"Be recording. This is otter. This is what we use in newspaper. In your book. It transcribes while we record, okay, and this is just voice, okay,
great. Um,
so we're gonna get started. What is the first question that we ask somebody when we're in
your own first name, Adam, last name, steer, it s, t, I R, R, A, T, and then
we'll be starting with closed questions. And I'll tell you when to ask open questions. This would be shorter questions yesterday. If you have any closed questions for Mr. Steer, it scans, and he will be calling on you publication.
How long have you been able to do?
This is my 24th year publications. Where did you go to college? So I started at SLU, and then I finished at Mizzou, and I got my degree in secondary education for teaching history, and then I went and got my master's at Webster in educational technology.
Yeah, did you go to a different
school for high school? I was a parkway North graduate go Vikings. Yes,
what exactly is?
Well, that's a great question. I've been here for a long time, and it's changed, I think four times. I started out as an instructional technology coordinator, and then I went to what do they call it, an instructional technology specialist. And now I am a digital coach, but I like instructional technology coordinator the best, and because I'm old, that's what I tell everybody. Yes, sir in the end, publications.
You think that AI should be regulated by the
government? Oh, what a getting right into it. So this is an open is this an open ended question? So we're abruptly coming to a close? Do I personally think it or like, how do you want me to answer that as a tech person inside of a school district, or as a personal I would say as a tech person, yeah, so when AI first kind of really be like when it became a thing, if you remember two years ago with chat, right, when chatgpt came out, it was like this great thing where all you did was type in a question, like, Hey, can you write me a sentence that makes me sound smarter when I'm talking about space, and it would do it, it's amazing. And then it, in six short months, it became this, in this incredible, own entity. Fast forward to 2024, and it's now got the ability to do voice and pictures and videos and everything else in the sun. I do think it needs to be regulated. Yes, I think it would probably be smart to put some boundaries on this game. And what that looks like sounds like. I don't really know yet, because it's so new, but yes, I do that's my as a long way to say yes, yeah. I
situations. How long
have you been working? Let's see, I stopped teaching. This is my 17th year doing the technology job.
Gigi, right.
Yeah. All of us do in some weird, quiet way. Do I use it like everyone uses it where it's like, Hey, can you, can you design a rubric for me to do this? And no, but my, my everyday AI uses in my phone, and how I am doing multitasking, how I allow a lot of the components of my phone to do things scheduled for me without even really having to type it. I just kind of ask it I just kind of ask it to do that kind of stuff. I use AI in that component every day. But as far as chat GBT, I used to when I when it first came out, but I've kind of deregulated, because I'm still working on trusting it all the way. Yes.
Well, do you mean like tools, or do you mean websites? Yeah, so we do have chat opened. We have chat GPT opened. We're going to pretty quickly have Gemini offered through our Ledoux Google Suite. Claude is some of the main hitters we've kind of been careful with because of plagiarism issues that some of our staff have brought up to our attention. So we are starting slow with just kind of Gemini and chatgpt, anybody on this side of the room?
Yeah, when I was in college at SLU, we had a computer lab that finally got the internet, and that was in 94 Shut up, Wisconsin. Do you
wish that you had chatgpt When you're a school of college?
It's a great question. If you would have asked me this a year and a half ago, I would have said, Yes, I'm a little skeptic of it right now, like because of my age, I'm seeing what it's doing to you all in your age group, as learners, and I'm not impressed yet. I will be but I'm not yet. Does that make sense?
Yeah. Jonathan bilber will do publications.
Do you think AI will change what it's like being a teacher?
I think it already has, and it, for sure, will continue to do so. Yeah, yes, I do publications.
How? From
a teacher's lens, I could kind of speak intelligently on that one I've I've worked with a lot of teachers in this building where, you know, behind the curtains, the sneak peek of what teachers do is they come up with an idea of what needs to be taught by both what our district says and what our state says that you need to learn. And then, because they're really smart people, they go out and they use all their resources to design lesson plans. And 10 years ago, that was done with research and their own versions of Internet hacking and searching. And now what I watch is teachers who will pay for a pro license of certain AI tools. They can upload PDFs that they found through their own research, through their own classes and graduate programs, and it will, it'll generate and create really important, impressive content, along with like assessments and grading rubrics. So it's transformed the time. I think it's like, like, good teachers use it to really kind of streamline their time frame so they can focus on, like, how kids need to be differentiated. But like, for the most part, it's the creation of the content that you that you see every day in the classrooms, like they are using it to help streamline how they build all that stuff. Does that make sense? Long answers, I'm sorry. I'll be quicker. I like closed questions. They're quick. I
that too.
