Assistant Instructors (AI) in Rural WI Schools, with Britni Walz

This is Busted Pencils, fully-ledded education talk.

Here are your hosts, Dr. Tim Slecker, and Dr. Johnny Lupinacci,

educated educators talking education.

Well, yeah, sort of, I guess.

It's Busted Pencils fully-ledded education talk,

educated educators talking education.

What am I talking about? Well, you know, if you're on the YouTube,

you're saying like, where's Johnny?

Hey, we always point out that when it comes to family,

we make sure that family comes first and his daughter's basketball game got rescheduled.

And so, you know, when that happens, go to your child's basketball game.

That's where Dr. Lupinacci is tonight.

So anybody out there going, where's Johnny?

He's fine. He's just doing what comes first, family.

Just how you doing?

Well, I'm doing great, but there's something you said when you brought us in

that just made me feel uneasy.

Well, you went kind of to educated,

educated, talking education.

Tim, it doesn't matter how many of us there are here.

We are always educated educators talking education,

especially when we have incredible guests.

You're right, you're right, Jess, you know, sometimes I just forget myself,

you know, forget all of the amazing people

show up on the show, busted pencils.

Yeah, it's busted pencils.

And it's the full hour all across Wisconsin right now, you know, down into Chicago.

Not on anybody too on the interweb as they used to refer to it, the interweb.

You could be listening anywhere, particularly, you know, we love our listeners in Finland.

Finland, how you doing over there?

Talked about you guys last week.

How is it so incredible to be so happy eight years in a row?

You know, we just talk about that, Jess, just like compared to us at 24, 24.

What would it feel like to wake up every year happy?

Well, I don't know, you know, but we've we've declined,

but that's not what we're going to talk about tonight.

You know, it's, it's one of those, no, tonight I said tonight.

What am I talking about tonight?

What we're going to talk about today here on Saturday?

Jess, we record so many episodes.

It's like, we record in the morning, we record in the afternoon, we record his timeline.

Wait a minute.

Why don't you just like think goodness?

I have my busted pencils alarm on my phone.

It's like, hey, get to your microphone hurry up.

But you know what tonight, and I got a point to suggest, you know,

I'm in the process of selling my house.

That's spooky.

Yeah.

Well, and so people would say, well, boy, Tim, I sold a house once.

That's really stressful.

I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, come again, try again.

You know, and somebody's like, well, I sold two houses.

I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, come again.

Well, we have a friend who sold three.

Like, yeah, keep going.

Jess, this will be our seventh house.

Oh, wow.

Okay, live in that blue collie scholarly life.

Oh, my goodness.

So yeah, it's just like I, you know, my wife and I, Michelle, who, you know,

again, nerdy birds, been on the show a couple of times.

We're looking at each other going, why are we doing this again?

Or is there something, you know, potentially wrong with the DNA structure

in our bodies that has created some kind of need to roam or something like that?

I don't know, but I tell you what, I had a showing tonight right before the show.

And I ran around the house turning on, you know, all the lights, got everything set up,

ready to go, came back.

I forgot to turn on one light in the living room.

Should I tell Michelle, Jess, or should I just let it go?

No, you should just definitely broadcast it throughout the sake of Wisconsin and the world.

One light, that's it.

So one, you know, it wasn't bad.

Actually, I told her and she's like, see, if you don't do room by room, I'm like,

I don't do rooms.

I do pathways.

Like, I plot my path.

I like our room, but yeah, you know, you know, I'm like, you know, I plot my pathway and it

didn't work out so well, but you know what?

Anyway, enough, enough, enough.

Yeah, if anybody wants moving advice from me, here's what I'll tell you, don't do it.

Find your place, buy it, stay there, enjoy it, remodel, do all those things,

but do not move unless you have to.

Maybe one time, you know, if you're going to do it.

But yeah, seven houses now, um, guess what, you know, what do we call home?

I don't know, it's when we wake up in the morning, we look around and go, I guess this is where

we are today.

So we are home, but you know, I just got a little text from the realtor today, the buyer,

the buyers who saw our house tonight were interested.

All right, all right.

Interested and they commented very nice home.

Okay, that's excellent.

I'm really glad to hear that.

Well, so there you go.

So everybody out there listening right now, it's like, Tim, will you get on with it?

We don't care about your house sailing.

You know what, though, we have a great guest tonight.

We're joined by a true leader in the next frontier of education.

