AI in Education | EdHeads Episode 1: Rajen Sheth | How Can AI Impact the Future of Personalized Learning?

April 29, 2024
Imagine a classroom where every student gets one-on-one tutoring tailored to their unique learning style. Sounds like a dream, right? This could be the future of education thanks to advancements in artificial intelligence (AI). Episode 1 of Saga Education’s EdHeads podcast season 1 highlights how AI is poised to revolutionize education, creating a more personalized and engaging learning experience for all students. 

Rajen Sheth is the former VP of Google Cloud AI and the current CEO of Kyron Learning. Sheth discusses AI’s potential to personalize and improve education while acknowledging the importance of responsible development and use. Both Sheth and the interviewer express optimism about the future of AI in education. As AI technology continues to evolve and educators are empowered to leverage its potential, a new era of personalized and effective learning can be achieved.

AI In Education | Episode 1: Rajen Sheth | AI Tools & The Future of Personalized Learning

 

AI In Education | Episode 1 Transcript:

00:00:00:00 – 00:00:29:18
AJ Gutierrez
I’m AJ Gutierrez, the Co-Founder of Saga Education and host of Edheads. Today we’re going to connect with Rajan Sheth, the former VP of Google Cloud AI and the current CEO and Co-Founder of Kyron Learning. We’re going to talk about how we can use emerging AI technologies to supercharge human beings. Thanks for joining. This is EdHeads.00:00:29:20 – 00:00:41:18
AJ Gutierrez
You’re coming off of an extraordinary career at Google. 17 years there. Done so many incredible things. And then you transitioned into the edtech space. Tell me a little bit more about why you made that decision and why now.00:00:41:20 – 00:02:16:02
Rajen Sheth
Well, you know, the time at Google was extraordinary. You know, once in a lifetime opportunity to see a company grow from reasonably small to a company that’s had so much impact for so many people. and, well, what I was realizing a couple of years ago, kind of in the middle of Covid was okay. I was thinking, okay, what do I want to do next? And really, what I always come back to is the social impact is the most important thing, what do, 30 years from now, I want to be able to look back at and say, I helped the world in this way. Education is something that I’ve always had a passion for at Google, working on Google apps, working on Chromebooks, we were able to impact a lot of students with, with our technologies and getting technology into the hands of a lot of students. But there’s still a huge gap that’s there. And I think Covid has shown the urgency of that gap, both in terms of equitable access to great teaching as well as achievement. And I think there’s a lot that needs to be done. And technology can play a big role in that. The second thing that I was seeing was the growth of AI. And, AI is something that’s been around for many, many, many, many years since the 1950s. But it’s hitting this moment right now, and we could see this three years ago, that it was about to hit this moment where it was going to take off and be able to help solve a variety of different problems. And I wanted to really focus every day on the purpose of providing equitable access to, to education and use some of these great new technologies to be able to do it.00:02:16:05 – 00:02:21:06
AJ Gutierrez
And you seem really passionate about education, like what’s the source of that passion?

00:02:21:08 – 00:04:02:16
Rajen Sheth
The source is deeply personal. and the way I put it is that I’m the product of great education, but at long odds. And, so a little bit about my backstory. My parents came from India. My grandfather on my dad’s side was in a small village in India. He was an orphan at the age of ten. If you were an orphan at that time, your future is not great. He was able to find a way to get an education. He was lucky that he had an uncle that supported his education and told him, if you can get into a school, I’ll support you. And he did. He found a way to work hard, get into law school. His uncle supported him and he ended up having a great career. And then that not only impacted him, but every generation after that, including me. And on my mother’s side. My mom’s father died when she was ten. Similarly, in the 1950s, her mother being a widow, that is typically a very tough situation, in, in India. But she had the determination that she’s going to put every one of her five kids, including the women, through college, which was not unusual at that time. My mom became the first woman to graduate with an electrical engineering degree in the state of Gujarat. And, that set her career, but then also set the context for me, as well. And so that is what really drives me that, you know, I, I think about if certain things hadn’t gone the right way, I could be in a very different place. But I’m very lucky to be where I am today, and I want to give that to others. And by impacting somebody with a great education, you’re not only impacting them, you’re impacting generations of people after.

