Podcast Episode
Episode Description
In this episode, I chat with Matt Miller about his new book, AI Literacy in Any Class, and what it means to prepare students for a future shaped by artificial intelligence.
We explore practical ways teachers can integrate AI literacy into everyday lessons without losing focus on meaningful learning, strong instruction, or core content. Matt shares approachable strategies educators can use across grade levels and subject areas to help students think critically about AI, ask thoughtful questions, evaluate information, and engage responsibly with emerging technologies.
We also dig into some of the more challenging conversations happening in education right now, including concerns about screen time, technology use in classrooms, and the growing pushback against devices in schools. Instead of framing technology as simply good or bad, we discuss the importance of intentional instructional design and how the way technology is used ultimately shapes the learning experience.
Episode Resources
- Check out Matt’s New Book! AI Literacy in Any Class
- Connect with Matt Miller
- Skills Before Tools: K-12 AI Implementation Guide
Episode Transcript
This transcript was generated using AI transcription tools to support accessibility and provide a searchable, readable version of the podcast. While we’ve reviewed and lightly edited the content for clarity, there may still be occasional errors or omissions.
Catlin Tucker
Welcome to The Balance. I’m Doctor Catlin Tucker, and today my guest is Matt Miller. I have had Matt on the podcast before and he is an experienced educator, speaker, author. He’s just released a new book titled AI Literacy in Any Class. So I wanted to have him on the podcast and treat it kind of as a bit of a conversation, since there’s a lot happening in education right now around AI and technology and screen time. So really excited to have this conversation. Well, thank you for joining me again on the podcast. So we’ve gotten the chance to speak on the balance before, and you’ve written another new book that we’re going to chat about. But Matt and I talked before the podcast and decided we were going to have this be kind of a back and forth chat. Since this is a space where both spending a bit of time in, so why don’t you kick it off? Tell everybody about your new book. What inspired it?
Matt Miller
Yeah, absolutely. Well, first of all, thanks for having me back on the show. I absolutely love your show. You know, I put it in my upper tier. So, yeah, always very excited to get to chat with you. Always very excited to get to chat with you. So, so anyway, yeah, the, the new book is called AI Literacy in Any Class. And I know I’ve been hearing a lot of talk, you know, everywhere everybody seems to be talking about AI literacy. You can’t throw a stick at an education conference without hitting the door to a room where they’re talking about AI literacy, you know, it’s like, yeah. And it’s not even just in our education circles, like politicians are starting to talk about it. Tech CEOs are talking about it. It’s just kind of all over the place. And I’ve just found the dialog about it to be so high level that it’s not even useful. Here. You have, you know, some like big CEO coming in saying, you know in the education sector we need to and I love how they always call it the education sector. Like nobody in education ever calls it that. But, they’re like, well, in the education sector, we need to start teaching kids about AI and about this and that and the other and everything. And after they’re done talking, I’m just going, how in the world does that fit in the, you know, in today’s school setting, there’s just not an easy clear cut place unless we start to create, you know, AI literacy courses and, you know, all of that stuff, which, you know, cool if someone wants to do that. But most of the schools that I’m talking to are just trying to figure out how to deal with student inappropriate use, and you know, what apps to consider and everything. They’re not even near that. Yeah. So, I started to think, like, how could I help teachers better grasp AI literacy and start to incorporate it in the class? And I found an interesting place where I started to see it. It was in my own class, me teaching high school Spanish. I started seeing, you know, like connections to AI literacy. And so, you know, for instance, early on I started generating, AI images that showed, you know, like it was like a scene that had lots of my vocabulary words in it, so I could ask my students questions about it and get them repetitions and stuff, which was great. But then I put, you know, one on one picture in particular up on the screen. It was a picture of a pig playing basketball against a sheep. And my students kind of chuckled at it because, you know, it was one of those early AI-generated images, and it had all sorts of weird things all over it. And so I just kind of leaned into that moment and I said, point out all of the AI weirdness that you see. And so they did. And what I didn’t expect was that it started the more I did that, because I kept doing that as a fun little, you know, like, brain break. And the more that I did it, the more that it opened up organic, natural conversations about AI because I was an adult who was using it responsibly in my class, it was being used in an educational setting, not for quote-unquote cheating. I was disclosing my use of it, and I was willing to talk frankly about what I liked about it, what I didn’t. And it started open up all these conversations. And that was my moment. And I was like, this needs to be like digital literacy, like digital citizenship, like all of those other things where if it’s done at its best, it’s integrated into what we already teach. So like 100%. Yeah. If we can just empower teachers to have AI conversations with students and not be afraid of it and not feel like they’re, you know, too disconnected or too low level with it or anything. I mean, if we can start having some of those conversations, anybody can do that in any class. And that’s, you know, that’s welcome to my TEDx talk. Like that’s what I’ve been shouting about for, for the last several months now. You know what I mean.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah. No. And that’s you’re speaking to something that I’ve been concerned about is because even digital literacy like, these things often get kind of siloed in the tech class and not integrated. But I kind of think the things in our lives that are integrated seamlessly throughout aspects of our lives, like the same thing needs to happen in classrooms, like if we’re going to be using AI to create lessons and to engage students on platforms and use it to generate text or images or whatever, then we also need to be weaving that conversation about AI, what it is, how we use that, where the short comings are into those classes. But I know that probably a lot of teachers listening who don’t feel as confident, like with AI are not really understanding exactly, you know, what a large language model is or whatever, but like the inner workings of it, like I don’t get it. And so how do we keep if we’re saying integrate this into kind of any class, how do we keep it from feeling like one more thing that teachers now have to learn and navigate and put into lessons or their curriculum?
