Podcast Episode
Episode Description
Technology has the potential to connect students, foster collaboration, and support richer learning experiences, but those benefits exist alongside real concerns about AI, screen time, and the role technology should play in schools.
In this episode of The Balance, I talk with educator and Scriblit founder Adam Sparks about how we navigate those tensions without reducing the conversation to technology being either good or bad. We explore the role technology can play in helping students develop as writers, including how peer feedback, communication, and collaboration can make writing more social and dynamic.
Adam and I also discuss the growing presence of AI in education and what it means to acknowledge both its potential benefits and the harm and risks associated with it.
Ultimately, our conversation asks a bigger question: How do we thoughtfully prepare students for the world they are entering while continuing to design learning experiences that prioritize connection, communication, critical thinking, and meaningful human interaction?
Episode Resources
- Check out Adam’s Substack, Edtech Confidential
- Scriblit — Write Better Together!
- Modern Classroom Project
- PAIRR Instructional Materials
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 Adam Sparks. Adam taught English and social studies for seven years before completing a master’s degree in Learning Design and Technology at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. At Stanford, Adam built a writing tool called Short Answer, and now he works on it full time and as part of his work with Scriblit, Adam and his wife Alexa, lead workshops with schools all over the country focusing on AI and what AI means for writing instruction moving forward. So excited to have Adam on the show to talk about his work. Well, I’m thrilled to have you on. And just to give listeners the sense of who you are. Can you share a little bit about your journey in education, where you began, how you got to the work that you’re doing now?
Adam Sparks
Yeah. My name is Adam Sparks. I’ve worked in education my entire career. So, right out of undergrad, I got my degree in, secondary education and history and social studies and taught for seven years, middle school and high school social studies in extremely varied contexts. So rural Nebraska, which is where I’m from and joining you from today, but also southern China, the west side of Chicago. And I also substitute taught in the Bay area, too, so I’ve been all over the place. And, about four years ago now, I finished a full-time master’s at Stanford in their learning design and technology program and ended up building what, at the time, was called Short Answer and has since grown into this platform called Scriblit. And it’s a K-12 writing platform that I now work on full time, with my wife, Alexa. And as a part of that work, we lead workshops with schools on how do we adjust writing instruction in a world where AI can write for kids. So that’s a very brief, I don’t know how many years that is, like a 15 year timeline, of my trajectory in education.
Catlin Tucker
Wow. Yeah. So I first heard about your work through Short Answer and a mutual friend of ours, and was really curious. It’s now developed into Scriblit. So we’ll talk about that evolution. But what inspired, like, an AI tool for education, you know, generally. But writing specifically, was there something that drew you to that focus? Because when you talk about AI and the impact on writing, that’s so tied up with so many of the fears that educators have about like, okay, kids won’t do original writing, they won’t find their voices and get good at this really important skill with AI. So I find it so interesting that was kind of like your angle in like, how do we improve writing with this AI tool?
Adam Sparks
Yeah, it’s interesting because when we started building it, AI wasn’t a thing. I mean, AI hadn’t been released yet and this AI boom that’s been kicked off as a result of that release wasn’t around. Yeah. Because we started building in early 2022. In fact, I started designing it while I was still in the classroom. So it didn’t start as an AI tool at all. And I still wouldn’t even categorize it that way. At the beginning, it was a formative assessment tool. So, you know, I taught for seven years humanities, English and social studies and spent a lot of time giving kids feedback on writing because writing was an important part of, all the curriculum within those different classes. And I’d spend all this time on Sundays giving them feedback, come in Monday, and give it to them. They’d ignore all of it and maybe, maybe complain about their grade, and they’d just jam it in their backpack and move on. And so, through a random series of events, I got to do a full-time master’s. And in that program, the Learning Design and Technology program at Stanford, you spent a year trying to solve a problem in education using technology. And that was the problem I wanted to work on was like, how do you get kids to think about feedback? If I’m going to take all this time to give it to them, how do I get them to think about it? And how can we augment feedback processes to make them more efficient and more importantly, like more effective? And so the initial product we launched, which, again, wasn’t an AI tool; it was a master’s project.
We ended up getting grant funding for and launching. I’m happy to talk about that story. But the original goal was just how do we get kids to think about feedback? And our solution to that was, well, let’s make the kids the ones giving the feedback. So it was all based around peer feedback. So when we originally conceived it, and that’s why we called it Short Answer. Originally it was like we’re going to build a formative assessment oriented platform that’s going to do broad formative assessment across curriculum, but oriented around peer to peer models of instruction, to create more kind of rich engagement around giving and receiving and, you know, reflecting on feedback. And we put that into the world and people loved it. But as it grew, we found that the predominant use case was for writing practice. So then it was like, okay, well, tell us more about that. Because, you know, about a year into releasing it, ChatGPT exploded and all of a sudden this thing was turned upside down, right?
Catlin Tucker
Yeah.
Adam Sparks
An interesting time to be building in the writing space. And so it wasn’t that necessarily that we, we set out to build a writing platform per se. I set out to build a formative-assessment-oriented sort of feedback platform, but it just kind of grew into a writing platform.
Catlin Tucker
Oh, interesting.
Adam Sparks
Because that’s where our teachers took us. So it’s kind of just a product of co-design over the last four years.
