Why Coraltalk Conversational Learning Beats AI Cheating ft. Melissa Morgan | My EdTech Life 352

Dr. Alfonso Mendoza: 0:12

Hello, everybody, and welcome to another great episode of My Ed Tech Life. Thank you so much for joining us on this wonderful day. And wherever it is that you're joining us from around the world, thank you as always for all of your support. We appreciate all the likes, the shares, the follows. Thank you so much for engaging with our amazing content and our amazing guests. As you know, we do what we do for you to bring you some amazing, enlightening conversations to help us grow professionally and personally within our education space. And before we get started, I definitely want to give a big shout out to our sponsors. Thank you so much to EduAid, Book Creator, and P.O. Back Education for believing in our mission of bringing you these wonderful episodes and you know, connecting with some wonderful guests. So thank you so much for that. And ladies and gentlemen, today I would love to welcome Melissa Morgan to the show. And I am excited to welcome Melissa here because I've connected with her on LinkedIn. She posted something there about this wonderful ed tech platform that she's going to share and tell us all about, which is something that is fantastic. So, Melissa, how are you doing this evening?

Melissa Morgan: 1:29

I'm doing so well. Thank you for having me on the show, Alfonso. I'm dialing in from Indonesia right now. So it is 8 a.m. for me. Good morning.

Dr. Alfonso Mendoza: 1:39

Yes. Well, good morning to you and good evening to our listeners here, because it is 6 p.m. here in Texas. So definitely a big uh time difference there. But I do appreciate you taking the time to not only talk to me, but to also just tell all my audience about the wonderful work that you're doing with Coraltalk. But before we dive into that, Melissa, for our audience members who are going to get to know you today with this episode, and I promise you they will be connecting with you by the droves after this episode airs. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what your context is within the ed tech space?

Melissa Morgan: 2:21

Absolutely. So for myself, I actually started in psychology at the University of Waterloo. I wanted to be a clinical psychologist. I make the joke that I was too crazy to tell other people they were crazy. So I switched into global business and digital arts. And when I was 19, I started my first ed tech company. And it was called Uintuition Platform that helped talented post-secondary students find job opportunities. And we really wanted to beat that cycle of students needing experience to get a job, needing a job to have experience. Ran that for three years, failed, but learned so much along the way. Fast forward, did some work as a product designer, freelance before it was cool, before COVID, and uh worked on a lot of different projects for schools, actually. So I worked with Harvard, I worked with York, Cambrees, I worked with the University of Waterloo. And what I realized was that education is really the foundation for any aspect of life, not just in the formal sense, but they say you stop learning when you die. And I really understood that. I did some actual teaching at General Assembly. I was a design instructor there. It was at the time called Bitmaker. And then I also did some teaching while I was in Sri Lanka teaching English to Buddhist monks. And while I was there, I had what I would call a really powerful insight that happened. These are students who don't necessarily know how to read. So they learn through speaking. And I looked up the pedagogy of this because I was so used to teaching in a classroom where I would talk at people, right? But it turns out that science shows that even though we teach in monologue, humans actually learn best through dialogue. And when I was speaking with these monks and seeing that they were starting to learn more effectively when they were teaching things back to me, that's also approved in pedagogy. And I said, wow, this is amazing. And it was a small group of monks. I think there were seven of them. And so I had the ability to actually speak with each one of them individually. And then I thought, okay, this would be amazing if I could actually do this. So could I clone myself? That's probably the only solution I could have as a teacher here to be able to give my students one-on-one attention. And obviously the answer is no. But then with the rise of AI, I started wondering: can I do the next best thing? Which is can I create an assistant for every teacher that could double as a student tutor to personalize the education, to meet every student to where they're at, to become the bridge between the teacher's teaching style, the student's learning style, and the requirements of that school, that district. And so that's the origin story, if you will, of Coraltalk.