Matt Miller
Yeah, that’s and that’s such an important question because, you know, we’ve had so many of those one more things, right? I mean, teachers already feel like our, our plates are already full with all of the one more things. And I think some of us even feel the hangover from COVID-19 still, when there were all of these extra responsibilities and somehow some way, here we are several years later, it still feels like that plate is so full in a way that it wasn’t before. But I’ve started to look at it in a little bit of a different way. I’m starting to look at it as an, in a way that if you use AI and generate something related to your content and you can identify that to your students that it was generated with AI, it gives you an opportunity to talk about how you handled its work. And so in that case, it’s not necessarily an AI lesson. It’s a lesson about whatever it is that your students are learning. But we can talk about the AI decisions and the way that I managed its business in the background. So, for example, there’s an activity that I love to do with teachers and professional development, but also with students. It’s this activity called Be the bot and be the bot. Is this just this super simple little activity that you can pull in into just about whatever it is that you’re teaching, and it gives students an opportunity to think critically, but also to talk about how I handle this business. So here’s how it works. Okay, let’s say we’ve been studying something together as a class, you know, for several days. So we’ve got sort of that foundational baseline information about it. And I say, okay, I’m going to ask AI this question related to what we’ve been studying. But before I do, I want you to anticipate what you think it’s going to say. Super simple right. Like not not not anything, you know, wild and crazy and complex or anything, but what it does, it does a couple of things, you know, students start thinking about whatever the question is. And the best questions are that are judgment-based, you know, opinion based, like those kinds of things where it has to make a judgment call about something. And so the students start doing a couple of things. Number one, they have to do retrieval practice. You know, they’re retrieving content from their brains, which strengthens their long term memory. There’s that. But then secondly, they’re organizing all of their ideas and then maybe they’re starting to rank them. And of course, you start to look at the thinking structures that are happening under the surface there. And we are slowly climbing up Webb’s Depth of Knowledge, of complexity of thought. You know, like little by little, we’re starting to do some of that good, solid thinking. But then after they’re done, we run the prompt up on the big screen on the front of class. And then what are they doing? All of a sudden they’re starting to compare the AI list with the list of what they came up with. And so it’s it almost feels like a big reveal. It’s almost like a game, you know, and they’re going, oh, I knew that was going to be number one. Oh, I can’t believe my number one didn’t even make the list. And they want to they want to fight about it a little bit you know. And afterwards we get a chance to kind of debrief, compare contrast. But then also because there’s AI-generated content right there up on the screen, we can start to say, how did AI handle its business? there? What decisions did they have to make in the background? You might notice that of the five things that it suggested, three are an awful lot of like, is there maybe a little bias or a tendency that it has to lean in that direction instead of something else? Was there anything that’s inaccurate? So like, we’ve got all of those opportunities for students to analyze that AI output and learn a little something about AI, but it isn’t an AI lesson. It’s still about the content. And I think those are my favorite things. If we want to reframe this as not another thing, you know, this be the bot example is one of many, you know, but this particular one, it’s still about your content. It’s low prep to know prep, all you have to do is come up with a good question and turn students loose and be willing to have a conversation about it. But you still get to learn a little bit about AI literacy along the way. So, yeah, in practice, I think that’s one of my favorite examples of it. Anyway.
Catlin Tucker
Very fun. So the goal is to help teachers with the book, like kind of develop their own AI literacy, but then also these kind of usable, small activity frameworks, or whatever that they can then integrate into lessons so that as they’re having students engage with the content and each other, there’s also this component of AI. Well, I kind of love that. Hopefully it feels more doable, although I know anything, quite frankly, that slows down a lesson. Sometimes I get pushback about because it’s like, I don’t have time for that. And I’m just like, we don’t have time for conversations like, it’s right. Teachers need more permission to have these conversations. I feel like.
Matt Miller
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Now, can I turn around? Since we were going to do this, can I come around, ask you a question? Because so all of that is sort of focused on student thinking, right? And keeping student thinking going. And I think there’s a big misconception out there right now about how AI is going to, you know, keep students from thinking it’s going to make students stupid. And of course, there are all of these, you know, all of these ways that it can be used incorrectly, that don’t push student thinking forward. But I think there are ways that it certainly can be used. And this also goes for teachers too. You know, if you just have AI generate lessons for you all the time, you’re not sharp. And you also don’t see your students work and know where they are and everything. So when it comes to that sort of misconception that AI is going to make us all dumber and, you know, worse critical thinkers, have there been any situations where you’ve seen where, when used appropriately and responsibly, it actually supports stronger thinking?