She serves as the instructional services, educational technology director at CISA 4,

where she leads AI-powered innovation across 10 rural Wisconsin school districts,

with more than 14 years in education as a science teacher, instructional coach,

and associate principal.

She is pioneering how artificial intelligence can be used, not just as a tool,

but as a transformative force in classrooms.

She's advancing AI literacy, equity, and personalized learning in rural schools,

proving that innovation doesn't need a city skyline.

It just needs bold leadership.

Welcome to Busted Pencils, Brittany Walls, Brittany.

How are you?

Yeah, thanks for having me, Tim, and just good to see you guys.

What you think there, you know, that's a Busted Pencils intro right there.

Right, right.

Great job, ChatGPT.

I was going to say, and you know, my favorite writing instrument or instrument or technology,

it has been, and you know, I don't shy away from it and say, for the show,

putting together, you know, promos for the show, introductions, and things like that,

it's been exceptional, you know, because I can take it.

I've trained it, and people, you know, Busted Pencils listeners know that

Johnny makes fun of me, you know, I'm the AI worship at the Church of AI,

whatever you want to call, drink from the AI cup.

Yes, but I created, you know, an editor that tries to edit in my voice.

I also have created a Busted Pencils editor to kind of give it the Busted Pencils flavor that

we like to do. And, you know, I grab people's information, throw it in there,

give them the topics we're going to talk about, like give me a great Busted Pencils intro for

our guest, and boom, there it is. So that's it, Brittany. But, you know, you know this, though,

right? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's where my bio comfort, my F2, like it just,

it just gives it that pizzazz, right? More than I can do.

Yeah, so, okay, first question then, you know, so you and I are admitted AI users, you know,

we're not in a support group or anything like that yet for it. But, uh, do you get,

you know, before we get into the heart of the questions and what's happening in Wisconsin,

do you get any lack about being an AI user advocate champion? I see. Yeah, go for it. Yeah,

like sometimes, sometimes it just depends on the crowd you're talking with. I mean,

you're true, pierist. I feel like, you know, like, I don't know. But then I like to remind them,

like, hey, have you received a phone fraud notification from your bank? And they're like, yeah, why?

Well, you can thank AI for that. Do you have a spam builder? Yeah, why? Like, thank AI. So,

I think it's just rephrasing the definition of artificial intelligence. And, you know,

when you approach it that way, I feel like it's a lot better. But, I mean, there's still that

purist in me. I still make my own PowerPoint slides. I can't turn that over yet. Like,

there are just certain things. There are certain things that I just really reclaim as a human

being. But yeah, there's definitely some pushback. I hear it quite often. I don't hear it as much

anymore. I feel like when Chad GPT first came out, it was this scary frontier. And, you know,

I'm an education. So that constant fear of, is it going to replace me? And so there's a lot of

people that just, you know, put the brakes on without really truly investigating what it was.

Yeah, there was a lot of fear there to kind of, you know, as you said, when to start it,

what I saw in education, though, was quickly the fear got replaced. And what happened more

was kind of this. And I think it was actually fear driven, though, is the banning

approaches to, you know, AI. And like, like, you're not going to use this in my fifth grade class.

You're not allowed to use it. You're not allowed to, you know, you can't use it for this. You

can't use it for that. And, you know, I started looking at that instantly. And I would start to ask

some, you know, future teachers who I was working with, you know, what is it that

turns you on or off? And they were like saying, well, you know, if we let kids use it,

they won't really learn. And that was that first kind of like where you went, okay,

how do I help them with that? Because that feels legitimate. And I tell you what, now that we,

where we are, where we are, I still feel like that question or that concern from somebody

is something that we need to give really good answers to and have discussions. Your thoughts,

Brittany? Yeah, I mean, I oftentimes hear all of that and then some, right? So I always like

to phrase it, you know, every tool was once considered cheating. I remember back in, I mean,

I remember back in high school, middle school, you're not going to have a calculator in your pocket,

like for yes, we do. It's called our cell phone, right? So I like to, I like to really push back

and I use the phrase often, I want AI to be the next calculator and up the next smart board

in education. And I think when you put it in that way, it's like, you know, the calculator made

exact like math, like, kelk-based problems. And like, who would have ever taken calculus if they

didn't have those basic computational skills? And yet, the calculator has opened up these vast

possibilities for people that like me weren't really like exceptional at math, but I could take

kelk and stats. So I try to like approach it that way. And then at the end of the conversation,

I say, do your kids use Snapchat? And they're like, well, yeah. So they're already using, right?

