Teaching AI in Elementary School with Charlotte Dungan

In this interview with Charlotte Dungan, we discuss Charlotte’s holistic approach to education, remotely teaching CS to rural communities, why Charlotte believes teaching is harder than working in industry, teaching AI in elementary school, the influence of money on research and practice, the future of work, and much more.

Welcome back to another episode of the
csk8 podcast my name is jared o'leary
each week of this podcast is either a
solo episode where i unpack some
scholarship in relation to computer
science education or an interview with a
guest or multiple guests in this week's
episode i'm speaking with charlotte
dungan where we discuss charlotte's
holistic approach to education remotely
teaching computer science to rural
communities before covet and after why
charlotte believes teaching is harder
than working in industry teaching ai in
elementary school the influence of money
on research and practice the future of
work and so much more if you want to
find podcasts similar to this one or
some resources that were mentioned like
some of the websites that charlotte
mentioned make sure you check out the
show notes at jaredoliri.com or by
clicking the link in the app that you're
listening to this on on my website
you'll find a ton of computer science
education resources as well as a link to
boot up pd.org which is the nonprofit
that powers this podcast and the
nonprofit that i work for you'll also
find a bunch of gaming and drumming
content cause i'm a nerd and i like to
stream and create content in my leisure
not just for my day job but with all
that being said we will now begin with
an introduction by charlotte hi i'm
charlotte dungan i am currently director
of implementation at aiedu that's the ai
education project we are interested
in ensuring that everyone has access to
ai education and prior to working at ai
edu i have worked all the way through
from pre-k all the way to adult
education and i have been very fortunate
to both be a computer programmer and
teach computer science throughout the
grade span and i went to harvard
university for a degree in learning and
teaching and i've been really fortunate
to have learned some great theory and
constructionism through karen brennan
and she has done work with mit
and all the scratch that you've seen is
through them too so i feel like i blend
a great amount of theory and practice
and the actual real world of coding
having been a database developer and web
developer for about 10 years and so here
i am now talking to you about ai
education in the k-8 space so can you
tell me the story of how you went from
being a developer to
working in computer science education
sure so i really liked what i did
actually i loved developing databases in
particular making sure they were secure
and i then i had a baby and then i had
another baby and as i was looking around
with these three and one year old i was
like i don't actually see a school that
i'm really excited to send them to and
why is that i wanted them to have a
really
hands-on
child-led
adult-guided approach to education i
wanted them to have opportunities to
explore at their own pace whether that
be faster or slower than what is the
average and so i went back and i got a
teaching degree i actually have
concentrations in english and history in
k-12 and i taught at a small alternative
elementary school in ohio called the
antioch school i was just a teaching
assistant when i started and i worked in
the pre-k classroom and i learned there
how to observe children and really delve
deeply into how they learn and they
learn by play and i was really grateful
to have started my education as an adult
learner there and then from there i just
expanded out you know but it was really
wanting something different for my own
kids and then building it how did you
know that that approach was what you
preferred and i asked this because like
most of my experience in education was
not that but the few times that i
actually had that hands-on like
interest-driven approach it just worked
so well but it was like the minority of
my experiences so how did you know that
that would work great for your kids when
the pervasive approach is not that i
think i was very influenced having grown
up in an inner city context with a
single parent
my mom
worked at a grocery store she was a
bagger she was disabled so she had very
limited opportunities i had a series of
step-dads and the one that i consider
dad he didn't know how to read and so
although i was occasionally labeled
gifted i was also like bounced through
the system up and down extra
opportunities no opportunities and i
really wanted to
make sure that my best experiences the
ones where i had a summer camp where i
got to delve into math and actually
build something that was related to math
or like those really inspiring teachers
that i had i wanted them to not bounce
around i wanted my own kids to not
bounce around but i also knew that the
way that people learn best is actually
by doing and i don't see schools having
the resources always to do that i think
there are lots of really good people who
want to do what they can for kids but
they have a lot of constraints and so i
was looking for how i could you know
paddle a different kind of boat and i
feel like public education in america is
a very big cruise ship and i had one
tiny tiny ore and so i wanted to figure
out how i could maybe make a smaller
boat in a better direction and also not
forgetting that there are kids who don't
have access to all kinds of resources
right like i knew that i didn't have
opportunities and options as a kid but i
wanted that to be true for more kids
that they would have more opportunities
and options whether or not they came
from a family that had ability to
provide those the things i've been
fascinated with when interviewing
different guests is kind of hearing
how
what they thought when they started with
education might differ from what they
view right now so when the things that i
believed and i understood when i first
went and started teaching like my senior
year of high school it's very different
than i believe now so i'm curious for
you like what's something that you
believe when you first began working in
education that you no longer believe the
first
week that i started teaching high school
computer science i had a teacher tell me
because i will only teach these students
one semester there's no way
that you can change your life like
that's far too aspirational you may be
able to impart some knowledge but don't
aim for that great thing of changing
someone's life and that teacher was
wrong you have great power and
responsibility to mentor the students