Dr. Alfonso Mendoza: 5:16

You know, that is very enlightening. And I mean, definitely I know that you were working with Buddhist monks, and I thought you were gonna say, like, oh, that was such an enlightening experience because it truly was. And even myself just listening to you and listening to the story, you have really pretty much summed up what I have truly believed in the last 19 years that in education, which is the importance of having that dialogue and discourse in the classroom. And oftentimes in the maybe in the last couple of years, it just seemed, or maybe probably, I want to say maybe after COVID, when we did come back to Brick and Mortar, it just seemed that that dialogue just kind of went away. It just seemed like when we came back, it was the students just were sitting, becoming consumers of the information, but they never really had an opportunity to reflect. So I truly believe in what you were saying that I mean, for myself, uh as a storyteller or learning through storytelling, when somebody tells me something, I that I learned better that way. The ability to reflect with somebody like you and I having this conversation, I think that's something that's truly powerful and is not done enough. So to hear what you learned and now creating a wonderful platform that allows for that dialogue also to occur, and that discourse is really exciting. So tell us a little bit more about Coraltalk and what your mission is behind Coraltalk.

Melissa Morgan: 7:00

Absolutely. So, Coraltalk, we measure and we build understanding through conversation at scale, and we use AI to do that. Now, the mission is really to equip every teacher with their own teaching assistant and every student with their own personalized tutor. And there are a number of other companies that are aiming to do this, but what makes us really different is that we are making a bet that conversational learning, specifically out loud with dialogue, we're not talking about chatbots, is the best kind of learning that can be done. Simultaneously, it combats AI-based cheating. So we're seeing a lot of tools popping up nowadays where students can use AI to write their essays. And then the market is spending money, schools are spending money trying to catch these students and they're cheating. And instead of playing that game, we want to take it back, back to Socratic methods where you sit down and you communicate and you're asked questions about what you allegedly wrote as a reflective piece. So the way CoralTalk kind of works, teacher will add their class content, their course syllabus, any relevant links, information, videos that they might want to reference, so that Coraltalk doesn't become this generic thing, but it is now their teaching assistant. We're even going to be offering voice cloning, as some teachers want the students to feel like the students are speaking to them. So that'll be another layer. And then they send a link to their students after they create an oral test, or the students can just speak to Coral anytime that they need additional support, questions about the class. So we're really empowering teachers, we're freeing up their time instead of answering sort of mundane questions, but then giving them unprecedented visibility into how their students have been performing, where they're struggling, so that they can actually do something about it in real time. I think back to my school years where we just got report cards. You probably did too, right, Alfonso? You got a report card at the end of the grade, and then your next teacher, I don't even know if they looked back at that or if there was any sort of file really that followed me throughout my academic career. But we want to do that. We want to create an environment, is a metaphor I like to use for every caterpillar so that it can blossom and become a butterfly. The create the environment so that that can happen. And then follow each student along their journey so that they can then use that file that we've created so that the teachers can best serve them.