They're already using Snapchat. And Snapchat is, is, is all AI. Like, you have a little AI guy. So

definitely trying to get them to see like kids are already using it. So we need to approach it

in that manner of like, how can we prepare them for its use in a, in a responsible way?

Our guest is Brittany Walsh. Yeah. C-4 Wisconsin, rural Wisconsin, AI, 10 school districts.

Yeah, just a little bit of warming up there. When we get back though, we're going to get deep into

this. Does it not hurt learning? Can it help learning? And if so, how? More busted pencils. When we get

back.

The

big smile. Ustet pencils fully let it education talk, educated educators, talking education,

and producer Jess always bringing us in with the best music on radio anywhere,

anywhere, just that was it did play on my way into work today. And I'm, I might put that on a

bumper. There we go. Nice bumper music. And when we say busted pencils, best bumper music in

the world. And that's because of producer Jess. We got a great guest tonight. It is Brittany.

Walsh, Brittany is the instructional services, educational technology director at C-4. We're

talking AI, AI, particularly all over rural Wisconsin at a first conversation where, you know, hey,

is it something to be frightened of? Is it going to hinder learning? Well, you know, we kind of

pointed out that, you know, what did calculators do for learning? It seems like it may have

opened doors for, and I'll admit, Brittany, I'm kind of just like you, you know, without it,

math was not something I was allowed to enter. And so, you know, the access. And I think about

that, though, too, and I'm glad you brought that up because for me, this is one of the ways

I think about AI. And I actually kind of think like the calculator is compared to AI is almost

kind of stone age-ish. It reminds me more of like the abacus from this standpoint, because I just,

I think I see something, you know, culturally different in AI, particularly when it comes to

the question of how might it, and I'm still going to use the might because I haven't seen

the official yet, how might it help students learn, help education? What about you?

I mean, I'm already seeing it. I'm already seeing it, Tim, so I'm a believer. I'm a full drinker

of the Kool-Aid here. Welcome to the club.

Well, when you, you know, so you point that out, right? It's just like, can it, can it help?

And, you know, I, it's just like, yeah, because, and this is one of the things where I,

I think it's different than the calculator because, you know, the calculator still is a tool

and still has that kind of, you know, it's an input machine, right? Where, when you really get

to the essence of AI, and I remember I had a, a future teacher in class, and she made this kind of,

you know, this epistemological change in the way she saw AI, and she made this comment of,

oh my god, it's not Google. It's like, I have my own assistant.

And that is that fundamental difference because, you know, a calculator is a tool, but it's not

an assistant. And so there's this other aspect to AI, Brittany, you're not in, react to that comment

from that student of mine. Yeah, no, absolutely. I feel like when we approach it as like that

assistant, it opens up just so many doors. And, you know, even with students, like teaching them,

I think that's a big, like, I feel like one of the big mistakes is treating AI like a search engine.

And now, I mean, Google has like the deep search, or excuse me, chat, GPT as the deep search,

you know, there's the Gemini has that search capabilities, but it's so much bigger than just

searching the internet because it's based on predictive text, right? So it's not the same.

And so I think it's really approaching it. Like you said, like it's producing an output that's

human-like, that has that intelligence behind it to act as that assistant.

Yeah, you know, and people say the large language model, it's like language. It's like,

yeah, understand what this is is like it's not just like it's a conversation. And I see more and

more people when they really break through, it's when they realize, and sometimes this is really

uncomfortable to get to this point and I get it, is when they drop the kind of sense of saying

and kind of imagine and take on the kind of saying, I'm going, okay, I'm going to treat it

like a person and have a conversation with it. And holy crap, when I made that change,

all of a sudden, they saw why it was so different. And I always tell them the same thing, right?

Chain of command prompting. Like as soon as you like tell it, do this sucks. Like, yeah,

try again. Like when you can have that honest conversation with it, my six my six grader,

my own son used it for feedback on an essay he wrote. And he's like, mom, I don't like any of

these words that he's I don't as a six grader used there or furthermore, I think was the word,

right? He's like, I don't use that word. So I think it's like when you start to build AI

literacy with kids for them to understand, like you like even with educators, if you don't like

something, tell it, like it's only going to learn from you. It's going to adapt. And I think

that's when you truly hit that sweet spot of it being an assistant and not just a tool is when

you start actually having that mindset, like you're saying, like that new teacher, when you take

on that mindset and say, this sucks dude, or this is awesome. Like those are the things I think we

need to encourage more of. But you know, and that's the point, I love the way you just said that

because it's just like, wait, you type and or, you know, and right now I'm really getting used to

using the voice interface, which is even really more cool because it's like, you know, I am talking

to somebody, not truly somebody, but, you know, but but you can say, in fact, you can be,

