A Beautiful Prompt: How Utah is Trailblazing AI in K-12 Education

Welcome to Educast three thousand. It's the most transformative time in the history of education.


So join us as we break down the fourth wall and reflect on what's happening, the good, the bad, and even the chaotic. Here's your hosts, Melissa Lobel and Ryan Lufkin.


Hello, and welcome to another episode of of Educast three thousand. I'm your cohost, Ryan Lufkin.


And I'm your guest cohost, Jody Saylor. On today's episode, we are excited to have Matt Winters, who is the AI specialist for the Utah State Board of Education.


Matt, welcome to the show.


So excited to be here.


Thanks for having me.


Absolutely. Thank you. Before we jump into today's topic, Matt, would you mind sharing just a little bit about yourself so our audience can get to know you?


Yeah. Absolutely. So my background is I was a higher ed adjunct professor for a long time, teaching English language and literature. And then I switched over to working in k twelve about a decade ago.


Taught in the land of bad decisions, better known as middle schools.


Shout out to Jessica Pack for giving me that phrase. I started building maker spaces, doing educational technology, getting really into artificial intelligence and three d printing and all sorts of stuff. And then, started working at Utah Education Network just twenty twenty one and did training all over the state on all sorts of topics, including AI, Google, Canvas, all sorts of things. And then moved into this role about just over a year ago, which was fantastic.


Awesome. Good timing. There's a lot going on in that space. Absolutely.


And Matt, you also served on the Utah's Coalition of Educational Technology.


Yep. I was the first back to back two term president of USET and moved the conference to the Salt Palace during my my presidency. I was going to say rain. I think that's the I think some people may have heard that. But, yeah, no. During my presidency, we kinda got bigger, which was fantastic. I brought in some really great speakers and had a really good time doing that.


Awesome. And for our listeners outside of Utah, the Salt Palace is the big convention center downtown here in Salt Lake City. There's no bigger space in the state to really have events, so that's that's great. Now one of the things we always like to ask our guests before we dive into the the meat of the conversation, we ask for your favorite teaching moment or one of your favorites.


We all have kind of a lot. Every time I think we ask this question, I think of a new one. But that can be something where you were the teacher or it can be something where you were the learner. So what do you think?


Give us one of those.


Yeah. So I've told the story many of times when I've been doing keynotes and things like that because it's it's a pivotal moment for me. It's a moment where I was being taught. I when I was fifteen, sixteen years old, I got really bored in school. And I had teachers that a teacher that I didn't really love, and she made decisions around what was happening in my classroom or the classroom I was in not very fun.


And so I started working on paperwork to leave school. And so I wasn't gonna graduate high school. I was just gonna go off and work and figure things out. And I kept working, going to school.


Like, I I was one of those kids that, like, you know, I didn't wanna drop out, but I didn't wanna be there. And I got placed in an English class the next semester, and I was like, okay, I'll give it one more try. And this teacher ended up she's one of those teachers that put up, like, on the board, like, a prompt every day and, like, go write. Whatever you wanna say, just write.


And it's I'm looking for a page. And so I kinda took it to heart, started writing. And she introduced me to some really great authors like James Joyce and Jon Krockauer, Jane Salinger. About two weeks into the course, she pulled me aside, and she's like, I'm moving you dead center front row.


And I was like, because I'm those of you that have never seen me, I'm six foot eight and a very large man.


Yeah.


Being in the front row is weird for me because I block everyone. And she I was like, Oh, I'm in trouble. And I said that to her, and she's like, No, no, no, no. You're I just need you in the front row because everyone needs to hear what you're saying. And it changed my perception of what school could be, made me want to be a teacher, made me want to be a kind of English language arts, all those sorts of things, and it just kind of shifted my mentality. And so I always look for, as a teacher, those opportunities where I can really highlight the kids that need an extra set of guidance. But as a now as a state employee or when I was doing coaching at UEN, looking for people who are doing amazing work and being the microphone for them, handing them the mic so they can do really cool things.


