Handing Over the Keys: Trust, Troubleshooting, and Student Agency

• Chantell

Welcome to today’s episode of the K-12 Tech Podcast. Today I am honored to have with me Jeremy Hill from Richmond Community Schools and his tech team. We’ve got four wonderful young ladies from Richmond joining us as well today. And Jeremy, tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, what the tech team is and why their message is so important.

• Jeremy

Oh, hi. Thanks for having us. My name is Jeremy Hill. This is my 29th year in education. It’s the 11th year for the tech team. So I was a middle school English teacher for three years, and then a high school English teacher. For, I don’t know, like 15ish years. I don’t know, the math might not math on that. But I worked in athletics, quite a bit. I was the AD, middle school AD, stuff like that. And then, 11 years ago, I got the opportunity to be the e-learning specialist for the district, and that was super cool. So we started that, and I didn’t want to take it at first but then, we had this idea of a student tech team. And so when we decided that we would do that then I said, I’m in because I didn’t want to not work with students. So this is our 11th year doing the tech team thing.

• Chantell

Awesome. Jeremy, I happen to have a student tech team as well. Very similar to kind of what you’re doing, when I was a teacher at Angola High School. And I agree with you. Bringing students into our work makes it worthwhile. I wondered, did you all get your start with the Hoosier Student Digital Leaders way back in the day?

• Jeremy

No we didn’t. Now, we went to, I think maybe one of those meetings, but, when we first started, we just had this idea. And then… so the first group of kids I had came from the resource class from my English teaching, and I said they were like, Hill, we’re not going to sit around and fix Chromebooks. I said, don’t worry, you’re not going to have to sit around and fix Chromebooks. So we went to a conference, and at the conference it was about, it’s going to be student tech teams, blah, blah, blah. Every session was about fixing Chromebooks, and oh my goodness. But I bought Dairy Queen when we left. So all it was… everything was overlooked there. We were good. And we do have a couple kids that’ll  work with Chromebooks. They want to do that, but for the most part we do very little fixing of Chromebooks.

• Chantell

Awesome. And, Jeremy, you know, you said you’re committed to working with students, but this is unusual. As you said, most student tech teams are repairing devices. Working more on the technical side. What made you decide and your district decide that students should be doing this work alongside adult educators?

• Jeremy

Yeah, so it was interesting. We’ve always had the office, and then we just really started solving problems. So we are the tech team, but we really solve like, any kind of problems that come up any time at all throughout the school. And then it really kind of expanded then, to other schools in the district. Then it expanded to out of the district, and then it expanded into the community. So we get all kinds of really interesting opportunities and problems to solve from all over. Then we started working with tech companies and then that… the doors really there were no rules anymore. So now we just have to kind of decide, what we’re going to work on and what we’re not, and we kind of have to pick and choose now. But it’s really interesting because it’s great. We have 30ish kids that are on tech team, and they all get to pick what they want to work on. So we just throw things out, they choose, and then they run with the projects.

• Chantell

How awesome that they have so much autonomy and that you all have so many choices. Testament to the work that your students are doing. And the direction that you’re giving them, the opportunities you’re giving them. Well, now, I’d  love to hear from some students. So I think Emma is on deck to answer this question for us. Emma, why did you want to join the tech team?

• Emma

So this is my first year on tech team. And I was… we have things called VIPs. Where it’ll be like people who aren’t technically on tech team, but they’ll come hang out here sometimes. I like how much creative freedom they got, kind of going along with what Mr. Hill said. And I saw like how much of an impact they were making on our community. Not just with AI use, but also just going around and teaching districts about… the different schools in our district, about what technology can do in the classroom.

• Chantell

Awesome. Sounds so fun.

• Emma

Yes, it’s  a lot of fun.

• Chantell

Yeah. All right. So now let’s get into some specifics. Chloe, how much say do you have in what you get to work on and what the tech team works on from day to day? Mr. Hill said there’s kind of a lot of autonomy. What do you think?

• Chloe

There definitely is. We can do… we come in and we decide what we want to do for the day. We have a list on the board of all the activities we need to get done. But we can work on our schoolwork in here. We can help whoever and just do whatever we want, pretty much. But being productive while doing it.