Catlin Tucker
Really? That’s so cool. So when I was first hearing about it, I so I spent 16 years as a high school English language arts teacher and very much was like, kids need to be writing more than they’re writing. And I had them writing a formal essay like they were turning one in every six weeks. So they were doing quite a bit of writing. But I was like, they need to write dozens of thesis statements, for example, to get good at writing thesis statements. And I remember developing what I used, I called the throwdown format, where all the groups of students in my class, they’d be in groups of 3 or 4. I’d put a prompt on the board. The groups would work together to construct a thesis statement I’d randomly assign two groups. I’d put whiteboard markers on their desks, and they’d go to the whiteboard at the back of my room, and the other group would go to the front of the room and they’d write their thesis statements. And I’d play music, all this like crazy stuff that they hadn’t really heard of. Just to kind of kill the time while they’re writing their thesis statements up. And then I would go to the board and I would do like a think-aloud, thinking through like, what was strong, what was missing, how I’d edit it, how I’d change it. At the end, I would crown like a thesis statement throwdown winner, and we’d all like snap for them or whatever. And it was funny because I was sharing this story with our mutual friend Robert, and he’s like, that reminds me so much of what you can do with Short Answer, but like more technology kind of infused.
And so that’s how I got excited about your offering and started talking about it as well. Just like here’s a quick way to get kids writing more, get them immediate feedback. It can be more individual, but can also have these kind of collaborative moments, which I really liked, where you can like have the whole class kind of like talking about some of the responses. So yeah, it’s interesting to hear that was your evolution.
Adam Sparks
Yeah. And I think what you’re touching on is really important in 2026 is like creating an audience for their work, where they’re creating things and sharing them with their classmates and seeing how their classmates react to it. I think that’s a really important part of the writing process that’s motivating for kids, because I think it allows them to experience the value of writing like, oh, this is how I communicate with the world. This is an important skill, but yeah, we talk a lot in the workshops about motivation. And how do you motivate kids to want to learn how to write in a world where they can press a button and they’ll write an essay for them in ten seconds? So I think the methodology you just described in your classroom, yeah, it’s very much in line with what we’re trying to do. And where do you teach, by the way?
Catlin Tucker
I taught at Windsor High School, which is in Sonoma County. It’s like a one high school town. I taught one other place before I went there, like I taught one year down south of where I live, but pretty much stayed there my whole career. As an English teacher before I moved on to become a teacher of graduate students. But, absolutely loved it. And what I loved about it, too, is it was just so like up until that point, all of their writing was so high stakes in terms of like, here’s the points, here’s the grade you get for this finished product instead of really like honoring that, like, hey, this is a process, and they’re not very good at the beginning, and that’s totally fine. Like, that’s actually why I’m here with them and we’re in this space learning how to write together. But it wasn’t until I started playing around with those kinds of just fun in the moment strategies where I felt like kids. It was like, didn’t have to be scared that they weren’t great at writing yet. It was just like, this is something we’re going to learn how to do together.
Adam Sparks
Yeah. And you’re touching on, I think if I’m reading into what you’re saying correctly, like we’ve been skeptical of rubrics at Scriblit since day one for a variety of reasons. And one of them is like when you give a kid a rubric with writing, it does kind of it’s kind of what you’re touching, I think is where it’s like writing is just, I just have to satisfy this script over here, and if I satisfy the script, then I get the point. And I did it well, you know, and that’s what writing is. And so a lot of our feedback is not based on rubrics necessarily. We do still use success criteria to focus the feedback, but it’s kids looking at two pieces from their classmates anonymously and being like. They’re like, okay, of these two, which one’s stronger? Oh, interesting. You said that. Why? So it’s a more holistic judgment scaffolded through comparison. And that was a lot of what my master’s research project was based around. It was that comparative judgment process. But I think it’s a more holistic way to teach writing, because what good writing is really hard to, to make, you know, boil down to like a category on a rubric. Well.
Catlin Tucker
And writing is so subjective on some level. Right. There’s certain things that are going to really speak to me that don’t speak to somebody else. But, you know, yeah, I, I don’t think all rubrics are created equally. I’ll say that. And I’ve very much gotten away in my own work from and this is what I do. And I will just say, I did this my entire teaching career, all of my rubrics were deficit based, like deficit language. This is what’s underdeveloped. This is what’s missing. This is what’s lacking. And as I’ve kind of grown in my own practice and really researched around asset based language and how we incorporate that, we treat rubrics more like a continuum of growth as opposed to, oh, you didn’t do this or you’re missing this. And then I think they can be more useful as a roadmap for students to say, oh, this is where I am on the continuum, and here’s how I get to that next level of sophistication in terms of my reading, or complexity in terms of my writing or whatever the situation might be.
Adam Sparks
Yeah. I’m certainly not trying to bash on, on rubrics. Because there’s value in them, don’t get me wrong because it improves their performance on the task and there’s research to support like so. Yeah I’m not trying to say get rid throw away the rubrics by any means. Right. But I like what you’re saying around the deficit mindset. And I think, that’s something that we have to constantly be mindful of. I, you know, this is an issue. I didn’t expect the conversation to go this way. So I’m a huge football nerd. Okay. And I was listening to.
Catlin Tucker
And I love football too.
Adam Sparks
Okay.
Catlin Tucker
Big fan.
Adam Sparks
Who’s your team?
Catlin Tucker
I’m a 49ers girl.
Adam Sparks
That makes sense. Bay area. That’s fine. Yeah. We had a great offseason. So, John Harbaugh, I saw an interview with him. Head coach, New York Giants. And he was talking about the 90/10 rule that he talks about in coaching. And it’s like a player’s doing 90% right and 10% wrong. And as coaches, we so often focus on that 10% and never talk about the 90. And when you do, that’s all that they start to internalize that. Right. So it’s like you got to like if you praise the 90, they’re more likely to actually listen to the 10% if and when you give them that criticism. So, I think that’s true also in a, in a classroom context too. Right. And especially with writing feedback. So anyway, it’s football season. I got football on the brain. Sorry about that.
Catlin Tucker
Oh no, I was just making my fantasy moves earlier. Don’t worry about it.
Adam Sparks
You do?
