On this episode of the Innovative Schools podcast, we're sitting down with doctor Marquita Blades to talk about AI, its uses in the classroom, its pitfalls in the classroom, and just try and understand this whole thing in general. Come on. Let's learn together. Hey, everyone. Welcome to this episode of the Innovative Schools podcast.
Jordan Bassett:My name is Jordan, your host for this episode. On this episode, we have another host, Will. Hey, Jordan. How's it going, man?
Will Anthony:I'm doing good. I'm excited to be here.
Jordan Bassett:Yeah. I'm really excited to start getting you into this whole podcast thing and have you a part of it.
Will Anthony:I'm really excited. I've been behind the camera for basically every other episode, so I'm excited to be in front of it.
Jordan Bassett:Yeah. Yeah. I am too. Who are we talking to today? Who's our guest?
Will Anthony:I'm glad you asked. Today, we are joined by the great and wonderful doctor Marquita Blades. Hello, Marquita. How are you doing today?
Dr. Marquita Blades:Hey, Will. Hello, Jordan. How are y'all?
Jordan Bassett:We're doing great. What is weather like down there in Atlanta?
Dr. Marquita Blades:Right now, it is overcast. Oh, yeah. Possibly gonna rain a little bit today.
Jordan Bassett:See, I kinda like those days. That sounds very soothing to me to have just a light overcast, light rain. I know there's some people who may not like that, but Me.
Dr. Marquita Blades:But Not when my to do list is long.
Will Anthony:Oh, okay.
Dr. Marquita Blades:Don't this is lazy weather.
Jordan Bassett:Got it. Yeah. Absolutely.
Will Anthony:True. So
Jordan Bassett:today, we're talking with you about this great big giant elephant artificial intelligence and how it can be used in the classroom on it's kind of pitfalls, different things. I'm really interested to get into this topic because you see it everywhere. Right? You see AI here, there, that it's in my banking. It's in just what it what am I trying to say here?
Jordan Bassett:Oh, how like streaming services, trying to suggest what I wanna watch. All these different things, you hear the worst things, you hear the best things. I I'm gonna make an assumption that most people know what artificial intelligence is, but It's kinda hard not
Will Anthony:to know at this point. Yeah. You know? It's it's so everywhere. I feel like I'm seeing it now in TV commercials.
Will Anthony:I can kinda spot it and know that that was AI generated, you know, and different things like that. It's everywhere.
Jordan Bassett:What are your overall doctor Makuta, your overall thoughts on AI in relation to to school? Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? What are we what do you think we're kinda looking at?
Dr. Marquita Blades:Well, throughout my career as an educator, I've always been about practicality, especially for teachers and how we can get students further faster. So in my eyes, AI is an excellent thing for schools and we absolutely should be incorporating it into as many classrooms as possible.
Jordan Bassett:Gotcha. What are some of the things that you see that if it should be incorporated, what are some of the just basically, we don't need to get into specifics yet, but, like, what are some basic things that you see AI being able to help educators and students with?
Dr. Marquita Blades:With educators, AI is gonna help lighten the teacher workload for repetitive tasks and those things that teachers put so much time into that they're now left burned out, tired when it's time to actually engage with students. So it'll preserve some teacher energy and get that time back so that they now can focus on building those very important relationships and spending time working more directly with the students. It's gonna help the students just in terms of preparing them for all of the tech that they're going to engage with once they leave our schools. It's just a part of how everything operates. You all mentioned that everyone knows what AI is, and I would say sort of everyone has engaged with AI, whether, whether they intended to or not, but they don't really know what it is and what makes it work.
Will Anthony:That's honestly, I didn't really thought about it like that, whether they know it or not. You know, they definitely have engaged. Mhmm. Before we kinda dig deeper into this topic, Marquita, I wanna ask you, what's your kinda, I guess, your journey in education so far, and what are you doing now? So let's just kinda know a little more about you.
Dr. Marquita Blades:Alright. So I am about twenty four years. Wow. Twenty four years in a It is a very long time. It doesn't feel that long because I'm always reinventing myself as an educator.
Dr. Marquita Blades:But the first sixteen years I spent teaching in K-twelve public schools as a high school science teacher. And since leaving the K-twelve arena, I've been working full time as an education consultant and, also an adjunct professor at three universities.
Jordan Bassett:Well, that's awesome. And you have time for a podcast.
