What's the most powerful tool in today's classrooms? The answer might surprise you. Welcome to a captivating episode where we explore the transformative power of Artificial Intelligence in education with our distinguished guest, Serena Sax Mandel from Microsoft. Serena's riveting journey from corporate IT to ed-tech sets the scene as we delve into how AI is revolutionizing the education landscape, and enhancing student learning experiences.
Venture with us as we traverse the AI landscape in education, sharing firsthand experiences of how this powerful tool is shaping pedagogy and feedback systems. Uncover how AI is helping students combat anxiety, encouraging metacognition, and even facilitating mastery and competency-based grading. Embark on a global journey from Malaysia to Taiwan and India, and learn how AI is transforming education on a global scale, helping students discover their unique talents, and bridging the digital divide.
Our enlightening conversation with Serena wouldn't be complete without a deep dive into Microsoft's role in this technological revolution. We illuminate the perks of using Microsoft's technology in education, specifically their innovative co-pilot feature. As we wrap up our discussion, we express our gratitude to Serena for her insights and her trust in Microsoft's technologies. Tune in to discover how AI is not just shaping the education of today, but preparing our learners for the workforce of tomorrow.
What's the most powerful tool in today's classrooms? The answer might surprise you. Welcome to a captivating episode where we explore the transformative power of Artificial Intelligence in education with our distinguished guest, Serena Sax Mandel from Microsoft. Serena's riveting journey from corporate IT to ed-tech sets the scene as we delve into how AI is revolutionizing the education landscape, and enhancing student learning experiences.
Venture with us as we traverse the AI landscape in education, sharing firsthand experiences of how this powerful tool is shaping pedagogy and feedback systems. Uncover how AI is helping students combat anxiety, encouraging metacognition, and even facilitating mastery and competency-based grading. Embark on a global journey from Malaysia to Taiwan and India, and learn how AI is transforming education on a global scale, helping students discover their unique talents, and bridging the digital divide.
Our enlightening conversation with Serena wouldn't be complete without a deep dive into Microsoft's role in this technological revolution. We illuminate the perks of using Microsoft's technology in education, specifically their innovative co-pilot feature. As we wrap up our discussion, we express our gratitude to Serena for her insights and her trust in Microsoft's technologies. Tune in to discover how AI is not just shaping the education of today, but preparing our learners for the workforce of tomorrow.
Welcome everybody. Thanks for joining us this afternoon for what the Ed Tech Smoke and I have had an amazing year so far, and today we have an amazing guest.
Dyane Smokorowski:We do indeed. Joining us today is Serena Sax Mandel from Microsoft. Welcome, serena.
Serena Sacks-Mandel:Thanks so much. Happy to be here.
Rob Dickson:So, serena, tell us a little bit about yourself.
Serena Sacks-Mandel:Oh, it's been a long road. I was in corporate IT, commercial IT. I was at IBM for the first 10 years and then actually Walt Disney World, so that was exciting. Merging tech yeah, you like that?
Dyane Smokorowski:I was a Disney cast member once upon a time as well.
Serena Sacks-Mandel:Cool, we can share stories. Yeah, so over 20 years in commercial IT. So it wasn't anything exciting. At Disney I wasn't a character, I was behind the scenes at IT, but I do take credit for the original invention of that smart band that they have now. They didn't implement it when I was there because 9-11 happened, but I did do the prototypes and cost justified, and then, 10 years after I left, they implemented it.
Serena Sacks-Mandel:But back almost 15 years ago now, I pivoted to educational technology and that's when I really found my purpose.
Serena Sacks-Mandel:I said, oh, I can use my powers for good. I know technology pretty well, I love leading, I love developing people and helping them, and so I became the CIO of Florida Virtual, which is the oldest and largest K through 12 online, and really learned from the best and the brightest in terms of personalization and leveraging technology and how that can really help students change the trajectory of their future. And so then I wanted to go to Brick and Mortar District. That was leveraging technology to create a model for the rest of the country in the world and how do we really help engage students and improve their outcomes? And so I went to Fulton County Schools where we implemented personalized learning at scale with all the devices, the digital curriculum, content assessment, analytics, on and on and on and turned around failing students in schools. We were the first large district to pivot to remote during the pandemic, and that's when I went to Microsoft in the middle of the pandemic and helped first the schools, both higher ed and K12 in the US, and now I'm the global CTO for education.