Dr. Alfonso Mendoza: 10:17

Oh my gosh, I love that. You know, just you hit on so many things that really are near and dear to me. And it really takes me back to my time, not only in the classroom, but just as my work, uh, you know, the work in digital learning as well is that component always centered around just student-centered learning, that ability to be able to speak, discuss, create via video, via voice, you know, voiceovers when they were doing um their slide presentations and so on. And recently, that this kind of ties into my last episode that I just released where we were talking about uh uh emergent bilingual students and how I helped support. And there was a set of twins. One twin was in my pod, the other twin was in another pod, same grade level. The only difference was is that the other pod with the other twin was more of worksheet-based, kind of quiet classroom. Everybody works on worksheets. My classroom was a little bit more chaotic in the sense of uh okay, get your Chromebooks out. This is the chapter that we're covering. You need to create a presentation. But not only that, I want you to do a uh voiceover of the presentation. So then the students were acquiring the language based on their responses too. I was able to listen and get that thought process, which I think it is so important, and that we can miss, we miss out on so much if we did take the time to just listen to our students. So the idea that you have of having your students are checking in on, okay, if this is what you really wrote, tell me your thought process. How did you come up with this? How did you come up with your thesis? How did you come up with this paragraph? What were some of your sources? And just to be able to have them explain that to you, I mean, it's it's a great way for you as a teacher to listen, hear their thought process, fix any misconceptions, reteach if needed, and uh just continue to help and support the students. But like you mentioned, obviously, you know, for a lot of teachers, that's like, oh my gosh, that's very time consuming. But with CoralTalk, now you can say you as a teacher can multiply yourself, let's say 27 times over. You have 27 students, and they're each gonna get their personalized feedback based on what they did. And I think that is something that is fantastic because, as you know, you know, uh we don't retain a lot. You know, within a week, we might lose out on what we learned if we're just simply writing it. But if we discuss it, then that retention definitely grows. The other thing that I love that you mentioned that I really absolutely want to highlight is that digital learning artifact. So as your student comes in, they come into Coraltalk, they record their conversation, they submit the whatever the it is that the teacher requires of them. Like you said, that is something that is a live document that can follow them from year to year and that they can continue to grow. But within that process, what I love about it is you can measure that growth too. So let's say if they started in third grade and now they're in fifth grade, you can say, wow, look at the development and look at the growth of the student in these last three years, two years, four years, however long it is that they're using it. And I think that's something that is very important, very impactful. So I really truly love that that you're doing. That is something that is fantastic. And also it gets them ready for that next grade level, or if they're in high school, it gets them ready for you know higher higher education, or maybe even they're applying for a job, communication skills. That is something that is huge. So, you know, tell me a little bit more about that as far as you know, what we might be able to see if I log into the teacher platform. What are some of the options that I do have available within CoralTalk that can help me assess my student and or assess the student learning and see how they're growing from maybe beginning of the year to the end of the year?

Melissa Morgan: 14:40

Yeah, great question. You said so many great things in there, by the way. I want to come back to some of that. But let me answer the question first. So, right now we have four types of oral assessment modes. So the first is that the teacher can create a conversational role play. So this is a scenario, scenario-based learning where the student could be perhaps a founder, and Coral, the AI, takes the role of an investor. And the student's job perhaps is to convince the investor to get the next meeting or to invest in the company. And these are really fun. And what we've been finding is that students really enjoy these kinds of things because they're low pressure in the same way that I'm learning how to play chess, and I prefer to play with an AI than a human until I'm at a certain point. So it's a safe space to practice. So role play assessments, we also have, we call them generic general exams where all the students get exactly the same questions. We have personalized exams where the student is asked specifically about what they wrote, what they upload. And then we also have hybrid exams. So hybrid exams are personalized questions about what the student wrote, but also what the teacher wants to understand. And then they are graded. The students are graded based on the rubric that the teacher provides, that the school curriculum requirements are, or even just based on the pre-built pieces that we have there, criteria that we have. And then that essentially adapts in real time. So we're working on that right now. But what's going to happen is if Alfonso, you're having a conversation with Coraltalk and you're just nailing it. It's too easy for you. Coral will adjust in real time and make it a little bit more challenging so that you're always in the and there is a sweet spot when you learn. It has to be challenging enough that you feel as a person that you're pushing yourself and you have room to grow. Otherwise, you're dising, you're not engaged. And it has to be easy enough that you feel like with a little bit of effort, you can actually attain it. And what you find in classrooms, I'm sure you've seen this too, there are a lot of tests that are given that are sometimes too hard or too easy for those students that are on either end of the spectrum, right? And so for the students that find it too challenging, we also want to help them. So we make it easier, build their confidence, allow little hints that Coral can give in real time to help guide them to where they need to be. And then we track all of this data so that when that student goes to the next grade, we can provide a report to their new teacher so that they can understand and then look for patterns in a larger classroom size, or even for the teacher to get real-time feedback about the effectiveness of their own teaching. So, what does that look like? Well, we can record the teacher's lessons in real time. So a lot of classrooms now are moving to a hybrid model, even for the ones that are in person, as long as they just record a transcript and add it to CoralTalk, we can then see what are the questions the students are asking after the class. So perhaps I teach a class and I'm teaching business 101. And now the trends on Coraltalk are showing that a lot of my students, maybe 83% of my students, found that this part of my lesson was vague or they were asking clarifying questions about what I meant. Because what we find is many students are shy, they don't speak up in class, and then the teacher doesn't know if what they were saying was actually effective or if their explanation was good enough. So it's combining all of these pieces to ensure that there's a level of unprecedented transparency that education has never seen before, that every student finds that sweet spot of feeling like the next level is unlockable, that we gamify it, that we use principles of psychology, and that we also create an environment where people feel like it's fun. Have you ever lucid dreamed before? Out of curiosity. Yes? Okay, it's amazing, right? I used to lucid dream as a little girl, and I could recreate these environments in my mind that I could then practice. And then when I did the real thing in real life, it was so easy. And I mean, we're not quite there yet. I think it could be fun to put Coraltalk down the road into some VR experiences. Like imagine if you were practicing public speaking with Coraltalk and Coraltalk would power it, but then it would be sort of a UI skin of you're presenting at a podium with thousands of people. You'd kick your fear pretty quickly, and then you'd get feedback to see how you did. And then the real thing would be so straightforward, so easy. Where it gets really interesting is now can we take data to understand? So for you, Alfonso, can I find you've got a massive online presence, you've got a great audience, you've been at this for a while. Could I create a version of Alfonso on Coraltalk so that I could practice speaking to him? Could I predict how he would respond to the ideas that I would pitch him? Things like that. We're not there yet. But I think that kind of thing is pretty fascinating.