Catlin Tucker
Okay. And I will also just say that what I love about this concept as well is one of the big things that I kind of struggled with with the early conversations around AI and writing was this idea that, like, AI was going to kill writing, kill the essay, whatever, all the kind of hyperbolic stuff we were hearing. And I think the reality is we need to take a step back and ask ourselves, like, where is writing happening? Because if it’s always happening outside of class after a long day with prompts and whatever the kids aren’t fully invested in, then I’m like, yeah, there’s a really good chance they’re going to lean on AI to do their writing. But if there are tools and strategies where we can pull this work into classrooms and build that space for students to stretch these muscles and get feedback and practice in these very low-stakes ways, then I don’t know if I’m as worried about them not finding their voice or learning how to write.
Adam Sparks
Yeah, yeah, I think I think what you’re getting at is it’s about more structural reform of how we’re approaching writing. I don’t necessarily think we need to throw away everything we’ve been doing to teach kids how to write, just subtly adjust it in different ways. And yeah, I know there’s a lot of fear around AI and what it means for literacy writ large, and especially what it means for writing going forward. And we feel that in the workshops we lead and with the teachers we work with, and we’re trying to help respond to that. But I don’t think it’s as bad as some people think it is right now. I’m hoping we can build the message of hope for a lot of people in that way.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah, and that is something that you and I want to get into, because I read your Substack, your recent Substack article, and want to talk about this because your description of what you face in training sessions, I was like, oh, I have deep empathy for these moments because I also bump up against a lot of the tough questions and the fears and the anger around some of the stuff that’s happening, you know, that teachers are having to navigate. But before we do. So I’m curious what evolved when you moved from Short Answer to Scriblit?
Adam Sparks
Yeah, I mean, it was really just like I said as we went along this journey of, well, we’re going to be a formative assessment tool. And we still very much are. But our roadmap started to take us down the road of writing to the point that this summer we launched a whole new set of features called Skill Builders, which is essentially a supplemental writing curriculum in the platform. And all of a sudden it was like the name Short Answer is a complete misnomer at this point, because that doesn’t encapsulate at all what this offering is. or how we’re doing this together with our open ended writing activities? And so we just wanted a name that was more evocative of that. And also something that we could imbue with meaning over time. What we found with Short Answer was everybody has a preconceived notion of, oh, a short answer. It’s a short constructed response. That’s all you do. Yeah. And I know what that is. And I might have feelings about that. Whereas Scriblit is a made-up word. We hope it’s a joyful word. Something, like I said, that we can imbue with meaning, and much more evocative of what we want to be as a, as a company and as a learning platform going forward.
Catlin Tucker
I love that, I love that, okay. So let’s talk about this Substack, post that you, published called No Country for Old Pedagogy, where you ask this kind of central question of what responsibility do educators have to prepare students for a world they believe should be different. So as I was reading it’s like, at least and you can correct me if I’m wrong. I was feeling this tension between do we prepare kids for this rapidly evolving world as it is, not how we think it should be, versus preparing them for the world that we kind of almost wish we were sending them out into. So I’d love for you to just kind of talk a little bit about that tension, how you’re seeing that play out, why you decided to kind of focus on it in terms of this post?
Adam Sparks
Well, I focused on the post because of a testy, let’s say, interaction I had at a workshop in Houston last month with a teacher that was really angry that we were leading any sort of AI workshop at all, and felt that I should be banned from schools because it’s essentially just, unethical software, like unethical digital tooling, like it’s built on the back of plagiarism. It’s terrible for the environment. Kids use it to cheat. It’s just going to undercut thinking and put us all out of work, like that sort of sentiment. All of that was shared in the workshop and so it was like, why are we accommodating this technology when it’s so evil? We should be resisting it, not leading workshops like this. And so, I mean, she raised some good points in it. And so I wanted to like because in the moment I didn’t respond to it very well, to be honest with you. It caught me off guard. I’ve had people criticize the workshop before, but I’ve never received that, direct of criticism before, in front of a room full of people and I in the moment, I said, well, do you prepare the kid for the world or the world for the kid? And it sounds like you’re saying we should prepare the world for the kid. And I don’t think that’s realistic. And I don’t think I should have said that, because I actually don’t think that’s what she was implying. And I say this in the Substack post, but I think she just didn’t want to normalize harm.
And she, she was viewing what my work is helping us accommodate and respond to AI as normalizing harm because she views AI as inherently harmful. And the more I kind of five-why it you know, we ask the same question five times. Kind of just got down to that core question of like, yeah, what what responsibility do we have as educators to prepare kids for a world if we don’t feel the world is just and we don’t want to inadvertently sort of like, go along with this world if we disagree with it or, or perpetuate the things that we’re experiencing. And this shows up in more than just I like I did an interview. Our Substack has taken on a life of its own and, I ended up getting interviewed by NBC news. This reporter named Tyler Kingkade, and he was asking me about the way I use technology in my classroom when I taught, like, and how is that better than analog options? And I was talking about my experience on the West Side of Chicago, teaching in a community of kids that, you know, experienced poverty and trauma on a daily basis. It was incredibly challenging. And as a result of that, they were missing a lot of school. So I use laptops to help me respond to that challenge by, just through like asynchronous instruction, I would record lectures and we did self-paced mastery based learning through a system called Modern Classrooms Project that I’m happy to talk more about.
Catlin Tucker
Oh, I know all about Modern Classrooms Project. I had Kareem on the show. I’ve talked with Robert. Yeah, I love Modern Classroom.
Adam Sparks
I know Robert well, and I’m a huge fan, and I’m happy to nerd out. But the reason that I bring it up is in that interview, the reporter was like, well, don’t you think that you’re just using technology to paper over larger issues? They’re like, shouldn’t we be responding to the core issues of, like absences and poverty and trauma? And it’s like, of course, of course we should be responding to those larger issues. But if you have a solution for poverty and trauma on the West Side of Chicago, by all means please come to Chicago and let’s solve it. But those are massive, very challenging problems to solve. And the reality is, I have kids coming into my classroom every day that I have to respond to. So, 100%, is technology papering over the larger issue? Yes. However, I can’t solve that. So do I like that the world is this way? Not at all. And I’m not trying to perpetuate it. But I have to respond to the kids walking into my classroom every day. And if that tacitly, I don’t know, like, perpetuates the world in which we live. Like, I don’t know if there’s anything I can do about that. And so I think as an educator, you just have to come to terms with that. And so I think that’s where the No Country for Old Men analogy came from in that post. And like coming to terms with the world that you feel unequipped to deal with.