that you encounter and the ones who are
changed forever they may not be the ones
that you expect when they walk in the
door but you do have that power in one
semester in one computer science class
to fundamentally alter what kids believe
is possible for themselves i'm glad that
that's shifted for me that i
didn't listen to that teacher and then i
held on to that idealism because i think
it's still true i wonder what the
catalyst was for them to believe that
just me kind of thinking out loud
because i am here today i am alive today
because of good educators i've had in my
life having been
suicidal and chronic depression and
whatnot like music and the music
educators in my lives is literally the
reason why i'm alive today so that's
something that has obviously had a
profound impact on myself so it's
something that i've been aware of as
well like sometimes you don't even
realize how much of an impact you're
having on students and then a few years
down the road when you've no longer
worked with them they'll come back and
be like hey you had a profound impact on
my life you might not even realize it in
the moment yeah that's really cool it's
one of the best reasons to work in
education it's to be that for someone
else when they were that for you yeah so
one really interesting things that we
had talked about previously prior to
recording this was you talked about how
you kind of worked with
a variety of different schools and rural
contexts and whatnot so i'm curious like
could you explain what that is like how
you're able to provide cs education to
so many different rural schools sure so
i am in north carolina and north
carolina has a school called the north
carolina school of science and
mathematics it is a public residential
high school that also has an online
program where students in 11th and 12th
grade apply to attend and they are
typically
the highest performing students in their
region so if you're from a great
metropolis you're not competing from
with someone who's in the farm
area they are divided up by
congressional district and they try to
keep it really fair everybody gets an
equal number of slots so in addition to
the application process ncssm the school
offers a program that they call open
enrollment and that is where
a school can identify a student who is
not joining the 11th and 12th grade
program to have enrichment courses and
those are taught by ncssm faculty so i
was hired not only to teach computer
science which i did but to create a
program called stem scholars and that
was to better prepare students in ninth
and tenth grade to have computer science
and other high-level courses so they
always took computer science and then
they were offered other higher level
might be a math enrichment or a science
enrichment course so that they had more
opportunities to shine prior to applying
to ncssm so these were schools that were
targeted specifically for being very
rural title one often they were really
small like the whole 10th grade might
have 35 or 40 students
and sometimes they were larger but the
factor was always that they either
didn't have the expertise to teach
higher level courses electives they
always had great core subject teachers
but they didn't either have someone who
could do that or maybe they only had one
or two students who actually
would enroll in a course that was
outside of the norm and so when you
aggregate those kids and you put them in
we had a tv studio think of it like zoom
before zoom was a thing like they would
sign in to a system that had high speed
internet in their school even if it
wasn't available in their community and
they were able to access a teacher like
me or there were many others who could
provide an experience that they wouldn't
otherwise have and in addition to
teaching remotely once per semester we
had the great opportunity to visit and
that was really the magic to see where
they're from their context and it's very
different at the coast in the mountains
whether or not they're farmers or you
know in a manufacturing area and so i
really got to know my state very well
and the opportunities and challenges
that differ across the regions not only
did i teach them for a semester but i
continued to mentor most of those kids
throughout high school that was like the
best part was to bring them cs but also
bring them many more opportunities where
we had an opportunity to do a cyber
security club and they were able to
participate remotely and we helped some
of them to do the congressional app
challenge and that was all done remotely
because we already had the connection so
we just continued that informally in
many cases yeah it's really interesting
that you were doing that before
remote learning was mandated for
because of coveted and whatnot can i
talk about that just a minute because
i did teach also through the pandemic
and it was such
a different and disheartening experience
i feel like we have perhaps missed the
boat on what remote learning could be
because we did it in a crisis and now
everyone has an impression of the
negatives of it for example teaching my
remote students in rural areas at home
they didn't have the bandwidth to turn
on their camera they might not have a
device that was as robust as they might
have at school and often they were
watching their siblings yep when we
tried to develop projects for the
communities that they had limitations
like i only stay at home i'm literally
not leaving so i hope that people who
are listening who may have had a
negative online experience or virtual
experience come to understand that the
emergency situation is not the reality
of what that experience can be yeah i
have very mixed feelings about remote
instruction and whatnot i feel like we
have been presented an opportunity to
rethink and kind of reset some things in
education and i don't necessarily feel
like we have taken advantage of that
opportunity to go hey why are we doing
some of the things that we're doing that
might not be best for students in the
long run because a lot of teachers are
back in the classroom and it's just
let's go back to business as usual what
it was before the pandemic as opposed to
thinking of what worked well with remote
learning what didn't work well and then
before the pandemic what did and did not
work well in the classroom what should
we change yeah and what tools were
really effective to reach different
types of kids and being able to
differentiate use multiple tools to
teach the same content i love multiple
access points for the same idea you
catch more kids that way yeah because
for some people the remote learning was
better than in person and then vice
versa
so we got to figure out like why and how
could we
have those different access points for