I love that story. And at six four, I'm very much used to being kind of pushed to the back in the you know, in in photos. I always go to the back in the, you know, in the classroom, I tend to go to the back. I don't wanna I don't wanna block people.


So I understand that. I love that, you know, your teacher recognized that that was something that was actually keeping you from being heard or being to your fullest potential. So it's amazing. As Jody and I started talking about having you on the, podcast, it's amazing because we both have students that, go to school in Utah.


Right? I'm, now a sophomore at the University of Utah, but, you know, went to all grades here in Utah. My and I have a son who's just left the, what did you call junior high?


Land of Bad Decisions.


Land of Bad Decisions. Yes. He's just left Land of Bad Decisions and is moving off to high school.


So, you know, I'm joking.


Daughter that is in that same exact boat, and I'm really glad to hear that it's leaving that land and a rising freshman in college. So very similar ages.


So it's interesting. For us and I see the difference in how specifically AI is being addressed between those two environments. And so I'm I'm excited to hear about what the Utah State Board of Education is doing in this initiative in general. So kind of what sparked this? Obviously, AI has been a hot topic for a couple of years now. But what is what sparked this from a kind of a state level with you all?


Yeah, there's a couple of things. Utah's had some really visionary leadership in education for the last couple of decades, thanks to Superintendent Dixon, some great board members we have here as well, and then just the wonderful employees we have here at USP. But then also our sister organization, UEN, Utah Education Network, has some really great leadership over there as well.


And so, when Chatt GPT hit in November of twenty twenty two November thirtieth is my birthday.


I like to remind everybody of that.


You have the world wildest birthday gift card.


Exactly.


You know, it it hit.


And then that spring of twenty twenty three, everyone was trying to figure it out. I mean, I remember going to USET, and that that was the first year I ran the conference. And we didn't have any AI sessions, so I had to, like, ask people, like, come and present. Like, figure this out.


We brought in some companies that they were very small at this time at the time, but around AI, and now they're absolutely massive. And so there was this visionary leadership that was behind everything that was kind of looking at this. Over on the UEN side where I was at that point, we started building courses. We started looking at how we can support our technology leaders in a variety of capacities, giving them training, those sorts of things.


In twenty twenty three alone, I did about five thousand six hundred hours working with teachers across the state. Most of that artificial intelligence work, trying to get them in the know about what is Gen AI and how to work those things through. And then, spring of twenty twenty four hit. And we had some really interesting things hit, that were very unique in the national perspective.


So, the first thing was, we had a collaborative group that's run by my friend Emma Moss over in Canyon School District. And she ran this group. It's or still runs this group. It's a large scale initiative with a lot of our LEAs across the state, so our district and charter schools.


And basically, the technology directors in those schools said, We need cheap, safe, effective AI tools. We just need these for the next couple next upcoming school year and we need them quickly. So, we worked on an, an RFP, a request for proposals for AI tools. We ended up being the first state to have consortium pricing around those.


But also on top of that, the state legislature buys tools like Canvas and Adobe and Nearpod that all have some sort of AI component as well. And so Utah was is setting up, that digital kind of equity, closing the digital divide question very, very quickly. And very, very proud of that. And that was over on the UEN side.


And that was a little bit more public because, you know, buying contracts. Over here on the USPE side, unbeknownst to me at the time, superintendent Dixon, deputy superintendent Norman, who sadly has retired since then. Sad for us. Not sad for her.


She's She's enjoying her life.


But they were working on with an interdepartmental team, an AI framework. So our framework around AI is meant to be a living document. We're working on draft two right now. But they were working on this behind the scenes with a large group of people.


And in that process, they went, we need somebody to kind of watch over this document and watch over this conversation and see where it's going because it's getting too big too fast. And they opened up a call for the first AI education specialist in the entire country. I happened to apply for that, and they pulled that in. And so, Utah has been really leading the way in a variety of capacities, both digital equity side, but then also providing frameworks and opportunities.