I’m happy to talk about Cormac McCarthy, but the fact that we’re leaning on McCarthy to process the world is probably telling of the sentiment that a lot of educators are experiencing right now because Cormac McCarthy deals with some pretty, heavy, sort of depressing postmodern stuff. So I don’t know if that answers your question because it’s a huge question, but, that’s the way that I think about it.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah. No, I mean, I think about so many because I was reading that part of your post where you were talking about that interaction. And I think any time you’re in education pushing against the status quo, which has been the status quo for forever, right? There’s a lot of people who don’t want to hear it. I get a lot of really, harsh comments online around my work. I have had tough questions in training. I literally just had a woman pull me aside, and I rarely do. AI is infused into the trainings in the workshops, usually as a vehicle to help teachers design more effectively and efficiently. I published a K-12 AI implementation guide that was called Skills Before Tools because I was like, actually, what I want to focus on, the conversation I want to be having is what skills are we teaching students that are transferable that, like they should be learning before they ever sit in front of an AI system of any kind? But that will also help them once they get there, be much more successful. But I’ve had those moments where even though that’s my messaging around it, that teachers will pull me over and be like, but what about the environment? And I’m like, I am super concerned about that as well. But I think there is just this reality of what what zones of control do I have as an educator, as a speaker, as an author, whatever role I’m in in that moment, and it’s like I, you know, I was listening to an NPR story that was basically like, there’s this person who worked at this, you know, at Anthropic or something who basically
said, there’s a 10% chance that AI could wipe out humanity. And I was just like, oh my gosh, how do I even process that as a person? And also, I have no control over that. I have no control over what these companies choose to do. And so what do I have control over? And what am I going to spend my time kind of investing my energy? And is it freaking out about all the things I can’t control? Is it deciding what aspects of this align with my values and my, you know, my, my educational kind of priorities or whatever? Because another thing that you wrote about that I absolutely loved was really thinking about this kind of tension. You made this point in your post that really resonated because you said, you know, we can recognize that something causes harm while also recognizing that it produces benefits. Like, I just maybe not the most dramatic example of this, but like, think about how convenient, like all of our use of plastic is, but like all the harm that it creates, right? Like, there’s all of these things in our lives that have these benefits and these like negative impacts. And so I’m just curious, like, how are you navigating that tension in those moments?
Or, I mean, you know, you say you would handle that situation differently, but I’m sure it won’t be the last time you get confronted with a question like that, but like, how do you navigate it where we’re not dismissing the risks because we know there are absolutely risks, but we’re not ignoring also the potential benefits and the fact that, like likely AI is going to play a role in our students’ lives, whatever they choose to do, whether it’s career, college, whatever.
Adam Sparks
Yeah, the way I frame it to teachers, well, to first answer your question, I would lead with empathy. And what I mean by that is like, those concerns are legitimate. And my intention in our workshop is not to like, explain those away as if they’re okay. So. Right. We spend the whole first hour of the workshop talking about the negative externalities of AI. We talk about hallucination, bias, both intentional and unintentional. We talk about the threat to literacy that could result from kids using it to read and write for them. We talk about the elimination of voice if kids use it to, you know, all these different things, IP theft questions. We, I used to talk about the environmental piece more, but, I’m happy to I’ve kind of moved away from talking about that as much because it quickly spirals into debates about capitalism that are just like way beyond the scope of a workshop focused on writing instruction.
Catlin Tucker
Right.
Adam Sparks
So I think you have to start with empathy. But I also think like, it’s hard to talk about because it’s complicated. It’s incredibly nuanced. And I also think, like, our kids have AI in their pockets, whether we like it or not. And it’s our responsibility to prepare them for that world. And so I don’t know how you prepare a kid for a world in which AI will be omnipresent without ever allowing any sort of AI into your classroom or just rejecting it out of hand. And so what that could look like in a classroom context, and I want to give a shout out to an organization that does a really good job of this. They’re based out of California, and most of the team is at UC Davis, but they’re across the UC, many University of California, campuses. It’s an organization, I don’t know what you would call it, I guess an organization called pair. It’s PAIR, and the person that I’m connected to it through. Her name is Anna Mills. If your listeners are LinkedIn people, they should follow Anna. She’s awesome when it comes to AI and writing instruction and the work they’re doing, and they just put out some guidance on this of like, hey, hey, teachers, here’s a bunch of resources on like the flaws and challenges inherent with AI use.
Here’s why we feel like regardless of these concerns, we still need to be incorporating, and teaching kids about this in our content area. And here’s a set of resources that you can use with your kids to talk through these things. And I think that’s what we do with kids. It’s like, yes, we want to make the world the way we want it to be, but it’s also my responsibility to prepare you for the world. And part of that preparation could be teaching you how to resist and push back on things that don’t align with your values. But the only way I’m gonna be able to do that is to walk you through this AI and how it works, and some of the negative externalities of it. And so that could be, you know, if we’re going to do AI feedback, we’re also going to set up, you know, metacognitive reflection activities with AI feedback to challenge and question it. And we’ve tried to build that into the platform. So like not to do a shameless plug for Scriblit, but we have an activity called Pen Pals where the kids pick two AI characters, and those AI characters argue with each other about the students’ writing, and the class has to decide which one they agree with. And the whole point of it is to encourage kids to question and challenge AI outputs, and not just take them at face value, as if this is the sole source of truth. It’s like, no, you need to think for yourself about what’s the value here. Yeah, that’s one small way we’re trying to actualize this concept of like, challenge these things and don’t just take them at face value.