Dr. Marquita Blades:I do. You know why? Because I'm I'm practical in my planning.
Jordan Bassett:There
Dr. Marquita Blades:you Also, because now I leverage AI. So
Jordan Bassett:There you go. Yeah. That's true.
Will Anthony:What a great plug there. Where do you go? Yes. Where do go? Alright.
Will Anthony:Well, kinda getting back into the topic now. Is there anything you think teachers just need to be wary of for students if they wanna start using AI in their school? Really, or in their classrooms more specifically. I I think we all kind of see that we're kinda worried about cheating. Mhmm.
Will Anthony:But is there anything else maybe educators should be worried about?
Dr. Marquita Blades:I'll say first that cheating should be the least of our concerns because kids have found a way to cheat ever since the one room schoolhouse. So let's take that part off the table. For sure. That's a good point.
Jordan Bassett:That's a
Will Anthony:really good point. Never
Dr. Marquita Blades:worse. Let's take the cheating off the table. Anything that teachers should be wary of is just, making sure that students have good digital citizenship skills
Jordan Bassett:Mhmm.
Dr. Marquita Blades:And making sure that we don't overuse AI and underemphasize some of those traditional skills that we know our students have always been lacking in. Interesting. I'll add to that. When I train teachers on AI implementation, I always tell them to analyze how you intend to use AI. Are you using it as a supplement, or are you using it as a substitute?
Dr. Marquita Blades:So if the entire lesson or the entire activity is AI, no teacher interaction, no peer interaction
Jordan Bassett:Mhmm.
Dr. Marquita Blades:No hands on, no movement, you're using AI as a substitute and nothing's gonna be accomplished. But when you use it as a supplement, when it's a piece of, when it is a tool for and accompanied with, then you're using it, in a meaningful way.
Jordan Bassett:Yeah. I think that's a really good distinction. I know, I haven't used AI a whole lot, but, I do find that in general, it's it's better to kinda if I've already done some of the lifting already and to just kinda help me get a little bit better to understand and not as a full substitute. So I like that of asking that question, Are you using it to supplement or to substitute? Will, I think you looked up some stats on AI and different things.
Jordan Bassett:Just kinda curious about what some of those things are, and let's just talk about them.
Will Anthony:Yeah. Of course. As I kinda go through this, Marcuda, I would also love to know your thoughts about any of these numbers that we kinda pull out. The first one was a which feels, you know, at this point, too far gone with how much AI is moving. But in 2023, we had a study that said eighty six percent of students said they use AI in their studies.
Will Anthony:About 24% said they use it daily, and 54% said they use it daily or weekly. And even in 2024, we can see twice as many teens from age 13 to 17 who have ever used AI to help with their schoolwork. That number has doubled for 2023 to 2024. So who knows how big that number is now? But, Marquita, was wondering if you had any kind of thoughts about that, those numbers there.
Dr. Marquita Blades:Yeah. I haven't seen any of that data or read any of those studies, but I can almost guarantee you that when they say they're using it to help with their studies, they're simply looking up answers to questions or scanning problems and allowing the AI to solve it for them. They're probably not using it to support any type of critical thinking, and I can guarantee you that the prompts that they're putting in are not sophisticated either.
Jordan Bassett:Yeah. That's true.
Will Anthony:That's true. We
Dr. Marquita Blades:Was that too much? Was that
Will Anthony:too much? No. No. That's what we wanna hear here. That's what we wanna hear.
Will Anthony:Yeah. We actually So
Dr. Marquita Blades:they think they are using it. They're they're they're not doing anything. They're not doing anything until we teach them really valuable and meaningful ways. What are you really prompting for? What is the true answer to the question that you're looking for?
Dr. Marquita Blades:What have you thought about prior to now that AI can assist you with? And I would say most students are really not looking that deeply into it.
Will Anthony:Okay. Mhmm. I had something else too. This is kinda focused more with educators. This is again from 2024.
Will Anthony:We see that 25% of educators said that AI can bring more harm than benefit. If you could say something to that 25% of teachers, what would you say?
Dr. Marquita Blades:What instances are they pulling this from that is gonna bring more harm than benefit? I know that I was working in a boarding school, back in January, which when you think about boarding schools, you think instantly you think these schools have access to all types of resources. You also think of a certain type of student that they're gonna be to a certain level of academic integrity. And what I found was the total opposite. The teachers were very leery about incorporating AI because they felt like all their students were going to do was cheat.