00:04:02:19 – 00:04:08:23
AJ Gutierrez
So tell me a little bit more about Kyron Learning., and you know what you’re, hoping to achieve long term.

00:04:08:23 – 00:05:07:12
Rajen Sheth
Yeah. So with Kyron learning, really our goal is and our stated mission is equitable access to high quality, one on one teaching for every student that’s out there. And what I want to get to is that every student should be able to learn any subject from the teacher that’s right for them. What I’m realizing is two things. One is that we need to figure out ways that we can scale amazing teachers and have it such that they can have an impact on many more people. And then we also need to find, for every student, who is the right teacher for them, because each student will resonate with a different teacher based on teaching style, based on their background, based on language, whatever it might be. How can we find the right teacher to supplement what they’re doing in the classroom? to be able to help them one on one. And so that’s really what we’re trying to do with Kyron. How can we supercharge great teachers to be able to have a great impact? And how can we help the teachers in the classroom be able to have an individual impact on every single student?

00:05:07:14 – 00:05:20:17
AJ Gutierrez
And we’ll have in our notes for this session, an opportunity for people to see a demo. But tell us a little bit more about what it looks like. So for the district leaders or teachers, listening to this like, what does it look like to use this technology?

00:05:20:17 – 00:06:41:19
Rajen Sheth
Yeah, absolutely. So there are two key parts of it. What we’re building is a platform by which teachers can create videos that feel conversational. And so what I mean by that is this is a video rather than just a flat video. This is a video where the teacher can ask a question to the student. The student can answer that the teacher says the right thing in response and continues back and forth like a conversation. And what we’re doing is we’re using the combination of teacher created videos and AI to weave things together. to be able to create that kind of conversational experience. It’s completely controlled by the teacher. So the teacher has full control over how that lesson is put together, what kinds of responses are there? And various things, things like that. And so we have available schools right now where, for any area in fourth grade math, a teacher can go and assign a Kyron lesson. What a student can do then is pick a teacher that they want to work with, and we have a selection of a variety of teachers, they can then have these conversations with the teachers, be able to deepen their understanding in a particular area, and we can help figure out what misconceptions they have in that area and bring that back to the classroom teacher to help the classroom teacher figure out how best to help a student. We’re about to put out some tools by which any teacher can go and create a Kyron lesson and then be able to help their students or help other students as well.

00:06:41:21 – 00:06:56:03
AJ Gutierrez
It does seem a little tricky that, you know, a teacher has to, like, record all these sessions. Has that been a barrier for you, or can you imagine just getting certain data from the teachers, like their voice and their likeness, and eventually even kind of recreating their likeness in the future?

00:06:56:03 – 00:07:42:09
Rajen Sheth
I think the key problem was that if you’re a teacher in the classroom and you have 30 students, each of those 30 students has different needs. And how can you help their needs, one on one? And so we want to make it such that that is possible. Now, the way that we’re starting with this is that we have a set of teachers that have created videos. So it’s very easy for a teacher to just take one of the videos we have and be able to assign it, and they don’t have to go and create these. We’re also now providing that tool where they can go in, they can go and do this. But part of what we’re trying to do is make it really easy for them to do it and, and use AI to assist them to create these lessons so that within, say, 10 or 20 minutes, they can actually have something that is of very solid quality, for their, for their students.

00:07:42:09 – 00:07:50:01
AJ Gutierrez
Students aren’t just watching videos. Right. Tell me a little bit more about what’s really exciting and leads to engagement for students.

00:07:50:01 – 00:08:33:01
Rajen Sheth
So the big thing here is that there’s an interaction every 20 or 30 seconds. What this feels like is the teacher may introduce the concept, but then they’ll ask a question to the student. Students can answer that question, and then the teacher has follow up questions and kind of goes deeper and deeper to help drive them, to drive the student to mastery. And so what we’re finding as a result of that is student engagement is really high. And students have really enjoyed the product, as a result of that. Because it’s not just sitting back and watching a video, but in this case, when there’s an interaction every 20 to 30 seconds feels like a very active medium. And as a result of that, students are learning what they need to learn.

00:08:33:03 – 00:08:43:14
AJ Gutierrez
What do you think is really important for a district leader to know about artificial intelligence? What are the types that you have, of technology that currently exists that they should be aware of?