• Chantell

Of course. And I love that you mentioned that you’re working on homework too, because of course that comes first. So, want to make sure that you guys are keeping up on things while you’re doing so much to help your school community and the larger EdTech community. So cool. So, Jaz, has there been a project that was entirely your idea?

• Jaz

Yeah, well, along with like, we had an assignment to make, like different personalized bots, but to take it about like going around classrooms. So now students can actually use my personal, Magic School bot. That’s kind of one of the things that, like, I went about as a project.

• Chantell

Awesome. So how much is it getting used?

• Jaz

I mean, I think people are using it. Like it’s funny, I’ll hear teachers talking about, like, how they’ve seen, like the jokes and things that I’ve said throughout using the chat bot which I think is really cool.

• Chantell

How awesome. And your reach is so wide now. So you’re in multiple schools, right? This is like across your whole district.

• Jaz

Yeah.

• Chantell

How cool.

• Jaz

I think it’s amazing, yeah.

• Chantell

I think it’s amazing. And like in theory, you know, anyone on tech team could create a chat bot that’s like their personality. Right. So you could have like, oh, today I want Jazz to tutor me. Tomorrow Chloe needs to help me out.

• Jaz

Yes.

• Chantell

Awesome. And you know, then students might even be thinking like they could make their own as well.

• Jaz

Exactly. Like at other schools that idea can spread and they can, you know, have just a figure at  their school. Just be representatives for other people.

• Chantell

Wow.

• Jeremy

Now I do want to throw in one clarifying thing here, like Jaz is being kind of modest because, the Jaz bot like… we debuted the Jaz bot outside at ISTE this year. So the tech team presented at ISTE for Magic School a couple different times. And so the Jaz bot has literally been seen everywhere by so many people. And we did a video for LinkedIn so that people could actually meet the real Jaz. Because a lot of times, so many of the things that we do are so ridiculous that people think that we aren’t serious. But it really is Jaz from the Jaz bot. And when I told her, like over the summer, I said, hey, by the way, we’re doing this in Orlando. And she’s like, are you serious? Yeah. So it’s crazy. So lots of people know Jaz.

• Chantell

Oh my goodness. So yeah, she was definitely being modest because if you debuted this at ISTE, educators from around the world got introduced to the Jaz bot. So we’re talking not just your school district, not just Magic School customers in Indiana or in the United States. We’re talking like the entire world.

• Jeremy

Yeah there were like 40 some countries.

• Chantell

That is so amazing. Mr. Hill, I want to get back to you a little bit because you… definitely this is, not a typical tech team. Not a typical situation a lot of educators find themselves in. And you definitely… you have to be able to trust the students. You have to give up some of that control. So what did you have to let go of as the adult in the room for this to actually work for 11 years now?

• Jeremy

Yeah. So when teaching, a lot of times people talk about what their stance is or how do you present information? What’s the make up of your room?  So that’s one thing. The hardest thing for me to give up was like, I love to have everything scheduled and know what we’re doing and knocking it out in a timely order. So for me personally, that was the hardest part because I have, like I email myself each night with an idea for the next day what I want to get done. And there are numerous days where I get not a single thing done that’s on my list, because all these other things pop up. And then sometimes we do get through that and the kids have the same thing. So we have the idea projects that we have on the board that they talked about earlier. And then they have their classroom stuff. We’ll talk about that later, probably. How that works. Because they have to have all the classroom stuff taken care of first. But, just the flow of what comes in. Like we might have a great podcast that we’re doing. Last week we had this thing blow up with Canvas and Instructure, and so a project came out of nowhere that we weren’t even really trying to do. It’s going to be a super cool opportunity. So, just preparing for the unexpected, but giving up that timeline and having control over your own schedule. That was the only hard part. It was never hard for me to put everything with the kids. I did that a lot in the classroom and this is just another way to do that. But, it’s absolutely the way to go. And so many more… Every school should have a tech team. That’s one of our favorite presentations. We definitely believe that.

