of the past,” he said.

The event featured remarks from U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education Cindy Marten and San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, as well as panel discussions that covered topics including community, access and ethics in relation to AI. Additionally, around 1,100 K-12 students were at the Tech Interactive on field trips to commemorate National AI Literacy Day.

Researchers from CRAFT (Classroom-Ready Resources About AI for Teaching) a �� project developing free AI Literacy resources for high school teachers, led 32 school leaders in a lunch-and-learn session, discussing privacy, equity, resource demand and student success in thinking about the creation and implementation of AI-related school policies.

“One of our goals is to support school leaders and superintendents in having conversations with one another about the issues or challenges they may be facing with AI in their districts,” said Christine Bywater, a member of the curricular resource design team for CRAFT and associate director of ��’s Center to Support Excellence in Teaching.

“We’re having them look through a framework to start to think about the questions they should be asking before they even start to venture into thinking about artificial intelligence, so that we can all make really strong decisions.”

Leaders in education from throughout the Bay Area shared concerns, came up with questions, and workshopped ways forward using the CRAFT framework.

“I think what we’re learning is that our scholars are discovering things faster than we are sometimes, and we want to get ahead of that,” said Mariah Butron, curriculum coordinator for Navigator Schools. “We do that by making sure we have safety nets for students, and the literacy and resources in place to help the families understand what’s happening with AI in the classroom.”

A key takeaway for many educators was the idea that successfully navigating generative AI in schools will require communication across sectors.

“I’m excited to see the partnerships that are happening across civic leaders, schools, businesses, and museums like the Tech,” said Mark Silver, MA ‘97, head of school at Hillbrook School. “I think it’s that type of collaboration that’s going to be essential in order for schools to effectively find ways to implement AI, and [to use] it in a way that will positively impact the student experience.”

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Faculty mentioned in this article: Dan Schwartz

Speaking in the future tense: �� researchers help ASU+GSV grapple with artificial intelligence

Olivia Peterkin — Wed, 24 Apr 2024 21:06:13 +0000

Speaking in the future tense: �� researchers help ASU+GSV grapple with artificial intelligence

Olivia Peterkin Wed, 04/24/2024 - 14:06

Candace Thille (center), associate professor at the GSE and faculty director of the Adult and Workforce Learning Initiative at the �� Accelerator for Learning, speaks at the ASU+GSV summit. Photo: Joleen Richards

Events | Innovation | Technology

At this year’s annual conference on education innovation and technology, AI took center stage.

April 22, 2024

By Isabel Sacks

For over a decade, the ASU+GSV Summit has brought together thousands of entrepreneurs, teachers, school district administrators, funders, and thought leaders to explore the latest innovations in education.

While there have always been trends and of-the-moment topics at ASU+GSV, never before has a single emerging technology infiltrated the conversation so thoroughly and felt relevant to such a wide range of education topics. This technology, of course, was artificial intelligence.

The summit organizers, recognizing a widespread need to communally grapple with AI and what it might mean for learners, educators, and classrooms, hosted a new two-day, free pre-show gathering focused entirely on AI called the AIR Show. �� learning specialists and faculty led multiple popular sessions for teachers at the event, including a workshop to design your own chatbot and an “ask me almost anything” session about large language models.

Even with two days of pre-show AI content, over a hundred sessions at the general summit were tagged as related to AI or machine learning. These ranged from the tactical (“The Future of Writing: Calibrating the Right Level of AI Intervention in The Writing Process”) to the existential (“Is AI Good for Education?”) and from the optimistic (“Will Generative AI be the World’s Greatest Learning Acceleration?”) to the realist (“Building with AI: Separating Real Innovation from Hype”).

Emma Brunskill (center left), associate professor of computer science and �� Accelerator for Learning faculty affiliate, and Bethanie Maples (center right), Graduate School of Education doctoral student, spoke on a panel about AI in education. Photo: Joleen Richards

Even the panels not ostensibly about AI ended up being about AI too, because AI could theoretically touch any area of learning – a transversal line across age groups and education settings. Panelists and attendees alike grappled with big questions: How will AI change my corner of the education sector? How do we make sure it’s safe? Is the technology even ready for this use? How do we make sure all the right stakeholders get a voice? Will AI diminish or exacerbate inequities in education?

�� scholars have been working on AI since long before ChatGPT was released in November 2022, and eight of the summit’s women leading the AI revolution in education were from ��, a testament to this longtime expertise. When it came to AI at this year’s summit, �� panelists led the charge of thinking through how it can be applied in education in evidence-based, thoughtful, meaningful ways.

Some key takeaways from �� speakers on a variety of topics, and their analysis of the impact of AI:

The rise of AI is a chance to envision the learners of the future. Dan Schwartz, dean of �� Graduate School of Education (GSE) and faculty director of the �� Accelerator for Learning, spoke on StageX, the main stage of the summit, about how the rise of AI is a chance for us to collectively rethink how we want to teach and what we want students to learn. “I am concerned that AI may automate old ways of teaching suited to a previous era,” he said. While traditional schooling often separates teaching students to be efficient (accurate and fast) and innovative (creative and novel), AI has the potential to bring these two key aspects of learning together. If we build the tools intentionally, learners with AI at their fingertips will be able to develop “adaptive expertise” and thrive in a dynamic future. “Adaptive experts are able to balance a reliance on prior knowledge with the need and courage to develop and learn new ideas,” said Schwartz.