Dr. Alfonso Mendoza: 20:01

I I think so too, as well, because a lot of things that you hit on, too, is just that importance. Uh, as far as teacher feedback, I think that's something that we don't talk about enough either. And I don't know, also, it's just that fear, too, of teachers have always been seen to be, you know, at the front of the room, those subject matter experts. But, you know, at any given time, like you mentioned, it's like the learning cannot stop. And for us, it's just To continue to learn, not only, you know, to for proper practice, but learning about our students too as well. So the one of the things that I wanted to go back to is just that feedback piece. It like in real time, I'm thinking to myself, back in when I was in the classroom, uh, you know, if I would have something like you're talking about right now with Coraltalk and being able to have that real-time feedback and assessment, I think that would have taken care of that ominous stack of exit tickets that I had on the corner of my desk after three classes. The day is done. It's 4 15. I'm barely winding down, and then I see that stack, and that stack just becomes so ominous. And then, yes, I went from that the sticky note stack to a digital sticky note, I guess, or like a digital format, like uh through a Google form. Well, now I have a digital stack that I called it, that really I just substituted my paper for a digital stack, and it was still very ominous. But just the fact of being able to use CoralTalk to my advantage and be able to allow the students to share their learning and then me come back to it and be able to reflect on what they're saying and allowing CoralTalk to do some of that work. But now taking it that step further of okay, as as much as it may hurt many times, or it stings, it's like, okay, what might my deficiencies be? Because one of the things that you mentioned, which is absolutely correct, is number one, students are not only sh can be very shy, but then a lot of students have had bad experiences where maybe they have a question or want to speak up, and you know, the the teacher may not either, you know, accept that question or maybe that comment or something, uh, you know, may accept it in in a nice way, and and then they just, well, maybe I just won't say anything at all whatsoever. So the fact that now as a teacher, I can reflect on my own practice and the way that I taught it and see what misconceptions I might have missed to help my students, I think that's a win-win. And so I really like that aspect. Uh, I think that for teachers too, let's say I would rather have Coraltalk or a platform similar that that's doing this, in this case, Coraltalk, take my transcript or take what I'm doing, and then I can listen to it later on my own, as opposed to let's say now I have a principal in there who is watching me and then the pressure's on, and so on and so forth. Like, you know, now I have not only feedback from Coraltalk immediately, but now I can be prepared for when I do get that walkthrough also as well. I'm dialed in because now I can say, okay, what like you mentioned, what might be some of the questions that the students may have when I put out this content? So I'm seeing this, like hopefully, like you're saying, and kind of like in this beautiful full circle where it's beneficial to the student, it's beneficial to the teacher, but it's also beneficial to the environment and allowing students to have those discussions, practice their speaking skills because you know they're gonna be learning while they're speaking, but then they're also gonna become better effective communicators too as well, and they're internalizing the learning a lot better than just simple worksheet, simple multiple choice test. They're in, they're out. Did they remember it? Short-term memory. Maybe it's something that they won't remember later on the next year, but if they're able to speak it, share it, oh, it goes a long way. And so I think that's something that is fantastic. Um, I did want to share with you, and I'm gonna share with the audience too. Like I mentioned to you, I did uh use Coraltalk a little bit, and then I did create a scenario for myself. And in this case, coming in from a business background, did a scenario where there's a manager at a store and I have a customer who is doing a return, and the interaction on it was fantastic. Customer comes in, they tell me their problem, and I'm there trying to deflect or de-escalate, I should say, the situation. But the the conversation piece with CoralTalk, I have not seen a platform be able to do this yet where it took exactly what I said and immediately gave a response to continue that scenario. And I I was really taken back and in a good way because I love the responsiveness of it. So tell me a little bit of that too, as well, the work that goes behind Coraltalk to make sure that the platform is effective and is something that is great for the student learning as well. Because I can definitely see that practice later on in that virtual space, too, as well. Because uh, like I said, the possibilities are endless as far as what I'm seeing right now.