But I don’t want to pretend like it’s easy. The way I frame it in the workshops is I’m going to use, like, research-based best practices as a compass that will point us in the right direction, I hope. But I’m certainly not going to pretend like I have a map that’s going to tell us exactly where to go, because I don’t think anybody has that, including the people building AI tools, which is part of what makes it scary. Yeah. So it’s very complicated to put it in a sentence.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah, no. Very complicated. I do love the focus on the metacognitive piece, because that is definitely a piece when I work with teachers and we talk about, okay, so we’re going to put kids in front of an AI chatbot or a platform of some kind, and they’re going to be eliciting feedback where kids need the most support, I think, is in two places. One. Do they understand the outcome they’re working toward? Do they understand the goal of whatever the assignment or task is, and can we coach them on really generating strong questions to ask AI? And I think that needs to happen before engagement with the AI system begins. And then once they’ve had that interaction, can we pause? And of course, all of this takes time, the one thing teachers don’t feel like they have obviously enough of, right, just to do the things other than AI that they’re being asked to do. But then on the back end of that interaction, are we also creating a moment of pause to ask kids, what did I learn and what am I questioning? And what did I reject from the AI in terms of suggestions and why? And what did I take? But how do I make sure the writing, the thoughts, the work is still authentically my own? And so like a lot of times I’ll just use like a simple AI wrapper to facilitate that before-and-after moment of reflection. But those pieces, I think, are the way we keep kids in control of the thinking. But, you know, some teachers aren’t necessarily quite there yet to build in that. They’re really kind of using a tool and putting it in front of kids and they’re interacting.
But I’m like, how do we get them thinking about their thinking as they’re engaging with these tools?
Adam Sparks
Yeah, and I think of it almost like a triangle. Sometimes it’s like we have the student. We have the teacher. I guess it would be more of a square. We have other students and then we have the AI. How can you play all of those things off of each other to promote thinking? It’s like anytime it’s just student to AI, student to screen, I think you get a little concerned, but like, okay, students got AI feedback can we do a think-pair-share after where they’re sitting next to each other, talking to each other, reflecting on what are the similarities and differences? What do I accept, what do I reject and why? And now I’m talking about it with a classmate. Yep. To me, you’re using AI almost as like a foil or a scaffold or something, just to promote thinking in the classroom. So I think there’s ways to use it in ways that it can in some ways, like increase the amount of, for lack of a better term, humanity that’s happening in the classroom like human to human interaction. So, yeah, I think it’s it comes down to quality of implementation, as it does with any intervention in education.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah, absolutely. So are you also feeling like in this work you’re hitting up against the increasing conversations about screen time and how much time are students on computers in classrooms? How has that been playing out for you mean.
Adam Sparks
You mean on my mental health? Poorly. Yeah, like there’s been only a few. I mean, we had one school that was like, hey, we’re not renewing because our district is pausing all, renewal of technology until further notice because we don’t want to send the wrong message to the, to parents. And then we had think this was even more frustrating. We had a couple, teachers we work with to apply for, for grants, and they were denied the grant application, to gain access to Scriblit. And when we read the feedback on the grant, it was basically like, this is a student facing digital tool. Like we’re not going to fund this. And I could be reading into that a little bit, but I got the sense that it’s like, we’re not going to use grant money to support technology right now. So, I mean, that’s how that’s a direct impact on the work. But like, the larger impact is just like when you interact with people in the world in the last six months, it’s felt like all of a sudden I no longer work in education, I work in the tobacco industry or something like it’s crazy.
Catlin Tucker
Pushing this whole thing.
Adam Sparks
Yeah, you’re just here to, I don’t know, like harvest student data and sell it to advertisers or whatever. And I don’t know, that’s been frustrating and hard to deal with. And that’s partly why I’ve we created the Substack and have been trying to push back, and the Substack has taken on a life of its own. We’ve written several pieces now just kind of going line by line through the evidence being presented against tech and the validity of that evidence. And some of it is valid and strong, and we should be using that to reform practices in K-12, edtech and instruction more largely. But a lot of it, I would say the majority of it is invalid and is letting emotion and fear and any number of other factors kind of push the pendulum way too hard in one direction of either we’ll just ban it entirely, or we’ll set a hard cap on the amount of time you can spend on it, regardless of quality of use. Both of which I think are absurd. And I’m happy to talk about why. So, I’m, I’m proud to fight the good fight for what I think is a valuable resource for schools and technology in classrooms. But, it has been frustrating. I don’t know how have you experienced it?
Catlin Tucker
Oh my gosh. Well, you know, my early expertise when I kind of entered the space was blended learning. So I remember when technology, it was 2007. I’m just starting to see phones like trickle into my classroom, like in the pockets of a handful of kids. I had written like two DonorsChoose projects. So the first one I got, one Chromebook, the second one I got two Chromebooks, and I started designing like lessons that would allow students to have more control work, but it was all collaborative because they didn’t. One-to-one was still so far away, and actually I never got there in my school before. I ended up transitioning to higher ed. And I’m actually so grateful because all of the activities, every way I use technology, was always bringing kids together, and I’m actually the first. I’m a keynote for a big virtual event happening. A company called Everway is hosting it. And my keynote is the problem isn’t screen time, it’s design. So what I thought would happen when schools invested just massive amounts of money into technology, into boosting Wi-Fi infrastructure, was that we were all going to usher in these technology enhanced pedagogical approaches that would allow teachers to, like, be freed from the front of the room.