Right now, one of the biggest projects we're working on is a professional development program that will, right now, has already trained three thousand teachers across the state of Utah with artificial intelligence. We're working on possibly between five thousand to seven thousand teachers by the end of summer. So there's a lot of really unique things that are happening here in Utah and it all comes back to we have a great community in visionary leadership. That's amazing.


Yeah, Matt, it's really incredible to hear the work that you've done. And as a Utah educator and parent myself, it's just so impressive to watch the way that the entire USB really has been coming together across the different departments there, but also with all of the leaders across the different LEAs like you mentioned. I'm curious, you know, you're talking about the professional development with the teachers, and we know that is where we need to make sure that teachers are comfortable and confident in the way that they can roll these new tools out to their students and to use in their own classrooms. And so I'm wondering if you could just share a bit more about really how you're working with the different schools and districts to help them to understand how to responsibly roll these tools out and thinking about the ethical and the secure ways of using these new tools that they have now available.


Yeah, absolutely. So a couple of things that are pretty important in this conversation is first, PD should be ongoing and recursive.


Mhmm.


We can't just do one and done, especially around AI. It's such a fast moving conversation that if you go, Oh, we're done. We did an AI training.


Mission accomplished. Yeah.


Yeah. You're going to be out in the cold after about six weeks.


So there's ongoing training. And I think we need and we've shifted this in Utah, but it's not everywhere. I always love what Ken Robinson says about PD, which is that it's an investment.


And I think that we need to invest in teachers and our not just our teachers, but our paraprofessionals, our administrators.


Everyone needs to have invested professional development around not just AI, but a variety of things every single month, every single year. And it's important to do that because we gotta keep up on what's new. Around what we've been doing with artificial intelligence, this program that we've been working on, thanks to a grant from Intermountain Healthcare, basically creates a tiered system. So, the first layer is a one hour PD.


We come out to anywhere in the state of Utah, any charter school, any anything publicly funded publicly funded district as well. And we do a one hour training that basically looks at a couple of key components. What is AI? Why is it important in education?


Which basically comes down to, if you don't look at AI right now, you're going to lose jobs, And you're gonna lose there's there's some issues with how AI is presenting itself in the marketplace and making sure that people are thinking through, in education, what their students are going to be graduating with and whether or not that's actually the acceptable skills that they need. And then we talk about data privacy and security because that's a core central tenant here. It's a different technology than we've seen previously. It has some volatility with how we think about our data and how it's used and absorbed.


And then we end up with looking at tools. And we look at three big tool types, constitutional chatbots, rag databases, and multimodal AIs. We look at tool types because every district, every charter school is a little bit different on what they have selected. Local control is a a great thing and a real thing.


And so we figure out what they need, but we focus on tool types so that they understand, you know, if they switch schools or something like that, they can work that through. This PD, again, we hit the three thousand teacher mark last week since April. And we're hoping to do about six to seven thousand by the end of the summer, which is roughly about quarter to a third of our teacher population in the state of Utah. The goal being is that we continue this working that through.


Now, that first layer, then we move on to a Canvas course, optionally. And at the end of it, they write a lesson plan on their content area and grade level that either uses artificial intelligence with students or teaches about artificial intelligence with students. And when they do that, if they are accepted, we can pay them two hundred bucks for Donors Choose. And so it's this paid model that, thanks to the grant, that is allowing us to build a database of lesson plans that where teachers are using AI with their content area and grade level.


And so far, we don't think there's a database like that all around globally. And so we're building that out, not just for here in Utah, but across the globe so other people can benefit from it as well.


So those lesson plans can be shared with other educators, and they can actually model kind of what good looks like. Right? Mhmm. So one of the things I think is so interesting is is I mean, it's pretty effective impact. And you talked about somewhere between a quarter and a third of all educators in the state. How do we continue to drive that? So we get that consistent experience in every school across the state of Utah.


Well, that's where recursive modeling comes in. So looking for we're looking for layer two funding to maybe do this again next summer and things like that. But then also working with our LEAs to figure out what they need and then figure out the avenues for that to happen. So things like, say, a district wants to do more AI training.