Dr. Marquita Blades:And they also said our students are severely lacking in basic math and reading comprehension skills, and we fear that if we incorporate AI, they're never gonna gain these reading and math comprehension skills. But we have to look at AI in the very same vein that we look at teaching reading and teaching math. You have to teach AI. You have to have an AI lesson plan, and you have to show students how to engage with it, when to use it, when not to use it. And if we're not taking the time to do that, then yes, it is gonna cause more harm than good, but that goes back to the substitute versus supplement.
Dr. Marquita Blades:And if you just put students on a platform and you don't explain to them what they're supposed to be doing, then nothing productive is gonna come out of that.
Jordan Bassett:Yeah. Yeah. I feel like based off what you're just saying, but I'd like to know more of your opinions on this, is if we don't show students how to use AI correctly, are you saying that there's more chance that they will abuse it, that they will use it incorrectly, that kind of thing? Is that is that kind of what you're saying?
Dr. Marquita Blades:That is what I'm saying. I'm also saying demystify it. Y'all y'all we've seen in history that anytime something is taboo, people want it more. And they do tend to abuse it. But just like back in the day, y'all y'all heard.
Dr. Marquita Blades:I've been teaching for a long time. So I remember when people first learned about Google. So teachers immediately put in their syllabi, no googling, and they put that on their assignments.
Jordan Bassett:No googling. Allowed to use Wikipedia. Wikipedia was the big
Dr. Marquita Blades:baddie when I was in school. Yeah. And you know what? The kids the first thing they did, run to Google. Run to Wikipedia.
Jordan Bassett:Don't use this oh, go there first? Is that what
Dr. Marquita Blades:I heard? The first place they're gonna go. And then they will put under their, works cited page that Google was where they got their information, and we had to teach them. Google is not your source. It's just the search engine you use to find your source.
Dr. Marquita Blades:We had to teach them. Mhmm. When we demystify AI, then the students are gonna become less intrigued with it. Anytime we take something and we make it a part of the lesson, all of a sudden, they don't wanna use it anymore. So once we demystify it, we're gonna eliminate a lot of the cheating and abuse.
Will Anthony:I can definitely see that for sure. Yeah. How do you how can educators teach students to verify these answers that they're getting from AI?
Dr. Marquita Blades:So, some AI chatbots are created better than others or some have features that are more supportive of an educational environment than others. So I think first starting by showing students the difference of the types of outputs they're gonna get across platforms. For instance, giving the students a prompt and telling them enter the exact same prompt on Google Gemini, ChatGPT, and Perplexity, and now let's analyze not only the outputs, but now that ChatGPT has started to cite its sources Google is citing its sources, now let's actually go to those sources and let's verify the information and maybe having the students do this, practice this four or five times so that they can start to see some data in which platform consistently gives accurate information. And now we know that when we're looking for this type of information, if we're working on a research paper, we go to perplexity. If we're looking for ideation, maybe we go to Gemini and chat GPT.
Dr. Marquita Blades:If we're looking for a more personable output versus a robotic one, which platform we go to?
Jordan Bassett:Sure. Yeah. I think not think. I very much appreciate that both Google and ChatGPT now, you can it it either gives you the sources or you can ask for the sources. Mhmm.
Jordan Bassett:And it kinda gives it to you, you can read it yourself. You can start to synthesize yourself. I think that's one of the things that I've really liked with AI is that I can ask a question and it gives me stuff back, but I can keep digging into it. It's it's almost just a depending on the one that you're working with is it's a it's a better search engine Yes. To just figure out where the information is coming from.
Jordan Bassett:And then at that point, it's no no really it's not really different because you still have to vet those sources Yes. And make sure that they're accurate. But that's also really intriguing to kinda put AIs next to each other in in a in a kinda battle and say, what is this one giving me? What is this one giving me? And cross cross reference everything like
Dr. Marquita Blades:Well, what we're doing, is then reinforcing the critical thinking skills that we constantly say our students don't but we're doing it in a way that they don't even realize that that's what we're asking them to do.