Catlin Tucker
One hundred percent. I think one of the things that I’ve been really excited by, and this is just a very small, number of teachers that I’ve had the privilege of working with, but the ones who are thinking about how to really get students doing a bit of co-creation around activities and projects and assignments with AI, where the teacher has been really clear with the class, like, here’s the desired result for a unit. For example, this is what I really want you to walk away from this unit understanding, knowing and being able to do. I want your help co-creating a performance task that would demonstrate your understanding, your knowledge, your abilities. At the end of this unit. But you’re going to work with AI using this clear desired result. Here are our target, our priority standards for this unit to design something. And then students work back and forth with AI. I really love it. Often will give students like an option. Do you want to do this on your own or with a partner? Because I love the conversations that happen between kids when they’re working with AI and they’re like, well, we don’t like this. Why don’t you like that? Oh, we don’t like it because of this. Or hey, we want an option that’s has a more artistic kind of focus or whatever. And then they literally submit a proposal to the teacher for this performance task. So the teacher gets to say, this is a great idea or provide some feedback or suggestion, but it’s the students saying, here’s how I’d like to demonstrate my learning. Here’s how I think I can show you what I know in a way that I’m excited about. That removes barriers for me. And that’s kind of like a big performance task example. One of the other, like very small routines that I’ve been encouraging teachers who might be a little bit more hesitant to use AI, but they’re they’re understanding the value, say, in a, in an area like feedback, right? We all value feedback, but most of us don’t have time to give every single student feedback, even in a week if we’re prioritizing it. Right. And so if we’re leveraging AI to position students to get feedback on their work, I’ve been encouraging teachers use kind of a variation of that old exam wrapper where it’s, metacognitive wrapper on the AI experience. So before kids use the AI to get feedback, what is it that you want or need feedback on? What kinds of questions are you going to ask? Right? What things have you been struggling with that you’re hoping AI is going to help you kind of develop and grow beyond in this session, and then they interact with the AI and hopefully it’s like, you know, something maybe like a SchoolAI Space where it’s not going to, you know, give them answers. It’s just going to kind of coach them. And then on the other side of the experience, they go back into a reflective mode like what? What did I learn in this session? What am I going to take and act on? Where am I realizing I need to spend more time? So it’s it’s very it could be like five minutes on either end, but it’s really training their brains to engage in that deeper thinking about, why am I using AI? What do I want to get out of this, and how did the experience go? What did I learn?
Matt Miller
Yeah, that’s yeah, I love those. I feel like both of those highlight something that I’ve found super important in this whole, you know, AI integration moment. And that’s just the very simple concept of human thinking before AI.
Catlin Tucker
Yes, yes.
Matt Miller
Right. In both of your examples, I think, do such a nice job of that. I love the one where, students are co-creating the task, because really, in the past we have wanted to, or at least many of us. Some of us, myself included, have wanted to give students more ownership of that kind of thing, but they don’t know where to go with it. They’re not trained in instruction and curriculum and, you know, instructional design and stuff the way that we are. So it’s it’s hard for them to come up with ideas sometimes. And then if the ideas don’t totally work, it’s hard to give them feedback unless we’re sitting with them one on one. And so now that scales it and it gives them access to AI to vet their ideas and run them by and to be able to get some of that feedback. And then, you know, the whole concept of using AI to give students timely feedback. That’s I mean, that has been one of the big barriers to teachers doing their their best work. We all know, you know, the timely, directed feedback to students is powerful, but it’s also one of the hardest parts of our jobs, you know, to be able to get it back in, in a, in a reasonable amount of time. And, you know, for instance, you were talking about, you know, sitting students with, SchoolAI Spaces, I do a similar thing. And I’ll use Brisk Boost where I’ll put a document off to the side, you know, and then there’s a little chatbot next to it. And I especially love this with, sub plans. You know, I’m still doing professional development, so I’m out of the class. And, whenever I’m out, I realize that I could be like every other teacher all over the place and leave a worksheet packet for them, but they get no timely feedback whatsoever, right? Right. And so if I, if I put them with that, that chatbot, then they’re able to work through some questions. So they either do a reading or they can even write. And then they can get immediate feedback from the chatbot. And would it be exactly the same thing that I would give them? Maybe not, but it’s timely and it’s probably close enough that if you do that plus timely feedback, it’s it’s going to be way better than getting something back three days later. And, yeah, I just I just feel like all of this, all of these examples that we’re talking about. Tell me, what do you think about this? Like, I feel like all of these examples are where if you have a good, clear picture of what you want to do, instructionally, and you look at all of your options and you go, okay, this particular one with this AI chatbot, it has these benefits, but it has these drawbacks. Yeah. If I did this as like, paired, you know, group discussion activity, it has these benefits, but it has these drawbacks. I have all of these options. I’m just going to pick the one that’s going to be best suited for the students. I mean, that’s just basically instructional design. And yet today we’re trying to make this into a discussion about technology. And it is technology, as if technology is either evil or good. Yeah, I know how you feel about that, because I feel the same way. It’s like.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah.
Matt Miller
Me, it all goes back to making smart instructional decisions, knowing all of the options at your disposal and making good instructional decisions. So when people start to say, you know, screens are bad, technology is bad, Chromebooks are taking kids’ brains away. I’m like, no, it’s just sorry, I don’t know if I can say this out loud or not, but I’m going to. It’s just bad teaching is just bad instructional design that caused all this stuff to happen. I mean, I’m not like way off base on this, am I?
