Episode 329: Building with Purpose with Eduaide.AI

Fonz Mendoza: 0:30

Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of my EdTech 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 your support. As you know, we appreciate all the likes, the shares, the follows. Thank you so much for your support. As you know, we appreciate all the likes, the shares, the follows. Thank you so much for your comments. We take this to heart because we completely want to improve and bring you some amazing conversations, as we always do into our space so we can continue to grow, and today is no different, and I am excited to welcome our very first four-time guest and our third well, I can say fourth, actually third-time guest. We have Thomas Thompson and Thomas Hummel from Edu8 joining us today. Thomas Thompson, how are you doing today?

Thomas Thompson: 1:16

Well, thank you so much for having us today, fonz, for the fourth time, you know I feel like the privileged list of guests. You know the Tonight Show. They would have the 10 comedians that would get to do repeat appearances. So it's an honor.

Fonz Mendoza: 1:28

Yes, no, fourth time guest for Thomas Thompson and Thomas Hummel. You are a three time guest now, so that's a wonderful honor. How are you doing today?

Thomas Hummel: 1:38

Fonz, I'm doing great, and it's always a pleasure to get to speak with you, so thank you so much for having us.

Fonz Mendoza: 1:43

No, thank you, and I'm really excited to have you all here and, as all my listeners know, and I always, when I close out the show and thank all my sponsors you are a sponsor of my EdTech life and I want to thank you for believing in our mission and what we're doing to just continue to bring some great conversations into this space and just see where we stand, where we're going, how we're growing, and just kind of take it from there. You know, right now, I think that having dialogue is great and just having those conversations continue as the technology continues to grow. It's something that's very important. So I'm really excited to get into today's conversation.

Fonz Mendoza: 2:19

However, we may have some first-time listeners or some first people that are learning about EduAid for the very first time. As you know, we were just at ISTE and you know a lot of conferences and in the summertime usually a lot of teachers get to dive into a lot of tools. So before we get into the meat of the conversation, I'll go ahead and start off with Thomas Thompson. Can you give us a little brief introduction and what your context is, not only in the EduAID space, but in the educator space as well?

Thomas Thompson: 2:56

Yeah, of course my name is Thomas Thompson, co-founder and CEO at EduAID. Prior to and in current with starting EduAID, I was a middle school social studies teacher. That's how I met Thomas Hummel, one of the other co-founders of EduAid. Taught in rural Maryland on the eastern shore. Did that for three years. Then I was starting graduate school, said okay, I can't be driving an hour to work every day. I started teaching in Glen Burnie, maryland, just north of where I live in Annapolis. Did that for another two years. We launched EduAid at that time. That sort of got out of hand so I had to step away from teaching and focus on EduAid full time and happy to do it. We bootstrapped this thing with three people, one of those being Thomas Hubble.

Fonz Mendoza: 3:31

Excellent, Thomas. How about yourself? Tell us a little bit of your context within the education space and in the EduAid space as well.

Thomas Hummel: 3:39

Yeah. So I'm just like really blessed to still be teaching. I think that anybody who goes into teaching they do it because they love it, not to get rich or anything like that. And so you know, I feel very fortunate to have a great team like teammate, like Thomas here who kind of can take over a little bit more on the edge weight side as far as all things going with the business. But you know, just on the teaching side, I think it's great that we have the ability to implement our tool into the daily practice that no other company really can do, because you know, we're just teachers and we're just trying to help teachers. So it's awesome to be part of this journey and also remain like committed to my community and to my students.

Fonz Mendoza: 4:22

So I feel very, I feel very blessed, fonz, excellent no, and that's wonderful and I think that's something that is great about both of you and the work that you're doing from the very beginning, really still kind of your foot in the classroom, foot in EduAid and still being able to see how it is that you can continue to improve your platform, you know, on the daily, on the monthly, on the yearly, and just to continue to help educators. And I know that there are many educators out there that are extremely thankful for the work that you're doing and the work that you've done from the very beginning. As I know, and personally, in having you all on the show various times and various phases of EduAid, it has been something wonderful to see your growth and really how you continue to enhance the, not only the platform. As we know, many people can come up and, you know, have critiques about platforms but the fact that you listen and listen to those even the critiques but also listen to teachers to help improve the platform and really stick to that pedagogy-based learning that is really reliable and can help teachers not necessarily feel that they're doing something completely different or learning something new, but really enhancing what they are already doing, is something that has been great and that's something that I love to catch up on.

Fonz Mendoza: 5:45

You know, from the last time that you guys were here, back in episode 282, you know, I know that a lot has changed from 282 to this being 328. And although the number seems very close, there are definitely months, months and many months going through there and a lot of growth in EduAid. So, thomas Thompson, I'll go ahead and start with you as we kind of dive in into the growth of EduAid. From the very last time that you were here, as you guys were planning on going and doing some efficacy studies and really diving in deep and hearing from educators to see how you can improve, can you please share with us a little bit of your findings and how that has helped you continue to improve the platform but also improve the learning in the classroom as well?

Thomas Thompson: 6:32

Yeah, certainly, I mean from. It has been quite a few months. We've launched a few like really intensive partnerships with some other organizations that have allowed us to take a really close look at our platform. So we worked with a cohort of teachers at Teach for America in a kind of a controlled study over a set number of weeks and we had these kind of meetup calls and they played around on some platforms, implemented them in their class to set a few objectives that they shared with the cohort, and it was just great getting a lot of the feedback from those folks. Really, a bright group of teachers, super committed, had a lot of great notes on not only things that we could add some different ways of thinking about how we approach certain subjects but then also like the positive feedback too, hearing from teachers who were new teachers, veteran teachers as well, coming across new and diverse methods of instruction they didn't previously consider or having supplemental resources they wouldn't have previously had access to. I mean that's quite rewarding.

Thomas Thompson: 7:33

The other piece of this, however, is you want to go beyond making teachers feel as though they're doing something effective or feeling efficient. Right, this is just the first step, kind of the tip of the iceberg. Really we are looking at the largest bottlenecks being validation, verification of the AI outputs themselves that you're putting into the instructional context, and prompting. I mean prompting and verification are really the two large bottlenecks. We got a long way to do kind of more of that alignment work on our side. So we have a partnership currently where we are looking with CZI, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, using their evaluator tools. This allows us to really get in on a very fine level and look at text complexity and sentence structure and ensure that when you're selecting different grade levels on EduA, that's coming through in the outputs from the AI and that we're able to better constrain the AI for those grade level texts and then just continue to expand out our knowledge graph of learning sciences research that we use to make rubrics and kind of grade the responses ourselves while we're testing and developing them.

Thomas Thompson: 8:40

That's been a pretty rewarding experience. I'm pretty happy with where that knowledge graph is and how these prompts are looking and how things are coming out now. So I mean a lot of work there. But you know those just streamed wall of text got old pretty fast for most people. So it's like we went the way of like really highly structured outputs. So graphic organizers, venn diagrams, freya model stuff, marking the text, exercises, really structured games, so like. These things are themed, templated, formatted. You have total control over all of it. You could change the colors, change which pieces are there, add a collaboration activity with one click, take it away, add in a summarization or retrieval questions or whatever. It's all very modular, really easy to use and really in a classroom ready package.

Fonz Mendoza: 9:23

Excellent.

Fonz Mendoza: 9:24

I love it and, like you mentioned, classroom ready package is something that's great and one of the things that I love and I'm going to bring it up too, because, of course, having you guys on the show is I know that you guys really emphasize that pedagogy first, not just the tech, as being the core to EduAid, because normally it's like, hey, there are are several platforms out there and it's really all about the tech and how I can do this and make this easier for you, which is, you know, in many ways, something that is great.

Fonz Mendoza: 9:51

You know, as part of my research that I'm doing through my dissertation, I know that that's a major component as far as the ease of use and doing some certain selective tasks a lot quicker, but I love the fact that you focus more on that pedagogy and that practice. So, thomas Hummel, I want to ask you, you know, just in continuing kind of with this idea of what I asked Thomas T about you still being in the classroom and being able to use this and work with this in the classroom and get feedback, and you know what has that been like and what are some of the things that you have been excited about since the last time that you were on the show yeah, it's funny fawns like uh, you know, every teacher has their own identity and my identity sort of is like the first teacher in the building kind of guy.