Jordan Bassett:Yeah, that's great. Well, this has been a great conversation so far. We're gonna take just a quick break, and after the break, we'll get into some of these more specific things that teachers and educators can use in their classroom to help enhance their lessons, to help teachers or not teachers, help students understand subject material more, and makes a margin for teachers so that they can continue to build those relationships and everything. So hang out for just a second, and we'll be back with doctor Marquita Blades to talk more AI.
Will Anthony:Alright. Welcome back everybody to this episode of the Innovative Schools podcast. Me and Jordan are back with doctor Marquita Blades talking about AI. Marquita, many educators feel overwhelmed by the increasing demands of their time. How can AI help teachers streamline their workload to get time back without sacrificing quality?
Dr. Marquita Blades:Well, as I mentioned just a little bit earlier, AI should definitely be the go to for some of those repetitive administrative tasks that most teachers don't enjoy anyway, like, lesson planning or grading, especially if it's something that doesn't require specific feedback. If we're giving
Jordan Bassett:short and
Dr. Marquita Blades:check ins, those should be automated. And then we devote our grading time to the things that really require us giving specific suggestions to the students. Other ways that teachers should be leveraging AI is for ideation, for reimagining lessons that we've done over and over again, but we're not getting the engagement out. We should be uploading to our chatbots and saying, give me five new ways to teach this to a group of students who, and then we've got to put in a case analysis of who our students are. We should be explicitly telling the AI, I have five students reading on grade level, three reading below.
Will Anthony:Yeah.
Dr. Marquita Blades:And getting those ideas very, very specific and nuanced so that they speak directly to our students.
Jordan Bassett:Yeah. I guess that's a really unique and helpful thing AI can do is to to help you see things from different perspective a little bit or just where you can enhance things. I definitely had a teacher who had a binder that had, like, every lesson,
Dr. Marquita Blades:like,
Jordan Bassett:in a day. And it wasn't that, like, she sat down at the beginning of the year Uh-huh. And, like, planned it all out. No. This was clearly from fifteen years ago.
Jordan Bassett:And she's like, this is the way we're teaching this, and this is how it's working. All the way through, never changed it. There'd be references to, you could tell she put a lot of work into it, when she first made it, but it had references to old bands or movies or other pop culture things.
Will Anthony:Yeah.
Jordan Bassett:And I'm like, that was, like, fifteen years ago. I have no idea what you're talking about. So using AI to kinda help elevate those or bring them at least current sounds like a great idea. Mhmm.
Will Anthony:Instead of blowing dust
Dr. Marquita Blades:off the other Yeah. Because my very first teaching job was, in a department where the science teachers all got together Mhmm. And planned. But what planning really meant was that you take the folder of these prepackaged activities, and it's your week to make all the copies for everybody. And I hated it.
Dr. Marquita Blades:I hated it so much.
Jordan Bassett:Gosh. But yeah. And what's crazy is how fast AI can return those enhancements. Mhmm. It's like it's like I'm still typing it in, and it's already churning things.
Jordan Bassett:Like, how did you read that so fast? Let's get into though some of the things. You said that, teachers can use it for grading, for, kind of lesson plans, things that don't need a lot of feedback. Do you have a specific, AI to for some of those tasks?
Dr. Marquita Blades:Well, my favorite, two platforms right now are ChatGPT and Magic School AI. Magic School is probably one of the most popular platforms. When I train teachers out of all of the platforms I share, the majority of them have already used Magic school, but they're not using it in the ways that I suggest.
Jordan Bassett:Okay. So what's what are the ways that you suggest? I guess, is the question.
Dr. Marquita Blades:Well, Magic School allows you to customize their tools. For anyone who is familiar with the platform, they have what they call magic tools, and these are essentially many GPTs within the platform that have been programmed to perform a specific function like writing a lesson plan, creating a quiz, or generating questions from a YouTube video. Okay. Well, Magic School allows you to customize those tools. So not only will I if I'm doing questions from a YouTube video, I'm gonna bring in the link to the YouTube video, but then in addition to that, I might upload some pre assessment data so that now the tool knows how much prior knowledge my students are bringing in as they watch this video, and it's gonna give me questions that will build on that knowledge or either fill the gaps that are already existing.
Dr. Marquita Blades:And and that's what I really love about Magic School that other AI platforms, they're great and they have excellent tools, but they don't allow you that level of specificity.
Jordan Bassett:So it makes it specifically for your students or at least starts to tailor it that way. Mhmm. That that's what you're saying?