Rob Dickson:That's amazing, serena. I did not know that you were at Florida Virtual, so I had a long time ago, 2009, my superintendent said, hey, let's start a virtual school, so Florida Virtual was one of those schools that we visited. I went to PA Cyber and then we went to Florida Virtual and, yeah, we ended up a couple of years later using Florida Virtual's curriculum out of that.
Dyane Smokorowski:That's more than once Crazy.
Serena Sacks-Mandel:Yeah, and that's very, very common. So you know, most people don't know Florida. Virtual's all over the globe and in every state, because they don't just teach, they produce the best curriculum for that kind of learning. And so I feel like I was, in a way, in the right place at the right time, as I learned virtual remote learning. Before it was the thing starting with the pandemic and the virtual schools ahead of time. So I'm not surprised, rob, you're ahead of your time there and you know it was very high quality. And then you know, now, being at Microsoft, when AI hits, it's like geez, I'm at the right place at the right time again.
Rob Dickson:Man, she said that two-liter word. That's a hot topic these days, ain't I Right?
Dyane Smokorowski:It's an exciting one. However, and Serena, I'm very interested Tell me where you feel AI is going to help in that personalized learning piece. So much.
Serena Sacks-Mandel:But we have to start, I think, with the educators.
Serena Sacks-Mandel:So there's globally a shortage of educators, and educators' time is so precious.
Serena Sacks-Mandel:We really want to respect the time that teachers spend in the classroom with their teacher, and AI can help teachers be more effective and productive with their time so that it frees them to spend more one-on-one time with the students.
Serena Sacks-Mandel:So, first and foremost, I think we need to focus on people, and the technology is there as a tool for us to leverage, free up our time so that we can spend more one-on-one time, because, at the end of the day, the students need, they need to learn human skills, they need to learn conflict management, collaboration, public speaking.
Serena Sacks-Mandel:So you know, I start with that and then I say you know, every student is individual and we want to light up the gifts and talents for every student, and the best way to do that is to personalize the education, and the only way that a teacher can do that for a classroom every day is with technology. There's no way a human could create custom lesson plans every day. So that personalization may be in the form of on formative, ongoing formative assessments that then create recommendations for the content. It could be the form of tutoring in terms of having a student ask the question of the AI and get guided towards the answer, or getting their answers checked, or getting or learning to read. Reading progress is a great example of using AI to help students progress in the reading fluency.
Rob Dickson:We use reading progress throughout all of our virtual school education, imagine Academy. Several of our brick and mortar schools in the district use that tool as well and I think it's amazing where it's utilizing teams, you know, to record the student, give them feedback, they're able to reread and rerecord and, yeah, I think that's a tool where there's AI in the background. The magic is happening behind the scenes and people don't realize that that's AI similar to like Amazon. Right, you hop in, you get all the interest and all those things. Right.
Serena Sacks-Mandel:But what's great about reading progress is I actually compare it to an ATM. So when the ATMs in a bank first came out, I actually was. I was selling the first ATMs at IBM to banks in New York and there was this argument that people aren't going to want to go to an ATM, they want to go see a person. And I said, no, this is going to be more convenient. Like who's even been to a bank? Or see the teller, like I can't remember the last time. And reading progress is kind of like that, it's self-service. But it's actually better because the student doesn't feel the stigma of somebody giving them a weird look or making them uncomfortable. They're reading to a computer, so there is no shame and they can just keep practicing. So it's self-service. You know fluency, that they can. It's just world changing. And now with AI, we can actually take the words that the student is challenged with and then regenerate a new paragraph using those words so that they can keep practicing them.
Rob Dickson:Yeah, I love that. The ability to have dialogue with AI, like I think that's inherently what makes us human and extends those human aspects into something where kids feel comfortable going back to. That like I think there's a comfort in having dialogue with something that you feel as though you're not getting some kind of physical judgment or and a you know the person's presence being there. That might be intimidating. So I think there's something there that, especially, whatever I see our students in eSports, they may present themselves as Someone different, a different persona than who they physically are, just because it allows them to be more themselves In the environment. Right, what do you say?