Catlin Tucker
No. I just recorded a podcast like, last month and released it about this whole hot topic. So before we because I, we want to transition talk to that about that. But before you know what as you were speaking and talking about instructional design and the choices teachers are making about AI, you know, I would say yes, and add: make those choices visible to students. make those choices visible to students. Like, yeah, feedback is really important. You guys, for all these reasons. And I’ll never forget when I started using my teacher led station in my station rotation, at times, like when kids were working on an essay or performance task, I would use it to give real time feedback. So they’re working at my station to make progress on this essay or whatever, and I would go in and give focused, actionable feedback on one element of their work. And for me, that was like, oh my gosh, this is such a huge win. I’m actually able to give them feedback, but I was limited in my capacity. It was like I could only give feedback on like one element of their writing. Then I was like, okay, I got to get into the next document so I can give another student that feedback. And now we’re in this moment where kids can literally get this kind of almost unlimited feedback as they’re working, which is really powerful. But I think if teachers were to say, this is the value of what we’re doing, and I’ve chosen AI for this reason, and I would love to know whether if we do this in the future, you would suggest we use AI again in this same situation. Are there any like tweaks we might make to the experience to improve it so even just in the conversation about like to your earlier about the image and kind of picking it apart or like how you know, be the bot, it’s like, let’s also like talk about these instructional choices and why we’re making it and what we think the benefits are for kids. But also let’s ask kids for feedback. How did it go? Is there another tool we should explore or another way we might want to do this? And I think that almost those choices we’re making as adults, and we make them visible to kids and invite them into the conversation, I think that can also be really, really powerful, but it’s not something I see all the time.
Matt Miller
Yeah, I don’t I don’t either. I, I would agree, you know, for, for the longest time I would just give assignments and just assume that students knew why we were doing.
Catlin Tucker
It right or to. Yeah.
Matt Miller
Right. Yeah. It’s like this is the way that teachers have always done it. And there are teachers all over the place that are doing it. I’m going to give a similar type of assignment, and we all know why we’re doing this. Right. And the answer is most of the time they don’t. And this year, just this year, I’ve been teaching since 2004. Like just this year, I finally started rolling out a why we’re doing this every so often. You know, I’ll say, okay, we’re getting ready to do this. We’re going to close the Chromebooks and do this on paper, and here’s why. Yeah, okay. This time we’re going to I’m going to ask you to write this. And we’re going to do it in a document. We’re going to do it this certain way. And this is why this is how your brain learns, and this is how that is tied into this. And it’s like if we can help them to see it, especially at a time now where it’s so easy to just outsource everything to AI students, just jump on chat on their phone or at home or something like that, and they just, you know, do it with AI. And I think not every time, but some of the times they do it because they don’t know why in the world they’re doing this in the first place. And if they understand, like for me, we’re going to have a test in a week and if I’m able to do this stuff, I will score well on that test or in my Spanish classes. It’s like I want to be able to get this so that if I’m ever in a position where I have to have a conversation, then I can see the why. This is the kind of stuff that’s actually going to help me. So, yeah, when you talk about intentionality and, you know, helping students to understand why we’ve built things the way that we are, I think, you know, there’s so much discussion that I have with teachers about. Yeah, but they could cheat. Yeah, but they could do this. Yeah, but they could use AI in this way that I don’t want them to. And I’m like, if they understand there’s there’s no silver bullet quick fix to all of this. But one little piece of it I think is whenever students understand why they’re doing it, why we’re asking them to do it, that helps some of them to understand, okay, I can get on board with this, and they’re more willing to do it and to do their best work. And learn something from it.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah, I, I remember reading Simon Sinek’s Start with Why and I and then having that connection of like, I don’t do a very good job of this in my classroom, telling kids why we’re doing something. And I think if they don’t understand that, why the value, the purpose, then a lot of the work also just gets kind of mentally filed into like a busywork category because they’re like, oh, she’s just making us do this because there’s no real value. And I’m curious. So when you started kind of like lifting the hood on the why for your students, did you feel like it? it had an impact. Did you notice any change?
Matt Miller
I mean, it was subtle. Because, I mean, I still I’m fortunate, you know, the class that I teach is Spanish III. So it’s an advanced class. It’s one that they get dual college credit for. So I’ve got some ambitious kids in my class and that helps. Yeah, but there are still some of them that have immense pressures to be all the things and do all the things and do more and more and more. And so, yeah, whenever I would start to do that, I mean, at very least I was getting those, you know, eyeballs on the front of the room at times when I might not have. Yeah. My completion rate was a little bit higher on tasks and stuff, and I felt like I was connecting with them a little bit better. And even if it was just the kids who probably would have done it anyway that were really paying attention to me at least they’re starting to get a little bit of, you know, a little bit of an education on how their brain works and how they learn. And I feel like, you know, across the board on so many different levels. We as teachers don’t do a great job at helping kids understand how and why learning happens and how they can orchestrate it for themselves in the future. I mean, if we talk about, you know, future ready skills, helping kids understand how their brain works and how they can learn and adapt to things, you know, just adding a little bit of that is, is big. And. Yeah. So I definitely, you know, I, I feel like especially for the ones that were willing to entertain the idea. Again, like I said, there is no across the board answer to all of this stuff, but for the ones that are willing to entertain it, I think it does make a difference.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah, I know when I was working on so I released the I released a Skills Before Tools K–12 Implementation Guide for AI just because I wanted something out there in the conversation that was focused on transferable skills. So to your point around AI literacy and helping teachers really embed that just into the fabric of their lessons and what they do every day, I was like, you know, the skills kids need to eventually be really successful with AI are skills we can start teaching them long before they ever get to an AI platform, or working with a chatbot of any kind, you know, how do we in classrooms? Because I’m not sure we’re doing this as well as we could be teaching them how to ask really good questions, establish the purpose of what they’re doing. How do we encourage clarity in communication, whether that’s writing, whether that’s talking. Right. How do we get them? Kind of like evaluating, making judgments, supporting it with kind of evidence, getting them revising, improving all of these pieces that I’m like, let’s figure out what they need to be successful. You know, at that point when we are going to be using AI in the learning environment, because I don’t think it’s going anywhere and, and really work up to it. And I don’t know that necessarily. That’s the conversation happening in a lot of places for teachers either, because I think if you tell teachers like, hey, we’re really going to focus on questioning purpose, setting, improving clarity of communication, they see value in all those things. It’s like just connecting the dots to and this one day will help our students hopefully be more savvy users of AI. As well. And I just wish that was that conversation was happening as much as, like, hey, we bought this big AI platform for the school. Now I can teach you how to use it. It’s like, okay, but like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Matt Miller