Sure, it scares the heck out of me when you think about what's possible with it. And we are not even it's not even really three years old. There's never been a technology that has grown so quickly and so powerful, and anytime you have anything like that, we should probably have our eyes on that and pay attention to that. Yeah. Do you
think Ari is
more helpful in the classroom? I think that it can be more helpful in the long run. It depends, though, how well a teacher is teaching you all how to use it. If you're lazy, I'm going to always pick on my son, so he just graduated from Parkway West, and he was a totally lazy learner in high school. He's at Mizzou now, and I'm going to pretend that he's not that he's not that way anymore, but as a lazy student, as you all could probably testify, AI is fantastic it. I mean, just like I was telling you how it helps streamline teachers in creating content, it streamlines a lot of time for kids to help write papers and help study that part's bad. What I love about it, though, is that every kid, if you know how to use it the right way, and you've been taught how to use it the right way. Every single kid has a tutor, a really smart tutor, for free, unless you want to go the pro version, and for 15 bucks for a whole year, you have a pro tutor, which you know what? The average rate of a tutor right now is, $75 an hour. And so like when you have something that you can get wisdom through, and you can get direction from. I really like that, so I think it helps, but they have to be taught how to use it the right way, or else they just use it to cheat. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean human nature, technology, it can kind of sound it makes us lazy, right? Like, it's so easy. It's like, why would you do that when you could do this? Like, why would I go to a library and look at books when I could just open up my browser and open up a window and type a question and, boom, I have twice as much information in my hands. Was the question again. Yeah, I just think that it allows, it allows us to produce in our heads a very polished product with not the same amount of work that normally used to take to make that right, like to make a paper that was five pages, that was beautiful, that was going to score a four or five on an AP class, it would take weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks you can do it in
afternoon, yeah,
in 10 years, what will be the problems? Basically, is that what you're kind of asking, I think that AI can create a lot of potential scary problems, and I hope what happens is that we regulate it so it doesn't scare everybody, like there are teachers in this building that feel like in 10 to 15 years, we will just be people that do this. We just kind of sit and go, I need this, this and this and this. By November, ready go, and you're just going to use AI to kind of teach yourselves how to work yourself through a program. So in 10 years, it's only gonna get smarter. The databases that it pulls from are only gonna get bigger and more accurate and wider. I think trusting information is a really big thing that you all your age group needs to learn how to do, like, how do you test what you're watching and reading and being entertained by and so if we don't have that, that scares me, but it's going to have a huge impact, like, huge, undeniable impact. And I don't even know, like, it depends. If we get back to your question about regulations and education, are the like, traditional education systems are the biggest advocates that are in Congress right now, advocating for really strict regulations.
Yes,
what do I consider as AI? That's actually a really great question. So it stands for artificial intelligence, but really, all it is the way that I was, kind of like my favorite way of it being defined was given to me a couple years back, where, what's the difference between AI and a Google search, right? Can I make this interactive? Like, does any who's got a good answer for that? When I Google, how do I build a peanut butter and jelly sandwich? And if I or if I go into chat, GPT, and I say, I'm really interested in a exquisite recipe for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Like, what's the difference of those things? Right? That's the big question. Google simply puts it out there to the internet and it pulls up based on advertisements. What are the most popular hits? Or who are the companies that paid the most to put their information out there? AI is a language based learning algorithm. So it takes everything that Google sees, but it then morphs it into a blender, and it intelligently spins it and it spits it out in this way that is designed towards your questioning. And so it learns what your brain is thinking as an asker, and it gives you dedicated questions that sound brilliant. And like you would say, if you learn how to ask it the right way, I don't know if it's that, that's AI, yeah, okay, sorry, go ahead.
I would say, right now, the way it it does two things. I have teachers who are excited about it and want to try to use it to learn how to do their job better. I also have teachers who are petrified, because now I can't trust anything that my kids turn in, and so I am constantly trying to straddle the line of let's not be afraid of it and treat it like it's poison, but let's be afraid of it and respect it, so that we regulate it, so that's kind of what I do the most right now. Yes, sir.