Melissa Morgan: 25:48

Oh, amazing. So happy that you tried it out and that you find it to be quite effective and we'll only make it better. So, on that note, we actually built CoralTalk after feedback with over 100 educators, and we wanted to make sure that there was proven pedagogy behind the way that it would speak, the types of responses that were, again, challenging, but not to the point that it felt unattainable. So, getting that sweet spot right, it was a lot of prompt engineering, and it was a number of pieces that maybe comprise of our secret sauce, so I'll leave that for later. But um that that's really what we're aiming to do. We wanted to make it to make it feel like a real interaction with another human being as close to real life as possible. I think when you feel like you're talking to an AI, it takes you right out of that illusion of, oh, this is just a robot. I don't care what I say. And um that doesn't serve the purpose of what CoralTruck is trying to do. So we knew that it had to be a certain caliber of conversational AI, which I think there are a few companies that have done that in an okay way, but it's not quite there. You're right. Like even outside of for the education purpose, I think voice AI has a long way to go before people start to really treat it as something that could be very effective for a number of purposes in their life, number of uses. So that's that's a little bit about how we built it, but I want to come back to something that you mentioned about efficacy, retention. So I actually saw some stats and they're shocking. So today, 90% of what students learn is forgotten within one week. Two-thirds of students feel unprepared for real life. And today, over 88% of student assignments are written with some form of AI, which makes it impossible to discern true understanding. So this is the world we're living in. Beyond that, now factor in that with the use of AI, fewer people are able to critically think because we're not using that muscle anymore, if you will, in our brain that allows us to actually come up with coherent cognitive thoughts. We just have a thought, we have a problem, we put it into the AI, and maybe we massage it a little bit, which is not necessarily a bad thing. I think getting from zero to maybe 0.5, maybe not all the way to zero to one, is a really good thing. And AI can be used powerfully, but it should still not in any way be a replacement for the kinds of things we need to do as human beings to feel fulfilled, to feel intelligent, to feel purposeful, to feel like we actually have a future. But that's a whole other topic. I think there's, I'm curious, what's your what's been your experience in talking with other educators about how receptive they are to AI adoption nowadays?