And don’t you feel too, like a lot of those big picture thinking skills, those are the kinds of things that if we want to set kids up for success. Yeah. In the near term and in the long term future, being a good, you know, critical thinker or problem solver, someone who can analyze, who perseveres, who adapts to new situations, like all, all of those things, that really come out of some of our really well-designed academic tasks and our, you know, learning experiences and everything. You know, I’ve been thinking a lot about AI literacy and what AI literacy really is. And I feel like in a lot of schools, it’s like, teach them how to use chatbots. And we got to realize that the chatbots that they’re working on right now are going to be some of the most rudimentary, incomplete, you know, poorly performing chatbots. AI in general, that they will deal with in their entire lives. And if we see the sort of meteoric growth of AI technology and features and capabilities and everything right now, I mean, if you look at a student that’s even in like 10th grade right now, I mean, if you and then even more so if you go further into elementary school, but even a 10th grader right now is going to be a few more years in high school, college, you know, assuming that college doesn’t change between now and then is, you know, four year, you know, four year bachelor’s degree or something. And if they go out into the workforce after that, that’s in, what, seven years, like something like that. And what’s the technology going to be like there? How will it have changed things if we’re preparing them for today’s future or just for today? For today’s technology, we are missing the boat. Like the boat is going to be gone and is going to be into the horizon, by the time that they get out into the workforce. So I’m, you know, you kept elaborating on some of those big, you know, there’s like, core fundamental, like thinking skills that I think no matter where AI goes, no matter where the technology goes in the coming years and everything, we still, as humans are going to be able to adapt. I mean, we’re going to have to we’re going to have to, you know, come up with, how do I go forward? How do I make sense of this? What should I do myself? What should I do for my family? Those are the kinds of things that those solid thinking skills, I think really help with. So I think, you know, we keep talking sort of keep bouncing back to that idea of AI literacy. You know, to me, AI literacy. And, you know, I had to I had to come up with my own definition of it and in the book and, you know, very simply, I said, it’s, the skills and understandings that we need to survive and thrive in a world full of AI. So, you know, the skills and understandings, you know, information and abilities. There’s the survive and thrive side of it, like, you know, to protect ourselves from the real risks that are involved in it, but also to understand that there is a good side of it where we can minimize the things that take away our attention, so that we can maximize the things that make us really human. Like there’s there’s potential there. So, yeah, I think when you were mentioning all of that, it just brought it back to those thinking skills. And I think if we really want to prepare students for a future with AI, I think it’s got to it’s got to be focused on that and not trying to teach them to code or trying to. It’s definitely not teaching them to code because AI is a lot better at it than we are. These days.
Catlin Tucker
Yes, that is so true. I know, and I even think about the kids who are in like a career technical education pathway and they’re going to be out in the workforce, you know, potentially right after high school. And the ways in which so many of those career, those kind of professional paths are shifting and the role that AI is playing and how that’s impacting some of those pathways, it’s like it’s really going to be a fascinating, it’s going to be a fascinating future to watch all of this unfold. But I agree that it’s so ironic that the fear is that we’re going to let AI do the thinking for us. And I actually think the people who will thrive in a future where AI is everywhere is those who are doing the thinking and really understand. They have those skills, they understand their own mind, and they’re able to leverage AI in really exciting ways or really kind of helpful ways. So yeah, such an interesting moment in education. But I do want to go back to the conversation about technology. So I in that podcast I reference, I just I started by kind of acknowledging that we’re in this moment, which is so funny because you and I have been through the edtech boom. We’ve been through all the all the kind of waves in education technology. And so there was this whole push especially, you know, supercharged by COVID-19, like, let’s get devices into every classroom, let’s beef up the Wi-Fi infrastructure and make sure everybody has access to online resources. And now it feels like the pendulum is swinging in the exact opposite direction, which is like, let’s get all this tech out of here. Let’s limit screen time. Let’s do all of this, have this conversation about how bad technology is. And I, much like you, feel like the problem is not the technology. The problem is that we invested. And by we, I mean schools and districts invested heavily into devices improving Wi-Fi infrastructure, buying platforms and learning management systems. And yet the investment in professional learning that would help teachers develop the instructional practices that utilize technology strategically to enhance and improve learning were not there, but I would love to know if you have, like any other layers or perspectives that you kind of bring to this conversation, because you have to be feeling this pushback to in the work that you do.
Matt Miller
Yeah. And I’m so glad that you went in that direction. That’s the big thing for me. I feel like, you know, COVID-19 remote learning was an inflection point. You know, it was it was sort of like the thing that started it. Because if you if you didn’t already have 1 to 1, then you probably did just in emergency action. Oh my goodness. How are we going to keep learning going if we don’t have those devices. Let’s upgrade our subscription to Zoom. Let’s get as many Chromebooks as we can, get our hands on. Oh, there’s this one app that you like to use. Let’s get it for everybody. Like let’s we’re just kind of throwing things out there. And, everybody hated it. I think a lot of people hated it because what were we doing? You know, you and I, again, we’ve been through a lot of this, we know about. Ruben Puentedura’s SAMR model, and we know about substitution. And we saw a whole heck of a lot of substitution going on during COVID-19 remote teaching, you know, still.