Thomas Hummel: 10:37

So I'm up early and I do a lot of my planning for the school day in the morning. Just because year 10 coming up, it's just like I don't need to go home and spend tens of hours a week doing this kind of stuff, like I have everything sort of how I want it, but it needs to be adjusted. And that's where we're finding, like where we've really made some serious enhancements with edu8 is like when I go in in the morning and I start to adjust my lessons to make them higher quality and things are not working the way that I need them to work as the teacher in the moment, I blow these guys up on the phone and I'm like I'm calling that you know, and the one guy, our buddy Ty, he lives out in Denver like I'm waking him up, you know, three days a week sometimes because we only want to put out the best possible product that we can for teachers. And if I'm a teacher and I'm running into snags on our product, what are we doing? We're not actually making it easier for people, and so we've really tried to refine out any difficult problems in our product, with working with it.

Thomas Hummel: 11:38

But, like Thompson was saying, you know the quality of our outputs. We spend a lot of time, you know, running the same thing on multiple sites and checking it and just making sure that what we're providing is of the highest quality that we can get for teachers and not just framed in a way that's like you know, a lesson plan, but framed in a way that it's reaching the certain taxonomy level, it's reaching the certain amount of questions that need to be done and just finding little ways to improve our product to help teachers. I think if I create something and it only gave me two questions or three questions and I needed five, most of the time just little things like that make a huge difference for teachers because we need to save them time when time is of the essence and time is valuable for those teachers. So excellent.

Fonz Mendoza: 12:28

No, and that, like you said, you've kind of hit the nail on the head. I know that for sure on one of your LinkedIn posts. And if you haven't followed Thomas H, or even Thomas Thompson, too, on LinkedIn, please do, because they do provide and share just a lot of wonderful content and they're completely transparent about their app. And even, just like Thomas H I know you've put up a lot of posts too you know you still being in the classroom and, like you said, being there early, leaving there late and talking a little bit about you know the way teachers feel at the end of the year and everything that you go through. So that's one of the things that I feel is a little unique, actually a lot unique in the fact that you are still in the classroom while still being a lot easier for teachers to use, not just the tool but giving them great pedagogy. So, thomas T, I want to come back. Can I touch on that real quick? Yeah, of course.

Thomas Hummel: 13:35

It's not just me at this point. Right Like we, we are so lucky with our product to be where we're at that we spend one day a week literally going over feedback from our teachers and we get so much feedback about the quality of what we're doing and what we're putting out there that we spent that Thursday meeting. We'll sit there and we'll just go through all this feedback and then we'll go implement these things and then, if it's you know, we try to make sure that we're doing the best from the people that we're trying to serve. So it's not just me that's using this, but it's over 800,000 teachers at this point that have used this thing and it's like we really respect their professionalism and we really value their feedback. So it's not just a me thing. It's like this whole thing with community. It's like-.

Thomas Thompson: 14:20

Community makes doing the app much easier. There's the constant source of inspiration, ideas, and instead of turning away from them, especially at the critical moments, it's important to lean in and understand that they're coming from you. Even if the messaging is frustrated, it's coming from a place of professional frustration. They have a job they want to do well, and these tools were promised or given to them as a way to do that. And if they don't, then we're doing a disservice to a very important enterprise, which is public education.

Fonz Mendoza: 14:50

Yeah, Well, thomas Hage, kind of going back into this, this is a nice segue as far as getting that feedback, and, just like you mentioned, thomas Hage, I mean, you've got thousands upon thousands of users, not only here in the US, though, but I want to talk a little bit about this internationally, because that was a nice segue, because I was just thinking too. You know, there are several people that I have seen and followed that are using EduAID. You know, in Africa, they're using it in other countries, so I want to ask you you know and we'll start off with you, thomas T you know, as far as, like you mentioned, the feedback and the evidence that you receive from international users, you know, how have you taken that? How has that influenced your product? And also, especially, you know, with localized curricula, how has that been for you to adjust to that?

Thomas Thompson: 16:25

Yeah, I mean the adjustment period wasn't too difficult, right? We keep it pretty open in terms of what our tool was able to do. So when we focus on the particular pedagogical aspects of the tool, so whether it's retrieval practice, distributive practice, self-explanation, elaborative interrogation, whatever the specific method might be right, those methods are generalizable regardless of locality, regardless of country of origin. The main difference there comes in the particular content of what the instructor is teaching, not the method that they would use to teach it. Necessarily, the method should vary, though, depending on the context. I'll be clear about that. We leave it really open for the user to input that contextual information where they can upload a document with their curricular materials to use as the basis for a generation. If there's a particular standards database that they have to work from, we're able to ingest those as well. And of course, cedre is offered in multiple different languages. Now we have specific standards tools for US-based standards. I mean kind of our bias, given that we're developing in the US. So common core math, common core English, next generation science, things that we're looking at. Bringing in the IB curriculum is definitely an area of interest and importance as we're working with newer international schools.

Thomas Thompson: 17:40

But generally I mean the biggest gap is, of course, the ability to access the tool right. That in itself is the biggest barrier, not so much barriers within the tool. There are linguistic barriers. There are barriers in like sampling, for example, like the kind of things the AI will provide, as examples tend to be kind of US-based. That's not just an Eduate thing, that's a general AI phenomenon currently, like you know, the same thing would have happened if you were to use a school AI or magic school or any of these other players in foreign countries. If you're building on top of the foundation models developed in the US, using mostly English corpa, you'll run into the same issue. I mean. So the independent testing I think Hummel correct me if I'm wrong, was it Ken Sheldon who does this where he'll test a particular historical topic that, depending on the context, can be either framed in a US basis or framed in a few other different contextual bases as well, and usually the AI will default to the US examples in his prompting.

Thomas Thompson: 18:45

So I mean it's definitely a gap, something that you have to continue to work on. It is prompting, so I mean it's definitely a gap, something that you have to continue to work on. But for us, again focusing on the pedagogical moves, the methods being at that level, that certainly, I think, helps us kind of translate EduAid into other countries and around the world. But to the access piece, I mean we have the EduAid scholarship program where we just kind of give access to EduAid away for free to folks who otherwise might be able to get their hands on it or it's prohibitively expensive, whatever it might be, because we're coming from a perspective where we view education as a public good, as a foundational human right, and the methods and materials to support instruction, I mean they should just be as open as and accessible as the instruction itself.

Thomas Thompson: 19:32

Like, if you're locking those behind very strict paywalls, yeah, you got to keep the lights on, like that's one thing, but if you make it totally inaccessible, I mean I think it's a crisis that we see in research and science right now. A lot of the great papers are locked behind paywalls. Independent researchers are basically locked out. I mean, who's got $35 to drop on one research article or, you know, thousands of dollars for a collection? So I mean those gaps are always top of mind as we're building and trying to expand access to the tool.

Fonz Mendoza: 19:59

Yeah, no, absolutely Just kind of. Before I go back to Thomas H, you know talking about, you know paywalls. I mean even just myself having to do research and finding articles, and then all of a sudden it's like, hey, here's the link. And then all of a sudden it's like well, you got to pay this and you got to pay that. I was like excellent academia. You know I'm trying to get information to continue to grow and continue to do the research, and there it is, and but I get it.

Fonz Mendoza: 20:29

You know. You know, within the international schools and even here locally. I know that for a fact and I've heard many of my friends too as well say that they're very thankful for the work that you're doing in that. And so, thomas H, kind of going back on that too as well, in your experience, you know in the classroom too as well. You know being able to get that feedback from just international educators. You know what does that feel like. You know building something that is now not only in the hands of US teachers but also internationally. You know what are some of your big takeaways and how has that helped you continue to grow within EduAid and Edu altogether.