Maybe I'm not the provider on that, but we help them find that provider. Or we encourage them to figure out what the best practices are for themselves. And so we're looking for multiple avenues. There's things like our we have an upcoming document that's coming out that's called the portrait of an AI infused, student, portrait of an AI infused learner that's connected to a portrait of a graduate.


Again, a first of its kind of document. We were trying to have it out, but there were some complications with that over the last couple weeks. So we're working on it for early July. But the goal is is to tie it to our portrait of a graduate here in the state of Utah and outline what are the skills, knowledge, and dispositions that a student needs to kind of work through being a part of an AI infused society and doing those things appropriately and safely.


And then also on the teacher side, here are the skills that they need to thrive as a teacher in this kind of environment as well. And so we're building all these out as documents that can help guide conversations in LEAs across the state or even in individual classrooms where they can look at this and go, oh, this is stuff that I can embed into my standards. I can build into my course content that isn't a heavy extra lift. It's just something that I can add that gets the kids to the skill sets they need.


Yeah. Well, it's one thing I love about education just globally is that it's so collaborative. It's so you know, no one should feel like they're starting from scratch. Someone has started laying that foundation.


So I love the fact that you're really focused on being able to share whether it's the framework. And we'll link to the framework in our show notes as well. But I love that you're making this kind of publicly available so everyone can benefit from it. Amazing.


Yeah. I love that it's extending that sphere of what your professional learning community really is. Right? These communities of practice and it's helping to really help these teachers, like I mentioned, feel more confident. When you can see what I you know, I'm maybe a teacher that's feeling a little bit nervous about using AI, but I can see what this portrait of a student and a teacher looks like. You're just making it so consumable and actionable for educators and students across Utah, but across, really, the nation. And it's so incredible.


The challenge is even at I see this in higher ed, but it's more, I think, widespread in k twelve. But this idea that we can't just move beyond the idea that AI is a cheating tool. Right? A lot of educators are very hung up on the fact that it is it can be used for cheating. And because it can be used for cheating, they don't get very creative in its use cases or or they don't start thinking about all available use cases. And so I I love that you're modeling that behavior because they think they need to see what it's capable of so they can understand that it's more than just a cheating tool.


Yeah. We know and Emma Moss from Canyons and Jonathan Stewart over there, they've done some amazing work, and they're leading out, I'd say, some national conversations around this. But they've come up with a really interesting chart that you guys can link to if you'd like to that's around AI adoption. It's like a ten layered thing. But one of the earliest conversations is getting stuck on plagiarism.


I always think about it like this, is that when we work with teachers, there's a continuum here when around AI. And the first layer is productivity. They start to see AI. Once they get past the fear based conversations around plagiarism, around and let's face it, with plagiarism, it's those conversations were happening long before AI.


Exactly. Yeah.


I remember being a teacher in twenty ten, and I had students buy papers off paper mills.


There's a reason Chegg's stock has dropped aggressively since That's right. You know.


And so we have to remember that this is an ongoing conversation.


But if we are able to harness the conversations around AI in interesting ways in our classrooms, then that's actually going to cut down the amount of plagiarism. It's just a matter of understanding the underlying technology and really working it through. And so with teachers, one of the things that I point to a lot is that when we start looking at AI and you get past those fear based conversations, you move into productivity. And productivity is great, like writing a lesson plan to fly out faster, getting through the administrivia stuff, like making sure that your workload is cut down.


That's a good one. I'm a bar in that. Administrivia.


I got a that one goes to Carl Hooker, one of my buddies.


He he he taught me that one. And so when we think about that productivity conversation, if we get couched in that, though, if that's the only way that people see AI, generative AI, then that's a problem. Because then it only becomes a tool that helps me basically speed up my workload.


AI, though, when it really gets down to it, is a tool that really thrives on creativity. It can ignite people. Curiosity is a big part of how it functions. And so, if we're able to actually dig into how AI functions as a creativity enabler, you can really do some interesting things.


And so, when we push on one of my favorite conversations I have with with teachers often is, I'll hear a teacher say, Can AI do and then they have this two to three minute, like, really hyper personal Hyper specific.