Catlin Tucker
Are still are.
Matt Miller
Yes, exactly. And we you know, some folks really did start some habits that didn’t change course. There was a lot of things that we did during COVID-19 that we totally threw away when we went back face to face. And, we set ourselves up for failure. I think in a lot of ways not, you know, not by design, because nobody designs for a pandemic to shut down the world for as long as it did. Right. But as a response, unfortunately, we set ourselves up for failure because we never really identified what the technology was for, especially in a normal day to day classroom. We identified what it was for sort of during remote teaching. It was so that we can replace what we did before, substitute what we did before as best as possible. But then when we got back, there was a lot of us, you know, especially like folks like you and I, that would do technology, professional development. And we’ve seen, you know, what the rollout has been like. And we thought, oh, maybe some of this will stick. Maybe this will finally start to change our practice a little bit. And again, we just we didn’t identify what technology is for. And so now we’ve got folks that are like, well, we used to write on paper. So now we write on a document. Well I used to show the video on the screen and now I can do it an Edpuzzle and ask questions. So let’s do that. Well, I used to give quizzes on paper and now I can have them auto graded. And it’s like all of a sudden I think it focuses too much. And again we’ve we’re having the same issue right now. It’s too much of a focus on the technology now to focus on pedagogy and instruction, on, you know, how students learn. And instead of thinking about, okay, here’s the experience I want them to have, here’s what I want them to learn in the progression that they’re going to take to get there. And here’s a piece of technology that will help me do it better than the way that I was doing it before. Or here’s a use of this particular part, you know, this particular type of technology that will augment and improve on that. It’s like you have to have a good foundational understanding of instruction and how kids learn to be able to know how technology can actually make it better. And then another thing that I think has come out of all of this is that, you know, some people are saying that we need to balance better, you know, we need to I know balance is a big word on your podcast, but like, you know, in this case, I think it’s being misappropriated because it’s it’s almost like giving the idea of saying we need to have equal amounts of paper and technology. And in some ways, I don’t know, this may be a forced analogy, but I feel like that’s almost like saying we need to balance the amount of time that students write in blue ink versus black ink. It’s like we’re measuring the wrong stuff. We’re not measuring what’s going on in their brains. We’re not measuring the change that’s happening in their understanding. We’re measuring the you know, we’re like measuring the materials that they’re using. It’s like, how much do we use lined paper versus copy paper? And it just makes me want to scream, nobody cares. Nobody cares. We really just care about how it’s changing. Student thinking about how they’re growing and if I can find something that will do that, then I’m totally fine with it. Whether it’s got a screen or lines on paper or not. And I don’t know, like the whole, I feel like the whole conversation has just gone off the rails and is focusing on the wrong stuff, I don’t know, forgive me if I just ranted entirely too much about this, but I’m as frustrated about this as you are, I think.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah, I think you know, what’s interesting is I think a lot of it is design. I think part of the reason, quite frankly, Matt, I was so excited about blended learning, which a lot of people don’t want to hear now because they incorrectly associate it with COVID-19, like, oh, that’s a COVID-19 thing. I’m like, no, it’s not a COVID-19 thing. I wrote my first book on blended learning in 2012. Blended learning is a set of instructional models that integrate technology strategically to position students to make more decisions about their learning, have a bit more control. That is it to me. It’s like if you’re going to adopt a one-to-one program without also teaching the teachers about instructional models that utilize that technology strategically, don’t be surprised that technology has little to no impact, or maybe a negative impact on the outcomes of the learning experience. But I think another piece of it like to add on to your kind of perspective is when I think about balance, when we talk about tech, I’m actually thinking more about the balance when we talk about online versus offline, where it’s like we have classrooms full of human beings and learning is in part a social experience. And so of course, when kids are in classrooms and they’re like being told to be on these computers, working through adaptive software or games meant for review or just watching endless videos, they are so isolated in the experience, and that is part of what I have a problem with too, is it’s like watching a video in a classroom does not have to be an individual experience. You can build social structures around it where kids are having conversations, they’re making meaning together, and that’s a piece of it. And and I think if we’re being real honest with ourselves, part of what’s scary about that for some teachers is the classroom management component of it, of like, ooh, I don’t know if I can control them if they’re all like working together, doing these things. But I’m like as a parent going into classrooms and I see or as a coach going into classrooms, seeing students just in every class, like staring at screens, quietly working on their own if they’re not listening to a teacher talk, and some of them taking notes on their computers while a teacher talks, when we know that is not best practice in the research. Those are the pieces. And I’m just like, yeah, let’s have a conversation about balance. But let’s talk about are we balancing the engagement online with human to human interactive conversations? Collaboration like that is another piece of this puzzle that I feel like we need to be talking about because because computers should not be used in a classroom to subdue or, you know, occupy kids.
Matt Miller
Yeah, no digital pacifiers, Just stop right there, right?
Catlin Tucker
I literally just recorded a reel that was like, are you using, are you using technology as a pacifier or an amplifier? Literally just recorded that reel like I that’s my concern.