different students yeah and previous to
covid when they were learning with me
they were learning remotely in their
school so all of the social benefits
were still there they were supported
often by either someone in their media
center or an instructor in a classroom
and that's quite different than an
online class where they're still very
much being self-driven i was teaching
them in person every day one of the
things that you mentioned in a prior
conversation was you have a holistic
approach to education and i'm curious
like could you describe what that is and
then how that informs your approach with
working with students every
student every person is a unique
individual who wants to succeed who has
their own unique goals and interests and
strengths and weaknesses and if we can
create content that allows them to use
those strengths to tap into those areas
of interest i want to talk about desi's
self-determination theory and how
important it is i think is in the
classroom it has three parts autonomy
competence and connection
and those three things are really
important whether or not you have a kid
who might be like interested in your
subject or forced to take your subject
when you can give people autonomy and
they feel some control of their own
experience and their own projects for
example that
makes them feel more connected
to the
course material or to the you as the
instructor and that they want to feel
competent so as they gain mastery i
teach them how to fail actually like
iteration isn't something like we talk
about that even if they make something
great the first time or they come in
very well prepared because in computer
science i'll get kids who have been
doing camps for five years you know with
their very well-resourced parents and
then like someone who's never even heard
of coding and they've signed up to be
brave and so we actually start with a
activity where students who are very
successful are expected to add to their
skill set and students who have never
touched a computer before
the competence is actually the trying
like just by trying you pass that first
assignment just by being vulnerable and
so by reaching people with a level where
they can feel competent at the start
that gives them a feeling of that they
can master tasks and then they take on
additional challenges especially when
the price of failure is almost none when
you're actually required to push your
limits and then finally like the
connection or relatedness piece is how
students feel like they belong in a
class that they have peers who are
perhaps like them in some way and that
they have a relationship that's positive
with the instructor i think
self-determination theory and also
constructionism are probably the two
theories that i use most because they
leave agency to the individual and then
constructionism is where they actually
build their own learning so as much as i
can possible i do project-based learning
by doing that i know we're going back to
the whole child like we're thinking
about them as individuals and so they
have freedom to create projects that are
relevant and interesting and important
to them as long as they meet some
specific objectives and they get very
very creative and that creativity is
also like extremely motivating so the
whole child is that you don't forget
their context you don't forget their
culture you don't forget the fact that
they have other classes like one of the
nicest projects a student ever did for
me he almost didn't do it all and he
came to me and said i just have another
project that i have to do for a class
and i said well we'll just move your
presentation in next monday and he said
you'd do that for me well of course we
would because that'll get your best work
right and so there we go the whole child
how did you
cultivate
the connectedness of relatedness even in
remote context i bring in visitors that
are relevant to them and i do it a lot
so i have a colleague at scad the south
carolina design school and we created
this class called connected computing
and it was with a partnership with the
north carolina zoo and the concept is
the san diego zoo global initiative
was looking at how empathy is actually
really important for
people to
make a change environmentally you
actually have to care about the animals
you can't just like abstractly visit the
animals or like hope that the
environment stays better you actually
have to like care that kangaroos or
giraffes or
lizards are impacted by your behavior
and so
thinking about some of the technologies
that they built like butterfly wings
where you can feel the magnetic pull of
the earth we built these same types of
projects the students built like robotic
turtles that you could drive and one boy
built an earpiece that you put over your
ears in north carolina we have red
wolves that are endangered and you might
think that their best sense is smell but
it's actually hearing they can hear up
to six miles and so at the zoo you could
like navigate with your sense of hearing
using his app as you wore the earphones
and so when i was in this one particular
school it was hard for those students to
connect to like what all this technology
has to do with where they live and like
they like hunting and fishing right and
so why would we want to save the turtles
when we want to catch the turtles and so
this professor from scad came and he
does vr experiences that are related to
nature and he talked to them about
growing up and hunting turtles and how
great it was that when he went to
college he didn't have to give up his
culture he actually integrated it in
some of the other experiences and he was
a better person and richer for having
had the experiences that he did growing
up and so
that's it to me is like i connected all
those things that seem quite disparate
like you got zoo and computer science
and like technology and this media guy
and these kids and you just look for
those connections and it's different for
each kid but you find the connection
whatever it may be yeah i appreciate
that last point far too often an
approach that's used is usually aiming
for the median or the average in a
classroom and let's just teach to a
collective rather than to a collection
of individuals who have unique
individualized needs interests goals
passions etc and i fully recognize how
hard that is having worked with
thousands of students over the years but
that's like the
thing that we should really strive for
but i mean i guess speaking of that like
one of the things that you had mentioned
in a prior conversation was that you
felt like education was harder than
working as a programmer i'm curious what
makes you say that being an educator is
harder than being a programmer because