I don't recommend this, but you can you can be mean to it. And one of the great things is

it doesn't get mad back at you. It just kind of says, oh, okay, let me reframe what it was that I

gave you. What about this now, Tim? And you're like, you know what, that's much better. I do not

encourage you to get testy with your machine. Actually, there's a there's a there's a a guy that

I follow a lot actually took one of his courses, Connor, Greshan, he's on LinkedIn, he's the NYU

Stern Architect of AI. And he made that point though that, you know, there's been weird anecdotal

information that actually being nice to it gets better results than being mean to it.

So, I mean, if it's going to take over the world, I want mine to know that I was polite. So,

that's why I always say, please, and thank you. Yes, I see, Jess, you got to see 100%. I'm with

Brittany on this. Let's let's be nice to the computers because when they inevitably take over,

when this all inevitably backfires on us and it's the folly of humankind, I want them to remember

that I was at least polite. Well, and that's the thing because they will remember, you know, which is

the other part of it is it's like, yeah, it remembers. And I know people that's another one of those

things that people get freaked out about. It's like, I don't want it remembering things.

Well, you know what? There was some AI literacy as Brittany just pointed out. You actually do have

the ability to quote control AI's memory. And in fact, you can kind of shut off its ability to

remember. Why would you do that? I, you know, there's different ways we can talk about that. I don't

great guess. Brittany walls, Brittany, though, when we get back our biggest segment,

we got to know what's going on in rural Wisconsin with AI and all of that great work that you're

doing. Come on back, Busted Pencils.

Yeah, you know, there are fighters left here. And yeah, we are the generation you've been waiting

for. It's Busted Pencils. It's fully letted education talk, educated educators talking,

education, our guest tonight, Brittany Walls. She is from CSA 4. She's the instructional services

and educational technology director where she leads AI powered innovation across 10 rural

Wisconsin school districts. Okay, Brittany, we've been chit chatting, kind of enjoying the fact

that we're both members of the same AI church and all of that stuff. But, you know, the listener

right now in civic media says, well, what's going on in rural Wisconsin? What's happening up there?

Brittany, tell us about the the AI world. I mean, AI in rural Wisconsin. Are you kidding me?

Right. I mean, do you guys even have internet up there?

Hey, no, hey, no. I mean, rural Wisconsin doesn't have to be northern in Wisconsin. That's where I'm

from, but I mean, well, can be anywhere. Yeah, so it's been it's been amazing. I mean, honestly,

like, you know, I was blessed to kind of stumble across a few superintendents from some of our

rural districts. So we have about 26 in the CSA 4 region. And, you know, I was like stumbling

on this superintendant. And he's talking all this tech innovation and all the amazing things

that the Wannock family has has brought to education in the White House school district with their

emerging technology lab. It's absolutely incredible. Like kids are learning to fly drones and

program self-driving cars. And I mean, it's truly, truly in this rural Wisconsin town, like

thinking about what is the future and what our future ready skills. And I'm talking to this super

intended. And I'm like, you know, I can't stand it that we don't teach science and social studies

and that we're, you know, all I see kids doing in classrooms is ELA and math, especially at our younger

younger grades. And he's like, absolutely, we need to free up teachers. We need to figure out

how we're going to maximize human capabilities and really reclaim passion back to the teachers.

And we both looked at each other. And it's like, AI, AI is how we are going to do those things.

Okay, great. And I've heard that. Okay. And here's the question.

What do you mean? How, Brittany? How is it going to help?

You know, and yeah, I'm an, you know, an old social studies teacher and I lamented, you know,

particularly I was an elementary education. I was a fifth grade teacher and man, the imposition

of trying to tell me that I needed to spend more time truly on reading and math and that the social

studies I'm supposed to teach, you know, you can do that the next grading quarter, this grading

quarter, we need to wait, wait, what? What do you mean? You know, so, so give it, give me a little

bit more about, you know, AI's ability to help teachers actually bring passion and joy back into

learning. Yeah. So we, I mean, I'm sure a lot of people have heard, right? You heard the blooms,

two sigma problem. If you want to move the needle on student achievement, you need personalized

learning in one to one tutoring. So I mean, really, I think it was reading so many of these books,

like educational, like more theory based books, it's like we have to, we can't put theory into action.