00:08:43:16 – 00:10:22:13
Rajen Sheth
I think there are a few things to really know. One is that we all use AI every day, even if we don’t know that we’re using AI. So for example, if you unlock your phone in the morning, you use AI to do that. If you do a Google search, you’ve used AI to do that. If you are looking at, you know, what’s your team’s chances of winning in the game tonight? You’re using AI to do that. And so AI is already a key part of all of our lives and so we’re using it in various different contexts. What’s interesting is that I think there’s a lot of emphasis right now on generative AI, but that’s only one of the types of AI that’s out there. And there are three key problems that are being solved by AI. One is prediction. So you’ll see this, for example, if you go look up a sports game on ESPN, it’ll tell you, you know, the Boston Celtics have a 53% chance of winning tonight, for example. That’s using prediction and taking data and trying to predict what the outcome is going to be. A second is classification AI. And so this is if you go and on Google look up pictures of a rabbit. Google can take different pictures and figure out, hey, this picture has a rabbit in it. And so that’s a picture of a rabbit. That’s an example of classification. That’s probably the most widely used AI that’s out there. And the newest is generative AI, where it’s actually creating new information. And that is, you know, something that we’re seeing with things like ChatGPT, that’s out there. But I think people need to understand that there are different types that are out there. The other thing I think folks need to understand is AI is an incredibly powerful technology that needs to be used very responsibly.

00:10:22:19 – 00:11:26:01
Rajen Sheth
And so what I would encourage district leaders to to think about are really three questions that they ought to ask when using any piece of AI. One is, is there bias in this AI? Right? What is the data that that is based on and is it actually representing the students that I’m trying to serve? The second is accuracy. So AI is a probabilistic algorithm. AI is basically all it is is very, very, very fancy statistics. That’s essentially all AI is. It’s predicting okay, what’s the next thing I should show this user. So inherently it’s going to be wrong some percentage of the time. So how do you deal with it when it’s wrong? How can you put a person in, for example, a teacher and empower a teacher as opposed to just going directly to students? And so that’s a key thing. And then third is unintended consequences. And we see this in a variety of places in the industry where, you know, AI can be used in places that could be dangerous. And so really understanding kind of what might happen.

00:11:26:01 – 00:11:45:20
AJ Gutierrez
When it comes to, you know, bias and mitigating bias. And I’m a district leader and I’m asking like a company, what they do to mitigate bias. What are some best practices you think companies should be doing, to decrease the likelihood of those types of and the unintentional, unintended consequences?

00:11:45:22 – 00:13:19:16
Rajen Sheth
I think number one is using representative data sets. You know, if you use a data set that’s skewed in a particular direction, then it could be completely unrepresentative and be very harmful. I’ll give you an example of this. You can build an algorithm to, in a different industry, you can build an algorithm to approve a loan for somebody. But if you just use, you know, what’s happened to the bank of what’s gotten approved and what’s not, you’re encoding that bias into the algorithm. And, there’s a tendency when it’s coming from an algorithm for people to believe it more than if it’s, if it’s just coming from a human. And so as a result of that, you end up encoding that bias and propagating that, that, that bias. If you have the right data set, you can take that same use case and actually open up loans to many, many more people. And so the same thing is true with education, which is to look at whether they’re representative of the data sets being used, to be able to create to, to create this. The second is what levers do you have to really kind of tune the use of AI to the student. And so a lot of companies, just like we’re doing this, are trying to figure out how do you empower the teacher who knows the classroom the best to figure out what kind of data to put into this and how best to use it, with, with the students. And I think that’s the key thing. How do you empower the teacher who has the knowledge of the context of the students in the classroom and empower them to be able to, you know, be the quarterback on how their students are using AI.

00:13:19:18 – 00:13:43:05
AJ Gutierrez
And so if I’m a district at Boston Public Schools or Chicago Public Schools, this seems a little intimidating because you’re talking about a wide range of stakeholders and data sets. Now, I mean, you have students who could be refugees, speak different languages. So do you see an opportunity for more co-designing with district leaders and, how do you see that manifesting in the future?