if you solve a problem it just works
right but people don't work that way and
to me education is people so we can't
always solve the problems that we see in
kids lives we can only just do one small
piece there's some great examples of
people who are doing good work to
support kids where they are and i want
to share this story about an educator
who is in a community where for
generations the families have lived in
the same place so it's not expected that
you would leave it's not expected that
you would try to go to college for
example and so
she created a college pathway where
students are able to gain all the
credits that they need to be successful
in going to college with a career
certificate program so while students
are receiving a credential that they
could use to have a job in their
community they're also if they choose to
ready to go out into the work world
that's a lot harder to dream up than to
like figure out a database right yeah
and when you're a teacher when you're
invested in those kids you're constantly
problem solving every day that's what
you do so of course it's easier why is
education so important to you like to
shift careers to work in education when
you're probably making significantly
less than you were as a developer like
that for many people is a hard shift to
make it is a very difficult field but
why is education important for you first
like to acknowledge that i had the
opportunity to switch because i had
privilege
with a partner who was stable with a
good job so
when i did take that financial hit it
was because i had a partner who could
support me and not everyone can choose
to make a switch like i did so
acknowledging that privilege it's so
critical for what i hope to see in the
world i worked with non-profits as a
computer programmer i developed good
programs that helped people indirectly
through programming but it's so
satisfying to
actually invest in people it's such a
part of me that i don't know how to get
away with it it just fills my bucket in
a way that just being a computer science
developer
didn't or couldn't does that relate to
your understanding of education as being
an equalizer yes i don't think the only
path to success is college i think it's
a great
path to success for many people but i do
know that love of learning is the most
critical thing that we can give to kids
if they know that they can learn
something themselves that they're
empowered
to
embrace learning challenges equity is a
funny thing like it does mean that you
give some people more or that you have
to invest in some people more to get a
similar outcome so my work now in ai
education is to think about that equity
gap of who's getting computer science
who's getting advanced technologies like
cyber security artificial intelligence
data science and it's often kids who opt
in or kids who have been encouraged by
their families and so the work that i'm
doing at aiedu is to make sure that we
reach the communities that would
otherwise not stumble into those
opportunities so it's quite intentional
my work in education is equity driven
and it's often with partners partner
schools partner districts partner
organizations informally also like
museums and boys and girls club for
example i've been a long time girl scout
leader and i'm really excited about some
of the opportunities they have and like
the reason those organizations are so
important is because otherwise you're
not reaching
every community every kid and every kid
deserves computer science especially if
they're not identified as gifted you
know if they're identified in other ways
they still deserve to know how
technology is impacting their life
because it does so you mentioned ai i'm
curious if we could like double click on
that topic in particular so when i think
of ai or hear people talking about it
it's usually talking about at the high
school or collegiate level
but when you speak about ai you've also
done it in like the k5 setting so i'm
curious could you describe what that
might look like like if somebody would
walk into you teaching an ai class or
lesson like what might people be
learning or doing in that kind of class
sure i'm going to start with ai4k12.org
they are an organization with multiple
university partners and teachers k to 12
who came together to work on national
guidelines for ai education ai meaning
artificial intelligence and artificial
intelligence is a set of technologies
you don't think just robot although
there may be ain robots is it's like a a
way for a computer system to learn using
data and sensory input to perform a task
that a human has specified so robots
aren't alive they're not coming to get
you
they're only as good or as bad as the
people who program them and decide what
they should do so we can improve them
and these technologies are all around us
and so this organization ai4k12 came
together and i was on the working group
first at the cater 2 grade band and then
at the six to eight grade band to think
about what students should
know and be able to do in ai education
and
it's such a cool topic so we broke it
down into five big ideas and the first
is sensors and perception sensors are
things like microphones and cameras that
allow machines to perceive the world
like people do like a camera can see a
microphone can hear but they can also do
things that we can't do like
look out into the sky
using a telescope or look down into
something smaller than our eyes can see
with a microscope and gather information
that we can use they can also hear at
frequencies that we can't hear for
example so sensors gather data
perception
allows us to
understand that data and we can use a
computer program usually to see that
information in a way that works for our
eyes for example then we have
representation and reasoning the second
big idea representation is how we
represent that information in some
meaningful way and how we can perform
reasoning on it so for example
we can look at galaxies i guess we're
going on a space theme today and we can
identify using a computer program what a
galaxy looks like maybe it has a spiral
shape and that spiral shape is
represented by some pixels on a screen
that we can see with our eyes and a
computer program can recognize too and
we can perform reasoning on that to
identify whether the spiral goes left or
it goes right and this is actually an
activity that you can do with nasa for
free you can see the images that come
back from the telescopes and you can
identify galaxy shapes and then you can
actually help a computer learn to
identify them so that when we take
billions and billions of pictures with
the james webb space telescope ai can
help us sort all that data so we have
sensors in perception then we perform
