Brent Warner 0:00
What were the conversations and collaborations happening at the AI show in San Diego, we went to see what people were talking about. This is the HigherEdTech podcast season six, Episode 17.

Tim Van Norman 0:20
Music. Welcome to today’s HigherEdTech podcast. I’m Tim Van Norman, the Instructional Technologist at Irvine Valley College, and Adjunct Professor of Business at Cypress College,

Brent Warner 0:33
and I’m Brent Warner, Professor of ESL here at Irvine Valley College, we both enjoy integrating technology into the classroom, which is what this show is all about.

Tim Van Norman 0:42
Welcome. We’re glad you’re here with us. All right. So spent a couple weekends at conferences, and hey, we get to talk about one of them. I love it.

Brent Warner 0:52
Yeah. So, Tim, you and I both went down to the AI show in San Diego that was on April 5th and 6th. We did not go on the 7th, right?

Tim Van Norman 1:03
Right.

Brent Warner 1:03
I don’t know if you did. I don’t think you did. And so it was nice to go down there. It was, I mean, that’s a big conference. I mean, it was, I mean, it was not the largest thing I’ve ever been to, but I was like, Oh, they really put this on. And so it was kind of cool. You walked into the conference center and you saw, I kind of liked how it was set up. So you walked into the exhibit hall, and then you could kind of see all the vendors, of course there, but they had a whole section on the left hand side for higher ed and a whole section on the right hand side for K 12. But it’s not like they were totally isolated from each other. They were just kind of like, you go this way, you go this way, but you could go talk to either side, right? And so I really liked that they didn’t really separate, you know, education like so so often it’s like you’re totally separate from one another. And my argument is always, well, what’s the difference between an 18 year old high school student and an 18 year old college student compared to a six year old, you know, first grader, or whatever it is, and and so it’s like, why are these? The distinctions are not always clear to me, right? But it was nice to see that they were just treating all education, you know, pretty much equally.

Tim Van Norman 2:19
Absolutely. And the nice part is also, you know, we get to, got to see some vendors and stuff that we work with, and, oh, they’re in the, in the K 12 area instead of the higher ed area or whatever. So, so, yeah, it was really nice to be able to see that. I love the fact. So this was three days of a much bigger conference that went on for the rest of the week, but the first three days was free to enter, which I thought was absolutely amazing to to make it available. And they encouraged parents and students and everybody to come in and just see what they were doing.

Brent Warner 2:59
So yeah, I was walking around and it was a full like, it was just a very open feeling. It was. It was pretty much inviting. And, you know, I think, I think the real goal of it was trying to get, you know, of course, it’s like sponsored by these AI companies and all that type of stuff, but it was like trying to get real honest conversations between educators and these companies, and Tim, one of the things that you and I were talking about there was all of the, almost all of the vendor booths were basically just like a computer screen and a keyboard, and then you just could talk to the people, right? And so it wasn’t like, you know, oh, come spin the wheel and get, you know, a piece of chocolate. And, like, you know, the little kind of novelties that happen at that, these things to try and pull your attention. It was just like, you want, you have questions. We have questions. We want to talk to each other. Let’s just chat, right? And I really appreciated that that was kind of the structure for it, because it made it much more, you know, less of like we’re trying to sell you on something, and more like we’re just trying to talk to you about what we do, and maybe you talk to us about what you do, and then maybe there’s some simpatico, you know, relationship there, and maybe not, and that’ll all that’s fine, but just kind of sharing, I think, was the biggest goal.

Tim Van Norman 4:19
Yeah. I also like the fact that while many of these companies were not the largest necessarily AI companies, their senior management was there, yeah. So I talked to CEOs and presidents of several different groups, you know, some of them that I worked with in the past, some for whatever. And that was really neat to see that level of participation in the free part of the conference. Mm, hmm,

Brent Warner 4:45
yeah, yeah. They were not messing around. Like there were, there were bosses and bosses and like, you know, all the way up, there was, like celebrities around in some places we actually miss, well, you and I saw Colin cow. Brent. But also there were, like, apparently, like rock stars playing, and like DMC from Run DMC, like was there, and he was, you know, he performed a little bit later on, on Sunday, after we left, I think. But anyways, so, so it was, like a full, full on event and, and it was a lot of fun, but we’re gonna talk about some of the things that we actually saw. So one, I got to talk to a lot of different teachers, some of the people that I know, you know, from LinkedIn and through my own, you know, experiences with other organizations. So a lot of people I happen to know were there, but also just a lot of this. So I did really appreciate that, because I really wanted to hear what other teachers are doing. And there was a whole section we’re going to cover some of it, the actual sessions that they were that different people were doing. And so it wasn’t just the vendor Hall. There were like, Hey, we’re talking about this. And they had eight or 10 different rooms,

Tim Van Norman 5:57
yeah. And that’s that’s stretching it, spaces with curtains between them.