00:13:43:06 – 00:15:17:16
Rajen Sheth
Yeah, for sure. This is something that we’ve really put a lot of focus on in that at the very beginning, even before we wrote a line of code, we actually brought in school leaders to help us build the product. and we particularly focused on school leaders, in underserved communities, such that we are representing, those kinds of various places like Baltimore City Public Schools, places like Chicago with KIPP schools, for example. Those are the kinds of school districts and school systems that we’re working with to be able to design the product. And that was critical because if we’re meeting the needs of a diverse set of students, then that’s something that can then be propagated more widely and meet the needs of a diverse set of students. Another thing that district leaders can rely on is that there are third parties out there that are evaluating this. One really good one is Common Sense Media. So Common Sense Media actually just published a set of ratings for AI products for kids. And we were one of the one, the, the ones amongst amongst that as well and got one of the highest ratings. But then what was really interesting there is they went into every aspect, all the aspects I was telling you about around bias and accuracy and how to use it. They went into each of those and evaluated every single product. And so those are things that are out there that are resources for district leaders to take a look at, to think about how do you use this and what is safe to use, or what are the things you need to mitigate against, when using this.

00:15:17:22 – 00:15:24:19
AJ Gutierrez
What are the opportunities for district leaders and educators to use artificial intelligence in supporting kids?

00:15:24:23 – 00:16:16:10
Rajen Sheth
Products like ours, which can really differentiate learning for each student and can empower the teacher in the classroom to differentiate learning for their students. And so this can make it so that every student has a one on one type of experience, and gets the learning that they need because the needs of every student is going to be slightly different. From a district perspective you can use AI to be able to analyze the data that you have. So be able to figure out, okay, what students might be, at risk. How are students doing in general? What are their biggest needs? You can do that with the aggregation of, of data. And that’s kind of, you know, using some of those predictive analytics that I was talking about before. Those are areas where I think AI can really help districts and make it such that, such that, you know, it makes the job of administrators as well as teachers and students easier.

00:16:16:20 – 00:16:30:18
AJ Gutierrez
Let’s talk a little bit more about how you see generative AI and other AI technologies, meeting students, where they are and advancing tutoring? So where do you see that playing out in the field?

00:16:30:22 – 00:17:37:03
Rajen Sheth
One of the things I think that is key there is that there needs to be the combination of the in-person human along with AI. And that’s the most powerful combination. If you have the combination of a teacher or a tutor that is there for the student and AI that that teacher or tutor is using to supplement what they’re doing, that’s the most powerful combination. If I’m standing, if I’m a teacher standing in a room, in front of 30 students, every student has their particular weaknesses and holes where they need additional help. AI can really help with that. To be able to kind of cater the teaching and cater the learning to each student can help bring them up to grade level. Can also help tutors. because I think one of the things we know with tutoring is that you have great tutors out there, but it’s very hard to scale tutors. So can you use the combination of tutors meeting with students in person or over, over, video conference, for example, and these AI tools, and can those be used in combination with each other to potentially get to even greater efficacy of tutoring?

00:17:37:05 – 00:19:20:19
AJ Gutierrez
I think you’re absolutely right, especially in thinking about ways AI can help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of tutors, is certainly something we’re thinking about at Saga, and how we can use AI to provide ongoing coaching and feedback to tutors. And this combination of human and technology is really important because, from what I’ve seen, oftentimes people think about either or. It’s like either human or technology. You’re talking about something a little different. And I think it’s a really good example. I’m a big chess player. And, you know, Garry Kasparov in 1997, he lost to Deep Blue. And it was pretty devastating in the chess world and also for humanity, because this is the first time that a computer technology beat a human, a grandmaster. One of the best chess players will ever play chess. What a lot of people don’t know. A year later, Garry Kasparov came back and had a new vision for chess, where he created a new chess concept called advanced chess, where you pair computers and humans. And what you discovered when you do that, an average chess player paired with an average chess computer can wipe the floor with a grandmaster and can even beat some of the best supercomputers in chess. And interestingly enough, McKinsey also had a recent research study where it paired some of their consultants, maybe on the lower end of the bell curve with technology, and those individuals actually outperformed some of their most seasoned consultants and experts. So this idea of supercharging humans is really fascinating. What are some other ways you think technology can supercharge teachers and educators in the future?