Dyane Smokorowski:I Would just say the other addition of bonus here is that you don't have to schedule it. How many times do we still have to? Oh, your device needs charged. Oh, there's no one in the computer lab. This is just Built in to be used at any moment that you need it, without having to go through 12 steps to make it happen. So I that is one piece that really is like citing when it comes to the reading progress. But with AI itself, what I'm very excited about is learning the prompt engineering of like that's kind of a switch of our, our focus here, but Learning how to think in deeper context. When you're writing prompts, I mean, there's a lot of Thought and process and deeper learning that goes on, in that You're finding that students who are Trying to wrestle with that prompt engineering to get the answer that they really need, they're having much deeper conversations with the AI than they're having with a peer saying right next to them right, right, and you know you're talking about prompt.
Serena Sacks-Mandel:It reminds me I was just listening to somebody today that said that they're hosting promptathons to help Educators learn how to form prompts. And it and you're right like it might seem so easy to just ask a question and get an answer, but once you start getting into it, you realize you have to think differently, you have to ask questions differently. And it's a chat. It's, it's a dialogue, it's not. It's not like you're just doing a search and putting in a search logic. You're having a dialogue with the AI and it takes them practice.
Rob Dickson:Yeah, I see so many different examples. I was just in district leadership team meeting we have a member Monday morning, so we had one yesterday morning and and watching even our cheap human resources officer Sit there next to me and bring up co-pilot to like Analyze the document before he starts talking about it in DLT. When I see those things happening and those efficiencies, it's like it's literally at every level and every age group. It's not one of these things that I think Tends to progress from younger ages on up. I think For some reason and maybe it's just the example of having dialogue back and forth that that modality is so easy that I'm seeing it happen at every age level all at the same time right, right, it's not like in Back.
Serena Sacks-Mandel:It might be one of those things like our young kids, you know, can pick up the technology on devices sometimes faster than the older people, and it may even work in reverse. That it Becomes just natural for them.
Dyane Smokorowski:Yeah, you know and the other piece of it is we. We now can personalize the experience for students using AI and in ways that we know are Fitting in that universal design of learning. So if I have instructions, I Just like every other educator on this entire planet. We can write instructions and what comes back to us from students is not what we had Expected to come back, based on our instructions. But having the AI tool critique my instructions, can you bring, provide clarity? Can you write this with more optimism? Can you write it that is nurturing to a young student of age 14? So that it does prepare? Provide that clarity, along with a few emojis to provide additional context for students who need that. That's helping my students of multi language learners. That's helping not just those students but my gifted students. It's helping everyone. I really believe we're at the point in education where we truly can personalize and design in a UDL space because we now have the tools to do that on demand.
Serena Sacks-Mandel:I Love that. I'd actually love to ask you more questions about that.
Dyane Smokorowski:So you're saying that you teach this whole different type, lots of types of students and that everybody's benefiting it from it because they can use the technology at whatever level they need correct our language Exactly, and now I can design my learning experiences for the students in the margins, not just the students in the middle, and, as I designed for those students who Need those extra supports, that every extra scaffolds, I'm designing it for everybody in a better format.
Dyane Smokorowski:I've been using a lot of these concepts with an online course that I've been teaching for teachers or transitioning or pairs transitioning to teachers, and Using AI heavily in that. In that space, I am, for the first time, seeing students respond to me with. I feel like I'm Actually growing and becoming a better teacher because you're able to give me better, high quality feedback, you're providing more clarity in what is expected of me and I feel like I'm growing. That's the best compliment I could ever receive. Oh, my gosh, if I love told, if I told them how much AI I was using. They might look at me, question a little questioning, but I just confirmed that Education is giving me time back. It's giving me the opportunity to AI, is giving me these features and it's giving me opportunity to personalize for our students of all abilities. I it's an exciting time to be an education.
Serena Sacks-Mandel:So you know from what you're saying, it sounds like you're. There's like 10 of you in the classroom because you're able to Right, so it's. It's really increasing your productivity and your ability to have a create a better experience for each learner. Exactly, and I amazing, that's amazing. Like when could you do that? Like that's amazing.