representation and reasoning and then we
have natural interaction and this is how
we interact with our ai computer systems
maybe that's with a screen maybe it's
with a microphone but it's how our
technologies blend seamlessly into our
lives and so this is becoming more and
more a thing as you know google home or
alexa or siri become a part of our lives
natural interaction is how translation
works like if we say something in
english and we want it to say out loud
to someone else in spanish translation
we want that to be as natural as
possible and we want that technology to
work for as many people as possible so
if you have a five-year-old voice maybe
you don't say all of your letters
consonant sounds exactly right can the
device still understand you or if you
have had a stroke for example does your
technology still work for you can all
people interact naturally with the
technology this only happens when
computer systems learn from data and
we're talking about enormous amounts of
data lots and lots and lots of
information the more information we give
the better the computer system can do
at giving us the results that we expect
so
if we only have
adults speak to computer systems they
probably won't work very well for
children but if we get a lot of children
to talk to those devices also and we can
improve over time then the computer
systems do a better job this is also
true for issues that you may have heard
of regarding bias in computer systems or
problems perhaps ethical concerns about
ai but the reality is that ai can be
both positive and negative and the
ethical impacts they can be just as good
as people want them to be so for example
a positive impact of ai is that we may
not have a single person making a
decision that could be
biased or racist and also like we can
actually process many more images for
breast cancer detection for example by
using a computer algorithm
to save the resources of the researcher
who's looking at each individual slide
if we can definitely eliminate
some of those cells that look completely
normal then we can save the human
resources for those maybe questionable
or potentially cancerous identifications
there's positives there's negatives
negatives could be wow we didn't train
our algorithm to look for wedding photos
except for american wedding photos and
so when we google the word wedding and
we're from another culture it may not
identify
weddings correctly and so sometimes
there's gender bias or racial bias but
one thing that makes me hopeful about ai
is that because those biases are
external we can evaluate them externally
we're not judging me as the programmer
we're making a decision we're just able
to improve data and measure it over time
and so i think ai although there is
possibility of problems or bias could be
a really positive thing for society so
getting back to how do you teach all
that to a five-year-old there's a great
program called teachable machine and
with this program without any reading
or writing at all you can record
yourself and you can identify a marker
with one
set of images and you can identify a
lego
figure with another set of images and
you can train the machine to learn the
difference even if you turn the lego
upside down or zoom it way far out or
way far in and so we can teach kids
really early about these five ideas
giving some of the examples i just gave
you what recommendations do you have for
an educator who's like hey this sounds
awesome i'm definitely going to go to
afrk12.org but i also want to learn more
about ai in the k5 or even older grade
levels yeah well k-5 i recommend cs is
elementary i'm the teacher for ai but
they have other classes too they have
cyber security and beginning programming
but the great thing about them is you
don't have to know anything at all
except how to play a video to your class
and students can follow along and do the
work and you can learn right alongside
them so if you do
the free program you can learn all about
ai education you've got about two weeks
of content ten days you can learn it too
though and then you can teach it however
you want you can modify it which is
really great and then right now i work
on
curriculum and resources for eighth to
twelfth grade at ai edu we also have
free curriculum with all the supports
that a teacher might need
including we have help sessions and
training for teachers who would like to
get support in diving in so don't feel
too intimidated it's really exciting to
bring ai to your classroom how do you
respond to people who see like more
frameworks or
standards or subject areas being added
to the plate and fearing that it's
diluting everything that's already also
there or like hey 10 years from now
we're going to have even more that keeps
adding then this is going to dilute what
we're currently adding i hope that we
see
transformation over time in the way we
teach our core subjects i think reading
for a long long time is going to remain
reading but math in particular
computerbasedmaths.org
is from the founder of mathematica
conrad wolfram and he's really
interested in acknowledging that every
person who perhaps isn't limited by
someone telling them they can't have a
device has a computer they have a phone
they have a computer they have a tablet
they have these at school and yet we
often take them out of the math
classroom
and so it's exciting to me to think
about how instead of further
differentiating and separating out our
subjects we actually begin integrating
and overlapping technologies that better
prepare students for the future of work
so group work and assignments that cross
domains
i think data science is another place
where we're seeing that in the science
classroom it's like really really
exciting to see
integration of technology and so i think
of ai as part of a larger cs umbrella
where i hope to see more and more for
one example i know a teacher who teaches
english language arts in high school and
she teaches shakespeare like many
teachers do and she has students instead
of blocking the play traditionally they
use robots that she controls remotely so
they don't have to have a robot for
every student they use little bird
robots finch robots
she's using coding as a way to think
about plays in the 21st century so what
do you feel is holding back educators of
the field and what's something we can do
about that in certain states there are
no structures for teaching computer
science or those structures are not
adequate to actually get a class with
every student included to have a
computer science experience i think also
there's a lot of fear for teachers who
have obligations to meet certain testing
or standards requirements and they don't
necessarily feel like this extra thing
is worth the risk i think it's a fear