So that's a great question too. So I can scare all of you a little bit. Do we have the power and the abilities and the software to track every single thing that you do on your computer? Your computers. Yes, we can track every keystroke, every site that you've ever been on and every app that you've opened. We can track what you've tried to install and what you've tried to uninstall. But with AI, we want to let some in so that everybody has an opportunity to kind of use it, and so we can let our teachers be exposed to how it can be something beneficial for the kids. But right now, the way that we track it is we block what we know is not regulated very well. So chat GPT, when we say you're going to be open in Ladue schools, we can put some parameters with chat GPT, and they'll they'll kind of give us, like, an education restricted version of it. There's other AI tools where we don't have that power, and so we just block that. We just like when we can't come in and tell it to fine tune it a little bit, we just don't allow it to happen. Now, if you're doing it on your phone, or if you're doing it at home on a personal computer, and then you copy and paste what you've gotten from a chat and you put it inside of a Google Doc, we wouldn't know. I
unusual. There's
a really good question to that. So how many of you guys have an English teacher that have ever used the word turnitin.com? Okay, so our new subscriptions to Turnitin as of two years ago include a very hefty and lofty and pricey back end that detects AI generated work. So in theory, if I went home on my non tracked computer. That's personal. And I use chat to drum up a six page paper, and I copy and paste that, and I throw it inside of a Google Doc, and I submit that, and I have say, Mrs. Hartigan for an English teacher, or Mrs. Kirksey, she could take that paper and submit it to turn it in and say, do your best. And turn it will kind of run through, and it'll kind of use the same language descriptors that AI and chat uses to help grade your paper and see if it's authentic. Yes.
Do you think students using AI will do more
games? No, I think it's up to us as teachers to teach you how to do it right, like anything, if you use it without a whole lot of guidance, it's kind of like why I didn't give Charlie the keys and just say, go drive, right? We had to kind of train them a little bit first. So if a student is not willing to learn how to use it to their advantage, you know, there'll be some issues probably with, like, some authenticity stuff, but no, I don't think it'll be harmful as long as they're taught the right way. Yes, ma'am,
complications. Do you think that AI is a credible source for learning?
Sure I do. Because you can ask AI to come up with where it's generating its content from. You can ask AI like chat GPT Pro lets you kind of see some of the sources that it's pulling from, and so that's helpful when you can track kind of what your information is supposed to be kind of looking like. Yes, ma'am. Do
you think all AI detecting softwares are
accurate? No, not at all. And that'll be who asked the earlier one about, like, the 10 year window. That's what's going to be really difficult. I mean, I don't, I can't see a scenario where the human can keep up with the pace of it advancing. And so we're going to have to use AI to actually generate software to help it bust itself, which is kind of scary and weird. It's like the robots taking care of the robots. But there's no one, one source that can do all that we're looking for when it comes to checking and keeping AI in check. So there will be some times when teachers have to kind of just intentionally assign stuff that will be aI not allowed. Does that make sense
when I call them for the law, yes, what are the consequences of
using AR Institute? So that's a really good question that we we don't really have. So we have what I'll call a dynamic rule in place. Do you know what I mean by that? So like a like a static rule would be like, if you do this period, you're suspended, or if you, if you get caught with AI on a paper, you automatically get a zero. And so we don't have rules like that. We have plagiarism rules, and we also have cheating rules, and we have honor code rules in this in this building, and AI is completely tied to all that. And so some teachers, and what our administration has allowed to happen is that by department, teachers can come up with kind of like their plan. And so there are some teachers that will, if you don't test I'm missing, what's that? What was the Chrome extension that we put inside of? Sorry, it's called something. It's gonna drive me nuts. Bing, no. Anyways, if you're typing a paper to me, and you submit it to me, and I put it up against turnitin.com and it says that you are over 65% AI generated paper, the first thing that's gonna happen is I'm gonna flag it in Infinite Campus, and I'm gonna have a conversation with you. We're gonna start talking about like, hey, look, I've watched you write papers all year, and you've never written anything like this. And I'm not saying that you took like a super vitamin, became super brilliant all of a sudden, but can we talk about how you wrote this? Because when I do like a version history on your paper, I don't see you building this paper. This looks like you just copied and pasted just right away. That makes me a little suspicious. Let's have a talk. And if it ends up where you confess and you said I did use AI. I'm going to give you an opportunity to write it without AI. So we have some teachers that play like that. We also have some teachers that just say, if you trigger over 65% AI, that's a zero for the assignment. Hopefully they've warned everybody about that, though, on the end,