Matt Miller
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. No, I’m I’m, Yeah, there’s there’s so much with this. Yeah. I’m actually working on a new keynote speech right now that I’m just simply titling screens. Okay. It’s it’s kind of fun. I think you’ll probably get a kick out of it. It starts with a call back to the nostalgia of the 1980s. Yeah, which is fun. But but I think. Right. But I think there are a lot of parallels to it. And it goes right along with what you’re, what you’re saying. Because back then we weren’t talking about screen time. We weren’t talking about isolation. We weren’t talking about the negative effects of social media. And, you know, all all of those things, because a lot of times, what did our technology do? What brought us together? And we would all sit down on the couch together. I mean, the term couch potato came around, so it wasn’t like perfect, but we would sit together and we would have a shared experience watching the same thing. Yeah. And now what happens? You know, and it happens in my own living room, too. We sit down on the couch, we have something on the big screen, but everybody’s really watching the little screens and we’re all watching our own thing and we’re flipping through it. And there’s no unity, there’s no relationship building, there’s no shared experience. And, you know, in a world where kids are feeling more and more isolated, that’s an opportunity. And so it makes me think, you know, like, you know, could screen time be let’s put a video up on the screen, let’s all watch it together. And every so often pause and talk about what we’re seeing and how it’s making us feel, or how it’s changing the way that we think or whatever, and that’s a shared experience done as a result of watching something on a screen. So I feel like that’s, you know, that’s a whole different thing. I think the question has to be if we’re going to use screens, there are lots of ways that it can improve our human experience, improve our human experience as learners. And so we’ve got to be able to answer that question, like, how is this actually helping things? We talked earlier about the impact of, timely feedback. If you’ve got a class full, I mean, I had 33 kids in my first period Spanish three class this year, and there was no way that I was going to be able to sit with every single one of them and provide meaningful feedback and get it back in, in a in a moment. But having some support on that makes it a little bit better. And I think, you know, it all goes back to that fundamental question of if we’re going to use screens. I love how you said that. Is it amplifying or is it pacifying? Is it a digital amplifier, a digital pacifier? Yeah. And like the other side and you mentioned classroom. Sorry, one more little tangent on this. You mentioned classroom management too. And I hear all of these folks talking about, oh, kids are on screens all the time. They’re on screens all day. Well, first of all, no, they’re not on screens all day long. And second of all, if they’re on too much that’s, that is a bit of a classroom management issue. That is if I’m teaching or whatever it is that I’m doing, if I’m sitting passively at my teacher desk and students are just looking at their screens and I have no idea what they’re doing, that’s a classroom management issue. So if I’m doing whole group instruction, I’ll tell my students at the beginning, okay, we’re going to have all of our Chromebooks closed. And here we’re going to go back to this and here’s why. Yeah. Giving just a little bit of that at the top. And I never have any pushback on it. And you know even if some of them show up and they’ve got homework for the next class period and they wanted to try to squeeze it in on the sly while I’m teaching. They will follow along with it because I’ve given them a little bit of the why. So anyway, I don’t know if any or all of that answered the question that you asked, but like I, I’m feeling it the same way that you are for sure.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah, well, I was just not going to have you on this podcast and not talk about it because what everybody’s talking about, but I think it’s it is complicated. It’s like everything else in education that’s complicated. But I think so often we do swing between these extremes. And to your point, are like focusing on the wrong things or kind of missing the point of like, why did we have what was the hope for tech in the first place? How maybe did we not, you know, roll out support, whatever in a way that was going to make it meaningful? And how do we kind of rethink, reimagine our approach to this without it being like, this is bad. But you know what? I think this conversation around tech in classrooms very much has kind of ramped up as AI and its presence in classrooms. And so I think it was almost like this fear. And I felt this so much when I was like, exploding of, oh, gosh, I’m having like deja vu of like the edtech boom of like we’re going to like, adopt all these tools and all this tech, and it’s just going to change everything. And then it didn’t. And it actually, for, for in a lot of ways has created challenges. And there’s some concern about test scores falling. And like what is the role of tech in in classrooms in that whole equation. And I think the now the fear of AI potentially making everything even more challenging or worse or whatever is, is big, a big contributor for sure.
Matt Miller
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And that’s why I mean, you know, you were talking about how people have these misconceptions about blended learning. That’s why I’m like, man, it would be nice if we could get Catlin out into all of the schools so that they could understand that’s not what this is about, right? Like we just we can’t we can’t seem to scale scale the, you know, the professional learning and the message far and wide enough to get rid of all of the misconceptions. And then all of a sudden they start to spin out of control and everything. And I wish that I wish that folks could see, you know, some of the cool stuff that we get to see and that we get to do and, that other great teacher, there are fantastic teachers that are doing really innovative, cool things and even not like, you know, wild and crazy above and beyond what everybody can do things. But just like little simple shifts that are making a big difference. And it’s like, man, if everybody saw that, we could finally get a better vision of what this is for and maybe be a little more intentional about it, but instead, you know, we just have viral TikToks about nonsense about, you know, with all or nothing thinking and overdramatize claims that lead us to try to pass laws and make decisions and ban devices and stuff. And that’s sort of like where we are right now. And it’s it’s sad. I don’t know.