Thomas Hummel: 21:09

Yeah, I mean when we first started this Fonz, I think that anybody will be surprised at where this has gone. I mean the workspace flow that we've made right you see that almost everywhere now, which is crazy and all kinds of different products, and so we just feel really blessed to be able to bring this to teachers and all over the world. And, specifically, something that I'm super proud of is that there's a lot of teachers in the Kenya area of Africa that don't get especially like the rural part. They don't have a whole lot of access, and we've been able to tap in through LinkedIn or different places, different venues of social media and stuff. But we've been able to tap in through LinkedIn or different places, different venues of social media and stuff, but we've really connected with them. And we've guaranteed life subscriptions to the Million Teacher Movement in Africa, which spans across multiple countries. We've guaranteed life access to EduAid for that, and so you know, while we've only given away a few thousand accounts already, which is still a lot right, like, if you added up the numbers financially, it would be a ton of money for us but we are just so lucky to be in a spot where we can do the good that we set out to do and that it doesn't like prevent us from also maintaining the business that we have. And so, uh, things like the million teacher movement, things like our scholarship program, uh, it just it brings me so much joy to help teachers save time and to create higher quality lessons, because the ripple effect of that doing that good piece is like you don't know where that's gonna go, but you know that the ripple is there and that it's going to expand, and so it just really gets me.

Thomas Hummel: 22:52

I have imposter syndrome sometimes because I walk into my school in my cheap, crappy little Volkswagen car and yet my product's being used in Africa or being used in Vietnam you could go down the list In 120 different countries that day it's going to be used and it just it really makes me feel weird about myself in some regards, but it also gives me a sense of pride and, yeah, even more than that, like I now feel responsible, like I don't know if I had to and, thomas, I don't know if you feel that way, but we at least I do I feel responsible for doing the right thing in this space and that when you have teachers who are people that are just trying to do good and you kind of have them using that product.

Thomas Hummel: 23:43

There's a huge responsibility there To not. You know, we don't want to make them feel any way, but you know better about their job and that's it Like. We want them to feel energized, we want them to feel good about teaching and, at the end of the day, if people love teaching even more because of our product, we've done so much good in this world that you can't even wrap your head around pretty much.

Fonz Mendoza: 24:07

And that's excellent and you know that's something that is great, thomas, and I think that's something that is definitely you should be proud of. You know in that and I know imposter syndrome a lot of us deal with it, you know in that sense but just the fact, like I said, it's just a testament of the hard work and consistency that both of you have been able to do and bring since the very beginning. So I love that and you know, that's something that I really do appreciate from you all and the work that you're doing, because there's LinkedIn posts upon LinkedIn posts also the international teachers just stating how thankful they are to be able to have access to a tool, a platform like yours to be able to do what they do best and enhance that learning and be able to help their students continue to learn in that so I kind of yeah, go ahead.

Thomas Hummel: 25:53

I think that this comes out of the fact that thomas and I started teaching in a really low income, like hurting area, and we didn't you know, we didn't set out to like change the world right off the get-go, but we did set out to make a difference in the areas that need it the most. And that's why I think whenever things like that, like the million teacher movement, pops up in africa and we can support that, I think that that just resonates so much more with how we started this thing well, I kind of want to change the conversation over a little bit as and we'll come back to a couple of questions that I do want to ask especially you.

Fonz Mendoza: 26:27

You know a recent substack that Thomas Thompson pushed or, you know, pushed through I think it was today and so on that really caught my attention. But I want to ask you you know I just came back from Misty and I mean, really, it's AI is all the rage. You know there's so many platforms. I think my biggest takeaway I won't say what the platform platform was, but their spiel was. They kind of caught me in an aisle as I was just kind of walking and they're like hey, have you heard of our app? And I was like no, I haven't tell me a little bit more. And they're like well, you see, these apps over here they help the teachers before the lesson. These apps over here help the teachers after the lesson, but we help them during. And I'm like like, okay, tell me more. And he goes oh well, it's an app that you download and your teacher wears either the phone around their neck or is somehow mic'd to their phone and it really just kind of keeps those notes and again, I guess either offer suggestions or some kind of you know write up afterwards and so on, some kind of you know write up afterwards and so on. And to me I was like, well, what about student voice? And what, if there's you know that PII? Oh well, the teacher wears the mic. It shouldn't the students, you know, you shouldn't be able to hear the teacher voice, and so on. And so there's a lot, a lot of tools that are out there.

Fonz Mendoza: 27:44

Now, of course, with that, there's a lot of people that are kind of in the middle and try and be in the middle, like myself. There's also, of course, you've got, you know, people that are just really on the AI hype train. There's others that are still kind of wait and see. So there's people at different levels and, as we even saw, just the advocacy that has come up and the skepticism of AI and education, you know, as we see Microsoft and do this push, you know, with other platforms and, of course, aft, you know, giving this alarm of. You know teachers are here. We don't have to worry about getting AI being replaced by AI.

Fonz Mendoza: 28:25

How is that, you know, for you all, both as founders, as educators, as people that are trying to do good, how do you navigate that tension on the day to day? Do you just really lean into the hype or do you respond, you know, to that pushback, you know, in not necessarily pushing that pushing people back, but you know and maybe justback, you know, and not necessarily pushing that pushing people back, but you know and maybe just saying, okay, well, this is kind of that pushback that we get. How might we adjust? So I want to start off with you, thomas H first, and then we'll start. We'll go to Thomas T.

Thomas Hummel: 29:02

Thomas, maybe he should go first. I'm the unhinged one.

Fonz Mendoza: 29:05

Okay, all right, we'll let him go first.

Thomas Thompson: 29:07

First, I'm the unhinged one, okay alright, if I start, who knows where this is gonna end yeah, I'll begin by saying I think hype is the reason why the statement believe half of what you see and none of what you hear probably so salient. Ultimately, I worry in that I know teachers have been burned by educational technology on quite a few occasions. Historically right, the promise of personalization has been around since like 2008,. And it was going to be MOOCs that are going to lead to true personalized learning and supreme access and lack of a need for structured institutions and things like this. But ultimately, I worry that too much focus on AI will lose sight of how we should be designing these tools, which is an understanding, or at least a theory of mind, of how people actually learn, of how people actually teach, of how people actually develop, and that if your tool does not in some meaningful way interact with one of these three domains, it's like what's the purpose of the tool at that level? It's like the tech being kind of inserted in as a substitution of something you already do. It might not be, it's not good enough at that point, like the technology should not just be merely substituting something you could already do, but hey, it's a new platform. It should like in some meaningful way interface with what you do on a day-to-day basis.

Thomas Thompson: 30:32

So we try to avoid the hype. We kind of have a strict rule internally where we try to avoid like using like the buzzwords in conversation, because it's just kind of easy to like hide what you really think behind some of those terms. So we just try to speak as simply and precisely as possible. I mean just off, pretty thorough and delicate and how you kind of phrase things, but in general it's just like get to the base of the problem. And the base of the problem is okay, you want to assist teachers at the level of planning, so maybe they're slightly more efficient, feel less pressure, burnout, these kinds of things, but more. Finally, more crucially, we want to bridge that gap between research and practice and education. With a high translation cost of trying to be a highly effective teacher, trying to translate kind of just rolls of thumb, like space your practice, bring in new concepts into practice. But like when? When to space? When do I bring in new concepts?

Thomas Thompson: 31:27

Generative AI has an incredible amount of promise there, but it's not the everything tool Thinking you can put students in front of AI tutors and it's going to solve education. I'm not really sure that's where we should be going. One reason is, I think a lot of technologists discount the embodied human factors that are important for teaching and learning. I mean, why does a lot of in-person instruction work?

Thomas Thompson: 31:53

Humans have a tendency towards conformity, I think, in general.

Thomas Thompson: 31:58

So when you're working with a group of other students, your peers and a mentor figure in the classroom, there's this pressure to conform right and our kind of natural hardwiring kind of goes for that right.

Thomas Thompson: 32:08

But if you unmoor us from that group environment where we're interacting with our peers and interacting with the authority figure, and I'm just sitting in my room on a computer talking to an AI chatbot, where's that pressure, where's the desire, where's the motivation, where's the engagement? I mean, those are all pieces that I think are generally lacking and why we see lackluster returns from AI tutoring systems presently.