• Chantell

So so cool. And you’re right, like, every teacher kind of has their own like amount of control they give students. And if we give students a lot of control in the classroom, it’s not that big of a leap to give them control outside of the classroom or to let them go to another classroom. And obviously that was kind of a natural extension for you. But really what you’re talking about, that timeline that’s kind of teaching anyway, just at scale. Right?

• Jeremy

Right. Instead of like some day, you know, there’s an interruption. There was a fire drill, there was an assembly. You didn’t get to see one of your four periods of English 10 honors. This might be you just lost a day and a half, and now you got to get caught up. So instead of missing a period or two, you can lose larger blocks of time.

• Chantell

Yeah. So when I had my student tech team, there were a couple times I was a little nervous. You know, I did trust the students, but they were students. And there was one time they were giving a presentation, back at the ICE conference. And one of my students was just getting a little too casual with the adults in the room. I was like mortified in the corner. So I wanted to know if there were any of those moments for you? Moments where you were nervous handing something over to students and then what happened?

• Jeremy

Yeah, so I think… So like the first few times we did conferences or any of that. But anymore, no. And I think that the reason is, is because we do everything very raw. So, for example, for this podcast, you gave us the idea of some of the questions and then Emma just divvied the questions up between the people. They chose what they wanted to do, and the people that just signed up to do this podcast showed up. Well, today, two of our four people that were going to present were sick and they couldn’t be at school, and they never miss school. So a lot of people would be nervous about that. And Jaz before we came on, even said, Hill, do you realize that everyone’s doing their work and no one’s locked into this podcast? But I like that because it’s not them giving my answers. It’s them giving their own real answers. And so that’s been our stance from day one. So we don’t practice. We don’t… any of our presentations. We literally come up with the ideas in here. We make an outline. We use AI. We’ll make the presentations and slides. I typically do the slides parts. They hate my design. So then they take over and they redo the design every time. And then they pick the parts they want to present and we go present it. So we don’t practice. We don’t do any of that stuff. And I like that because it keeps it real for everybody else. I think that makes it more usable because they’re really getting their opinions, so. 

• Chantell

Yeah, and I think as educators we can tell when something is rehearsed and not authentic and when it’s really, truly coming from the students and when it’s not. And so much more impactful when you actually can tell it’s coming from the students. All right. And one more question for you right now Mr. Hill. How do you know when a student is ready for more responsibility? That can be a little tricky.

• Jeremy

Yeah. So the only problem I ever have with that, you know, with the new state requirements, with the different graduation pathways, that junior year is really heavy. And it’s a good thing. But they’re taking way more dual credits than a lot of college kids are taking right now. And then with the senior year, they’re doing a lot of internships. So for me, my most important age group of kids typically is the juniors, because the seniors I’ll only have them for half days. So Emma referenced the VIPs earlier. And any kid can be part of tech team. If it can’t fit in their schedule, they just drop by when they can. If they have a sub, if they get done early in class, or if they have things that they want to work on individually. And then as we learn about people in here and we see how they’re doing, as long as their class stuff is on board, then we really up the game each time to what they’re doing. Based on what they want to do after high school. So if public speaking is important, then they’ll want to be part of our presentation groups. If they have no interest in that, then maybe they’re interested in working on Chromebooks. We had a kid that graduated a year ago. He went directly into the Navy and he works on Navy planes. And he got through that so fast and ranked up right away. And so it’s all about the individual student and what they’re wanting to do. They tell me where they want to go and then we set a plan for them to get there.

• Chantell

The personalization that you’re describing, that’s huge. Like the individual attention and the different pathways that working with technology can take. It doesn’t mean you have to be a teacher or you have to repair devices. There are so many careers that involve those skills that you’re building. Like you said, public speaking. Some are more mechanically inclined. Maybe it’s writing, maybe it’s designing the presentation, graphic design. So many things.

• Jeremy

Yeah, absolutely. It’s great letting them have the opportunity to do whichever parts they’re interested in. Strengths that they’re building. Like, Chloe will tell you that she hates public speaking, but she’s great at it so it’s hilarious.