Catlin Tucker
I know I get frustrated and I err, like when I work with teachers, I always walk away with the same wish, which is I wish in education we could stop piling more on teachers, more standards, more curriculum, more whatever, and take something, take things off their plates, give them like the priority standards to focus on. Give them dedicated time to work with colleagues, like pulling tech out of the classroom. That’s not the solution. What teachers need is actual time with their professional colleagues to learn how to utilize tech or AI or a curriculum, or whatever it is they’re doing, and what they don’t get is time. Or often that professional learning space, you know, professional learning is squeezed in to all of these really hectic moments for teachers. And they’re being asked to, like, learn how to do things without anybody saying, here’s what we’re going to, like, take off your plate or here’s how we’re going to like, you know, make it feel like this is doable for you. And so to me, I’m just like, I just feel like we missed the point so often in education. And then we just exhaust teachers when we make them feel so frustrated because they’re being asked to do things that, quite frankly, just like it’s like doesn’t feel doable and it’s not addressing the actual issues that they’re facing every day in their classrooms.
Matt Miller
Yeah, it’s like that. That’s part of the reason that I’m actually kind of hopeful with, AI tools in the hands of teachers because there is some of that, like, monotonous drudgery for lack of a better term, you know, that it, it some of the, some of the tasks that we do take a lot of time and it’s not the most productive use of our humanity. Yeah. And so if we can, you know, minimize some of that so that we can maximize how we use our humanity, I’m hopeful that, you know, maybe that starts to turn the tide a little bit for us as educators. Unfortunately, it does mean that working we’re working against some of the messed up stuff institutionally that’s going on, that’s causing all of these issues. It’s like it’s almost like a coping mechanism in the middle of all of this, like chaos and toxicity and everything. But if that’s what it’s if that’s like the little bit of hope, the little, you know, the little bit of light that we have that’s, that’s going to help us get through this than maybe that will cause some of the great teachers that love teaching to be able to hang around because they want to, while we get it figured out, I don’t know, maybe that’s a little bit too much of a Pollyanna approach. You know, I’m looking through my rose colored glasses, but, you know, I think we got it.
Catlin Tucker
You got to look for the silver lining. I was just had a series of conversations with Robert Mayfield where it was like, how do we use AI to do some of those kind of shallow, like they’re necessary tasks, but they’re pretty shallow in they’re time-consuming. So we can make time for the deep work. And I love your point, too, of I’ve always said, let’s let technology do what it does well so we can do what humans do well. Right. And so I’m a big silver lining, you know, glass half full kind of gal, too. So I hope that’s I hope that’s what happens. All right. So I always end every episode I ask my guests, you’ve been asked for I have no idea what your answer was back then. What is it that you do in your life? Routine, habits, whatever. Schedule that for you helps you to try to achieve some semblance of balance given everything that you’re juggling.
Matt Miller
Yeah. Yeah. I don’t remember what my answer was, but I’ll say this time, right now, one of my big things is, is running, honestly, because, you know, whenever I get to a point where, you know, I’ve been working on, you know, teaching, writing, answering emails, all of that stuff, and eventually it’s just a lot, I feel like whenever I can do some form of physical exercise and of course, I like running. I live in, you know, very rural west central Indiana, out in the middle of nowhere. I live on 25 acres. I only have one neighbor in a one mile radius of my house like I am out there.
Catlin Tucker
Holy smokes, I didn’t know that.
Matt Miller
Yes, yes for sure. 90 minutes away from an airport, by the way. So that is sort of a.
Catlin Tucker
No, I’m 90 minutes from SFO. I have to do that drive all the time. It’s the worst. Yeah, yeah.
Matt Miller
Okay. All right. So you feel me? Yeah. But, Yeah. I mean, being out on these, you know, like county roads where it’s real quiet and, especially now that the weather is a little bit better and everything that’s, you know, I feel like whenever I get done with a run, you know, I’ve got the endorphins going. I feel a little better about myself, and it gives me a little bit of space to just get away from things and to move and to be in nature and everything, and that helps things feel a little bit more in balance for me. Anyway.
Catlin Tucker
I love that I used to be a runner. I did cross-country and track in high school. My knees can’t take it anymore unless I have one. I get at tartan track, but I remember it feeling so meditative. It was like the way I got out of my the busy brain. So I can totally relate to that. And well, it is always a pleasure to get to just chat with you about all things. Matt, congrats on your new book. I will link to it in the show notes. Everybody. I just appreciate you joining me for this conversation.
Matt Miller
And thank you. It’s fantastic, as always, and I appreciate the invite back. Thanks.
Catlin Tucker
I really appreciate having these kinds of conversations. I think as AI evolves and changes and develops and its role in the way we design and facilitate learning, also changes that. Maybe the easiest place to start when it comes to helping students develop AI literacy is having really open conversations with them about how we’re using AI, why we’re using it when we use it in the classroom. Let’s talk about the students’ experience. I think so often, you know, in education, the conversations I’m hearing about AI are still around. How do we ensure students are not cheating with AI? There’s no plagiarism with AI, and obviously there’s very valid concerns, but I feel like the more it’s not a taboo topic in classrooms, the more we are engaging students in conversations about AI and the role it’s playing in their learning experience, then it normalizes it a little bit, and maybe it makes it easier for us to tackle this conversation with kids about responsibility and ethical use and all the things that we know are important. If we’re sending kids out into the world where they’re going to be utilizing AI, whether that’s in a college or career pathway. So if you guys have any questions, any comments, any feedback, any thoughts, feel free to reach out. You can find me or Matt very easily online. I will include the link to Matt’s new book in the show notes, as well as a link to my Skills Before Tools, which I mentioned in this episode in the show notes. And as always, I appreciate you guys joining me for this conversation.
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