Brent Warner 6:02
Yeah, that was, that was the worst part about the conference, I think, was the setup was not strong. They it was. It was definitely not, you know, accessible for people who have hearing issues. I would imagine it was even for me, and I don’t have the many hearing issues. I’m just aging a little bit, but, but, but it was like, just, yeah, just curtains hung between the different sections in a big room, and then they had like giant PA speakers in each of them, so you’re really hearing what was going on in the next curtain from you. But anyways,

Tim Van Norman 6:35
we’re tough when you have attention deficit disorder, that’s for sure. Yeah.

Brent Warner 6:40
So we’ll take a look at a couple of the things that we kind of thought of as takeaways. Some of these are, like, very tech related. Some of these are kind of a little bit broader, but let’s just, let’s start running into them and seeing what we what we saw, and what we covered absolutely

Tim Van Norman 6:53
so one of the big sponsors there was Google, so we hadn’t mentioned it, so this was the ASU GSV conference. So ASU, Arizona State University, GSV is a, is, I believe, venture capital, a venture capital firm? Yeah, so that was, those were the named sponsors for the whole thing. But Google was there, or at least CDW education was there presenting Google or something like that, but one of the cool things that they talked about was Gemini and notepad LM are now considered under their enterprise grade data protection, so that means they’re FERPA compliant, even if you if you are using a education Google for Education, it is, it is FERPA compliant, even if you’re not paying for it. So for instance, at Irvine Valley, at South Orange County, we don’t pay separately for Google. We’re covered under this, yeah. And that is huge. That means Gemini is now FERPA compliant for us,

Brent Warner 8:09
yeah. And that’s great, because you know where there’s always like, okay, all these options. And so now it’s like, Hey, if you guys log into it with your IVC account, your data is not going to be trained on it. Your privacy is kept, right? And so I really do appreciate that, and that’s also true for notepad. And so, notebook LM, yes, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, sorry. So, so that one is great, because if you’ve ever played with that, you know there, there’s a lot to play with around, yeah, sorry, notebook LM, but that’s the one where you can upload data into it, turn it into, like a kind of a note reflection system. But also you can click a button and it will turn all of the files that you uploaded into a podcast conversation between two hosts. And so if you’re trying to kind of get a summary, and it’s actually gets fairly robust, but it’ll, it will, you know, it’ll talk through the data instead of just like being a boring, you know, long chunk of of heavy text. Yeah,

Tim Van Norman 9:11
it’s amazing. Saw a little bit of things people were doing with notebook LM, and just, I’m kind of excited to try it out. I hadn’t you had talked about it with me before, but I hadn’t gotten a chance to even see really some people doing anything and and the ability to, like, give some of that information to your students and have them interact with data, stuff like that. I’m really interested in what that can do now that it meets the requirements that

Brent Warner 9:44
we have. Yeah, so if you’re at IVC, you can go check all these things out, if you’re other otherwise, and if you have Google Enterprise for your school, you should be fine. Just

Tim Van Norman 9:55
talk to whoever your Google administrator is and see if. You can get it turned on for your whole school. That’s the nice part.

Brent Warner 10:03
Yeah. Okay, cool, Tim. Let’s jump around a little bit here, just to keep with the main companies that we talked to or looked at. So next up is Playlab.

Tim Van Norman 10:15
Oh yes,

Brent Warner 10:19
Alright. I talked with them briefly when you were already talking to them, but you had several conversations with them. So, so what was your I mean, I have been enjoying play lab a lot since we got into the pilot of it all and everything but, but you had some real conversations with them. So what’s going on?