Because what I found in my teaching experience when I use tech was like, I don’t have to be up here the whole time. I don’t have to be the fountain of knowledge, right? Like before technology, I kind of had to be right. Like I was the subject area expert. The only other source of information in the room were whatever my kiddos brought in for through their lived experience, and then the books we had in that space. And so with technology and unlimited information everywhere, I was like, my role is fundamentally changing. I am becoming a designer of student-centered learning experiences and a facilitator and coach who now doesn’t just disseminate to an entire class. I work with small groups, I work with individuals, and I felt like the impact I had in my practice, starting to adopt technology and use blended learning models, which, you know, Modern Classroom Project is built on the playlist model. It’s basically a self-paced learning sequence, right? But like the investment in that professional learning to help teachers understand how to integrate technology in these really meaningful ways did not happen. So because so many teachers were still using the same teacher-led, whole-group lessons, it made total sense that the tech just became this weird little add on.
You know, it was great for maybe streamlining some workflows, but it wasn’t doing all the things that technology can do that are going to enhance, elevate, transform learning. And what’s interesting about how you’re describing your workshops and how Scriblit can be used that so much aligns with what I’m talking about is in the keynote, I’m like, there’s three shifts that I want to push toward. Like right now, technology use tends to be focused on consumption. There’s a lot of isolation, and for some reason we’re using it to standardize experiences where I want us to move from technology as something that provides kids a way to consume to. How are we also letting it be something that allows kids to create? And why do kids always have to be isolated when they’re working with technology? Why can’t technology be a catalyst for connection and engagement with other humans? And let’s, you know, I get that standardizing, you know, assignments, having all kids doing the same thing, like there might be some logistical benefits to that at times, but like, I think we should be pushing towards personalization. And what you’re describing with the use of this tool is creation. They’re writing, they’re producing, they’re creating, they’re connecting with each other. They’re giving each other feedback. They’re getting personalized kind of feedback on their writing. Right. Like the whole thing just feels like this is where I want the technology to live in classrooms. But I don’t know that we have done a good job helping teachers design that way.
Adam Sparks
Yeah, well, thank you for saying that because that is a lot of what we’re trying to do is create a social environment where kids are creating things and sharing it out and learning together. I mean, literally our tagline is Write Better Together with together underlined and gold like the together part is the point. Yeah. So I agree. And I hope because I think the larger point you’re touching on here is being more intentional about the way we design digital learning tools and the way we implement digital learning tools. And, that’s 100% a fair criticism of the way edtech has been rolled out and something that hopefully this moment can be good for in reforming. I think the part that’s been frustrating for me is the suggestion that you essentially cannot design technology, to be valuable for learning because the medium itself is somehow inherently flawed. I mean, that’s the argument made in, The Digital Delusion by Jared Cooney Horvath, which is now kind of the canonical text of a lot of the anti-edtech movement. And I don’t think that’s supported by research at all. And so, yeah, it’s been frustrating. It’s essentially a denial of what I did. My master’s in. I want to give a shout out to Dr. Karin Forssell, Keith Bowen, and Soren Rosier who wrote the book on this like they wrote Theories of Change and Learning experience design, which is like how do you build a theory of change for edtech product or tool?
And then how do you go about designing an edtech tool to actualize that research, to in ways that tap into the unique affordances of technology? Like this is an entire validated field with hundreds of people studying it around the world, if not thousands across the country. The idea that it’s just, I don’t know, like made up or completely invalid because of neuroscience or whatever, sort of over-extrapolation of cognitive science research that we’re using, to make these points, I think is just it’s been really frustrating. It’s been really.
Catlin Tucker
Frustrating. Well, and when you, I and I’ve heard, you know, people in government, I’ve heard like researchers that were like pointing to test scores and the decline, the correlation, you know, the connection to the rise of technology. And I’m like, but we’re not using it well, like we’re we’re not designing learning to actually capitalize on so many of those affordances. So for example, I, you know, a lot of teachers in classrooms will have students watch a video that is almost always an isolated experience where they are answering questions inside of whatever the platform is playing the video. And to me, I’m like, okay, well, if I can get teachers to use video for some things, there’s a lot of benefits to kids being in control. But like, why does that have to be an isolated experience? Why can’t a group of 3 or 4 students watch that video together? Pause every minute or two and have a structured conversation about the content, like it’s just these design moves that aren’t happening that could absolutely push, I think, the effectiveness of technology in a lesson to a place where it has a really profound impact. And if the teacher isn’t at the front of the room, transferring information in that one size fits all structure, then how might they be using their time to pull small groups, differentiate instruction and provide, you know, scaffolding and support for kids who need it? It just yeah, the pendulum swing of all technology to no technology is just it is I think it’s so frustrating.
Adam Sparks
It’s what we do in America. And I want to be clear. I mean, it’s not all on the teacher either. It’s also on us as edtech designers and developers to make sure that we’re designing these platforms in ways that make it easy to enable the experiences that you’re describing. So it’s both on the provider and the and the person implementing it. And I think it’s fair to criticize a lot of edtech design the last 20 years that many, many products of which over-optimize for engagement and usage and scale and under-optimize for learning and outcomes. And there’s a lot of reasons that I’m happy to get into about why I think that is. But if there’s anything good that can come out of this anti-edtech wave, I’m hoping it’s that we can bend sort of away from that other direction and towards impacting outcomes and intentional learning design.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah. And I would pull the school leaders making decisions about adopting certain tools into the conversation because like teachers are juggling so much all the time and sitting down with a new tool that leadership has bought and decided is important for teachers to be using, but not having the, like, high quality professional learning of like, how do I design with this effectively that’s so frustrating for teachers and it does often translate into superficial, if any use in a classroom. Right. But I’m curious because I do know the, you know, we think of the word engagement in education is a really positive word, right? We want engagement, but we talk about it around development and tools and technology. Actually being optimized for engagement might not be the best thing. So if you want to kind of speak to that, I’d love to hear your perspective.