Yeah. Example of, like, Can this do this in my classroom? And I always say, I don't know. Ask the AI.


Yeah. It will tell you whether or not it can do it. And if it does do it, then it's just going to do it. And you're going to have that thing done.


And then you can retool it if you want to. If it can't, it's just going to, you know, give it a couple months. It might be able to do it then. And so, I always encourage teachers to think that through.


But then, once we get through creativity, you have to start thinking about inclusivity and how AI can act as a tool to meet the needs of students who are traditionally underserved, and helping them to work with it. I think about my role in the classroom when I was in middle school, high school, and I was always the kid who was smart enough to get work done quick, and I would always have to tutor someone else. And that's not an effective use of my time. It's just the literature shows us that.


If I had AI that would extend my learning and, like, encourage me to do really interesting things, it may have been a different scenario for me. And so we gotta think about our gifted and talented, our multilingual learners, our students with disabilities. How can AI be leveraged to help support those communities in ways that currently we're not able to? I really like walking that through with teachers and showing them that AI is not just this amazing tool that can write my lesson plan.


It's it's actually can do some really heavy lifting with us to build our classrooms to where we wanna be.


Yeah. And that idea that that doesn't undermine the value of an educator or in any way to track. It just powers them in new and exciting ways that makes the learning more engaging, makes it more personalized. Right? Like, that is I love that viewpoint.


Yeah. I think of all the things that I wanted to do in my classroom. Right? But I had limited time and limited resources that if I were to go back into a classroom today, I feel like it would be a totally different experience for myself as an educator as well as my students because I could do some of that, like you were talking about, Matt, extension or providing the different levels of information and different things that I wanted to provide to my students.


My husband once asked me, Are you going to be working all night? Should we come home or are we going to be staring at the top of your head and maybe stop and visit grandma on the way home? And I thought, What are you talking about? But it was because I was rewriting texts to the different levels for my students.


And the fact that we have this incredible tool that can allow us to do that and expand the horizons for all the different students and the different levels in our classrooms is just absolutely incredible. So I'm wondering, Matt, with that in mind, is there a specific success story or case study of an educator that you have seen or maybe it's, you know, you shared a lot about what Canyons is already doing and they're doing some really incredible work. It's really, really impressive what they're doing. But is there one specific success story where a teacher has moved beyond that productivity or has moved to one of these higher levels that you can share with those listening?


Yeah, absolutely. I want to make sure that I say this, though, too, is this technology is two and a half years old.


When we talk about generative AI, November twenty twenty two is not that far away.


Yep. And so we have to remember that the the research cycles to validate generative AI in education have not fully been completed yet. And in fact, they're just barely starting to some degree. And so, when we talk about best practices around generative AI in the classroom, or are we seeing learning shifts or learning goals, there's some of that starting to happen. And somebody that I know from Stanford calls it best promising practices. Yeah. That's right.


I think that's something to really think about and use in the vernacular around this.


In terms of, like, my own stories, though, we did a wonderful series of trainings that were funded by the STEM Action Center here in Utah. And they were two day trainings. We brought out we did three of them, two on the Wasatch Front, one in Southern Utah. And we brought out teachers from all over, groups of, like, thirty to forty teachers every time.


And And it was intensive AI training. So two days, we really dug into what it is, how it works, and then gave them time to be coached through developing a lesson plan and process that work. In that whole system, we got some amazing lesson plans, things that they then shared at UCEDD, and they're going to some of them are sharing at the upcoming Utah Rural Schools Association Conference. There's a couple of favorites in there.


One, there was a teacher who I sat with, and I wish I would have taken pictures of her presentation, but I was just so thrilled with her project. She had done she's a political science teacher, and she had constitutionalized an AI to work with her students on their own political bias. And like, track that, like, where are you seeing shifts in your own bias systems? And she was like, I've done this lesson for a decade and change.