Tim Van Norman 10:35
Absolutely. So they did a separate presentation, and in their presentation, they actually had people use play lab, gave them a free account and go in and create something in play lab. And it was really neat to be part of that. I’ve done it myself, and so I just turned to the person beside me, and I helped them go through and do stuff. And it was really cool how fast you’re able to do stuff. But they had a couple of really cool, interesting tidbits that they gave in their presentation. One of them was, most big tech companies don’t care about your objectives, your objections. Make sure I get that word right. They don’t care about your objections. They don’t care that you don’t want to use it. Yeah, everybody else does. Why should they worry about one or two people? That’s not necessarily what their sales people will say. But that definitely was interesting to hear that from a company that is dealing with a lot of that stuff. Another 160 6% of business leaders will not hire new talent without AI skill set. And you know, there’s a reason for that that that makes a lot of sense. Getting good at AI requires play and collaboration, and that completely makes sense just sitting by yourself trying to do something is and only just doing what you think you can is really limiting. It’s when I’ve seen when somebody else’s idea was that I went, Oh, I could do that too, or I can scratch in this way. So I absolutely loved those three comments, and then play lab, understand, and hopefully we’ll be able to do an interview with them sometime soon. Yeah, yeah. But they they also broke down because they’re about solving problems, and they really had a neat concept of three ways to choose what problem to work on. And one is, I spend too much time on X if you spend too much time on it, maybe that’s a problem you want to work on. If I had x, I’d be able to do more y. Or maybe if my students had this, I’d be able to do more of something else, or something like that. And then I wish there was a faster way to do X the problem. And if you think about those three, it’s amazing how AI will really help you be successful by just focusing on those, not trying to focus on the whole world of all possible problems, but just how it affects you. And all of a sudden AI becomes a lot more meaningful. That’s I really liked them putting that together like that. So

Brent Warner 13:27
it sounds like their presentation was kind of very much about understanding the practicalities of AI, kind of not trying to hype it up, but just kind of saying, like, think about how this affects you, right? Think about how this affects your students lives. And so I think it sounds to me, I didn’t see the whole presentation, but it sounds like a very kind of pragmatic approach to understanding the value of these things, which to me, also was a lot of the conversation around the session. Now, of course, you know, around the whole conference was kind of like that, but I felt, you know, I mentioned this before, which was like, you know, sometimes you kind of go in your ups and downs, and it felt really good at this conference for people to be like sharing, hey, we’re struggling with a lot of the problems, but we’re also not just letting them overwhelm us. We’re figuring out ways to deal with them, right? And so I think one of the things that it sometimes does bother me or get me in a negative state of mind about these things is like, it feels like so many people are just complaining and saying, like, this is problem, problem, problem. And it’s like, okay, well, maybe you’re all right, maybe, you know, whatever. But then when you go here and it was like, Oh yeah, yeah, there’s problems. But like, think about these cool things that you can do, or, you know, like, let’s look at the ways that students are actually trying to use this stuff with integrity to to figure out how to increase their learning and increase their understanding of things, right, where they might spend more time with it. And like, Okay, once you start seeing that perspective, and you get, you know, kind of the, you know, the more positive mindsets going around. Around, I felt like there was a lot of those types of conversations which really did reinvigorate me for, you know, for a lot of these conversations, absolutely, absolutely so connected to that, Tim, then I’m going to talk a little bit about this book, The the opposite of cheating. And so before I went, I think I even mentioned it to you, hey, I scooped up this book, like, I’m gonna maybe read it, you know, during downtime, when I go back to my hotel room or something like that. And then, like, and then you’re like, Wait, aren’t these people presenting right now? Like, like, I think I saw the title of that thing and, and so they were actually presenting on the content inside of the book. And so that was by Tricia Bertram Gallant, who teaches down at, I think UC San Diego,

Tim Van Norman 15:48
or, I think so, yeah, someplace in San Diego, yeah, yeah. And then

Brent Warner 15:51
David Rettinger, who I think is, I’m sorry, I think I want to say Arizona, Texas. So anyways, the two of them, I did pick up the book, and I already had started reading it a little bit, just kind of getting into it, but it was really nice, because, again, same kind of thing, right? They’re doing this whole, like, you know, positive approach to understanding and what’s going on with this stuff, but also using, you know, research backed information for what classroom integrity looks like. And the very first thing, Tim, you and I sat down in the session, and they said the opposite of cheating is learning. And I was like, Oh, cool. Like, they, you know, they, it was just like, they went right into it. And then they talked about, you know, really kind of understanding what’s going on, how different schools can make approaches to supporting students. Really a lot about how students want to know what to do, but are not being told or taught by teachers. And this part was continues to fascinate me, because it’s like there are so many teachers out there who will say, like, hey, we don’t want this stuff, whatever else it is, I get it. But also, like their perspective was, you know, essentially, what good are you doing your students if you’re going to bury your head in the sand about it like you can be opposed to these things, but be opposed with knowledge and information, not with, you know, not with just like, fear of cheating, or fear of, you know, whatever the other problems are going to be. And so I really like how they approached a lot of those ideas and how they, you know, they presented it in a kind and thoughtful way. And so I am still only slightly into the book, but their presentation was quite good, and it was motivating for me to kind of get more into that