• Chantell

Awesome. Jaz, what’s the biggest thing that you’ve been trusted with as part of the tech team?

• Jaz

Honestly, I would say just like holding it down in the tech room. I’d say the biggest thing we’re trusted with is kind of to be the adult almost in the room and to be there for underclassmen and just coming up students who just have, know, not as much knowledge as we do. And working together to solve problems, I’d say.

• Chantell

Awesome. Working together to solve problems. Like, I don’t know that there’s a better tagline for being part of a tech team than that. Awesome. Chloe, tell me, did it feel different being trusted with something real versus a class project?

• Chloe

It definitely does. It lets us feel some type of independence and feel confident in what we’re doing. Recently, a couple of weeks ago, a lady from our community named Roxie Deer came in to talk to us about one of the events we hold in January called The Meltdown. And it’s a huge event that people travel to from all over the country and some from elsewhere. And she wants us to get more people brought and get it more known about and out there in the community. So we’re in charge of… We’re going to be in charge of making like the social media posts and just drawing more attention to it to get more people to come out and join. So it was really nice to be put in charge of that so we can actually help in our community.

• Chantell

So the tech team influence definitely is, it’s community based outside of your school. It’s global with the Jaz bot. You guys are everywhere.

• Chloe

Yes.

• Chantell

I love it. So you guys solve a lot of problems. And I just said that was like a great tagline for the whole tech team experience. So, Grace, what are the topics your team actually spends time on? What do you… Walk through what do you do with your tech team time? 

• Grace

So with Mr. Hill being, obviously, AI Educator of the Year with Magic School. We spend a lot of time like working with Magic School and using that to teach students not only to help like in school, but also with other things. So like right now I’m studying to retake the SAT using Magic School. And I can plug in my scores from before and it gives me certain specialized things to study to help me improve my scores.

• Chantell

Again, it’s just helping you personalize that experience right? So you want to do it for yourself, then you can help others. Awesome. So speaking of AI, how do you help other students think about using AI effectively rather than avoiding it, on one extreme. Or over relying on it on the other side?

• Grace

So there are certain, like with rooms like we use Magic School a lot. So there’s certain like specialized rooms that help contribute to different topics, which is really helpful. So teachers can like, actually integrate like they’re… What they’re wanting the student to get out. And then we can use that to help us. And that’s definitely helpful with using AI in the right way.

• Chantell

Got it. So you’re collaborating with the teachers then? Like working with them. What is it that we want students to get out of this? Like what’s… We don’t want to go one extreme or another. So where’s that happy medium and how do we best get students there.

• Grace

Yes.

• Chantell

Yeah. Those are some really great conversations to be having with teachers. And I bet you they don’t always have the answers right away.

• Grace

Oh yes.

• Chantell

So along that same lines, tell us about a time you led some professional learning or professional development for teachers. You’re working through these kinds of problems with them. What was that like being the one teaching the adults?

• Grace

It’s a really cool and fun experience because like, they don’t expect it to be coming from kids. They expect it to like come from other adults. So like, Mr. Hill took us to Northeastern last year and we got… Which is another local school in our district, and we got to teach them about AI and stuff like that, and they all seemed really like into it. And it wasn’t, it wasn’t like anything they learned before, and they were getting to learn it from high school students, which is definitely a unique and cool experience.

• Chantell

Absolutely. And obviously they put a lot of trust in you like Mr. Hill did. But then also those teachers learning from you that like they had to give up a little bit of maybe that control to, to take it in. But it went well and yeah. Awesome. So, along those same lines of AI everyone’s talking about it. It’s everywhere. We can’t avoid it. It’s been years now and it’s still out there. And one of the big worries from a lot of teachers, especially teachers with writing, English classes, is academic integrity, right? Cheating. So how does your team approach it Chloe?

• Chloe

So last year I took ACP U.S. History and I had to write a lot of major papers, and I struggled with those a lot. But instead of turning to AI to do all my work for me, Mr. Hill introduced us to Magic School, which has like bots that don’t give you the answers but walk you through what you need to know and learn. And that helped me. I used it for almost every essay because it was able to explain topics to me and help me to get my own thinking going, rather than just using AI to do it for me. And, it helped me learn a lot about what I was doing, and it made me feel good because I did it on my own, but I just had a little bit of help without full on cheating.