Dr. Alfonso Mendoza: 28:44

Have you seen it? I mean, it's it's pretty mixed. Uh I would say, you know, like for example, myself, like I really consider myself kind of like the in-the-middle guy, like really cautious advocate. But it at the very beginning, obviously in 2022, we definitely saw like there was like everybody that was just going it all in, bringing it in, and not really fully understanding the capabilities yet. And and that's because it wasn't the best that it could be, because as you see from year to year, things keep getting progressively better and better and better. And then after that, there's like okay, the people that are like very just anti, I don't want this, that feel threatened by the fact of okay, now there is something, a platform out there that can now do exactly what it is that I'm doing, which kind of takes me back to that piece that we talked about is that the learning should never stop. And I think oftentimes because we have we may fall into a routine of this is the way we've always done it, and now there is a platform or platforms that now, thanks to those platforms and you know, large language models, now there are many other platforms that are coming up that are doing what we are normally doing, what we always do, but now doing it better or extending that practice. Well, there's that fear, you know, obviously that is there, but you hit on something that I think right now, as as you we may see. I mean, we're both on LinkedIn, it's the conversation is really circling around critical thinking, critical thinking, off uh cognitive offloading. Um, recently, uh in this last week, I recorded with a neuroscientist professor or a professor of neuroscience, I should say, and he was just explaining the similarities between the way the brain works and the way that LLMs and AI are working, and just talking about how very similar in think or in processing they are. And to me, being a a long for for very long that middle guy, right now I'm I'm starting to see more promising platforms and more promising practice, and it's really exciting. But again, it it's it depends on who you ask, and there is a mix there. However, I do know for sure that every teacher that I do talk to really does care about the success of the students. The only thing is, is that it's just kind of figuring it, figuring out that we're all in this together for our students to help them reach those goals. And the fact of the matter is we can always say uh this is not gonna go away, you know, as we see, it's getting better. And even I'm very impressed, like I mentioned to you, with what I was able to accomplish through Coraltalk. And to me, I'm thinking to myself, if a CTE student, a career technology education student comes in and has and is able to do a simulation, you know, whether it is, you know, a nursing program, speaking to a patient, learning bedside matter, uh, if they are speaking to a customer, writing a speech, you know, for my emergent bilingual students. I'm seeing how this might benefit them too for language acquisition. Uh, to me, that's really where I see that hope that my students that at once were needing to be pulled out for additional support, no longer need to be pulled out and they can be in class and still be able to get the services that they need, and we're still going to be able to see the growth that we want to see in them. So, uh, like I said, for me, I'm very enthusiastic now of what I'm seeing and the promise that is there. Obviously, the questions will still always be there, you know, the security issues, things of that sort, you know, the cognitive offload. But I think, like I said, when there's a platform like this, I think for a lot of teachers that might be like, okay, let's see what we can do. We can adapt, improvise, and see how we might be able to implement this with our learning or our current curriculum. So I don't know. I think it's fantastic. And like I said, that there's it's still a mix out there, but I think that more people are seeing the promise now.

Melissa Morgan: 33:24

I'm so happy to hear that. And uh I'd have to agree in the way that I've been speaking to other teachers as well. It seems like that's where we're trending. There's a lot of concern, yes, around critical thinking, privacy security, absolutely. I think that's a deeper conversation because just with other tools and the way that people use technology, the way that we all have online presences, even now the the parents of kids are posting them online, which I mean their prerogative. But what is privacy in the world that we currently live in? And to what extent is the information that we possess our own? When we use Chat GPT, we are giving up our data. We are revealing more of ourselves that is being used for targeted advertising. I mean, it's it's a whole other, a whole other piece and in itself, a discussion that I think the legal side of things hasn't caught up to yet. It's something that we take very seriously because obviously we record video and so we must, especially for underage children, right? So we we have we're in the process right now of getting all of all of our compliance checks done, GDPR, SOC one, SOC 2, uh Bug Kappa, all of the alphabets. Yes.