publications kind of going back to like restrictions, but not on, like, a school level. Do you have any ideas of like, what the government can do to, like, help with AI, making sure it doesn't become too
powerful? Well, my honest answer to that, I have tried to keep up with what they're doing. I think, I think that what you have to be careful with, with AI is that, like, right, right, down. It was this beautiful, awesome, open thing, and then it's gotten monetarized, right? So, like, in order to use it, really, it's going to be, there's going to be a price, right, right. Different levels are going to however much you're willing to pay, will give you the benefit of the fullest version of every AI tool the government's going to first come in, and it's going to handle it with money. Handle it with money. It's going to put some restrictions on what you can charge and what you can bill customers and users. The hard part about AI is that, like with internet, you can block domains and sites, and you can discourage people to post inappropriate things and all that kind of stuff. With AI, it's a it's a language tool? How do you block Language Tools? That's the question. So I think what they're going to probably have to do is they're going to have to come up with sources and coding that is not allowed so that it doesn't almost outthink itself. But I don't know how you do that. It's beyond me. Yes, what
do you mean? Give me an example, different
things that
Yeah, well, I mean, like, my personal opinion is that AI, a fully AI generated story is okay, as long as it checks out with credibility, like as all news stories. So I guess whether it was written by a human who did the homework and did the research themselves, versus a bot that was able to search enough databases that were legit to come up with something, I guess it's your preference of whether or not one is right or wrong, or if they're both okay,
but I think I think it should be okay. I think that's okay. Yeah. Gigi,
like mandatory, sure, yeah. I think that you all at your age group need to learn how to use it without a doubt, because if you don't, then it's the Wild Wild West, and you'll be ill equipped. Yes, where have you gotten your knowledge? With an interruption in the combo? I when it first came out, I was like, it was, it was absolutely my exposed geek nerve. I it was, I was just fascinated by chat, and I played with it. How many of you guys know Mr. White, he and I dork out a lot. He, he dorks out a little more with Dungeons and Dragons stuff, and he was using it for that. I was like, whoa. I'm not like that. But the fascination to me of this language model that can take it. Could learn my tone, like, like I have a certain way of talking, I have a certain way of learning. I have a certain way of writing. And I was just it was, it was mind blowing to me, that it learned how to adapt to me so that it sounded like the stuff that I wrote by hand. And so I just dove right into it. Everything I could read about it. I did everything I could play with, I would play with it, and then, actually, now I've backed off of it because it's intimidating to me, which is just, I'm getting to a point where I'm like, Okay, so at some point it's kind of like trying to understand politics. Right now, you just kind of go and AI, is getting to that point, because it's so powerful so quickly. Yes. Do you think now it's becoming pretty becoming more interested? Oh, I am, for sure, more worried about it right now. I think I understand the direction it can go. I think I understand the products that it can make, and I am frightened that it'll be so impossible. Let me rephrase that. The most powerful country in the world is a very well informed country. And when you can't trust how you're being informed to be accurate or real or authentic, that scares me, and I can't tell the difference there are, there are things that I legitimately cannot tell the difference between whether it was either a picture that was really taken or AI generated, or if it was a piece of writing that was written by a human that did the work to find out if it was real or not real, or a bot that just used programming language. So that scares me. Yes, ma'am. My favorite AI technology I had. So the last thing that I was really having fun with was with images. So I was using chat GPT pro version so that I could kind of develop images for like, it was a personal thing. My son was graduating from college, and we were kind of doing fun timeline pictures with like baby pictures to graduation pictures and the stuff that it was pumping out, it was just almost like a game for me. It was just, I couldn't believe it. It made him look like he was 65 years old for real. Yeah, I also really like Gemini apple. I just was up before I came down here. The reason why I was a little late, Apple's got a press conference right now with all their new gadgets and gizmos, and Apple AI is coming out with the new iPhone 16, and that looks amazing, amazing, amazing, amazing. Yes, ma'am, remember,