Tim Van Norman 17:42
absolutely so I had the advantage I mentioned earlier that I actually have spent spent the last couple of weekends at conferences. So the weekend the conference I had gone to, the weekend before the the guy who wrote it spoke at that conference too on the same topic. Oh, good. So I got two doses. They were different. The presentations were different, but I loved their take on, what are you doing to actually have your students learn rather than trying to constantly catch them cheating, which nobody wants to do. How are you helping them learn? And it was really, really good from that thought standpoint.

Brent Warner 18:30
And you know, this is just a small anecdotal but, you know, I’m bringing AI stuff into my class and just having students play with it. And even today, I had students doing stuff, and they’re like, oh, is this a cool way to use it? Like, like, Hey, I’m trying to figure this thing out. And they were bringing me in to show me what they were doing in order to talk about whether or not it was useful. And I’m like, okay, like, if you build that level of trust, and if you build, you know, the I the ideas that, like, Hey, I’m really trying to help you guys see the value of learning here, and not just, like, what this tool, you know can just spit out, but really like trusting in yourselves to be good learners, right? I really feel like that. You know, it doesn’t eliminate every problem, but it really reduces, you know, the concerns I have around what’s going on, and it also helps me just have a more positive view of, like, you know what students are trying to achieve, and because when you get so caught up in the conversations around cheating, cheating, cheating, plagiarizing, plagiarizing all the time, well, it’s like, okay, you’re you’re going to start sinking into what you’re spending all your time thinking about, right? And so, so I really was glad to see that. Anyways, their book is called the opposite of cheating. Great presentation. Absolutely. I’ve got a couple other ones here, Tim. I’m not going to spend quite as long a time on it, but, but we’re going to just cover a few of these. So one was digital promise. Had a session on AI literacy framework, and we’ll, we’ll share this in the show notes. But. Uh, Tim, you and I had mentioned before, maybe it’s worth clarifying what is AI literacy. So right on their home page, they define it as AI literacy is the knowledge and skill that enable humans to critically understand, evaluate and use AI systems and tools to safely and ethically participate in an increasingly digital world. Now, you know that’s a broad Gen, a broad definition, but it points you in a direction of going like, okay, hold on. I mean, really, we’re talking about being able to critically think about what AI is and not just accept the outcome and the results as, quote, unquote good. I think that’s kind of how I start the conversation with it. And then it was, they had a lot of great ideas. They kind of were showing their different frameworks. All this stuff is available on their website. So again, we’ll have the show notes for like, best AI literacy practices, how to expand the framework. So if you’re interested in kind of starting to get a a better sense of AI, more than just generates text and generates pictures, but really kind of understanding, like, what does it mean for us? How do we evaluate it? How do we look at it? What types of choices do we need to make around it? I think that this is a really nice starting point for a lot of people, and it’s really, you know, well put together. So if you’re interested in that, that’s from digital promise, absolutely,

Tim Van Norman 21:31
it looks great. I love that they talk about, understand, evaluate and use. That’s a combination that we really do need to focus on with a lot of our students? Yeah, yeah.

Brent Warner 21:44
Okay. So next one is the SDSU AI survey. So I went to this one, which was great. So again, San Diego. They were San Diego was well represented, since the show was in San Diego and everything too. But they did a whole it was really wonderful. They did a whole presentation on how they surveyed their students and kind of how they collected information, and they’ve got a whole dashboard, so they asked students all sorts of different questions, and then you can download their own survey instrument. So they’re actually trying to build a bigger statewide understanding of student AI use. So it’s not just SDSU, but it’s also the other Cal States, the other UCs, even the California Community Colleges. I went in and talked to them, they’re like, Okay, let’s talk about it later, because they’re trying to get this going. And so I love the idea that they’ve got already a survey instrument, and then it’s like, Hey, you can copy it and use your own. And then you can try to you can, like, pair you. You can compare and contrast your information with our information. So you and I, Tim, through the AI Task Force, we did a survey last year, you know, or in the fall semester that we’re using to kind of guide some of our ideas. But I love the idea of joining in with them next year and saying, Okay, we’re going to turn this into a bigger thing. We’ll be able to see, like the bigger pulse and the local pulse, and really get a feeling for what’s going on. So I’m excited about the possibilities here, around what San Diego State is doing.