Dyane Smokorowski:That's a break room. Let's go back in time, right, you? Your story starts in Long time ago, saying my first year of teaching was 1997. So it's been a minute right, and we think about how we could personalize the classroom. As an elementary teacher, I could have had a listening center with headphones and cassette tapes, and I might have another space that was a writing center and I might have an SRA set of cards that was adaptable, right. So you got the red one. Oh, you didn't do so. Well, go pick up the orange one. This was complicated. We were trying to personalize at that time, and now it's all streamlined into one space. I am a better practitioner today than I was, not just because of my experience, because I have the tools at my, at my fingertips.
Serena Sacks-Mandel:And another thing I want to touch on that you mentioned is the feedback, that you can personalize the feedback to make it. You can personalize the feedback to make it Approachable so students can hear it, ingest process and action. So I'll just bring up there's a company that I've mentored a bit that uses AI. I'll just say, can I say the name of it? Sure, sure, sure, sure. It's called Go Nurture and it closes the feedback loop.
Serena Sacks-Mandel:So, let's say, you hand in a report. When the student hands it in, they also say how confident they feel about it or an exam, whatever it is. So that gives the educators some information about some students are very confident and don't do as well as they think they do, and some are the opposite. Right, they're not so confident and they actually did a great job. So it allows the educator to personalize the feedback based on the student's headspace. Then the AI could go through and see how the student did and actually prompt the teacher with. These are some things you might want to share with the student. If she gets to okay, it doesn't go back to the student until the teacher okays it. But here's the magic part when the student gets it back, they're not allowed to see their grade until they read the feedback reflect what it means to them and what they're going to do about it. Then they get the grade.
Dyane Smokorowski:So you're talking metacognition as part of the learning process, gary, exactly, exactly. When so much of us in the classroom say I don't have time to build in that reflection, even though I know that's where the deepest set of learning occurs, time takes away. This is built in so that metacognition has to happen and students reflect on their learning. And the other thought that I have with what you're saying here is how many of our young people stress with anxiety. Right, this is going to be a conversation directly meeting that, as they bring assignments to me as an educator. That's exciting.
Rob Dickson:I even wonder, like when you think of the awareness of a student when they walk in, they're waiting that grade many times, not thinking of reflection of the learning. They're waiting to react and this allows them not to react. It actually allows them to have personal awareness of their own growth before seeing the grade. I think that's pretty powerful.
Serena Sacks-Mandel:And it de-emphasizes the number or letter. Because, in reality, should we even be giving students a grade Like? Is that even fair? Is it better to just tell them well, you did better than the last time, let's keep going? You know, I think that with AI, we really need to also, in addition to personalize, move closer to mastery and competency grading. Because, if you know, I always use the example if you have a sixth grade student that gets a C in math, how are they going to do an algebra? You know? So why like and you said you can do this learning anytime, right, you don't have to wait, you don't have to be in the classroom. So, just like with reading progress, with math solves or other math tools other, you know Microsoft has them, but so do others. You can learn at your own pace, and math is one of those things that some people get really quickly and it takes others a bit longer. And if you can help a sixth grader get mastery of their assignments in math, they have a much better chance of feeling confident in algebra.
Dyane Smokorowski:Well then you're talking about STEM identities when you're going that level. We have a lot of research out now that say the reason why many students don't enroll in higher level math and science courses is because they don't feel that they have representation in that space. They don't feel adequate to do that work. But if we are going to take the time and nurture them properly and see this is where I'm going on understand that I master concepts then I feel more confident to take on those more challenging pieces. That's a conversation change in all of education.
Serena Sacks-Mandel:And by giving a student a device and access to the bandwidth. Their day doesn't end when the school door closes, so it unleashes the time and the location so students can learn on their own pace and their own place.
Rob Dickson:Yeah, I, you know, especially overseeing our eSports stuff, I totally see students where they're more comfortable in their own space and communicating, and even how they build those abilities to just be resilient, even like being able to fail in a space where you're comfortable in, allows you to begin to be able to experience failure then around others as well, and I think for our students they don't have. You know, like I remember, whenever I grew up, my mom would just say boy, I want you to leave the house until the lights come on right. So I'd have to leave the house and kind of fend for myself socially. Our kids don't do that these days, and so we need to build the right environments for them to feel okay to fail over and over until they feel because failure is growth right.