issue almost like teachers truly have to
take a risk
and sometimes learn alongside their
students i hope that if you're listening
to this that you'll be brave and think
of yourself less as a
sage on the stage and more of a guide on
the side where you can explore things
together and kids naturally love
technology anyway so it's a great way to
delve in so if somebody
is brand new to cs maybe they've been
teaching for a while and they are
interested in diving in and learning
alongside kids but they also want to
improve upon their abilities over time
so it's not just
like constantly going well i don't know
let's figure it out i'm curious if you
could share like how you practice and
iterate on your own abilities either in
computer science or in education maybe
your response would help somebody else
who's interested in doing something
similar sure i think in terms of
computer science specifically it is
worthwhile to join csta find your local
chapter
meet with other educators who are also
implementing cs and try to go to the
national conference if you can find
somebody who'll fund you to go so that
you can have the opportunity to learn a
lot all at once remain curious go ahead
and just get on scratch
and make a silly game it's really
scary
to do that but use the tutorials that
are built for children i'm going gonna
confess something here i often learn a
new skill any new skill cooking weaving
or whatever i go to the youth section of
the library and i pick out a book that's
designed for fifth graders and it hits
me where where i'm at i'm not going to
learn to knit from an adult book but i
am going to learn to knit from a book
written for fifth graders that's my
superpower i often just pull up youtube
how do i figure out how to do this thing
just type the question into youtube all
right let's watch a few videos that's
true and coding train i have to give a
shout out to codingtrain they do such a
good job of breaking down even ai videos
but any kind of python you want to do
you know get on the coding train because
they're going to show you exactly how to
do it how do you prevent the burnout
that can come with constantly iterating
and improving things and just working in
the field of education which is known
for having a high dropout rate it's hard
if you're at that point right now
you might look around and think it's not
worth it and it's okay if it isn't it's
okay to protect yourself to take care of
yourself i think it's really important
to take time and break in the summer to
actually recharge and not do
every pd offered every you know summer
camp available to you it's not worth a
little bit of money to take on that
second job if you can't come back
restored and refreshed i think we need
to do a better job as a society in
supporting educators and recognizing
what enormously hard work they have been
doing over the last several years and
how many people are leaving the field
especially really thoughtful
dedicated educators who just can't do it
anymore and we can't continue to ask
teachers to give up their planning
periods to cover for other teachers
teaching is the only field i know where
you have to bring your own whiteboard
markers to the classroom to teach a
class and so unless we fix things
systemically we're not going to see
the best educators you know that they
may choose to leave because it's too
hard and i don't think that's wrong
but if you want to say
the best way to do it is
to continue to fall in love with your
students and your subject seek out a
great administration it's okay to go to
the district next door and take care of
yourself maybe that isn't the answer i
was supposed to say but that's what i
feel is true is like until we as a
society take care of educators we're
going to continue to see turnover yeah
are there systems that you put into
place to try and help yourself like i
really appreciate and that last point
resonates with me like i was in a
district where it wasn't great and then
i moved to a different district and it
was awesome so like just having a change
of admin and environments can have a
profound impact on like my own personal
well-being and whatnot oh yeah i do
think it's important to continue
learning independently i think in the
classroom though we can also set the bar
a little bit lower i think formative
assessment is really useful as a tool to
take the pressure off for you personally
as a teacher to have like a quick
reflection piece where you can see where
they're at but you don't have to grade
every darn thing
i think using some tools like peer
assessment in assessment of projects and
having like really clear rubrics that
students can self-evaluate and having
like clear
end points where a project is showcased
for example and if you meet all the
requirements of the showcase well then
you know what your grade is and taking
some of that pressure off yourself it's
also okay to set some really clear
boundaries like i don't work on sundays
i don't grade i don't i go mountain
biking that's what i do and
having those boundaries does not make
you a bad teacher even if it means you
didn't finish a certain thing that you
were supposed to get done so focusing on
what matters i have the like two by two
in my brain of like make four squares
important and urgent and really you only
need to do the things that are important
and urgent
and other things can wait and that as
long as your students are in the
important plus urgent bucket the fact
that you graded something or didn't this
weekend probably doesn't matter i really
appreciate that response i have heard
similar things than some sessions before
and people have said that they felt like
they needed the permission to do that
they needed to hear that from somebody
so hopefully there's a listener out
there who listened to that and said yes
this just resonated really well with
them try to remain in the work it's what
you're doing is really important you
matter to kids you know you're giving
them opportunities they might not
otherwise have but you don't have to
sacrifice yourself snaps to that
what do you wish there is more research
on that could inform your own practices
i wish that researchers who come into
classrooms we're thinking about the
students and the teachers first not
their phd project not the outcomes of a
survey but the actual experience that
students have with your activity if
you're starting with a pre-survey and
you end with a post survey what did the
student gain from that survey i'm
guessing nothing so why don't you
redesign that survey to
be a formative assessment that students
can reflect on their own work and you
can evaluate the responses of that to
get at the data that you need and
otherwise pay your teacher to