Tim Van Norman 23:19
Absolutely this is, this is amazing how much detail they went into. Over 12,000 respondents to date, yeah, including faculty, staff and students. So that’s that’s a really good broad view of what’s going on in AI. So I love, I love what they’re doing, especially

Brent Warner 23:44
because it’s always a concern when you get too small of a sample, because you’re like, oh, you know, anybody could really skew those results, you know? And so the more you get, the more, the more likely it is going to be accurate, of course. So Okay, couple of very last things. Tim, just, just a quick second on these. But one was on the main stage, you know, they had these kind of, like 15 or 20 minute presentations going on. And one was this kind of cool website called ed tech insiders.ai, and basically, they’re kind of collecting different tools under categories, you know, and then they’re, they’re saying, Hey, here’s a bunch of AI tools that kind of fit under this category. So, you know, one of them might be like, writing evaluation, or one of them might be, you know, testing, or whatever else it is, right? And so they’re, they’re, I think, once, twice a year or three times a year, they’re going in and they’re updating and removing tech AI companies that maybe have disappeared, and adding new ones in there. But it’s kind of a nice service. If you’re just kind of saying, Hey, I’m looking for a tool that kind of does this and it doesn’t tell you too much about it. You still have to do your own research, but at least it’s kind of all collected into a single place. So I like that at. Insiders AI. And then just very briefly, they did have another guy going on there, and his name was Mark bracket, and he did a whole thing. It wasn’t even about AI, it was just about like, hey, a lot of us, a lot of people, are struggling in modern technical world. And let’s talk a little bit about how, you know, we just deal with the stress of this world. And I just was like, okay, cool. They’re not, they’re not just trying to do tech all the time. They’re kind of looking at human conversations and what it means to be, you know, you know, dealing with the overwhelm of the AI world and all these things as well. So I was like, Okay, gotta appreciate that there, you know, these human elements are the big part of the conversation that just feels like it gets left out so often and when, when they brought it in and and made an intentional point, you know, in several places throughout to bring that up, I was just like, okay, that makes me feel better about what they’re doing.

Tim Van Norman 25:54
Absolutely, that’s great.

Brent Warner 25:57
Whoo, so that was a zip overview of a pretty long weekend. Was there anything we missed, Tim that you wanted to talk about?

Tim Van Norman 26:06
Oh, we missed a whole lot of stuff, but basically, I would encourage anybody to go next year. Yeah, I don’t care if you’re anti AI, you know, if you whatever position you’re in, I think it’s worth at least getting there, especially because, like I said, it’s free. I live close enough that I literally drove down, and that was nice. Gave me some time to think as well, and and it ended early enough in the day that I didn’t have to worry about it and stuff. But it was, it was really a neat conference to just get, to get a good feel of different things going on. I

Brent Warner 26:51
agree it was. It was definitely a worthwhile experience. I will absolutely be going again next year, and I think, I think yes, in line with what you’re saying, it’s worth your time, so get to it next year.

Tim Van Norman 27:10
Thank you for listening today. For more information about this show, please visit our website, at the higher ed tech podcast.com

Brent Warner 27:17
as always, we do want your feedback, so please go to the higher ed tech podcast.com, and let us know your thoughts for

Tim Van Norman 27:23
everyone at IVC that’s listening. If you need help with technology questions, please contact IVC technical support. You have questions about technology in your classroom, please stop by a 322 or contact me. Tim Van Norman AT T van norman@ivc.edu

Brent Warner 27:37
and if you want to reach out to me about the show, you can find me on LinkedIn, at @BrentGWarner.

Tim Van Norman 27:43
I’m Tim Van Norman,

Brent Warner 27:45
and I’m Brent Warner, and we hope this episode has helped you on the road from possibility to actuality. Take care, everybody.