00:19:20:19 – 00:20:22:04
Rajen Sheth
For teachers, becoming literate in AI and learning how to use AI within their classroom and within their teaching practice, it’s going to make their lives easier, and it’s going to make and make them more effective for their students. I think over the last ten years, we’ve seen a lot of really interesting technology start to come out to be able to change how we teach in the classroom, being able to do things like blended learning, for example, in the classroom, and, and being able to kind of give students, the learning that they need. I think AI is going to take that to another level. It’s going to make it so that teachers can give students what they need, because the teacher is the one that really understands what the student, needs. And they can now use tools to be able to provide that to the student. It’ll also, as we talked about, really save teachers time. things that are monotonous that they have to do right now can become more and more and more automated and can save them the time such that they can do the things that they like to do, which is coaching and teaching students.

00:20:22:10 – 00:20:58:22
AJ Gutierrez
So we already established that artificial intelligence can supercharge humans, which is very exciting in many ways, but also it can create some concerns because now there’s it could be the case that the people who have access to these types of technologies are going to be at a much better position to reach, their aspirations and goals in the future, and it could exacerbate inequities. So what can we do to prevent that, ensuring that all students have access to these types of tools and resources and have the information they need to engage with it effectively?

00:20:59:00 – 00:22:28:15
Rajen Sheth
So what they think is needed is that everybody, students, teachers, every human needs to be educated about AI. There needs to be AI literacy to understand what is this that we’re working with? How does it work? What are the things to watch out for? It goes back to the ideas that we talked about, talked about around, you know, bias and accuracy and, and unintended consequences, those kinds of things. Another key aspect is equitable access to AI. If done incorrectly, you can have a situation where AI is only accessible by those that have the means to be able to access advanced technology. And those are going to be the humans that will be supercharged by this. We have to really make a concerted effort to make sure that that is not the case. In our company, actually, the in written into the charter of our organization is equitable access to high quality one on one teaching. And we want to make sure that really we’re focusing on the groups that need this the most and are able to access that. If districts are able to adopt AI, embrace it and bring it to students, then the students coming out of those districts will be literate about how best to use AI and how best to supercharge themselves, going forward. At the same time, having all the students and everyone understand kind of how you mitigate the dangers around AI is going to be very, very crucial such that AI is used correctly.

00:22:28:17 – 00:22:36:09
AJ Gutierrez
What do you think are some of the important limitations folks should be aware of, when it comes to these tools and what should we do about it?

00:22:36:11 – 00:24:11:15
Rajen Sheth
There are three things that I need to get better and better at at a base level, particularly generative AI. And that’s accuracy, empathy and judgment. And what’s interesting is that as you look over the course of the past year, it has gotten better and better and better at that. But those are the areas we need to continue to get better at. Accuracy, in particular areas, AI has been less accurate. And so, for example, I think, you know, in what we’re doing with teaching math, in many cases, we’re not using generative AI because it’s not accurate enough yet to teach math. And so, we have to look at kind of where, where is accuracy in how you mitigate in the cases where AI is, is not accurate. But then the other two things are really important to empathy and judgment. So when you are talking to a student, how are you empathizing with that student? How are you putting in the right judgment? For example, it’s not right to just tell the student what the answer is. You have to have a judgment that the teacher has about, okay, what’s the next teaching move I put in here to get the student to the right place? One is that AI is going to get better and better. You can. You’re already seeing huge improvements in accuracy. You’re seeing huge improvements in the ability to train AI to do different, different things. Much more so than I would have thought a year ago. But I think that the other thing is that, you know, using it in concert with teachers, empowering teachers, because teachers can actually help train the AI to be better and better at helping their students.

00:24:11:17 – 00:24:26:14
AJ Gutierrez
What do you think the future of schooling ought to look like? Even in the concepts of Kyron learning? Like you, how do you what’s your what’s your take of what? the purpose of schooling in the future, how technology can change that.