spend the time that they have with you
and ensure that the lesson that you're
building that you're testing in their
classroom is aligned to the other work
that they're doing and i see
often a disrespect from researchers who
work with teachers that the primary goal
is the research and it's not it's the
student experience yeah i had a meeting
a couple hours before recording this
episode that was talking about future
grant proposals with some other
researchers and whatnot and part of the
meaning was like hey let's pull up the
request and let's see what the verbage
says and a lot of the verbiage in there
is it's talking about like effective
teaching practices it's not necessarily
trying to improve but rather just prove
what works so
the grants that fund a lot of this
research that will give hundreds of
thousands if not millions of dollars
often has a huge influence on the kinds
of questions that researchers ask so
i think if we were to do that which i
agree with we have to also look the step
above the researchers at like what's
what's funding that research i probably
have a bias there because
i am pretty familiar with ai grants
right now it's a lot of money going into
how we might best do artificial
intelligence education and those are not
only centered on teaching students or
teaching teachers to teach ai but also
on what tools we might empower teachers
with
so that they can use ai and apply it to
their classrooms like how could we
better personalize education so
as all of that rolls out just keeping in
mind always the experience of the
teacher and the student respecting the
teacher as the expert in the room is
really important there's always going to
be those other polls i think there's
better partnerships to be had in those
spaces yeah rpp work research
practitioner partnerships tend to
elevate the role of educators within
that research space but i
definitely see this like hierarchy where
the research and the research question
and the person who's evaluating that is
often
positioned above the teachers as having
more power and sway and whatnot so it is
interesting seeing the shift where
they're trying to have teachers have a
voice and have a say in like
the questions that are being asked and
how it's being implemented and whatnot
but there's still not enough of that
yeah i think probably i'm influenced by
how i learned in my very first school
which was i didn't come in as the expert
i came in as the learner hope
researchers
come in with an eye to surprise
what might come out of this with just a
little bit of open mind it's exciting
yeah i like that a lot of the
researchers that i'll interview i'll ask
a question like what has surprised you
about your own research and it's always
interesting to hear their different
responses i love those responses because
when we're open to wonder cool things
happen yeah what's something that you're
working on that you could use some help
with okay i'm gonna tell you my dream
here it is i think we need artificial
intelligence badges for girl scouts
because they have a wide reach not only
to girls but into rural areas that don't
have computer science education across
the united states i've worked with girl
scouts national to develop that badge
series it's in their plan i've worked
with my local council we've got pilot
you know groups ready to test those
badges in k-12 i need funding for those
badges and i really think they could
make a huge difference for girls in
learning about ai so i don't only need
money i would also like thought partners
to do that work the best and well i'm a
lifetime girl scout and that's where my
heart is so if you have any connections
with ai and scouting and you want to
talk i'm interested in working with boy
scouts too but i don't have as many
contacts there so do you have any
questions for myself for for the field
i'd love to know
what learning theories or psychological
theories might be beneficial
in applying to cs education broadly not
just ai and how we might best do that i
hope we could have a conversation about
that about ways that we can best educate
i think we don't really know yet all the
best ways that we can employ technology
in classrooms and it'd be fun to talk
about it with people who are interested
in that my hunch is we could get there
if people read more outside of the field
there's a tendency in the cs education
space to kind of put some blinders on
and
think of cs as oh it's this relatively
new field and so therefore we kind of
have to have come up with approaches
that are going to work well for us so
it's starting from within and then kind
of working its way out as opposed to
looking at well what have they done in
social studies or what have they done in
science education or in the arts like
and seeing the different frameworks and
heuristics and theories that have
informed educational philosophies
elsewhere and then trying to figure out
okay well how might we actually apply
that in our space so i've tried to do
that with some of the podcast episodes
like the unpacking scholarship ones or
i'll point to like well here's what
they're talking about in a different
field but i wish there was more of that
in our space i'm glad you're bringing
that attempting
are there any questions that i haven't
asked that you'd like to discuss i think
i'd like to talk about the future of
work if you don't mind yeah so if you
remember in 2000 maybe you're old enough
to remember two thousand we didn't have
cell phones they just we didn't have
them if you had one it may be flipped
open or was the size of a brick
and you were likely using it after 10 pm
so that you could have free minutes and
if you texted you pressed the number two
an awful lot so if you think about the
shift that's happened in 20 years we
went from having computers at work to
having computers in college to finally
having computers that really did
something at home for the majority of
people then we had a revolution where we
added phones that are actually like star
trek communicators they can do literally
everything and you have the whole of
human knowledge like at your fingertips
and
ai is a similar revolution it is however
invisible so people are less aware of it
as when phones came in our pockets and
the whole landscape of
the types of jobs that are available are
shifting as a result of ai and so it's
really important that we don't simply
teach students to code that's not really
the goal
but that we think about the shifts in
the future of work and that we cannot
predict them and so we need to empower
students to reflect thoughtfully on the
impacts of our technologies
and the ways that we can regulate
technologies to benefit humanity and
also to be prepared with skills like
creativity and problem solving and