• Jeremy

So from the teaching side of that, the way we test that is this is the first time in history where every kid has an opportunity to have help at home. Because before, it was always an academic or a socioeconomic issue. But now all of our teachers can build bots where the kids can study at home like they would with a parent. But not everybody has that opportunity because parents are working or they, you know, kids are babysitting younger kids. Then it’s really good for our teachers because our kids can test it out first. And so, for example, the class that Chloe’s referencing, they’re really strong about not wanting to use AI the wrong way. But we can see every interaction that Chloe has with that AI. So she can say, well, here’s where I was stuck, here’s where I was getting help. And that’s really beneficial feedback for the teachers too to improve instruction as they’re working through the next day. On the other hand, if she’s using something that isn’t you know, a school program, be it ChatGPT, Snapchat AI, heaven forbid. Any of that kind of stuff. Then what they’re doing is they’re just getting answers back, and the teachers can’t see any of that conversation. So there’s no way to improve the teaching and learning there. So that’s kind of our guiding question is, is it a thought partner or is it an answer vending machine. And that kind of tells you if you’re using it right or not.

• Chantell

I love that. And that’s a really easy concept for teachers and students to understand, right? I love that idea of  the thought partner versus the vending machine. Because that truly is a differentiator. That’s easy to comprehend. Awesome. So we talked a lot about the professional learning, working with teachers, helping refine the teaching and learning process. Mr. Hill, how do you coach students to have credibility on topics like this? Both with their peers and with staff members?

• Jeremy

So really, what we just talked about there with Chloe, that’s a perfect example of what we do. We want it to be real and we want it to be authentic. So we want our kids to go first and try things out. We spent two and a half weeks before we purchased Magic School trying to break it. That was a whole different group of kids a couple years ago. But they did everything that they could to make it act inappropriately, tell inappropriate jokes. Give answers that would be jaded one way or another. Make inappropriate pictures. You can only imagine what they tried there. We worked with our tech department and said, hey, here’s what we’re going to do. And they loved it. They said go for it. That way when we rolled it out, teachers knew it was safe. Parents knew it was safe. Kids knew it was safe. But because the kids had that experience, I could put Ozzy in front of people and he could say, I promise you, for two and a half weeks, I tried to make it make every bad picture I could. This thing won’t break. And when it did have hiccups, we could contact, in this case, Magic School. And their engineers could, you know, say, oh, we see what’s happening here and right away… and, you know, that was at the very beginning before people were really using it a lot, so. And even today, companies are really responsive. And once we started doing that thing, it also changes when… Like when the kids are speaking with companies at different places. Then they’re like, holy cow, they really know what they’re talking about. But, we don’t really like train or practice for that stuff. It’s just through everyday use. And that’s what I like about our approach there.

• Chantell

I love that. So like I said, most districts don’t have tech teams like this. You’re kind of a 1 in a million. Although hopefully rapidly growing. Let’s talk about some practical takeaways, for maybe some listeners considering launching something similar. So let’s start with the bad, ugly side of it. What’s a mistake you made early on that you’d skip if you started over? Help us prevent those.

• Jeremy

Yeah. So the first, the biggest mistakeI ever made was, I took this new role in the middle of the year, and so I just pulled kids from dual credit resource classes because they had the easiest schedules to get in. And that was not the way to do it. You want a cross-section of students, so you don’t want to just pull from kids that openings in their schedule. And it’s something that you also want kids to strive for. Because if they fight… and that’s  the other hard thing like, how do you pick? We have 1,400 kids. How do you decide which 30 get in? And there’s no truthful answer to that, you just have to find your way in here. And that’s kind of how we do it. Like, you have to figure out how to get in yourself.

• Chantell

Yeah, I think that’s so true. It was in my experience as well, like the kids who want to be there, will figure out a way to do it. If you help them, it can’t just be who’s available, because if there’s no interest or there’s no motivation, makes it hard. So then on the other side, you’ve learned some lessons as well, made some positive changes. What does it take from the adult side to make this sustainable year over year?