Serena Sacks-Mandel:Oh, I want this, yes, yes. So I want to pick up on both of those points. One is the level of anxiety and stress that not just the students in this day are feeling, but the adults do. And we have to find ways to de-stress because you know, your brain shuts down, it's focused on survival, it's not learning when you're in stress mode, right.
Serena Sacks-Mandel:So, like you said, rob, if students can be in a safe place where they are comfortable trying maybe not doing it right the first time and trying again, because it's not a judgment on them, it's just practice right, like hitting a baseball, you're not going to hit it every time. So that part's super important is to lower the stress so that you can open the synapses for learning. So I love that. And then the other part you were saying is that so that they're in a safe place. And oh, esports, oh my gosh. You know eSports has opened up so many different people's talents and skills and love of engagement. And the students doing esports actually do better in their academic courses because they feel like they belong, like there's a place for them. So I love the esports bringing that in.
Rob Dickson:Yeah, we did a year-long study with Wichita State University last year and their academic team came in and interviewed our students, interviewed our staff, and their findings were those students because they feel more connected would do more both emotionally and academically in their classes than students that weren't in esports. And I just love it because we're getting so close to more kids trying out for esports than our other sports, so it's taking off in our district quite a bit.
Serena Sacks-Mandel:Well, it comes back to what I was talking about in terms of belonging and the people aspect. So students that are doing esports feel like they belong on a team, they feel like they found their people, and I think the gifts that we can give our students are not necessarily a list of facts and dates and times to memorize. It's a love of learning and it's a knowledge that I can make a mistake and call it okay. It's okay to make mistakes because that's learning.
Serena Sacks-Mandel:I hate to bring this up, but my youngest daughter she's doing computer science and my husband's a computer scientist and so he was helping her with the homework and she was getting so frustrated. I'm like why are you so frustrated? It's a practice, it's learning. She was like I hate learning. I'm like what? Like this is my daughter now? I'm like how can you hate learning? She goes because my teachers made me feel stupid when I didn't know something. I'm like, oh my gosh, I want to replace that teacher with AI, with somebody like yourself you know, this is dorm because I want somebody that's going to encourage and say it's okay to fail, it's okay to make a mistake, you just move on. And that's what we need to teach our students, not giving them a grade and a label and a bad feeling. We want them to love learning for their whole life.
Rob Dickson:Imagine a student creating their own custom GPT of a persona that they feel comfortable with and that's their tutor Right it's like I want Superman or whoever right and then you're able to have dialogue back and forth of growth because you feel comfortable in that space. Like that. That's some pretty amazing stuff.
Serena Sacks-Mandel:I love that I love that.
Dyane Smokorowski:Serena, I'm also curious. In your years of technology, you've seen a lot of things come and evolve and explore and grow. What are you most excited about today that you wish you could have had in your hands or students have in their hands, even 10 years ago?
Serena Sacks-Mandel:I feel like it's maybe a played record because we keep talking about AI. But AI is not one thing, it's embedded in everything and so it's not even a technology thing, it's just empathy. I mean, there's students that are neurodiverse, that are different kinds of learners that now I think, hopefully, we're better at understanding and seeing and nurturing with the technology. But to me, the technology underlies everything we do and gives, like yourself, this power to personalize and customize for every kind of learner. But it starts with understanding who your students are, and that's what we need is that gift of time for teachers to be able to have one-on-one interactions with their students so that they get to know them, so that they have relationship and so that they can help personalize the work.
Serena Sacks-Mandel:There's just I mean, I can talk about data analytics absolutely critical. We didn't have the access to the data and the analytics a long time ago that are so important to seeing where students are and where the growth is, and data is the fuel of the food that AI eats in order to personalize. So you know, I know Rob knows this and he's been a leader in this field and he and I have had these conversations for decades about how we need the right data to see our students and how they're performing and then help them grow and achieve from there. So I think those technologies it's just a whole new day to age now and it's exciting.