Thomas Thompson: 32:30

It's really difficult to do that, especially when you can say IDK three times and the AI tutor just gives you the answer and it's like well, okay, so what's the theory of learning there? Are we suggesting that it's just exposure to correct answers? No, not quite. So it's like what's the purpose of the AI intervention? What is the purpose of the tool, what are the unique affordances, what are its boundaries and how do you adopt that into your unique context? And if you don't have answers to those questions, as a developer, you probably question your motives. That might have been strongly worded, but I figured if I come out strong maybe Hummel will help bring it down, or he's just going to keep us climbing here. I don't know.

Fonz Mendoza: 33:06

Yeah, I don't know. Maybe that might have calmed him a bit. But, as always, I'm definitely very interested in, thomas H, what you have to say about this. I mean, you've seen the space. I know you're very active on LinkedIn and all social media.

Thomas Hummel: 33:28

And so you see it, all I out of alpha school, where their kids all scored in the top two percent of the state on the state testing. And if you don't have an education background, why would you not send your kids there? You know what I mean. Why would you not give them the opportunity to be in the top two percent like everybody else that has gone to that school? And so, while I think that you know that is not real for everybody and I spend most of my time as a teacher trying to engage and motivate my students rather than, you know, necessarily diving into the curriculum all the time and actually learning new things, right Like, there's a huge part of my job. That is the engagement piece, that is the motivating piece that a chatbot can never do and that a student who is not motivated will never get anything out of. But there is a select bit of students who are highly motivated, whose parents are sending them to schools like the Alpha School and those other things and they're performing super well. And I get really worried, fawns is that. I think last time we talked about this there wasn't any data out on the, on the alpha school testing and stuff like that, and I was like, oh, who knows if you put your kids in front of a chat bot and all this stuff. But when they have a really good performance, like those kids did this last year, I do think it puts public education on a pretty shaky ground sometimes Just because we're not getting great results all across the nation from our schools. In fact, we're getting subpar results across the nation from our schools, and so I don't really know what the answer is. I don't have an answer, but I do.

Thomas Hummel: 35:12

I do know that you know I have a son. We are looking at new areas to move because the school district at which I teach is not that great. It's a five out of ten on zillow, uh, and the only thing I'm looking at when I go to a new school is a 10 out of 10 school. When I'm looking at new houses, it's for a 10 out of 10 school, and I'm not the only one that's like that in the world and people move to new areas based on the quality of the school and trying to do what's best for their kid. And so I don't know.

Thomas Hummel: 35:45

As a teacher, I'll tell you right now I would never put a chatbot in front of my student, because I know it's a probabilistic model and that if it makes a mistake which it will because of probability that I would be on the hook for that. But as a parent, fonz, if I have an opportunity to send my kids to a school where everybody's scoring in the top 2% and it doesn't cost me anything extra for X, y and Z reasons, what are you going to do? And, of course, you're going to choose what's what you think is going to give your kid the best results. And so I get really worried that we've pushed some subpar tools into public education. And here we are with some private schools that are doing a great job at getting their students to perform.

Thomas Hummel: 36:30

I'm not sure that the conversation, uh, doesn't skew in that direction here in the next few years. I'm not, you know. I mean, I believe in teachers. I think teachers are the best people on earth, I think they make the biggest impact you could go down the list but that's not how our society feels about teachers and that's certainly not how our society feels about education. And I get worried whenever chatbot based schools are having super great results and what that means for education as a whole, what that means for public schools, what that means for people in low-income areas. Everything that I've been working towards and I think last time I had a really like cynical view on this perspective like, uh, you know, chatbots not good. Putting Abraham Lincoln in front of students is a lie if it's a chatbot and all these things, which I still believe in. But some of the results that are coming out from people are insane and, um, it makes you think. It certainly makes you stand back and think about what this means for education yeah, no, that makes perfect sense.

Fonz Mendoza: 37:31

I know, when I was researching alpha school because there's one here locally in my area that's about an hour and a half away, which is very in the same city now that uh, the star base is for, uh, you know, uh, the rocket launches and everything. So I'm pretty sure that that'll be the school that'll continue to grow, especially with what they charge with tuition. But before and this was before they got all the hype I know that they had their curriculum up on the website and then all of a sudden it came down. But the last time I checked I know that they were using IXL for math, which is really just. You know, you go in there, students can go select a specific skill and they just kind of sit there and practice the skill. I don't know what else they added. I know for the high school they used to use some of the Play-Doh software, which is really like credit recovery software that they would use. But now you know, it's very interesting to see what it is that they would use and I may have to take them up on an offer on a tour that they offered me. Take them up on an offer on a tour that they offered me. So just to kind of see what it's all about, and especially the local one here, and see like, as you said, you know there are some, you know it's coming out, there's data that's coming out. As far as that is concerned, my thing is is always just even within a school district where I work at, it's always the Southside kids have more access to things outside of school. So you know the outside tutors and things of that sort, and it always was that they would do better because they would have that access. Or you know a parent at home where the Northside kids it was, they didn't have that support at home, and so I know that that plays into a role of those things. But one of the things, and one of the things too, though, is that I feel like every student can learn. You know it's not. I just don't like the fact that they say, well, you know it's, it's the Northside kids, it's expected. No, you know we got to raise those standards too. But anyway, that's a whole other conversation.

Fonz Mendoza: 39:23

But kind of talking back and talking about, you know, chatbots and talking about LLMs, I know, thomas T, you posted something on LinkedIn. It was actually today. You know you were revisiting you know taxonomy here. Let me get the actual title of that. It says Revisiting a Taxonomy of LLMs for Education Application. So and I know you wrote a really nice post there, very descriptive You've got you know talking about domains and subdomains and things of that sort. So I want to ask you you know, in writing this and revisiting this, you know like and I love the subtitle it says a taxonomy is a picture of the thing, a particular form. Tell me a little bit about your thought process as far as writing this sub stack and the information that you shared here.

Thomas Thompson: 40:10

So I thought that was pretty insightful as writing this sub stack and the information that you shared here. So I thought that was pretty insightful. Yeah, so it's essentially just taking a look at the. It's like 20 authors on this paper Wong is the head author 2024,. The paper is called Large Language Models for Education a Survey and Outlook, and they proposed essentially a taxonomy of different instructional implications of LLMs. You've probably seen it circulated all over the place. Even if you don't know listeners, if you don't know what I'm talking about, you've probably seen the chart.

Thomas Thompson: 40:37

It's like academic research, study, assisting teach, assisting adaptive learning tries to essentially catalog all the different domains of large language models, and I think the reason why the title is what it is is that I mean, like all taxonomies, it's a very particular picture of education. It's a way of looking at teaching and learning that centers on, in this case, performance as the sole benchmark of quality. So, like teaching and learning, in this taxonomy it consists of like discrete, automatable units like question solving, error correction, material creation. I don't think any teacher would describe their job as just question solving, error correction and materials creation. There's much more to it. Right, it doesn't capture the full grammar of educational activities. It doesn't capture the lived context in which those activities gain meaning, which I think is a particularly unique boundary for large language models in that while they're doing this kind of broad statistical modeling of language, they don't have kind of the context in which parts of language gain meaning in context, right. So some certain words and phrases might mean different things to teachers than it would to say, like someone who is not in the field. For example, the word taxonomy itself right for a teacher it evokes ideas of like bloom's taxonomy or um marzona's taxonomy. But if you say taxonomy to um a biologist, right, they might think of like the taxonomy of different animals, right, we're almost. For example, that's the taxonomy of creatures, biological things. Hummel, was that? I muddled through that, okay, I had a science reference and I want to make sure it's only a bonehead. So, like in general, I think it's not a critique of the paper. I think they did an admirable job with what they did. But I think it shows something that the field itself views education.

Thomas Thompson: 42:33

When I say the field itself, right, the broad swath of AI research, ai tooling provided to teachers very much treats teaching as this kind of set of tasks that can be almost automated away, so tools for solving problems, generating questions, creating materials, but those actions themselves they don't carry meaning just because you did them right. They carry meaning in how you deploy them. A good question is only really a good question when it engages that student in meaning making in the classroom At the proper time. A follow-up question at the proper time A follow-up question only gains meaning when you ask that follow-up question again at the proper time, at the proper place to the right student. That's when that question gains meaning, because otherwise it's just sitting around and not really doing anything. And I worry about the general. The taxonomy is technically accurate. I think these tools are out there. There are tools for question solving and question creation, but that's not what's important. Necessarily the drafting of the materials are. But it's why you ask the questions how we correct students when we guide students, what it means for something to be understood.