00:24:26:16 – 00:25:30:08
Rajen Sheth
One of the things that is interesting is that we’re expecting every teacher to take on 6 or 7 different roles and be experts at 6 or 7 different things. It’s a lot to have to do. And one of the things I think that there’s a potential with is to start to disaggregate that and help the teacher, with, using technology to be able to do some of these, some of these things. You know, if I look at what the future of school is, I think one, a teacher is always central, no matter what, because that teacher is key to bringing the student to where they are. But I, I view that the teacher can almost be like the CEO of their classroom, using a variety of technologies and other, other tools to be able to help them do their job and do their job in a better way. They can rely on some of these technologies in areas where they don’t, may not have the subject matter expertise. They can rely on some of these technologies to be able to, to, take the burden off of things that are, that are monotonous for them.

00:25:30:10 – 00:27:07:17
Rajen Sheth
And then if you look at them, okay, what’s the future school design out of that? There’s a lot of interesting things you can look at. So for example, you can start to have teachers be able to, you know, take on different roles based on what their strength is. You could potentially have teachers be able to impact students that are outside of a classroom. If you can scale kind of what they’re doing and make it so that they’re able to, to impact others. Another thing that I think is interesting about the future of school is how do we get to more equitable teaching? And so, you know, one thing that we’re finding that’s fascinating is students, a lot of times learn best from a teacher that they can identify with that might be of their same background, that might have a particular teaching style, that might be teaching in the same language, as them. We’re able to supplement the teacher in the classroom with a set of assistants that can do this. So, for example, with Kyron Learning, when a teacher assigns a, let’s say, lesson on fractions to a student, the student can then pick a teacher that they want to work with, or that we have teachers of a variety of different backgrounds and teachers that are teaching in Spanish. And so what we’re finding is that different students gravitate to different teachers, and also that students that are English language learners, that are struggling with math because of the language are now able to understand math in a better way as a result of our tools. And so extending teachers out there and then finding the right teacher for each kind of component that is best for that student is something that I think technology can really help with.

00:27:07:19 – 00:27:52:02
AJ Gutierrez
And so you talked a little bit about some, the limitations of AI right now. So it’s around judgment and empathy. And to me, it’s now become more important than ever to figure out what it means to be human and you know how schools, you know, teach that? Right? And so even in today’s world, you know, there’s controversy over how we approach teaching slavery in schools. So now you’re asking something that’s much more profound about, like what it means to be human. And I can imagine that being very challenging. and moreover, we have to prepare our students to have the skills they need to engage and interact with these technologies effectively. So you know from your perspective, like what are your thoughts on this?

00:27:52:07 – 00:28:38:17
Rajen Sheth
So even in electronic tools, you need to model that kind of empathy, the empathy that you see. So for example, in our product a couple of things that we do, one is that we want mistakes to be okay. We don’t want to put down the student if they’re making a mistake. We want to give them that growth mindset. And make sure that they understand that making a mistake is actually okay. It’s part of the growing experience. The second is that we weave things like social emotional checks into the lesson. So it’s not just we’re teaching you about math, we’re checking in with you to see how you’re doing. And in doing those kinds of things, we can model that empathetic behavior, such that not only students are getting what they need, but they are kind of seeing that as a role model of how they would interact with others, too.

00:28:38:20 – 00:29:05:03
AJ Gutierrez
And one of the podcasts you talk about the importance of organizations having principles they stand by as they develop technology standing by those principles no matter what, even at the expense of revenue. And I will leave here. Like what are some of those principles for you? And do you see a future where you create, like, you know, avatars, or is it really important to you to always have these teachers be represented by real humans?

00:29:05:05 – 00:30:39:14
Rajen Sheth
The important thing is, how do we make it such that teachers are in control of what is being put in front of their students, and how can they extend themselves? And I think the real teacher is really important there. So for example, the bond, like the number one thing that students tell us about our product is that they really have built a bond with the teachers that are there. It’s almost like the peloton effect, where, you know, so many, so many people that use peloton really build a bond with their instructors there. Same thing is happening with this. So I think representing that real teacher is going to be really important. I think that can be done in several ways. I think one is the way we’re doing it with videos of those real teachers teaching that are supplemented with AI. Another thing is, you know, in cases where a teacher can’t record something, have it be something where the teacher is actually in charge of how that gets, how the AI gets generated and makes sure that it’s representative of them. And I think those are going to be key things that will be needed. I think there’s a big question about, okay, you know, can you just generate all of this? Can you just have one giant model that just teaches everybody everything? I don’t think that that’s the case, because the art form of teaching is something that is very hard to replicate, and you really need the real teachers in the loop, either on that video or guiding that video, being the producers of those videos, such that, such that they’re guiding what the, what what the AI is doing.