Adam Sparks
Yeah, I think I think this is this is something I definitely was guilty of when I was in the classroom, teaching and I it’s easy to fall for this. I think it’s easy. And I’m not the first person made this point. It’s easy to confuse engagement for learning because the kids are sitting forward. They’re smiling, they’re having a good time. They’re engaging. It’s like, oh my gosh, everything in this lesson. I’m crushing it in this lesson right now. All that stuff is meaningless if they’re not actually learning. whatever the content is that you’re trying to get out of it. And like, I would use Kahoot all the time when I taught as an example. And Kahoot! is great. Kids love to use Kahoot! How much they actually learned and how much their learning improved as a result of, you know, how quickly they could click a button. You know, that’s another question. And so, you know, as I reflect on some of the practices when I taught, I don’t know, that’s one that comes to mind of like, maybe I was prioritizing engagement over learning in that situation. Maybe sometimes it’s okay to prioritize engagement over learning, depending on the vibe of your classroom and where the classroom culture is at. And you know what day of the week. You know, there’s so many variables, so it’s deeply contextual.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah.
Adam Sparks
But I do think that’s a common mistake is mistaking engagement with learning. And, you know, that’s, that’s, there’s a lot of arguments to be made for, like a reorientation of education around cognitive science principles. I think a lot of those folks making those arguments have gone way too far. And some of the arguments that they’re making, but I do think that’s one that’s one situation where it’s like, you know, the, the perspective of cognitive science research could be helpful in reframing how we think about what success looks like in the classroom, because I do sometimes think that, we mistake engagement as success in and of itself when when really learning should be success.
Catlin Tucker
Right. Like, what are the outcomes for sure? No, it’s interesting because I think I still come back repeatedly to this idea of sometimes the screen can be a barrier to the interactions with other humans. And learning is in part a social endeavor. We are in this shared space together, and it’s interesting to me how many classrooms I go in and out of, and kids don’t really have very many opportunities to interact. And I’ll never forget, I was coaching in a school in a school on the East coast, and I was in a math class. I had designed a, station rotation with a math teacher. And one of the stations was this, online review of what used to be that platform called Quizizz. And it was interesting watching kids all had their own touchscreen Chromebook and they’re just kind of like poking at the screen, like nobody’s working these problems out. Like, I can’t tell if they’re even really thinking about the problem. And I remember going over to this station had six kids in it, and I created like two pods. And I told two kids in each pod, hey, you can go ahead and put your Chromebooks away. You just need one. They were not thrilled about that at first. I said, you know, when the practice problem, the spiral review problem pops up, I want everybody to work it out on paper and then compare your answers. And it was so fascinating. And it was like taking devices away made all the difference, because now kids were literally like pen to paper, pencil, paper. They’re working out the problems.
They’re like looking at each other’s work. You have kids going, wait, you skipped a step here. Look, you have to do this and like peer to peer teaching and interaction and that simple adjustment, the energy at that station, it was like night and day. And it was so sweet to watch them learning with and from each other. But the technology still played a role in confirming are we right? Do we get the right answer? What’s the next problem? You know, and so I just think there’s so much potential and some of these design moves are huge. But we have to be thinking about how do we message around really like connecting students, like capitalizing on this shared learning environment that we’re in, even when technology is part of the process or part of the lesson?
Adam Sparks
Yeah. And that’s like what you’re describing is a really subtle shift. And that one little subtle shift made a huge difference. And that’s so much of education. And I think that’s partly what’s frustrating about this movement. It is not subtle at all. It’s like a black and white all good, all bad, get rid of it all. Like we’re not going to be able to grapple with the nuance that you just described in that interaction, that station. If we don’t have options for both, right. So yeah, I hope that’s one of many arguments against this anti-edtech movement. But yeah, education in general is extremely contextual and nuanced. And we have to become comfortable with that I think.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah. So is there anything else you want to share about your journey, things you’ve learned like in this work facing some of these big challenges? Before I bring you to my last question, which I ask everybody.
Adam Sparks
All right. Let’s do the last question. That sounds great.
Catlin Tucker
All right, so everybody who comes on the podcast, I ask them, is there a routine, a strategy, a tip, something that you use to try to create a healthier work-life balance for yourself? Especially given everything that you’re juggling and obviously the stresses that come along with, building a business.
Adam Sparks
Yeah. That’s what’s funny, is that most of your listeners are probably teachers. And so I feel like my advice should be more teacher-oriented..
Catlin Tucker
It’s all over the place. Okay. Yeah.
Adam Sparks
You know, I will say I’ll give another shout-out. When I transitioned to the self-paced, mastery based learning with Modern Classrooms Project like my quality of life as an educator went up tremendously. Because, just quickly, the way that model works is, students move through curriculum at their own pace. So that means you’re recording a lot of your lectures, and kids are moving through those lectures on their own and working through checks for understanding at their own pace. They move on once they’ve mastered each lesson. It’s very sequential in that way. So what that means is I’m no longer at the front of the room all day, every day, either as a guide on the side, running around trying to manage all these kids or, up there lecturing, trying to like, command a room of 30 kids. It’s like the kids are moving through it at their own pace. It’s on them to get through it. And I’m there to work one on one with them if they need support. And it was so much more. I don’t want to say relaxing because it wasn’t relaxing, but it was so much more, fulfilling, I guess, because I got to spend the bulk of my class period just working one on one with kids, which is why I became an educator. Yeah. And so, I don’t know, I guess the tip would be check out Modern Classrooms Project. From a teacher perspective. From a professional perspective. I’ve just tried to, like, as much as, like we could talk about, like, self-care and all these other, like, you know, like, stop working hard at 6:00, like, set up, like, all these different, like, things that people come up with.