• Jeremy

You really just have to… I mean, it’s all about the students. And so, like, we get tons of presentation requests and I don’t do any that don’t involve the kids. Because it’s really all about them. I’m not trying to build a resume. I’m not trying to job hop any of that stuff. We care nothing about that. So to me, it’s all about the sustain. And you also, like, have to be super flexible. People ask, well, what are you guys going to do next year? We don’t know what we’re doing next semester. Like we have a schedule of big events for this month. We try not to do more than 1 or 2 really big ones each month, and then we fill in as needed. But things change so fast. The way AI works in school today is vastly different than the way AI worked in school a year ago. So staying flexible and staying on top of those things is super important as well.

• Chantell

I think that’s great advice, because we know working in education technology, sometimes one week, one update, from one product can change the whole world, so.

• Jeremy

So yeah, we do understand that. And it’s crazy when you sometimes when you see stuff you’re just, you’re like oh wow this is going to be different. So, and a good example of that is the push back on screen time and stuff right now. Nobody would have predicted that. But that’s important to people. So like in all of our presentations and stuff, that’s something that we have to address. Is to what… do we have too much screen time? How do we feel about that? What age should kids begin using AI? So that’s stuff that we’re talking about for the presentations we have coming up in the fall.

• Chantell

I love that. And that’s what the adults in the EdTech world are talking about. That’s what parents in the community are talking about. So again, just grounding that in real experiences and authenticity. Awesome. All right. And at the end of… Towards the end of every episode, we do a rapid fire round. So these are like fast, quick, fun, 1 or 2 sentence responses. Kind of give us the first thought on the top of your head. So I’ve got some for you, Mr. Hill, to start. What’s the best tech tip you give every new student on the team?

• Jeremy

Power off, power on, log back in.

• Chantell

It’s amazing how many problems that solves, right?

• Jeremy

About 80% we feel.

• Chantell

And next, what’s one word to describe your student tech team?

• Jeremy

Inspirational.

• Chantell

I love that, and I think they’re inspirational. I think that’s just a testament to how far and wide your influence is becoming, that they’re an inspiration to the EdTech community. And what’s a skill you didn’t expect to learn from running this program, but you have?

• Jeremy

Patience I guess? Yeah. Or I didn’t understand, like school picture day will change everything. Dances will change everything. Birthdays will change everything. That has nothing to do with my job. But somehow it directly impacts it.

• Chantell

Absolutely. Homecoming dress up days, all of those. They throw a wrench in the plan.

• Jeremy

We survived.

• Chantell

All right. So, Emma, you’re going to answer some rapid fire questions on the student end. So can you tell me what’s your favorite PD session or conversation you’ve led with teachers or students?

• Emma

Yeah, we just did a competition for the best Canvas page. And so at the last PD meeting, they gave one of our teachers, Mrs. Bessie, an award for having the most organized Canvas page. And so that’s just like one of the little things that we’ve done lately.

• Chantell

Awesome. And I bet you that she was really excited to win that.

• Emma

Yes she was.

• Chantell

All right. What do you want to do after high school?

• Emma

I want to pursue physical therapy. I’m doing an internship for it right now.

• Chantell

Excellent. So just on a side note, what in tech team is helping prepare you for that career?

• Emma

I was actually just talking about at my internship today that AI use and notetaking for after patients leaves. Like, f or the healthcare side of things. Like, they’re starting to incorporate more AI use into it.

• Chantell

I love that, and yeah you’re right, a direct correlation. And then finally, what’s one piece of advice for a student thinking about joining next year?

• Emma

I think just bring all of your creativity. No ideas are dumb and anything can be made possible if you have the right team of people doing it.

• Chantell

I love that and it’s so, so true. Who would have thought that you all would be going to ISTE and working on a community project? Excellent. Yeah. All right. We’re going to end always with a practical takeaway. So what’s a tomorrow morning action item for listeners? So Jaz, if a listener wanted to do just one thing to move towards having a student tech team, what should it be?