00:30:39:16 – 00:30:48:05
AJ Gutierrez
to wrap things up, I’d love to get a sense from you, like what fires you up in the morning? What are you most optimistic about in the future when it comes to AI?

00:30:48:05 – 00:32:04:03
Rajen Sheth
Yeah, I wanted to wake up every morning and know that I was working for purpose, and I feel that with with what I’m doing, I feel that, you know, we every day are focusing on how do we bring about equitable access to great learning, how are we helping teachers, and how are we scaling great teachers? And so that is what really, really drives me. And I see this, I’m really optimistic because I think that we’re at this really great juncture point where we have, you know, we’ve evolved so much knowledge of how teaching can be done effectively and how pedagogy can be done effectively. If I look at, for example, how I was taught, there’s a huge advancement from back then, like for example, how math was taught back then to how it’s taught right now. Really focus on things like conceptual understanding. So we have that basis that we’re building on, and we have incredible technology. We’re just like the AI that you see out there right now is the worst that it’ll ever be. It’s only going to get better and better from here. What makes me optimistic is that if we have so many people that are thinking about this in the right way, that if we can shape that technology in a way that actually helps the teachers, we can end up in a much, much better place with education.

00:32:04:03 – 00:32:39:09
AJ Gutierrez
What’s a really important message from our discussion today is that we have to do this in partnership with school districts and with teachers. Where we are not just entering the future like we’re building it together. And this is a message of empowerment to teachers and district leaders. You even found firsthand, like even our teachers are better coders and programmers on active AI instruction. I think that’s a really important message for a lot of folks here. And if folks are interested in maybe getting involved with you, like how can they go about doing that?

00:32:39:10 – 00:32:48:03
AJ Gutierrez
You just go to kyronlearning.com. You can go and use our lessons or you can go and create your own. And so we have the ability for people to do that.

00:32:48:03 – 00:33:21:01
Rajen Sheth
And I think that you know just to double down on what you said in this journey for starting Kyron Learning, I’ve built such a respect for educators and administrators in education, and how tough a job they have, but how good they are at the art of doing their job. And I think our goal and our goal as a society needs to be to figure out how we empower them to do that, to do what they’re doing, because they’re amazing artists and what they do.

00:33:21:03 – 00:33:28:09
AJ Gutierrez
Follow us for more conversations with leading experts on AI next time on EdHeads.


 

Key takeaways from Episode 1:

  • Leveraging AI for Personalized Learning: Kyron Learning uses a combination of teacher-created videos and AI to provide students with one-on-one tutoring experiences. Students can choose teachers that best suit their needs and learning styles.
  • The Role of Teachers in the AI Classroom: Teachers remain central to learning. AI can empower teachers by automating tasks and providing individualized student data. Teachers can leverage AI tools to become “CEOs of their classrooms.”
  • Ensuring Equitable Access: AI-powered education solutions must prioritize equitable access for all students. Kyron Learning strives to offer a variety of teachers with diverse backgrounds and languages to cater to individual needs.
  • AI Limitations and Responsible Development: Generative AI is still under development, and limitations include accuracy, empathy, and judgment. It’s crucial to develop AI responsibly, considering potential biases and unintended consequences.
  • The Future of Schooling: AI can transform education by disaggregating teacher roles and allowing them to focus on personalized instruction. Technology can also connect students with the right teachers beyond physical classrooms.
  • The Importance of Human Skills: Even with AI integration, human skills like empathy, critical thinking, and social-emotional intelligence remain vital. Schools must continue to nurture these qualities alongside technological literacy.
  • The Teacher-AI Partnership:  The interview emphasizes that AI is not meant to replace teachers but rather to work alongside them.  Teachers curate content, guide AI development, and maintain the irreplaceable student-teacher bond.
  • Looking to the Future: Sheth and the interviewer express optimism about the future of AI in education.  As AI technology continues to evolve and educators are empowered to leverage its potential, a new era of personalized and effective learning can be achieved.

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