Dr. Alfonso Mendoza: 34:38

And there's such a large alphabet of compliance for sure. And we see that, you know, from year to year and platform to platform. Um, but I think like at the end of the day, it's it's what is being built and what I'm seeing, and especially like I said, got really excited about what I saw through Coraltalk is to me, I'm saying, okay, yes, things are gonna get better on that side, but but for our students, like this is like I don't want to be one of those to say, like, man, I did a disservice to my student for not for finding a tool that was definitely gonna be able to help them, but I just chose not to use it just because you know I'm one of those, I don't want to be replaced or anything. But instead of seeing it that way, it's like, hey, if there's a tool, again, like we mentioned, that can help me multiply myself over 27 times for a classroom, 32 times, and still be able to get a wonderful artifact from my student that is spoken that they practiced, and I can hear it and check for understanding, and then I'm able to immediately provide feedback or do a mini reteach or work with a small group. I mean, that is very efficient. I would want that because now I can definitely not spend as much time on having to go back and grade all that stack of paper, but now I get that immediate feedback and then I can immediately work with my students and just continue to go and then be able to go deeper with the content. And to me, that's that's the promise that I see, and that gets me really excited about it. And and again, I'm very I was very cautious advocate, but like I said, as things are getting better, I'm getting way more and more excited and just saying, like, wow, like this is this is fantastic. So very exciting. So I want to ask you, uh, Melissa. So as you tell us a little bit more, or excuse me, you told us all about Coraltalk, its inception, its beginning, and so on. I want to ask you now, as a founder, you know, creator in this space, what are, for my audience members that are again, K-12, higher ed, what are some of the misconceptions about AI that you would like to just, you know, share and say, hey, like this is okay? Like we're we can put that aside, you know, some things that you might want to clear up about AI in the education space?

Melissa Morgan: 37:17

Hmm, that's a great question. I think there's a misconception that a lot of teachers still hold on to, which we've both alluded to, the sense that perhaps AI will replace teachers. There is no type of technology that will replace teachers, especially the really good ones. I'm sure you've had those teachers that I certainly did, completely changed the way you viewed the world, moved you to the point of believing in yourself and inspired you, and held your hand when you didn't even know that you were on the ground, needed to be lifted up. There is no AI that will be able to replicate that. And I think teachers need to recognize the value that they bring and to view AI less as a threat to replace them and more as a way to support them, to amplify them, to allow them to do the things that really matter and to offload their plate for the things that just take up time. I I really think if that mental and emotional shift happens, we can start to use AI truly for the power of good that is empowering for teachers, for schools, for students, and just like just like anything, it can be used for good or for evil. But I think that that's the biggest piece that I would say. That's the biggest misconception I think that needs to be cleared up.

Dr. Alfonso Mendoza: 39:36

Excellent. That is a great answer. And uh, and I agree with you on that. Like I said, uh for me it it took a while, and I've always been kind of more on the very, very reserved side of things, but like that optimism of me seeing, you know, a lot of wonderful apps out there, and especially like I mentioned to you, to help the students grow. Why would I not want to give my student the best opportunity for them to gain knowledge in whatever content or in whatever language they may need to continue to support the learning? And I mean, for me, like, yeah, so I definitely agree with you because you know, you're still going to be there in the classroom. AI is not gonna be able to read the room the way a teacher would, and just to be able to add that additional component, that human connection that goes right along with teaching is still something that is very important. And like you said, exactly, like I still remember those teachers that were there that really helped me out and really helped me grow. And I, you know, that I never thought I would be in education 19 years ago, but now that I am, I can see how a lot of those teachers influenced me in a positive way to be here and do the work that I'm doing now. And I'm just excited for it. So thank you so much, Melissa. I really appreciate you being here. Thank you so much for sharing what you're doing with Coraltalk, your mission, your vision. And I'm just really excited about what Coraltalk is going to be offering in the future. So, for our audience members, we'll definitely put the link in the show notes for Coraltalk. So you can make sure that you log in, try it out. We'll definitely uh Melissa will definitely put your LinkedIn and then that way maybe our audience members too that would love to connect with you may connect with you or reach out if they have any questions or anything that they may want to reach out to. But thank you again for being here and just sharing your passion for education, the work that you're doing. But Melissa, before we wrap up, we always love to end the show with these last three questions. So hopefully you are ready for our little mini lightning round that we have. All right. So question number one, Melissa every superhero has a pain point or weakness. So for example, Superman Kryptonite was his weakness. So I want to ask you in the current state of education, what would you say would be your current edu kryptonite?

Melissa Morgan: 42:16

My current edu kryptonite. My view of education and what the weakness is.

Dr. Alfonso Mendoza: 42:28

Yeah.