Dyane Smokorowski:And now that you're on the global stage, where do you see other countries really harnessing some of these new innovations and really taking off with it or using it in creative ways?
Serena Sacks-Mandel:Yeah, there's so many bright spots. So, for example, like in Malaysia and Taiwan, they're using that read and progress to teach every student English. So you know we're going to have all these new students that are able to play in, like this global workforce stage. India has taken a very proactive stand from a central government standpoint to give every student a device and access, and one of the challenges in India is the thousands of dialects of languages, and so it's another thing that technology provides. You can translate AI, you can learn these different dialects and languages right away, and we can reach students in these remote villages. So they're giving the students food and you know, so they are comfortable coming to school and the government's taking care of them. There's just so many exciting things happening.
Serena Sacks-Mandel:I was just in Japan and I spoke at an event around school. The future, talking about this whole new method of educating that is based on what I've just been talking about is really seeing the student as a unique individual, which is groundbreaking for Japan, where the harmony has been the culture and fitting in, and the Shibuya, which is kind of an innovative area within Tokyo, is looking at how can I help each student find their gifts and talents, and I've been a higher ed in K-12s and I've seen so many polytechnics. So Temasek Polytech in Singapore is doing amazing things to help students be more creative or engineers or like hands-on things that you can't do with AI. Yes, ai can enable them Like I saw a manufacturing line that could be customized kind of on the fly, to produce all kinds of widgets or whatever. They were producing flashlights at the time and it's all AI driven. So these students are learning really hands-on, very important skills that aren't going to go away, you know, with AI. So you have to look at, you know, what is cognitive versus what is physical and just so, all over the globe, just seeing higher ed and K-12 harnessing the power just like Rob, just like you're doing in Wichita harnessing the power In some countries are sort of the opposite and I've kind of scolded them because I said you know you need to move from fear to adoption.
Serena Sacks-Mandel:You need to understand what you're afraid of and mitigate those risks, not ignore them. Like, if you're afraid that students aren't going to use it properly, let's talk about that. Let's figure out how we can put those guardrails in and help them use it properly so that they can harness it and be workforce ready with AI. So there's so many bright spots both in the US and around the globe. And then there's that danger of the digital divide switching. It may not be the same players before that were behind, so there's going to be a change in the world order based on who adopts AI and who doesn't.
Rob Dickson:I agree. Let me ask this question Do you think those non-early adopters, those naysayers, do you feel like that's a level of digital literacy, or do you think it's just out of fear itself? It's something that I run inside my brain all the time and I can't pinpoint it because I feel like it's a more complicated problem.
Serena Sacks-Mandel:It is multi-layered, it is multi-faceted and I think it's some of both, because when you really unpack it, so there's the fear of the data being in the wrong hands. Well, rob, you wouldn't be doing what you're doing if you didn't really understand cybersecurity and how to have a zero trust environment. So maybe they don't really understand how you can keep things secure, because they're hearing all these ransom attacks and that was happened but those are the organizations that aren't doing all the right things. When you do the right things to have zero trust, it is a safe place. So that's a combination of a fear that can be substantiated, but it's also a lack of awareness of what can be done to mitigate it. So there's the cybersecurity issues, there's the data accumulation issues and then there's this esoteric existential crisis of AI is going to take over the world, and that's harder to talk about because you have to understand the person who's saying that.
Serena Sacks-Mandel:And my argument back to that is look, cybersecurity is a huge problem and there's a lot of bad actors out there and there are a lot of attacks. But who's winning? And I choose to believe that good will win over evil, that we will. There are enough good, smart people that are going to not let that happen. And yes, there are going to be people that you know. I feel like we're going back into a Marvel comic days or something. There's going to be evil actors and we have to be able to stop them, but not stop all progress, because they might exist. They got to tell you they're going to come out of the woodwork, whether the rest of us are benefiting from it or not, and so we might as well be benefiting at learning and putting up those mitigation to those risks early and often.
Dyane Smokorowski:And prioritize empathy in our experiences with students. To say this is the direction we really want you to focus is to see different perspectives, empathize with them and collaborate in those spaces. If we keep that in the focus, as well as what AI can do to improve life, I think we're on the right track, Right right Like I choose.