Every time I do it, I don't know where to take it the next day. I don't know how to track their bias. I don't know I don't have real actionable data. And she was like, with this, not only was I able to see it in real time, but I knew exactly where I could take the lesson plan the next day.


And so we talk a lot about we pay a lot of service and and education to data and being data driven instructors.


AI really opens that door for us to do that data driven instruction that is an important and engaging in a way that is real time instead of it being two days or two weeks after the initial assignment. She was just so thrilled, and she was like, I could actually see how my students were shifting their perspectives in real time through the AI. And she was just blown away by it. It was amazing.


But perhaps my favorite was in that same group. We had an educator from a charter school. He's a special education teacher. He has small classrooms between four and six people students per class period.


And there are a variety of disabilities, from non verbal to students on the autism spectrum to variety. We were having a one on one post the seminar and doing some coaching. And he was like, I really wish I could create an AI that would meet all of my students' disabilities, and that they could have a conversation that where it's keyed into their individual needs in the classroom as well. So, like, if I have a student with autism, I can key the AI into doing to working with that.


But then also, they're a social studies student, and they're struggling on that. Key that in as well. And I was like, you can. And he went, well, I can only make one of these per thing.


And I was like, no, you can make as many chatbots as you want. And so he started making a chatbot for every single one of his students keyed into their individual disabilities and their academic goals. And he was like, it was incredible to see that shift. Like the nonverbal students, particularly, he was like, I can actually see them learning and talking in the real time now.


And they may not talk to me verbally, but I can actually talk to them in other ways. And that's I've never been able to do that or see that. And the best part about this particular teacher is he told me all of this, and he was like, do you think that's any good?


And I was like, yes, buddy.


You were you're doing amazing work here. Wow.


And that's the kind of stuff that we love to see is teachers really keying into the academic needs.


If you're working with a student with a disability, their their personal needs, those sorts of things, and digging in in ways that allow you to help students in ways that have never been able to be done before.


Yeah. And that's exactly what we were talking about earlier, that curiosity, that exploration of what the tools are really capable of. And you've gotta acknowledge, you know, it's more than a writing tool. It's more than a chatbot.


You can actually start doing some really amazing things. RMIT down in Australia did a a really interesting their chatbot's called Lev, but they created individual personas. So if you were doing research, here's your persona. If you're exploring campus, here's your persona.


If you're in need of mental health interaction, here's your persona. Right? So that that ability so, you know, pretty good, you know, Utah, you k-twelve institution terrible not a terrible thing to see. It's amazing.


How do you you know, because these tools are only as powerful as the data they're leveraging.


How do we balance that access to data with student data privacy, especially in the K-twelve space? I know that that has been a bit of a hang up for some institutions on moving forward.


Yeah. Utah's so I'm actually on the student data privacy team at USB. So this is part of my day in, day out. I'm not student debt privacy officer.


That's John Lyman and Nicole Sanchez. But I do a lot of work with them. And Utah is one of the few states across the country that has extra student debt privacy concerns on top of Fuerpo and Coppa. One of the big things that we do here in the state of Utah that's pretty unique is we have what's a licensing system for data privacy agreements between companies and districts or charter schools.


So let's say that a big district wants to work with or even a charter school wants to work with a specific company, the company can sign the DPA with that district or that charter school. But then as soon as that gets done and signed, any other district or charter school across the state can license that same agreement and start using that product. So it saves some time on every single company's kind of perspectives and their workflows, but it makes it really easy for everyone to see what's available and get it done really quickly. And so, one of the stances that I took before I was even on the student data privacy team was if I'm going to show off a tool or talk about a tool, it needs to have data privacy agreements here in the state of Utah.


And I think that's incredibly important for any system, even outside of the state of Utah, is to really think through, in the age of AI, is there a data privacy agreement there? Do the teachers understand what that means? Are they I tell the stories a lot to teachers. I had a wonderful day in my class back in about twenty eighteen.


I had come across a tool called Flipgrid, and I was like, this is awesome. I want to use it.