lifelong learning that will allow them
to be prepared for whatever job doesn't
exist yet while other
roles that have traditionally been
available are being automated just for
one simple example many of us started
our careers at the local grocery store
and where there used to be 10 cashiers
hired now there's only one manning the
self-checkout and where we used to work
at a fast food restaurant many of those
restaurants are having computers pour
the drinks or process the orders and
schedule very flexibly when people might
work and so i hope that the conversation
will continue where we think about how
we might best prepare students for the
future of work i do think that includes
ai education but i think it more
generally
requires us to stop thinking about math
and science and social studies in
english language arts and requires us to
become more holistic and our whole
approach to how we consider the
individuals who come into our schools
every day yeah i really appreciate that
response i'm curious for you are there
any jobs where you really hope ai
doesn't take it over like being an
educator working in education or like a
therapist or a masseuse like do any
stand out as no this should not ever be
replaced by ai well i sure hope that my
role as a mother i'm not replaced by a
robot anytime soon
[Laughter]
[Music]
you know i hope that we replace jobs
that are dangerous and difficult
with technologies that make those jobs
safer i think we have to also really
thoughtfully consider jobs that are at
high risk of automation like a truck
driver not only that our roads will be
safer which is often what you hear with
ai that the roads will be safer with
self-driving cars i do think that's true
but there are a lot of people who love
their jobs as truck drivers they have a
culture and it should be honored and
that they are losing something by losing
their jobs and that we not only need to
find them new employment but meaningful
employment so i hope that we continue to
have conversations holistically about
all people as users of technology i
forget where it was but i had read
something a few years back where they
were shutting down like a coal mining
plant and
what they ended up doing was providing
cs education boot camps to anyone who is
working there who is interested in it so
hey this job is no longer going to be
available but we are going to provide
the education so that way you can learn
and take on another job that might be of
interest to you was a really interesting
approach that i think provided some
support but that is a really important
part about the culture because like i am
inherently an educator like whether it's
playing magic the gathering with friends
like i'll teach them oh here's some
strategies you can use or like here's
what mana is and why you need to know
what that concept is and
whatever like my wife will sometimes
joke about how my education background
just kind of shows in moments like those
in my leisure and whatnot so if all of a
sudden it was like well this ai that we
programmed is going to do a better job
of teaching than you ever could in a
million years well then that would
definitely have a profound impact on me
if i wasn't allowed to do something i
was very passionate about agreed i also
want to acknowledge that your example of
being an educator is like a choice but a
lot of caregiving roles are
not chosen they're almost assumed so
when we have elder care for example it's
often placed on the daughter of the
family to do that elder care and even if
she's wanting to do that elder care it
may be a real strain for her career for
her family yeah and if we can create
technologies that mitigate some of the
downsides and allow us to be our best
selves in caregiving for example or in
travel
and leave some of the harder parts to
the technologies that to me would be the
best possible outcome now i don't think
our caregiving robots are potentially
like coming right tomorrow but i do
think there's a need
for
ensuring that people are able to
live their end of life with dignity and
perhaps there's a way for technology to
help with that from my understanding
japan's actually pretty
forward on that they have a lot of
caregiving robots and whatnot and it's
fascinating the things that i have seen
so it'll be interesting to see if that
makes its way over to the states in
terms of like people wanting that i hope
so but i also think japan has a culture
that believes in the life force in all
things and so there's less of a you know
a hesitancy perhaps to
embrace a robotic companion that's
shaped like a seal or something like
that yeah that's a good point i'm
curious are there any other topics that
you'd like to discuss as well one more
thing which is if you're worried about
self-driving cars i know a lot of people
are and that the worst stories end up on
the news
occasionally but robotic vehicles are
far safer than humans they don't get
tired they don't drink they don't get
distracted because there's a baby in the
backseat in thoughtful application
self-driving cars will save hundreds of
thousands of lives a year in america so
if you've been hesitant trust that that
technology is going to save a lot of
lives so where might people go to
connect with you and the organizations
that you work with if you're doing k5
talk with john pierce's css elementary
if you're doing middle school or high
school and you want to chat with me at
ai ebu i'm charlotte
aiedu.org i would love to continue a
conversation with anyone who wants to
chat more about cs or ai in general and
with that that concludes this week's
episode of the csk8 podcast thank you so
much for listening to this particular
interview would be so kind just ask that
you share it with somebody else because
charlotte had some awesome things to say
stay tuned next week for another episode
and until then i hope you're all staying
safe and are having a wonderful week

Guest Bio

Charlotte Dungan is Chief Operating Officer of AIEDU. She was a computer programmer for 10 years and earned her BA from Antioch University with concentrations in English and History. Charlotte has an Ed.M. in Learning and Teaching from Harvard University. She developed AIforTeachers.org including AI PD for educators, standards aligned K-12 curricula with integrated AI, in person training opportunities, and a space for a supportive online peer community. She is a member of #IAmCS, the AI4K12 working group, and is a co-facilitator of the 2022 AI Institute at the National Humanities Center. You may have seen her as the face of AI in CS is Elementary videos! Her vision is to change the fundamental understanding of Artificial Intelligence in society.

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