Thomas Thompson: 43:40

Large language model has no conception of any of these things because it has no conception of anything.

Thomas Thompson: 43:45

So when you're working with an AI, you shouldn't think of it as a thought partner. It's not really that. What you're doing is you're playing a language game with a computer and you're trying to I'd say trick, but you're not really tricking it, because it doesn't have intentionality either. What you're trying to do is just select your words carefully so you put it in this language game, so it repeats back language that looks like high quality instruction. It doesn't understand high quality instruction, but we can trick it with language such that what it returns appears to be that Now, that can be hollow, that can be thin, that can be factually inaccurate if you're not taking proper precautions. But even if you take quote unquote proper precautions and I can dive into what those are you're still not going to completely eliminate hallucinations from AI responses. You can't. They're in a form of the system. They're a unique, emergent property of the probabilistic mapping of language in response to inputs. You will always have some level of hallucination.

Thomas Hummel: 44:41

There's no the teacher's expertise. There is no other thing that can replace that, and that's what we build our system on.

Fonz Mendoza: 44:52

Yeah, no and that's something, oh, and I kind of wanted to add a little bit to what you're saying. I know it came up a little bit in the chat a while back that you were talking about, like you know, chatbots. And you know, if you put IDK, idk, idk, of course are we talking about, you know, just that exposure to the right answers and just correcting. You know, are we missing out on so many more things? And obviously you've mentioned a lot of things you know and, like Thomas H, you just said right now that you know there are some things that the AI cannot replace that teachers can do, as opposed to, like you mentioned, very probabilistic answers.

Fonz Mendoza: 45:28

And I know, back in episode 324, I believe, I had Charlie Myers who was on here and said you know, it's pretty much just a data set, like in a matrix, that you know you're putting in an answer and then you know it's just going to give you something back. You know it's a mathematical equation, but the way that he said it and I don't know how you think about this too but he said you know, if we were being completely honest, that when we are putting a chatbot in front of a student and it said, hey, I'm just a chatbot. I have no context about you, I don't know anything about you, but you're giving me this question and I'm going to give you a question without you know whatever it is that I know and I can crank out. You know, is this really what you're putting in front of your students and what is your thought process in doing that? You know. So I think that that's something that we need to think about.

Fonz Mendoza: 46:17

As I know, thomas H you mentioned it with a couple of platforms that may say, hey, you know, go ahead and talk to Abraham Lincoln, but how well is that information going to come in? How accurate is it going to be, and is there still room for the teacher to be able to go ahead and make any corrections and make sure that they vet the information properly? And so those are just kind of the things that I think about, too, when students are have access to, you know, an LLM, whether it's a persona that they're talking to, historical figure, or if it's just the LLM itself. So I want to ask you, you know what are some of the challenges? Thomas H, I'll go with you, like this past year and just this past year, we'll focus on this, because I know it's been a long road, but in this past year, what have been some of the major challenges that you've seen within your school? You know as far as teachers using AI within their classrooms.

Thomas Hummel: 47:10

Yeah, the biggest challenge is that we don't have time to even learn AI. I went this whole year. I planned for an eighth grade class that never even hired an eighth grade teacher, so we just had rotating subs the entire year, and that's just the reality of most schools. I think like 70 percent of schools have a vacancy. That's available and it's hard to get to a spot where you're thriving if you're worried about surviving, and that's where most schools are at, most public schools are at right now.

Thomas Hummel: 47:37

So my school has done zero AI policy. Cbs tried to come in and film us and like film me and Thomas whenever we were first started with EduAid me and Thomas whenever we were first started with EduAid and they denied CBS from coming in and doing an interview because they were so scared about the reputation of AI and what that means for our local community and things. And so I'm on our AI committee. We've issued some guidance where now every single assignment, a teacher has to dictate the amount of AI that the student is allowed to use on it. I'm not sure that that necessarily covers everything, but it does start to frame the world. It doesn't allow us to hide from the fact that this technology is here. So maybe, if it's an essay, I'll tell my students this is a five. You cannot use any AI on it at all. If you do, that would be considered cheating or something like that. That's the idea with the guidelines of the ai. But uh, my school is so far behind and fawns.

Thomas Hummel: 48:37

I'll even tell you this we just did a maryland summit over outside of dc and baltimore, and I was the only person from my school district to attend the summit. And not only that, I was one of three people from the entire general area in which we live that attended the summit. And not only that, I was one of three people from the entire general area in which we live that attended the summit. And so, to me, I'm a big believer that this is going to continue to create this digital divide and it's only going to amplify it because, like, people aren't even like and I'm not trying to be a hater here but like, the school districts where I live don't even care.

Thomas Hummel: 49:09

They don't even care to do what's best for the students, they don't even care about this information. They're just trying to hire enough teachers to staff their building and that's their number one priority. So you know where I'm from and where I'm dealing with it like on a personal level. Who knows? I mean, we have it's the Wild West still of AI and it's year three, so there's no plans in my school district at all to guide or to do anything. In fact, they actually bought Turnitin and I had to throw a huge fit because nobody even read any of the data about how those things work, whether they can actually identify AI or anything like that, and so you know, I live in that kind of system and there's many like that out there.

Fonz Mendoza: 49:55

Yeah, you know and it's very interesting just to kind of go back to that that you mentioned that there are many schools that really, at this point, yes, the conversations are kind of being had, there's that summer slide, but you know what, now that I'm coming back, it's like I got to worry to make sure that I do have a teacher in a classroom and so on, and so that's where those priorities are. Now my thing is, and I'm going to ask you this and then I kind of want to go back. We'll go back into some of the great updates and new things that you're bringing out to EDU8. As founders, you know, and getting just an honest answer from you, you know, being at ISTE and seeing, you know, kind of like the big five companies that are out there slowly, that are that were at ISTE, that are kind of slowly just being a predominant name or very well-known name as a founder, you know, and as much effort as they put into this, sometimes I feel like, you know, are they a little bit out of touch and think that this is a perfect utopia, that everybody should have access to AI, and they really don't consider, you know, what is happening here, like you described, thomas H, and so I kind of want to know from you, you know, as EduAID founders, what are your thoughts here?

Fonz Mendoza: 51:07

You know, as, as EduAID founders, what are your thoughts here? You know, because, again, I see that people are all in and and in in our bubble and the bubble that I was in this last weekend, I feel like everybody's like no, we all have it, we all have it, everybody should have it, everybody should be using it, everybody should have access. And I'm like do you not know that other school districts have other issues and bigger problems, and you know teacher shortages and all of that, but the push is go, go, go, go, go, ai, ai. So I want to ask you how do you guys keep your feet grounded, because I feel like you guys are very well grounded, you know, and, kind of, because of Thomas H, you're still in the classroom. So, thomas T, I'll go with you. How does that work for you both? What do you see? And how do you guys just kind of, you know, understand that man, we ourselves, as founders are, have some barriers to overcome to make sure that we can help teachers?

Thomas Thompson: 52:04

yeah, I mean one area where we're particularly lucky is that thomas humble is obstinate in his desire to stay in the classroom, like will not come on the edu-A full time, despite the pleas for more assistance. But I'm kidding, he likes to stay in the classroom and we respect this decision precisely because one he sees the application in action. It's one thing to gather feedback. It's one thing to have users send you know videos of their usage of the tool to you. It's it's one thing to do studies, and but if you I mean it's something that I even find myself missing now that I'm no longer in the classroom was like stepping into that building in the morning and working with students and like maybe I'm getting too far away into thinking about like philosophy of education and the science of learning and things like this, because on the day, on day to day, it's like how much was that crossing my mind while I was in the classroom.