I was talking about that tutoring thing. My heart kind of bleeds for the kids in the middle that like they're good enough at school, but they're not in AP classes, and they're not bad enough in school where they're getting all sorts of help, but they're kind of like, Man, if I could just get a little extra oomph, I could probably go from a B plus kid to an a kid or C kid to a B kid or C kid to an a kid. And I've watched kids use it for math. I've watched kids for using for papers that have a lot to say, but they just can't write it in the right forms naturally. And I've watched that happen, and that has been a game changer for kids. So I love that love that love that
Wisconsin. Thank you cheating. It was your class. What would your personal decision be if you caught
a kid? I can I give you kind of the wimpy answer? I used to be kind of like a teacher when I when I had my own classroom, it was easy to be kind of hard and just like, here's the line. Can't cross it. And then, as I got my own kids, and I learned things have to be subjectively learned, like, I need to understand the kid. There are some kids that just have an act to cheat and they just do it because they do it. And I would probably have a hard time. I would trust that I would know the relationship with the student good enough to say you were just trying to beat the system and not do the work, versus you got caught in trying to get some help and it just you wrote a paper that's got too much a on it because you're trying to use it to get some help, I would have to really dig in hard to, kind of, like, learn that. But I for as much as my answer was true with what I meant there, I can't. I couldn't just be a hard just like, if you use it, sorry you fail. I'd have to have that relationship with the kid and understand why they did it. Does that make sense? Like, there's a legit reason. Great. Talk to me about it. Yes, ma'am, how has some Gallaudet
publications? How is the new adapted to helping teachers manage professional
development? So I get to stand up in front of teachers and bore them to death with, like, AI stuff, and we have half the staff that goes, I don't want to hear about it. It's crazy. I'm not going to use it. And I have some staff that are like, Mr. White, who's like, oh, I use it every night. And then there's some staff who are curious, and they're like, Yeah, okay. And so we just kind of take it one person at a time and use tools and let them start using it personally. That's the best way first. And so once they start learning how to use it to write curriculum, then they're ready to start letting you all use it for your projects. Okay, over here, yes.
Questions. So eventually you would not be able to sort of give us, it sounds so much
like teachers. I totally believe that it will, and that I mean, like, what do you do then? I mean, like, aside from making everybody write papers with their pens and like, what you guys are all doing right now? I mean, I don't know how. I don't know how, in five years, you will really be able to tell, unless they keep the fact checker technology as up to date as the actual language bots. But you ask a good question that I don't know. I'm
gonna pause you guys for a second. I can ask more than one question or not going to ask any more questions, and then we're running out of time, because I think that thing heads up for 30 minutes.
Okay, sorry, I'm blabbing too much, exactly what we need. Hi, how can AI
benefit teachers?
We kind of talked a little bit about that before I would say for right now, teachers can do it in two ways. They can use it personally to help develop content for the classroom, but they can also use it as like, hey. If those of you that are struggling with writing up this coming up with something to start this assignment with, let me give you some writing prompts for chat. So there's a couple teachers that have done that like you can create these banks of questions that they have found to be very helpful. Sign up with chat and it can help you kind of get started, but those are what I see the most. Yes, sir. Is AI
currently integrated in
any school systems. So it's turn it's embedded in Turnitin. It's actually embedded inside of Chrome. It's which will be like, Gemini has actually got some stuff behind it. Like, how many of you guys, when you're typing up a paper and it kind of generates, like a it thinks it knows what you're about to say, and it kind of ghosts. So that's AI, right? Gemini, when we turn a full blast on, we're still waiting for Google to kind of give us the Okay, that it's okay for kids. You'll see the ability to connect all your slides and Docs and Sheets that you have inside of your the new schools domain, and it'll be able to fully access all the content that you've ever created. It's really impressive, but those are the two main ways can be used for scheduling. You mean for like, the way that council I schedule, like, classes and course sections, yeah, yeah, oh gosh, yeah. It'll absolutely be used for that. But, I mean, that's, that's through our Infinite Campus program, and so that's we're waiting for them to come on board with that. We're not going to do it on our own, to be, to be kind of precise about that. Couple more questions, I think, time for two more yes in the green time." You need to go through our press conference recording and pull 4 usable quotes. You will need to edit these to make sure they are exact to what he said. Make sure the quotes are useful for your story and are true to the context for what Mr. Stirrat believes about AI. Remember not to take snippets out of context. You can pull more than 4 if you want.