Dr. Marquita Blades:It's almost like you're building your own AI, but you don't have to know anything about most machine learning and
Jordan Bassett:Oh, perfect.
Dr. Marquita Blades:And all of that. You know, you're just uploading documents and telling it what you want it to know.
Jordan Bassett:Gotcha. I just wanna pause for a second that any of the AIs that we're mentioning, we're not paid to talk about any of Just just wanna make that clear. These are just tools that Marquita's Mar Marquita, sorry, has found and wants to share with everybody. So just wanna talk about that. We were talking about Magic School earlier and you were I was really interested in this piece of it that you're talking about of kind of like a I hope I'm saying this right, kind of like a AI tutor as well for the students?
Dr. Marquita Blades:So Magic School actually has a tool that they call TutorMe with AI. Okay. And you can use it as is. You can, deploy it to students through their function that's called student rooms. You can create a room for students, only add the tools that you want them to engage with.
Dr. Marquita Blades:You give them a link, and now they have access to this room that is filled with AI tools that you have selected for them for the intended activity, that we are supplementing and not substituting.
Jordan Bassett:Good, good, good supplement, not substitute.
Dr. Marquita Blades:Okay, and so further, I could have also customized those tools before I deployed them. So, yes. And going back to my reference to the boarding school that I worked with earlier this year, they went so far as to customize the tools for specific types of chemistry and physics problems that their students were struggling with. Mhmm. And within that customization, you can tell the tool, ask the students these five questions first before you give them an answer.
Dr. Marquita Blades:So it's causing the students to engage and think and try some steps on their own rather than just uploading the problem and having the AI spit the answer out for them.
Will Anthony:Yeah. We also had another one listed here. I think I'm saying this right. It's I think it's edjaaid.ai. I was gonna say it's edjaaid.
Will Anthony:Yep.
Dr. Marquita Blades:I don't know. Edjaaid.aij. Yes.
Jordan Bassett:Yeah. Description. It saves us every time. Yeah. Yes.
Will Anthony:Can you tell us about that one maybe a little bit, or is that one you you like to use or recommend?
Dr. Marquita Blades:I love EduAid. And let me say this first about EduAid. On top of it being a robust tool that allows you a lot of access, under the free plan, it is also for us, by us. It is created by a teacher, the founder. Shout out to him.
Dr. Marquita Blades:He's we'll put that in the description as well. He's very active on LinkedIn. Look at me like I'm creating this show. Yeah. But he's very active.
Will Anthony:Go ahead.
Dr. Marquita Blades:Very active on LinkedIn, and he is currently a classroom teacher.
Will Anthony:Oh, wow. Awesome. Okay. Nice.
Dr. Marquita Blades:So he gets it. And and that's for us. For years, teachers have complained about tools being forced on us and designed by people who really have no experience in pedagogy. Mhmm. And, when you go on to EduA, you will see that it has been designed by someone who is an actual education practitioner and professional.
Jordan Bassett:Yeah. I literally just pulled up the website real quick, it says the first and only teacher created the AI workspace. Yep. Right there at the front.
Dr. Marquita Blades:Yep.
Will Anthony:Nice. So
Jordan Bassett:what do you use EduAide for?
Dr. Marquita Blades:Alright. So, it is organized by categories and subcategories. I think what I love about it the most is that it has a lot of tools to support what I like to call old school teaching strategies. Some of the strategies that we have gotten away from, things like, jigsaw and four corners and games like tic tac toe and bingo. Things that were kinda analog that we've gotten away from because it's all about the tech tech tech, and I am a tech integration person.
Dr. Marquita Blades:But as I stated earlier, I do believe that there has to be a balance of analog activities going on that are just hands on, active kinesthetic things. And he has tools. He I'm talking about the founder like I know him, y'all, but there
Jordan Bassett:are tools I believed you. I thought you did. Yeah.
Dr. Marquita Blades:There are tools on the platform that will help you design activities that have to be acted out in person.
Jordan Bassett:Oh, cool.
Dr. Marquita Blades:Interesting. Love that.
Jordan Bassett:So it's taking it because screen time is kind of a a a big topic too of how much screen time should kids have in there. So Yep. This is this AI can help you create non screen time activities.
Dr. Marquita Blades:Absolutely. That's awesome. Yes.
Jordan Bassett:I'm gonna just use this to entertain my kids.