Thomas Thompson: 53:00

You know, how much was um, I don't know, just to pick out some random like uh tech tool platforms that were around, like how much was Kealo, or or, or nuzella or, um, I don't know, canva at the top of my mind on, I didn't, the tool was a means to an end, right? I'm concerned about my student behaviors. I'm concerned about my classroom management. I'm concerned about reaching the, the 25 students in front of me. I'm concerned that when I say something, I think an action as a teacher that's going to set off 25 minds in different reactions which will then bounce off of each other and cause even more reactions like teaching is a very messy and chaotic thing. I mean, my classroom is really well run.

Thomas Thompson: 53:42

I don't want to sound like I had, like was struggling to manage my classroom, like I had routines and structures from day one and like had that down, but what I'm saying is it's very easy if you are not in the classroom to be removed from the day-to-day struggle and context of the teacher. And if you were removed from the day-to-day context, that the means of life as a teacher. You don't have that same grammar, you're not speaking the same language, so to speak. You're kind of talking past each other, which is very common, I think, in think, in the world today. So it's like technologists, even most well-intentioned individuals, have this kind of just grammatical gap from the daily experience of the educator.

Thomas Thompson: 54:20

And that's very tough. I mean, that's something that you're going to see reflected in AI outputs as well. I mean the day-to-day interactions between a teacher and student. They're not documented. I mean, there are plenty of blogs out there that maybe talk about this and it might be in the training data, but it's not a thing that is so prominent and so discernible. Also, learning is, for all intents and purposes, invisible. It's not something that we can see, it's not something that you can point to and like it happens internally in the student's mind, mind.

Thomas Thompson: 54:50

So we have all these proxies that take place for it, right? Um, some good, some not so good. Like when I first started teaching, uh, the school I was teaching at with hummel admittedly had terrible proxies. It's like, did you have your learning objective and success criteria on the board and did you refer to them? Like, well, this is a proxy for quality, but how does this in any way relate to real and meaningful learning on the part of the student? It doesn't.

Thomas Thompson: 55:13

So it's like I worry about the proxies taken by those who are not in the classroom. I worry about kind of having that contextual barrier where you're not really speaking the same language. I also worry that education is incredibly faddish, right, we like to repackage things and say it's something brand new. It's like okay, discovery learning, inquiry-based learning, self-guided learning, like all of these things are essentially the same thing, just like some slight PR changes. It's like, so, even at that level, like we can't even get on the same page of what we're talking about from one school to the next or one classroom to the next. What one of what we're talking about? From one school to the next or one classroom to the next, what one teacher might call?

Thomas Thompson: 55:53

a specific method another teacher will call another. Sorry, there's a terrible storm outside. I'm getting a lot of background noise. So I mean I said a lot there.

Thomas Thompson: 56:03

If I had to like summarize this down to like the prime concerns, it's like very easy to find yourself in your own kind of language game, your own bubble, so to speak, and very easy to then like assume you're talking about the same thing as other folks, just to realize that you're that you're not right.

Thomas Thompson: 56:21

That's a great tip about marriage as well. It's not the fights that you have, it's when you think you're in agreement, without actually ever having the conversation to make sure that you are. You're just assuming the other person has the same expectations, needs, wants and desires, and it's like the needs and wants and desires and theory of mind of a technologist will not be the same as a teacher. So it also helps that we don't live in a tech hub either. Like I live in Annapolis, maryland. I go to the coffee shop by St John College, I talk to teachers. I'm very much, my feet are on the ground and kind of removed from the conference scene. So when I go to something like an ISTE or ASUGSB, it's like whoa, this is a whole new world from what I'm accustomed to in Maryland.

Fonz Mendoza: 57:02

And Thomas H. I'll go with you too because I want to get your feedback. I know being said that you were the only one in your school, I mean, and I went to ISTE this year and it was my second ISTE, but this year I got to participate a little bit more. But it just seems like sometimes I think, like man, like this is just a bubble that's here and we kind of lose all sense and notion of reality of how things can really be at other school districts. So I want to ask you that you know how do you keep your feet ground? Obviously, I think it's just because of the experience that you're still there in the classroom.

Thomas Hummel: 57:35

But tell me your thoughts and you know it's super weird, because tech is an abundance industry where they just make tons of money, have tons of money, have all kinds of funding, and you know, money is never an issue with tech, but then education money is always an issue. Money is never an issue with tech, but then education money is always an issue, and it's a scarcity industry. And so it's funny how, you know, we see the difference between these two things, and the bridge between those two could not be any further. Their product would be totally different than what it actually is, because you would have a better understanding of what it actually means to be grounded in the classroom and providing instruction, being forward, thinking about it Right, like I can't just teach a class on Wednesday and not know where that's going on Thursday or Friday, and those kind of things. Like just that whole mindset is totally missed in education. Or is it missed in the ed tech department of education? And there's just if you think about where we've been for the last 15 years, we've only seen a decrease in the quality of our education and the outcomes of our students. And yet everybody who has a tech product tells you that it's the best thing that's ever come to be and it's going to save all the problems, but the general trend of education is heading in the complete opposite direction.

Thomas Hummel: 58:55

And so that goes to tell me that either people are a uh, you know, they believe their products and they believe that they can solve the world's problems, or, b that they're lying and it's just disingenuous and that they're trying to make money off the backs of teachers and students and you know I don't want to put that on anybody, but that's the reality of it is that if you're going to make these promises and you don't keep them, there are consequences to it. And I'll give you one here is that the Gallup poll that just came out said that teachers are saving six hours a week with AI, but when all these products came out, it was 10 plus hours a week. And so my challenge to these people and to anybody thinking about this serious if they come up 40 percent short on the student department 40 percent they come up 40 percent on their expectations or their guarantees or their promises short. Are you OK with that, with that happening to a student? I don't know why we're OK with that happening to teachers, and it just doesn't make sense. And if we're not going to do what's best for teachers with tech, then you truly don't care about the students either. And that's really concerning um, and I think that's how we stay grounded.

Thomas Hummel: 1:00:06

Honestly, it's like we never the framing and intentionality. We've never said that. We never said this is going to save you xyz. We just said it's going to save you time and create higher quality lessons. And that's what all of our users always say, um, and so it's really interesting, but there's no repercussions for it, fawn. So you know, you could go out there with your own ed tech company say you're going to make every student get 100. Everybody buys it, and that doesn't come true. There's no repercussions to it at all, because the thing that's happened with the tech department of educational technology is that there's so much money poured into the growth of these companies, where growth is the only thing that matters, but the quality does not seem to follow that growth and, if anything, that's just going to continue us on the trend of the last 15 years, and I think that's a shame for AI, because this is the most revolutionary technology that's ever come about in my lifetime and for us to just, you know, continue with false claims or marketing schemes. It's just, it's really upsetting sometimes.

Thomas Thompson: 1:01:12

I mean it doesn't help that the whole enterprise of teaching and learning is incredibly complex and messy and how that process works doesn't map on neatly to any one tool or application. So when you frame an application or tool as a general solution to a lot of problems it becomes disingenuous in that there are no general solutions to all of the problems in teaching. There are particular contextual solutions based on the particular group of students in front of you or the particular kind of context of the school that you're working in, and it's hard to generalize that. We love to systematize and generalize it and kind of have these broad taxonomies or frameworks for kind of viewing everything through that lens, and those lenses run into more trouble than they're worth. Honestly, every tool should be like it's useful in these particular contexts and that should be a fine claim to make, but it seems it's not the claim that leads to hype and growth, so it's hard to claim it all.

Thomas Hummel: 1:02:13

It's hard, though, because the whole ecosystem of ed tech, right. Where's the governing body that is checking the quality of magic schools, tools, eduades, brisk, diff it? There is none, and the only ones that that you do, you have to pay to get, have them do that, and so, right, it's like there isn't an honest perspective on ed tech that puts it in front of the educators, um, and I think that that's wrong.

Thomas Thompson: 1:02:39

So I mean the question also comes around what are the measurement criteria themselves? Like? It's okay, so you record time saving, but it was like time saving to to what it time-saving in that a novice teacher is bypassing the hard cognitive work of doing and planning instruction. Are they losing intentionality? I mean, this is something that we also need to consider If we're worried about skills loss from over-reliance on AI at the student level. We need to stop pretending that adults also don't have brains that react to stimuli, and not the same way as students, obviously, but in dynamic and interesting ways that it's not immediately apparent. It's like OK, so if you kind of outsource your upper cognitive functioning in terms of lesson planning and instructional design, maybe your product, you have the product, yet state you have the lesson, you have the materials. Product, you have the product, the at stake. Like you have the lesson, you have the materials.