And I created a lesson plan where kids came in the classroom, scanned a QR code, it would give them instructions to write a poem, and then go slam it down in the hallway. And so, they'd have to record themselves doing the poem. And about thirty class periods into that, my principal came in, and he said, It's time for your eval. Surprise.


And I went, There's the lesson plan on the board. And I was like, Do it with the students. And he was like, That's weird. So, he did the lesson plan with the students. He slammed up home. It was awesome. And he came to me afterwards, and he was like, That was if that's what you're doing every day in your class, like, you've got a job forever.


This is the kind of stuff that we want people to be doing.


It's authentic. And then, okay. Found out a few weeks later that there wasn't a data privacy agreement in place with that company. Now, not a knock on FlipGrid or anything like that, but or, you know, Microsoft at this point, but that just wasn't in place, and I didn't understand what that meant.


I thought my district was trying to quash my creativity. You can't use that tool, like, blah blah blah. Now, I understand how important that is. And I would encourage a lot of teachers who are going, Well, I just want to use this tool.


My district and my charter school has not allowed me to. You need to listen to your technology directors. And technology directors need to be transparent with their teacher faculties of why tools are not allowed, or especially around data privacy. We know with large language models, if you're using a model that trains on your data, all of that data goes straight into the large language model.


And my worst fear is that a teacher doesn't understand that, and they plug in student privacy data into that. And they create a whole mess where that data can come back, at some point, maybe permutated into someone else's response in the large language model. And so all those are parts of the components of why data privacy is so important. And I'm just really happy for the team here, happy to work with the team here in Utah, who are leading the way and making really great decisions around how our data is used and making sure that our students' and teachers' data is saved.


Yeah. So incredibly important. We've already you know, it's unfortunate, but in a time of such rapid change, we've kind of seen the first round of some of these AI companies that got funding, and they've burned through that funding. And I personally got a call from a a company saying, hey.


We're closing our doors. Do you wanna buy our IP? Do you wanna buy our our beta partner list? Things like that.


And you're like, I hope all of that was covered by protection contracts. I hope they have the right paperwork in place. And so, yeah, can't underscore enough how important that is. Well, and one of the things that Jody and I started talking about guests.


So, you know, we were talking about with Melissa, I'm guest on the podcast. One of the reasons that you were on the radar is because you and the state of Utah won an award at ASU GSV. Right?


Yeah.


Tell us more about that.


Yeah. So big thank you to Sarah Young, our former chief of staff here at USP. If you know Sarah, she is a force of the Incredible. Best way possible.


She put in for an award. It's called the Education Innovation Showplace first place winner for Impact. It's a global award. We were up against three or four, well, more than that, about a dozen projects across the globe.


Great projects. There was one from the Bronx that was like our finalist against us that honestly, they're doing amazing work. And it's for impact. And so we have the possibility with this program we're doing, but also the programming I've been doing across the state of hitting every single student in the state of Utah, which that's a hard impact to beat.


And so very proud of it. And but it's a cumulative effort across the entire agency and across, honestly, the entire state. When we won the award and people have been asking me about it, they're like, how are you guys doing these things in Utah? Well, I couldn't be moving as quick as I could I am around AI if I wasn't for the work that Sarah Young and Rick Gaesford did a decade ago around digital teaching and learning, that the work the agency has done around personalized competency based learning, around working with UEN, the contracting around certain products and things like that.


Like, Utah has a really beautifully crafted, collaborative environment.


And so being able to pull on that and and use that to my advantage has been incredibly useful over the last, you know, year and change in this job. And so awards like this, I am so happy to receive them, but I'm very realistic. I couldn't have done this without it's not an award for me. It's an award for the community.


Yeah. That's amazing.


So with that in mind, Matt, I mean, I've been able to have the privilege of watching a lot of this work from various roles that I've been in, and I can't help but think of things that you and I have talked about in the past with, like, backwards design and how we're thinking about what's the future state and how do we make sure that we're tracking towards the direction we want to go. So with that in mind, looking ahead, what's next? Where do you see everything evolving over the next three to five years? And what is the role that you and others can play in making that a reality?


Not a light question there.