Dr. Marquita Blades:Yeah. Happy pre at a bingo game.
Jordan Bassett:It's Saturday and it's rainy. I need my kids to be occupied for an hour. What do I do?
Dr. Marquita Blades:Yep. Yep.
Jordan Bassett:Yeah. And learn something.
Dr. Marquita Blades:Yep.
Will Anthony:Yeah. That sounds really incredible though the way that it's set up like that. I mean I mean, even just the way you were talking about it, like, you can definitely tell it was made by teachers to be used by teachers. That's that's
Dr. Marquita Blades:really special. And it has other functions like quizzes, debates. And and so EduA gives teachers assistance with creating the, you go from very simple activities to the very high rigor activities, and it has tools designed to just help you create these things faster. You know, I work with teachers all the time on student engagement, and they say to me, doctor Blades, I wanna be more engaging, but I don't have time to put a PBL case together, or I don't have time to design an independent study, which are the types of highly rigorous activities that we should be pushing our students towards. Well, EduA will create that for you.
Dr. Marquita Blades:And now what are you spending your time doing? Coaching the students through that activity, watching them ask questions and become independent thinkers. I think that's one of the main takeaways I want teachers to get from this interview is that AI is incredibly powerful to get us there faster, but it does not have to replace all of those skills that our students will need in order to go out into the world and be successful in whatever field that they have selected.
Will Anthony:I just really like the creating help that that these AIs are I mean, helping you do. I mean, I can't even imagine how much time that this is really taking away, you know, that freeing up for you. Not taking away, freeing up for you to actually spend more time in front of the students or working on the next thing. So that's really incredible. We have here ChatGPT as well.
Will Anthony:I think that's a kind of a the most known one. I was wondering what are what are some of the main things that you use ChatGPT for? What are the main go tos for ChatGPT that you like to utilize it for?
Dr. Marquita Blades:Well, my most recent use of ChatGPT was taking a term paper assignment, and this is for my graduate students, y'all. I just felt like we had spent the entire semester writing papers to the point where it was almost the same paper over and over again, and I told them I'm tired of reading papers. I know y'all are tired of writing papers, So I uploaded their final paper into ChatGPT. I asked it to give me five engaging doctoral level, live Zoom activities that we could do that would still allow my students to demonstrate their scholarly knowledge, right? And that they could incorporate all of the readings from the semester.
Dr. Marquita Blades:And it gave me five amazing things that we could do. I allowed my students to vote on the one that they wanted to do. Ultimately, they chose a PBL simulation. And so we spent our last Zoom meeting together doing a mock town hall meeting of school officials and parents looking to change the curriculum in a local academy. And it was amazing to see my students not only apply all of our readings throughout the semester, but then they were able to bring in their actual expertise as teachers into this activity.
Dr. Marquita Blades:And I learned so much about them that I could have never gotten out of a term paper.
Jordan Bassett:Yeah. I would say that chat p ChatGPT is probably the most well known. We use it here sometimes just to synthesize some information to try and learn a little bit more or, even creatively. I've heard about people asking it just how can I explain this better? Yes.
Jordan Bassett:How can I explain this subject to this group of people or, relations and things like that?
Dr. Marquita Blades:I also use it for what I call student responsive content. So with my graduate students, I read their papers, then I will upload my feedback. I usually like to give them five positives and five things they need to work on. And then I upload that into ChatGPT and I say, give me a list of next steps for this scholar. And it will suggest articles that I might wanna suggest that they read.
Dr. Marquita Blades:And these are things that y'all I don't know all of the articles. I don't read all of the research. So it's a way that I can help them that I would never be able to help them if I just had to rely on myself.
Will Anthony:Yeah. Yeah. Alright. Well, thank you for those very specific tools. That's something we would definitely wanna incorporate in this podcast is not just talking about these good concepts and ideas, but actually being able to give and supply these.
Will Anthony:So that's
Jordan Bassett:For sure. Fantastic.
Will Anthony:I I asked the last question for you, doctor Marquita, is I just saw this article over the weekend about how China is starting to implement AI education all the way in their l like, even down to their elementary school. So I just wanted to ask you what your kind of thoughts were around that, and then maybe do you think that's where we're potentially headed?