Thomas Thompson: 1:03:35

But if I was, you can envision a study where you have let's take 100 teachers, right, you put 50 of them in the control group. They're just doing straight lesson planning, human to human, maybe collaborative planning, they're just planning in a vacuum with traditional materials. Um, maybe give another one, another teacher, just access to basic search functionality. Another group and then your other group would be teachers using generative AI tools. If you were to say you need to return x, y and z materials, you specify it. I want a lesson plan. I want the materials for instruction to go with it.

Thomas Thompson: 1:04:08

Once you have all those materials, if you were to ask each one of those teachers in those groups to explain their lesson to you, which group do you think would be able to do that best? And is it more important than that we create materials of instruction or that teachers still have that level of explainability where they understand at the content level, at the pedagogical level, what it is that they're doing, why they're doing it and when it's appropriate to augment it and to change it they're doing, why they're doing it and when it's appropriate to augment it and to change it. Over-reliance, I think, will always be an issue. Verification and prompting, I mean all of these kind of converge, maybe at the worst time too, with educational outcomes being at kind of historical lows. Maybe they're bouncing back from the worst parts of COVID, but still a lot of concerns out the open there?

Fonz Mendoza: 1:04:52

Yeah, no, most definitely, I think, you guys hit still a lot of concerns out in the open there.

Fonz Mendoza: 1:04:54

Yeah, no, most definitely. I think you guys hit on a lot of great things, and one thing that I will say, and just the fact that you guys are just so well-grounded really, we don't see you at the ISTEs, we don't see you at TCEAs and we don't see you in all that but just the fact that you're still very well known and being very well recognized for the work that you're doing and because of the help that you bring to others, and just the pedagogy behind this. It's not just tech first and that's one thing that I really enjoy and speaking with you all that it's not about the tech first. It's what can I do for the teacher first, help them, like you said, having those levels of explainability, not being too over-reliant, but just reliant enough to where they can enhance what they are already doing, still be able to work with the students and still be able to share all those great things with them. So that's something that's huge there.

Fonz Mendoza: 1:05:45

So, as we kind of start wrapping up, though, before I want to talk about some of the newer updates, and I know that I've been seeing a lot of that on social media as well. So we'll go ahead and start with Thomas H. Tell me a little bit about through that teacher lens and mindset. You know what are some of the updates there that the educators should be thrilled about that have come out through on your platform.

Thomas Hummel: 1:06:08

Yeah. So I don't know if Thomas Thompson would frame it this way, but I'm going to frame it this way. It's that we've done a good job at enhancing our graphic organizers and our games and these are things that teachers typically would go to Teachers Pay Teachers for because somebody else has done it at a certain quality or it's going to save you time or X, y, z. But we believe that our prompting and the quality in which we're putting out for those things is better than, if not comparable to, the best teacher pay teacher stuff. And we're doing it obviously at a fraction or no cost and I'm really, really excited about that. It's like, how can we allow teachers to create content that is specific for those students, specific for lessons, and that is reaching those deeper goals or just reaching the goals of the lesson or the standard? So super stoked about those two things the graphic organizers and the games.

Thomas Hummel: 1:07:03

There's this game we have. It's tic-tac-toe. Obviously, everybody knows how to play it, but I'm so excited to get my students doing it as a review whereas I'm going to give them questions. I've already started making stuff for the next year, like on cells and stuff like that's how I start the year but like instead of me doing like a five question review, I'm going to give them their own, like them and a partner their own separate tic-tac-toe game with like all the nine spaces with review questions and stuff. Like I cannot wait to see how I can start to gamify my lessons and just make them that much more engaging, rather than I want to take out all of the me in the front of the classroom and put it on the students and the partners and like. That's where I'm going with it this year and I think that Eduway is going to allow me to do that excellent Thomas, thomas T, how about yourself?

Fonz Mendoza: 1:07:46

tell me about all that excitement?

Thomas Thompson: 1:07:49

yeah, I mean, basically I've been sitting on this binder. This is mr claire's graphic organizers. I picked up my senior year of high school when I first started thinking about teaching. It's like when I first launched eduator, like these graphic organizers. I use them almost every day in the classroom, some form of them right, being able to lay out materials in a very visual, structured way.

Thomas Thompson: 1:08:12

When gendered of ai first came out, it was the streaming walls of text, but that got old pretty quick. So we moved into the structured outputs, graphic organizers particularly. They were echoing each other. Just because we're excited about it, we just put it out. But one thing to note on those. It's like here's one version of Mr Clare's change analysis worksheet but then like here's another version of it, which is the few slight alterations and tweaks. Here's another version of it. Right, there were always different versions of those same graphic organizers floating around his class, depending on the group, depending on the particulars of the context of the students.

Thomas Thompson: 1:08:49

So we built these such that there's a bunch of these like one-click toggles where you can add a collaboration activity to the beginning of the Venn diagram. Or maybe you have a Venn diagram, you add a third circle, it will just kind of automatically refactor itself based on your content, that you've input, but like they'll do it dynamically, so it's all one-click differentiation, all simple toggles. You can add, you know, the retrieval question set to your mark in the text exercise. Or you can change it to a 3-2-1 for writing prep, where you're putting out three vocabulary words that you didn't understand, two sentences. You would rewrite what the central claim was. Very fast, differentiation of multiple copies of materials and like a fraction of the time it would take me to create one beforehand would have been very powerful.

Thomas Thompson: 1:09:37

When I was in the Kotak classroom working with, you know, 15 students with IEPs, and I needed to do a lot of that differentiation work. I mean, it's no wonder that EduAid started that year when I was doing all of that work right, trying to do the differentiation piece. So that's what got me really excited about organizers work, right, you're trying to do the differentiation piece. So that's what got me really excited about organizers, the community response. We couldn't be happier with it, a lot of excitement and interest.

Thomas Thompson: 1:09:59

And then I mean our roadmap for the next few months has been totally dictated by the community, right? Folks coming online saying I love the organizers, but let's see some argument maps, let's see flow charts, let's see storyboards, uh, analogy diagrams, the cornell note-taking formats, concept maps and so on. So it's like now we have our playful like we tested the, uh, the general idea and, yes, teachers, like the um graphic organizers, won't interact with them, so we'll continue to build it out. And then I mean back-end stuff that teachers can't see. Right, these new evaluator tools that we have our hands on being able to really like on a very fine-tuned level, get a look at what our outputs are and how we can tweak them and how we can continue to improve the end output on EduAid is also very exciting.

Thomas Hummel: 1:10:44

It's fun.

Thomas Thompson: 1:10:45

Like what else. I get to wake up in the morning, I get to talk to other educators, folks working in education they're educators, folks working in education. I get to do research, I get to do experiments. It's truly a blessing.

Fonz Mendoza: 1:10:54

That's fantastic, it's stressful sometimes.

Fonz Mendoza: 1:10:57

Yeah, no, but it's fantastic the work that you're doing and just to continue to do that. And, again, the way that you put community first too. I mean I know that there are many other platforms out there that always say, yeah, community first, and I know to some extent extent, but just the fact that you guys really do do this and it's community first and you really take that into account. And I know thomas h being at the school too, I'm sure he hears it from his teachers like, hey, how about trying to add a little bit of this or a little bit of that or something? I mean, it's not always that you get to work with a co-founder of an ai platform and then you can give a suggestion right then and there, and, and that's something that's fantastic. So that's huge. But, gentlemen, thank you so much. I really appreciate you being on the show. Thank you so much. Also, from the bottom of my heart, my sincerest thanks for being just an amazing supporter of my EdTech life and the work that we're doing here. Because, again, if it wasn't for platforms like yourself and just not just platforms, but just humans like yourself, yourself and just not just platforms, but just humans like yourself, human beings that I consider friends like yourself. Thomas Hummel, thomas Thompson, thank you so much for everything that you've done for this show and just that we continue to bring these great conversations. So I really appreciate everything that you're doing and for all our listeners. Please make sure that you follow these fine gentlemen on LinkedIn. I promise you they always do some great posts. But please make sure that you check out EduAid also as well, and of course, those links will be there in the show notes.