I really do think it’s just a matter of getting the work done so that you can check out at the end of the day and then check back in when you come back. And so how do we be more efficient in that work? I will tell you, Claude Cowork has been a revelation for me not to just randomly give a plug for Anthropic here, but, and specifically, I probably send I don’t even know, hundreds of emails a day. That’s all I do, sometimes for a million different reasons. We’re a small team supporting over 100,000 teachers and students, so I send a lot of emails. Just having a tool that’s like, hey, I need you to summarize all of my emails and I want you to draft those responses to those emails. Don’t send them because I need to look over them. But put them in my drafts box so that when I wake up in the morning, the first thing I’m seeing are drafts that are ready for me to review, as opposed to 100 unread emails. Like that has been a major shift for me. And just like my mental health and my productivity and being able to check out at 6:00 at the end of each day. So like this is one of those positive use cases where I feel like it’s making my life easier in that way. Now it’s not perfect and it’ll often screw up. And that’s why I have to look through the drafts, make sure it’s actually getting the context, and it sounds like me and I still need to read through things. I’m not fully automating email responses, but, that has been huge for me. It makes my life easier. So as a teacher, Modern Classrooms Project; as an edtech developer at this point, Claude Cowork would be my practical things.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah, it’s funny, I used a variety of different blended learning models, but I will say my experience was exactly the same whether it was with station rotation or the playlist model feeling like, oh my gosh, I actually get to work with kids. And I think that’s maybe one of the nuances of the screen time conversation that I find most frustrating, because if we take them all away, then it’s so much harder for teachers to get out of that one-size-fits-all, teacher-led, whole-group dynamic that, ironically, actually creates a barrier to some of those interactions with kids that are so fulfilling and rewarding for us and for the students themselves. Right? You’re so busy orchestrating the entire lesson from the front of the room and explaining concepts and modeling skills. At the end of the day, you’re looking at your kids, but like, how much did you get those touchpoints that are so like just magical to feel like, oh my gosh, I said something and I saw a light bulb go off. I saw a kid get more confident. I saw them do something they hadn’t done before. And that kind of makes me sad about, like, to your point, the black and white of the tech conversation, because are there a lot of places it’s not being used very well. Absolutely. Are the concerns legitimate? 100%. But taking it all away, I don’t think is the answer, because I think teachers will lose those moments now.
Adam Sparks
And I think part of the reason that the folks advocating for the removal of technology from schools are so comfortable doing so is because many of them do want what you’re describing. Many of them are coming from a very, very conservative interpretation of cognitive science research that essentially says the best model of instruction is a teacher at the front of the room doing whole class direct instruction, basing everything around, cognitive load theory and, like basically like drill and practice and retrieval and juicing test scores like, this is what education should look like. Like it should look like what my classroom looked like in China. Honestly, I think that’s about what my classroom looked like when I taught in China, because that’s the model the school I taught at used. And so I think if you start to five-why where this anti-edtech movement is coming from, part of it is because it is folks that believe in, exclusively in whole class direct instruction, and very, very conservative interpretations of cognitive science research. And we should be careful about that, because we’re going to end up in scripted-curriculum land where you have to do this on Monday and this on Tuesday, you have to be at the front of the room, and the teaching itself is a pure science. There is no art to it. There’s one right way to do it, and it’s based on cognitive science.
And here’s what we do now. Everything I just said is pretty loaded. And we could probably do another 60 minutes just about that. Yeah. But like, there’s a reason that the person, you know, making a lot of these claims is a neuroscientist who studies like electrical impulses in the brain. And anyway, sorry, I’m ranting now. It’s it’s late in the afternoon when I’m mad and I’m tired. I’m sorry. I tend to go on rants, but yeah, I would just encourage people to question like, why are folks so comfortable stripping resources out of the hands of teachers? What is the alternative that they’re advocating for? And make sure that you’re on board with that alternative before you start advocating for the things they’re advocating for.
Catlin Tucker
Yeah. And that’s great advice. Well, this is a really great conversation. I’m so glad we got to connect. Thank you for joining me. I will include in the show notes all the links to Scriblit and Modern Classrooms Project. For anybody who wants to check it out. I’ll even hunt down PAIR, which you recommended because that sounded awesome too. So anybody listening check those out.
Adam Sparks
Yeah. Awesome. Thanks for having me.
Catlin Tucker
Of course. I really appreciate this conversation. I think for me personally, I’ve been grappling a little bit with the tension that Adam and I discussed around the reality that AI has a lot of potential benefits. I, like Adam, experience those benefits every single day. I’ve been working with teachers for over 20 years around how we design, with a high level of intentionality to better meet the needs of diverse groups of learners. And AI has made designing at a higher level really thinking intentionally about data-informed design differentiation, where we build in meaningful student choices, how we create different learning pathways. All of a sudden, with AI as a design partner, those things feel much more doable for teachers, and the benefit for students, when they are experiencing lessons that are using data strategically and intentionally, that are tailored to meet their specific needs, that honor the agency they walk into our classrooms with, those benefits are incredibly exciting. However, I at the same time hold space for all of the aspects of AI that I think scare a lot of us, which is there’s a ton about AI can’t control. There’s a lot of it that feels very scary and, you know, unknown. The impacts on the environment, like all of these are real. They’re they’re things that I think about that I spend time quite frankly worrying about.
And just kind of acknowledging that tension in this conversation with Adam was helpful because I do think, you know, so much of the way we talk in education is so, you know, it’s either this or it’s that it’s black or it’s white when the reality is there’s all this gray and all this nuance, and I don’t want educators, school leaders making really rash decisions that, you know, swing this kind of pendulum from one extreme to the other because I feel like in either direction we lose something important. So I just really appreciate having these conversations with passionate, kind of knowledgeable people about this complicated moment in education. So as always, I want to thank you guys for joining me, for being part of this conversation. I always welcome your feedback, your questions, your thoughts so you can find me on social. Wherever you hang out. You can post a question or comment right to my website at CatlinTucker.com, and I will include a bunch of links in the show notes for Scriblit, Modern Classrooms Project, PAIR, and some of the other things that Adam and I kind of referenced or chatted about on this episode. So I look forward to seeing you guys back here next week.
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