Melissa Morgan: 42:28

I think that education today is preparing a lot of students for a world that no longer exists. It's it feels a little dated. I remember, and I'm sure things have changed since we weren't allowed to use calculators or we had to memorize a lot of things. Those types of things, those types of preparation, those skills are not what we use once we graduate. And I wish we could prepare students a little bit more effectively for real life. Cheat sheets, I used to use in Waterloo, that kind of thing, the ability to have a resource available at all times. I think if we did that, it would mimic the real world more closely.

Dr. Alfonso Mendoza: 43:15

All right. Good answer. Good answer. All right, Melissa, question number two. If you could have a billboard with anything on it, what would it be and why?

Melissa Morgan: 43:29

Where would the billboard be placed?

Dr. Alfonso Mendoza: 43:32

It could be anywhere you'd like.

Melissa Morgan: 43:36

Interesting. I would want it to be something that people would stop and think about. There was a song that really resonated with me from The Eagles. So oftentimes it happens that we live our lives in chains, but we never even knew we had the key. So I won't figure out the exact wording of what would be on the billboard, but it would probably be a succinct version of that to let people realize that they are standing in their own way and they can do so much more than they perhaps believe that they could to empower. Yeah.

Dr. Alfonso Mendoza: 44:13

I like that. That is a great, great lyric, and that definitely is a great thought to have. You're absolutely right. That really got me thinking. It's like sometimes, you know, in all honesty, and I'm sure that this happens to everybody, and it's not just me, but sometimes that imposter syndrome hits, and sometimes we just get in our own way of that. But it's like say, hey, you know what? We we totally have the key to overcome that. And when you do, great things happen. So great message. I think that really hit for me today. So that's awesome. All right. My last question for you, Melissa, is if you could trade places with anyone for a day, who would that be and why?

Melissa Morgan: 44:54

Hmm. Dead or alive?

Dr. Alfonso Mendoza: 44:57

Either. You can choose.

Melissa Morgan: 44:59

Oh, interesting. The the purist in me wants to say some sort of dictator from the past or the present and uh have my version of them remove themselves from power so that they don't hurt people anymore. But the more selfish part of me, I would love to see what it would have been like to be Cleopatra for a day.

Dr. Alfonso Mendoza: 45:24

Okay.

Melissa Morgan: 45:25

I'm very curious. Yes, I have an affinity for ancient Egypt. And um, even though Cleopatra was not actually Egyptian, just to be in that kind of an environment and to yield that kind of power and to see what it was like, that would be pretty incredible.

Dr. Alfonso Mendoza: 45:44

Excellent. That is a great answer. I think that's probably if I can go back, maybe that's probably our only or the second time that anybody mentions a historical figure. Usually somebody will like mention somebody here in the present and now, but that is a great answer. Very wonderful, very insightful. Well, Melissa, thank you again for being here on the episode. And you know, it's just amazing speaking with you and just hearing a lot more about Coraltalk, your work, understanding where this is coming from, your heart for this platform and what you envision this platform to be and to become. It is something that is wonderful. And I very much enjoy just finding some amazing voices on LinkedIn or on social media and being able to amplify your voices and your messages here on My EdTech Life is definitely something that really fills my bucket and I enjoy doing. So thank you so much for being a guest. And like every My EdTech Life uh guest, you always have an open invite. So anytime you want to come back, if there are any new updates or anything uh major happenings with Coraltalk, you're always more than uh you're more than welcome to come back and share those here within our space. So thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate you.

Melissa Morgan: 47:08

Thank you, Alfonso. I really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you so much for your support. And it was lovely to be here. Sure, I'll see you again soon.

Dr. Alfonso Mendoza: 47:16

Excellent. And for our audience members, please make sure you visit our website at myedtech.life where you can check out this amazing episode and the other 350 plus episodes, where I promise you you will find some nuggets that you can sprinkle onto what you are already doing. Great. And as always, thank you so much to our sponsors, EduAid, Book Creator, and Peelback Education, for believing in our mission to bring these amazing conversations and amazing guests into our space. Thank you as always. And my friends, until next time, don't forget, stay techie.