Fonz Mendoza: 1:12:18

But before we wrap up, I know we always end the show with these last couple of questions and it's interesting to hear now from our four-time guest. I know every appearance he's had a different answer. Thomas H2, I don't know. I'm always anxious to hear your answers to these questions, so we'll go ahead and start with Thomas H first. This first one. As we know, every superhero has a weakness, so Kryptonite was Superman's weakness. So I want to ask you right now, in the current state of AI or it could be in education in general, it could be either one or both what would you say is your current edu kryptonite?

Thomas Hummel: 1:12:57

Yeah, I would say just, you know the fact that I'm still a teacher. I just think that this one hits home a little bit. But just trusting in the teachers as professionals, I think that that's something that's been taken away from us for a trend for a while, and I think I see that in the tech as well been taken away from us for a trend for a while, and I think I see that in the tech as well coming through is we just need to trust teachers in being the professionals and if you take you know, if you take the judgment of teachers away from them, that is only going to hurt education. And if you take the decision making away from the people that know the students the best, I think that that's bad for education. So I would say that that's my kry kryptonite is Just keep teachers with their power, and I think that's a good thing.

Fonz Mendoza: 1:13:36

Excellent, good answer, thomas.

Thomas Hummel: 1:13:45

T what would your edu-kryptonite be? Currently, You're muted.

Thomas Thompson: 1:13:48

I was trying to block out the storm. Maybe kryptonite might be the wrong word, but it's the thing. That's definitely a gap and I'm working really hard to get a sense of how we fill it, which is, we have all these general heuristics for how to do teaching well, space your practice and accept your problems, these kinds of things. How do you translate that into precise kind of adaptive systems that you can put out in front of teachers? So it's like I'm going to sound like a broken record here. Retrieval practice, interleaving, spacing how do you get those to interact dynamically and not just independently? I'm also just mimicking Carl Hendrick. You should go subscribe to his substack. The Learning Dispatch Him. Exploring the science of learning is a constant source of inspiration on our side. But yeah, how do you translate that? The problem that we started off trying to solve?

Fonz Mendoza: 1:14:37

is the problem that we're still wrestling with? Excellent, all right, great answer. Now I'm going to start with you, thomas t. What if you could have a billboard with anything on it? What would it be and why?

Thomas Thompson: 1:14:48

um, I've had other answers that were a little pedantic, so let's go with something a little more fun. Um, hmm, maybe I'll just go with the quote I pulled for that sub stack I put out, which is uh, a picture held us captive and we could not get outside of it for it lay in language and language seemed to repeat it to us inexorably. I think that's a powerful reminder.

Fonz Mendoza: 1:15:13

All right, excellent, good. Quote. I love it to us inexorably.

Thomas Thompson: 1:15:15

I think that's a powerful reminder All right, excellent, good quote I love it All right, thomas H, still pedantic, less fun. Sorry, couldn't think of a fun thing off the top of my head.

Fonz Mendoza: 1:15:21

Hey, it works, though it works, Thomas H. What would your billboard?

Thomas Hummel: 1:15:24

say Join Edu8 Educators on Facebook.

Fonz Mendoza: 1:15:34

We're giving away $ hundred dollars every friday for the summer. That's what it is. There you go. Hey, that's it. Hey, that's a great billboard too. Sign me up for that too as well every time.

Thomas Hummel: 1:15:38

Go ahead for real that join. Uh, we're giving away a hundred dollars to every to a teacher every friday for all summer. So that's kind of how we like to give back is just um, literally just give back to teachers.

Fonz Mendoza: 1:15:49

Excellent, no and it has been a thriving community there on Facebook. So please make sure that you join that Facebook group and I will make sure and give you all the links, all right, listeners, so you can make sure that you connect, join the Facebook group and all that great stuff, all right? Last question All right, so we'll start with Thomas H. Thomas H, if you could trade places with a single person for a day, who would that be and why? Wow, with a single person for a day, who would that be and why?

Thomas Hummel: 1:16:13

Wow, if I could trade places with a single person for a day, I probably would trade places with Cristiano Ronaldo, maybe, just so I would know what it would be like to be great at soccer. I think I spent like the first half of my life trying to be great at uh. You know, there's a lot of time invested in that.

Fonz Mendoza: 1:16:38

I think I'd be cristiano ronaldo for a day excellent, all right, and thomas t, who would you trade places with for a day?

Thomas Thompson: 1:16:45

really like any kid. I think it'd be fun to be a kid again, just to experience wonder and curiosity when the world's new, I mean. That's why I like I remember when, like you, were a kid again, just to experience wonder and curiosity when the world's new, I mean. That's why I like I remember when, like you, were a kid, in the summer days used to feel so long. Like days don't feel long anymore because we're not building any new experiences, like we were always learning and everything was new and exciting. So like days seem to drag on because I'm full of new experiences, lost that I mean I'm still curious and I still have wonder about the world, but I think that was even more so as a kid, so I'd be any kid for a day. Just recapture that perspective there you go.

Fonz Mendoza: 1:17:17

I love that and you're right. I think like routine has definitely made the days a lot shorter.

Thomas Thompson: 1:17:21

Yeah that's for sure.

Fonz Mendoza: 1:17:23

well, gentlemen, thank you so much as always for your support, thank you so much for being great guests, thank you so much for the work that you're doing and just continue doing what you're doing, guys, because, sincerely, you guys are, are definitely making a change, well, actually making a difference in a lot of educators lives and in their practice too as well. And again, also, just really, I love the fact that you stay true to your pedagogy first tech, second approach, and not the other way around, as you know. That can definitely, you know, make a big difference. So can I say the same thing about you? Not the other way around, as you know, that can definitely, you know, make a big difference.

Thomas Hummel: 1:17:53

So thank you. Can I say the same thing about you? I mean, we really appreciate you being the objective voice in the space. I don't see anybody else doing the work that you're doing and you know, bringing it to teachers directly from Founders Mouse or from anybody else. I think that anytime that you can get out the you know, cut through the BS of of the EdTech marketing scheme, I think that you do a great job of this and you know we just really appreciate knowing you and being affiliated with you in any way.

Fonz Mendoza: 1:18:21

Thank you, thank you, guys. I really appreciate that feedback. That goes a long way. It definitely fills my bucket. As a podcaster, I really appreciate that, and also just as an educator too. So I really appreciate those words, guys, and thank you so much for the encouragement. And again, my hat's off to you for all the work that you guys are doing and for all our listeners.

Fonz Mendoza: 1:18:39

Please make sure that you connect with Thomas Thompson, thomas Hummel All those links will be in the show notes, the Facebook group links also too as well. That way you can join that wonderful community and just to continue to learn from Thomas Thompson and Thomas Hummel, because they will reply to your messages. I mean talk about a place where you have founders that will listen and go ahead and share and do great things. This is a great community. So I definitely encourage you to join them.

Fonz Mendoza: 1:19:08

And again, please make sure you visit our website at myedtechlife where you can check out this amazing episode and the other 328 episodes that I promise you you will gain a lot of knowledge nuggets from that you can sprinkle onto what you are already doing great. And please make sure that you look for all the Edu8 episodes too, because you will find Thomas Thompson and Thomas H there also, as well as, like I mentioned to you, thomas t, fourth four-time guest first ever. So congrats on that. And of course, thomas h has joined this very special group too of a three-time guest, so thank you all for that and we got a solo episode fawn so I can catch up there you go.

Fonz Mendoza: 1:19:49

Well, hey, we'll throw that into. That way we can catch you up. Yeah, that's not a bad idea. So thank you all. As for all your support. Like I mentioned in the beginning, we do what we do for you to continue to bring you some amazing conversations. And thank you again to our show sponsors. Thank you so much to Book Creator, eduaid and Yellowdig we really appreciate it and, of course, my friends. Until next time, don't forget, Stay Techie.