GSE Dean Dan Schwartz spoke on StageX, the main stage of the summit, at ASU+GSV about how the rise of AI is a chance for us to collectively rethink how we want to teach and what we want students to learn. (Photo: Joleen Richards)

New generative AI tools are forcing us to recalibrate our classroom norms. When ChatGPT was released, “there was a moral panic about cheating,” said Victor Lee, associate professor and faculty lead for AI + Education at the Accelerator. However, his research with faculty affiliate Denise Pope indicated that the reasons students cheat have little to do with the tools available to them, and ChatGPT has not significantly changed rates of cheating in high schools. “What we see historically is that what we think of as responsible or ethical is in large part a function of what tools we have available,” said Lee, citing tools like calculators, audio recorders, spelling and grammar checkers, and Wikipedia that were once considered inappropriate in the classroom but are now widely used. “With AI, we’re in the midst of recalibrating norms about what we think of as acceptable,” he said. He urged teachers and districts to consider: “What are the core competencies to enable smart use of a given tool? What do we want people to be able to do when the tool is not available? We want people to be able to use good judgment about when to use or not to use the tool.”
Technology can help us understand and reduce illiteracy at scale. Sparked by pandemic-era needs, the Rapid Online Assessment of Reading (ROAR) is an online, automated, gamified tool to assess student reading ability. Associate Professor Jason Yeatman, faculty affiliate of the Accelerator, shared how his lab developed and finessed the ROAR by trying out different tweaks to the tool and testing it with both real students and AI simulations. “Our tool is grounded in cognitive neuroscience and rigorously validated in the lab and in schools,” he said. “We’ve now gotten it to a point of better reliability than the gold standards against which we developed it. This enables us to do inclusive research because we can test kids’ reading at scale, not just children in the area around ��.”

Jason Yeatman, faculty affiliate of the Accelerator shared the work of Rapid Online Assessment of Reading (ROAR) at ASU+GSV. (Photo: Joleen Richards)

Tutoring is an effective tool, but we can’t do away with human tutors. Susanna Loeb, faculty director of the SCALE initiative and founding director of ��’s National Student Support Accelerator, shared evidence about what makes tutoring effective and how AI might play a supporting role. She cautioned against the hype around AI tutors. “The power of tutoring is that it can inspire, motivate, and engage students to where they are more likely to want to be in school and see themselves as students,” she said. While there is evidence that virtual tutoring by a human tutor is effective, AI tutors only show effectiveness for the most motivated and engaged students. Instead, she said that AI could be used to transform how schools work and move toward more individualized attention to each student, while still prioritizing the important role of adults.
When used appropriately, AI can support workforce development and economic mobility. Candace Thille, faculty director of the Adult and Workforce Learning initiative at the Accelerator, sees potential for AI to support personalized learning journeys for workers trying to develop new skills. With mass amounts of data and models to process it available, “we’re not building learning paths anymore, we’re building dynamic recommendations, always keeping the learner’s agency at the center,” she said. At the same time, she advocated for transparency in data collection from workers and the models built using this data. In particular, Thille emphasized that the data should be used only to support worker learning and not shared with employers.
The future of edtech is bright. GSE students and alumni alike enjoyed the summit to learn, network, and develop their ideas. Notable speakers included doctoral student Bethanie Maples, founder and CEO of Atypical AI, and Alex Stolyarik, MS ‘23, co-founder of EcoSystemOne.

Additional �� sessions included:

Assessing Mind and Machine: Measuring What Matters in AI Learning (Emma Brunskill)
Will Generative AI be the World’s Greatest Learning Acceleration? (Isabelle Hau)
New Dawn for Neurodiversity: EdTech's Transformative Role (Bruce McCandliss)
The Challenges of University Leadership in 2024 (Mitchell Stevens)

Isabelle Hau, executive director of the �� Accelerator for Learning, welcomes guests to a cocktail hour co-hosted with Reach Capital. (Photo: Joleen Richards)

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Faculty mentioned in this article: Dan Schwartz , Denise Pope , Victor R. Lee , Jason Yeatman , Emma Brunskill , Bruce McCandliss , Mitchell L. Stevens , Candace Thille , Susanna Loeb

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������������ Graduate School of Education kicks off new academic year in remodeled space

Digital literacy in the AI era (Part 1)

������������ education students share research, build community at AERA conference

Working behind the scenes to help graduate students navigate the conference

Connecting with familiar faces in overwhelming spaces

Seizing opportunities to share research

Building a community of scholars

Schools have a role in helping students navigate AI and fake news, ������������ panelists say

The need for digital discernment

Bridging the gap between students’ digital and educational lives

Using AI as a learning tool, not a tool in place of learning

Designing with learners in mind: GSE students create tools for the future of education

An emphasis on human-centered design

Making technology more accessible

A community linked by a love of learning

������������-led DREME network celebrates a decade of progress in early math

From playful strategies to state policy

Finding energy and motivation

������������ event explores the unfinished legacy of Brown v. Board of Education

Author Bonnie Garmus shares her recipe for more gender equity in the sciences, at ������������ GSE event

������������ teams up with The Tech Interactive and Bay Area school leaders for inaugural National AI Literacy Day

Speaking in the future tense: ������������ researchers help ASU+GSV grapple with artificial intelligence

�� Graduate School of Education kicks off new academic year in remodeled space

�� education students share research, build community at AERA conference

Schools have a role in helping students navigate AI and fake news, �� panelists say

��-led DREME network celebrates a decade of progress in early math

�� event explores the unfinished legacy of Brown v. Board of Education

Author Bonnie Garmus shares her recipe for more gender equity in the sciences, at �� GSE event

�� teams up with The Tech Interactive and Bay Area school leaders for inaugural National AI Literacy Day

Speaking in the future tense: �� researchers help ASU+GSV grapple with artificial intelligence