• Jaz

I would say the first biggest step is to find a representative of students that represent a diverse group of students around their school, and that should basically reflect a population of kids at the school. Just because seeing different voices of students, they can tell you the issues that need to be solved, and they can work together and bring just different people to be one in a way. And so I think that’s one of the most important things. For sure.

• Chantell

Awesome. That’s an easy thing, right? One quick easy first step. 

• Jaz

Yeah.

• Chantell

All right Emma, where can listeners learn more about your program?

• Emma

We have a website. It’s rhstechteam.my.canva.site. And this is kind of where we update all of our like, projects that we’re working on, our team. You can learn all about our team up there. Past tech team members are highlighted on there and, and what they’re doing in the workforce. And so that’s where everything gets updated.

• Chantell

Awesome. So we can check up on you next year and see where everyone is. Right? Cool. All right. Is there a final thought from any of you students or from Mr. Hill on what you hope schools take away from this episode of the K-12 Tech podcast?

• Jeremy

The whole thing is, just hand it over to students. Every school… One of our favorite taglines is, every school has problems. And if you have, as long as you have students that’s your solution. And it’s been really important for us following that. We did a really cool project last year where we had the Kiwanis group come in, and the average age in the Kiwanis group was probably 80ish. And they wanted to know, like, what AI looks like in school because adults think that AI looks how they use it. So to make funny pictures for social media or to use it like as a search engine. But it looks completely different for students.So we got them to come in and they got to pick what grade they were in. They got to pick their subject and they got to use Magic School rooms. And when they left and it was the… We’ve never had any pushback in our community because people are able to speak about what AI in education looks like, and it’s vastly different from what AI looks like for adults. And so because we had a team, we could pivot quickly and say, yeah, we can come, you know, come on in and we’ll do it. And we paired up all of the different Kiwanis members with a different student. And that was like their tour guide. And they just walked them through and let them pick the topic, grade level. And they learned all kinds of cool stuff.

• Chantell

How amazing. And it’s not… You said average age approximately 80, right? So these are maybe some of our least tech savvy community members. But you’re dispelling any fear that they have because they’re seeing from a student side what it looks like. So I think that probably not only leads to conversations about AI, but screen time in general. What are students are doing on devices? Here’s a window.

• Jeremy

Yeah, that’s a big one right now we’re talking about. And it was really great with the Kiwanis because a lot of them are retired business people. And they were talking about how if they had it when they were in business, how much time and effort it would have saved, how much better training their employees could have gone. So that was super cool. And they’re very active in all kinds of areas around town. So that’s a big one. We’re trying to get more and more parents in to get to experience it. And that screen time conversation is one that we’re talking a lot about. And one of our biggest points there is like, I know I have way too much screen time now. I’m going to guess that you probably have way too much screen time. And so it’s a balance because like, we know if I’m catching up on the Daily news on TMZ, not a good use of screen time. Any kind of social media, pretty much terrible. But if we’re doing something productive, like if they’re working on marketing and social media for the Richmond Meltdown, very important. If they’re studying for the SAT. If they’re running… Jaz Em’ Ups Beauty Supply, check her out online. Very important. So things like that. There’s good screen time. There’s bad screen time. We all need to balance. So we’re with that. That’s another thing that I like about our tech team too. We have members who are not very pro AI. They’re pretty much anti AI, and so it’s a great checks and balance system. Like Jaz was talking about, you need to have every kind of student representative on your tech team. And that’s really important. That’s a great first step for schools so.

• Chantell

Awesome. Well thank you so much tech team students. Thank you, Mr. Hill for being our guest today for sharing a little bit about the work that you’re doing. I really encourage everyone to check out their website. We’ll have it linked in the comments and in the information for this episode, because it truly is amazing to hear and see the things that the student tech team has been doing just this past year, and even all of the stories about the students from the past. So check it out. Consider maybe one first step to try to create a student tech team, or at least space for a student tech team in your own school or district. Don’t forget to check out all of our previous episodes of the K-12 Tech Podcast, and don’t forget that you can earn a professional growth point for listening to the episode and completing our quick Google form. Thank you so much for being guests today.