Serena Sacks-Mandel:You know a theory of abundance, not scarcity. I choose to make this a positive AI experience and not give in to those bad actors.
Dyane Smokorowski:You know, I was watching just this weekend. You know, as one does in holiday sorts of things, you watch films and I had watched Love Actually for probably the 27th time and but it also reminded me, if you go back 16 years in technology, there were a series of commercials that T-Mobile put out of people using their phones to capture things like flash mobs. And there's a wonderful one called Welcome Home and it's people getting off of the planes at Heathrow Airport and it's flash mob comes and sings and it's this big, you know heartwarming moment. But it was at that moment and we're talking 16 years ago that we were starting to think this device in my hand can capture life and I can share that with people in YouTube and so on or social media. Fast forward to today. We think about our devices capturing things at every moment. I think, as we see right now where AI is coming, it won't take 15, 16 years for us to get to that point of it's just part of who we are. I kind of predict that'll happen in less than three.
Rob Dickson:I mean, think about it. We've only spent a year in this large language model like experience, and so just a year has been amazing.
Serena Sacks-Mandel:It's the fastest adopted technology ever. And so when educators say, well, students are going to you know, plagiarize, they're going to not learn, I'll say I'll take you back. Look, when I was in college, I went to the library stacks. I used paper books, right? I did my research from paper and I wrote it down on paper and I had a computer. So I eventually put everything in the computer. But my kids, they use the internet.
Serena Sacks-Mandel:Now, when the internet first came out, I remember saying that's cheating, you're going to the internet, Don't believe what you see on the internet, right, do you? You know, my kids did not go to the stacks to read all the books and takes notes, and they use the internet. It's the same thing with AI. At first we're saying, well, that's cheating, but that's if you don't know the process.
Serena Sacks-Mandel:So we have to change our pedagogy, our content and curriculum and our assessment. So the teacher can't just say, well, go give me an essay on this. You have to say give me your thesis, give me your sources, give me your outline, and you have to help the student learn the process. And then, for an assessment, you can't just say give me a paper, cause they can use chat, tpp, and that's fine if they're more advanced than now. They're doing some analytical thinking, but if you want to find out whether they understand and assess differently, they have to present it, whether it's in a video or a standup or a you know, powerpoint I don't know what it will be. Teachers are creative and they'll find ways of assessing, but it has to be more real time practicing your human skills. So assessment has to be updated, along with the pedagogy and your Gaji and higher ed and the content and curriculum, because you can't just say memorize these facts, you just you have more power in your hand today than our grandfathers had in their whole life.
Rob Dickson:Yeah, I think more than ever, the thought of memorization today should just go away.
Serena Sacks-Mandel:Well, I'll push back a little bit. I think memorization is a good skill, but what you're memorizing doesn't matter so much. Like I had to memorize Robert Frost, two Roads, the Verge of the Yellowwood, I still remember that poem. Okay, the poem doesn't give me a whole lot of good, except for when I'm taking a hike, which I do all the time, but the idea that I could memorize it gave me some confidence, like, oh you know, my brain works For sure for sure.
Rob Dickson:Well, serena, thank you so much for this time friend. I totally appreciate. I know that your time is important and special and I just know that you know we have an incredible engagement with Microsoft in relationship and have been for some time, and I am just grateful for the things that are coming, like seeing co-pilot, seeing what it can do and just knowing that in what we do every day, what we have an assistant there, something that we can refer to, that can get us beyond. You could basically start at 70, 80% of your work and I think there's something powerful with that Spoke.
Serena Sacks-Mandel:Yeah.
Dyane Smokorowski:I would say just really enjoy the conversation, of hearing your perspective and what you've seen around the world. We seem to be on that same conversation of we can do things better for students. We've been saying that in technology gosh since 1997, I can't sort of, you know the conversation hasn't changed. The tools have that, I think, were closer than ever. So I thank you for your perspective today.
Serena Sacks-Mandel:Well, thank you so much for having me and for the work you're doing. I mean, you're doing the hard work of educating students and teachers, and I just appreciate it. And thank you for trusting Microsoft and leveraging our technologies. It was great to talk with you both, right back at you. Thanks everyone. Thanks.