Dr. Marquita Blades:Y'all don't make me say something. I'll hear that. I don't need to be saying, but I will say this. Is that somewhere that we are potentially headed based on what I see happening right now? I I wouldn't say that we are headed that way.
Dr. Marquita Blades:Do I think we should be? I think we should. There is a huge digital divide that already exists in this country that is It's really alarming when you think about there are students who still just don't have Internet access Mhmm. Or consistent access to a phone, an iPad, or a laptop. And now we're adding on to that AI, and that digital divide is just widening and widening.
Dr. Marquita Blades:Do believe that the earlier we can expose our students to these technologies, the more that we can get them off of the consumption side and onto the production side. Right now we just consume, consume, consume.
Jordan Bassett:Yeah.
Dr. Marquita Blades:We're nowhere near ready to create because we hide everything from our students is taboo. You can't use it. You can't know about it, which now Yeah. Doesn't create any type of curiosity about where does this come from and how can I contribute to the next set of tools that roll out? What problems can I solve using this technology?
Dr. Marquita Blades:What gaps exist that I could possibly fill as the next creator? So we definitely need to be headed in that direction.
Jordan Bassett:Yeah. I can definitely see that how AI, you know, it can seem really scary, but it really can open the door to learning a lot more and getting deeper and taking ownership of your learning. How much time we can reclaim with AI if you're a teacher to create like we were talking about creating lesson plans or do grading or anything like that. But then as a student too, I find myself I'm not in school. I'm way past school age, but asking questions and the way that the AI responds makes me wanna ask further questions and get Mhmm.
Jordan Bassett:Farther and farther down and learn more and more and more. And I think that's the power of AI when harnessed correctly. It's just a tool. Right? Just like a hammer, a hammer can destroy or it can build.
Jordan Bassett:If we are teaching, which is what you're advocate what you are advocating for, is that if we're teaching how to use these tools correctly, it can open the floodgates to creating more just being a creator opposed to just consuming, but also just understanding and getting deeper and deeper into knowledge and being able to share that and teach everyone. Doctor. Marquita, I thank you so much for joining us today and sharing all these different tools. Real quick before we go, what are some ways that people can connect with you if they wanna know a little bit more about either AI or any of the other things that you're doing?
Dr. Marquita Blades:They can connect with me on LinkedIn. I am Marquita Smith Blades. Doctor might be on there. They can connect with me on inst I'm not sure. They can connect with me on I am powerful teaching.
Dr. Marquita Blades:Y'all see it spelled out. I do know what spells out.
Jordan Bassett:For those just listening.
Dr. Marquita Blades:It's an acronym.
Jordan Bassett:Can you spell that though, for those that are just listening and not watching?
Dr. Marquita Blades:Okay. P o w a r r f u l. It is an acronym. I do know how to spell y'all, on Instagram. Powerful teaching.
Dr. Marquita Blades:I do have some summer intensives coming up in June and July where teachers can, come to me for four days and we're gonna learn how to merge differentiated instruction, student engagement, and AI so that we can have a seamless school year next year or close to seamless. We know that we're gonna have to do so much more with less this upcoming school year, so I really wanna have teachers, equipped to to manage these trying times that are coming, and AI will be the way to help them do it.
Jordan Bassett:That's fantastic. And we'll have links to everything down in the show notes for everyone. But thank you for joining us. Will, thank you for being a host with us.
Will Anthony:Of course. I had a great time.
Jordan Bassett:It was fantastic.
Will Anthony:I loved it.
Dr. Marquita Blades:Thank you all for having me.
Will Anthony:Of course. Thank you for being here. Thank you for making this time.
Jordan Bassett:Thank you for joining us on this episode of the Innovative Schools Podcast. I hope you learned something today about AI or just education in general. And if you did, I hope that you take this episode and you share it with your colleagues or your friends or whoever really. And I'm not just saying that so that we can get the most likes and all this different stuff, but it's because we really wanna help as many teachers and educators as we possibly can. And that only happens when you share with other people or any of our episodes for that matter, anything that you've you've learned.
Jordan Bassett:We're getting to the end of this first season, and we've enjoyed making it. We wanna keep making these to help as many educators as possible. Teaching is difficult. Teaching is hard. But like I say a lot of times in this podcast, that, it's rewarded by the success of our students, and that way that's what we wanna help you guys accomplish.
Jordan Bassett:So thank you for joining us on this episode and we will see you on the next one.