No. I'll just pull out your crystal ball.


No more softballs here. Yeah.


That's a hard one. You know, AI, again, is like two and a half years old. General AI. We don't know.


Like, I don't think anybody could have predicted some of the stuff that's happened over the last two years. What I'm looking at, I use a framework from Stanford's design school, d school, called the Futures Framework quite a bit. And basically, the premise of the Futures Framework is two things. One, how do we be good ancestors to our future descendants, whether it's culturally or biologically?


It's the long view. It's not ten years. It's one hundred years, two hundred years, one thousand years. And so, like, really thinking about the impact of decisions now down the line.


The other side of it is not always being focused on the the fire that's in front of you, but the smoke of the next fire that's coming, you know, three to five years. And so I'm really thinking about those things quite frequently and and trying to prepare both myself and the community. That's part of the reason why we wanted to build a portrait of an AI infused learner and teacher is so that we can edit, revise that over time, but then also have this guidance document that helps everyone to see these are the knowledge, skills, and dispositions around AI in the classroom. And so those kind of framework documents really help to guide the change oriented work that's happening.


And then the other side of this too, and this has been feedback slash I think this is for anyone who's in a change oriented system. John Kotter, I mean, in his book, Lean Change, talks about how if you institutionalize change around a single person, it fails over time. Because, you know, you tie it to the person, not tie it to the organization or to the actual structural change. And so, over the last year, I've been very cognizant of, and I would say this for everyone who's in this kind of role, I've been very cognizant of, let's pull other people and give them a microphone and give them a platform so that they can start being the next generations of people like me who are doing interesting and engaging work.


Because if it's, again, if it's just tied to one individual, it'll fail over time. People leave, people I'm not saying I'm leaving. I'm just, you know, people leave, people make changes. So you need to have a whole structure.


And so in terms of what's going around with AI, if you're in a change oriented mindset, find people that are around you in your community that can really help you navigate these complex changes. And I feel like I'm punting a little bit, Jody, but really what it comes down to is we don't know three to five years what's going to happen. And so we just have to think about how we build structures in place now that will support us in the future, even if they're not maybe ever gonna come to fruition.


Yeah. I absolutely love that, Matt. I think the change management and being comfortable with change is such a critical piece in all of this. Right? I think we've talked a couple of times about AI truly being such a different shift and trend than anything we've seen in our twenty plus careers in your careers in education. Right?


And those resources like the portrait of a learner and things like that, that's so valuable for us as a technology vendor as a to help keep us on track and make sure we're developing the right direction to support schools now and tomorrow.


Yeah. It's one of those things that you really have to apply very thoroughly and then think through. I always think about with AI and with a lot of things. We don't know where we're going. There's things we can predict. But anybody who says this is where it's going is a liar because of the shifts that we've seen.


Or they have a real functioning crystal ball, which you can really have.


If you have one of those, I wish you could buy one. Please let me know. I have cash available.


I'll pitch in.


Honestly, good investment.


No, Matt. This has been amazing. Thank you so much for joining us. We'll add some links in the show notes here for all of our listeners. But, also, is there a place that our listeners can go to kind of watch what you're doing, see the latest and greatest?


Yeah. I'm easy to find on LinkedIn. I post about once a week, trying to highlight people who are doing really cool work. This will probably come out after it, but I'll be ISTE. This year, I see a CD, which is always a a fun conference. And then schools dot utah dot gov. There's lots of great stuff on there, and we have an AI page that I'm gonna be adding some stuff to over the in the next one to two months.


Awesome. Well, thank you so much. That is it for this episode of the Educast three thousand podcast. Hopefully, you'll you'll join us next time. Thanks, everybody. Thanks so much.


Thanks for listening to this episode of Educast three thousand. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and drop us a review on your favorite podcast player so you don't miss an episode. If you have a a topic you'd like us to explore more, please email us at InstructureCast at Instructure dot com, or you can drop us a line on any of the socials. You can find more contact info in the show notes.


Thanks for listening, and we'll catch you on the next episode of Educast three thousand.