So it was kind of like a happen chance where we stumbled across, you know, con Academy with

their conmigo, like their AI tutor bot. There's just, there's a lot more like technology sources,

like embedding AI into them. So we started to look at what would be the capabilities of a classroom,

if we let some of the tier one instruction be turned over to AI. So where students are actually

receiving learning, I mean, as adults, if I want to learn how to change a faucet, I go and watch

a YouTube video. Kids, this generation of kids, they want to learn via technology, they want to

learn via videos. And so I mean, I think it was just like this perfect storm of like students

being disengaged, you know, I was an instructional coach and associate principal. I sat through,

I've sat through my share fair share of lessons that I as the adult was bored. And so it's like how,

I always say Wisconsin has an engagement issue and not an achievement issue. So it's like all these

problems of practice that we were trying to like find a way to solve. And it's like, well, we have

something right in our hands. And so what would it look like if we could turn over some of that tier

one instruction to a tutor bot or to personalize learning via an online platform and let the teachers do

the depth of knowledge like three four like projects and challenge based learning and

and really bringing in those real world connections and allowing, you know, collaboration and just so

much. Do real quick though for the listener, tier one instruction, just give us a little

rumor of like tier one. And you made comments to like three and four. So I, you know, just give us a

quick little, what does that mean? Yeah. So I always like to say what like to the average listener,

what do you remember from freshman biology that the mitochondria is the right? Just what is it?

What is our hotel? Yes, right? So like I think of that as like your basic level, right? And I

I always call myself out like man, I beat organelles and over the heads of my kids like not obviously

literally, but but like honestly, like I was so, so into that memorization. So you know,

I think of like level one in education. It's like the facts and memory. What is Google now, right?

Or like my smartwatch when I when we think about those like deeper levels of learning,

that's where it's like more of that application, right? That's there's like the four tiers or the

four levels, I should say. And so it's oftentimes we don't ever get to three and four because we're

spending so much time on those facts and like almost like that regurgitation, like let's memorize

the 50 capitals, like you don't have to do that anymore. So yeah, so we really like took on this idea

of if we can free up teachers, if we can just maximize the teachers capacity in the classroom,

what could that do to student learning and student engagement and to kind of reclaim

passion? I was in a classroom today. I told you I got to be in a fifth grade classroom and

the teacher looked at me and he said, this is how I'm this is why I'm staying in education. Like

for the first time, I feel so connected to my kids. I know that more than I've ever known them

before, I am incredibly excited to come to work. And I mean, just to hear a teacher talk like that,

what do you think the students feel? Oh my god, Jess and I are just like, whoa, we needed to hear that

because man, you know, I've always said, you know, the teacher shortage teacher exodus, it's,

you know, at some point, you know, we're driving teachers out of the classroom and you know,

lots of different reasons, but I'll also say too, the absolute kind of, you know, obsession with

requiring and mandating tier one type of instruction to the point where teachers themselves were,

like you said, you've watched those boring lessons and I'm sure that those teachers themselves

would have said, that was a horribly boring lesson. You just watched, I know, I hate doing it,

but I have to, right? And you're sitting there going, it's just like, so, you know,

AI personalized learning, the tutor, you know, to imagine that you talked about, you know,

conmigo, and we've actually had the con Academy on and we, you know, we interviewed,

what one of the main Jason of Toronto Blank on Jason's last name right now. But, you know,

and we pointed that, we actually also had a super teacher, which is Tim, yeah, you know,

Tim Novakoff from super teacher on this, you know, to point out that these are things that can be

used by the kids to personalize that kind of tier one instruction so that also that when there

are three students listening to, you know, in the past, the teacher is talking and they go,

oh, I got it already, but they can't move on because you still have, you know, 14 other students

that are still, you know, needing more, right? Or seven are and then two, three are just sitting

there going, they have no clue, right? Because you know, you sit and go like, that's the kind of

workload that a teacher typically would have, you say, but wait, what if they had their ability

through a device, through a laptop, through through the phone to take that tier one instruction

on their level in a way that is personalized to them? Well, we can do that now. We always wanted

that, you know, we required, you know, future teachers and teachers to write in their lesson

plans. How are you addressing all learners? And I always said that I was like, okay,

we put that in there, but that's crap because no one can read, no one can do it. You just, you just

can't, but I think no, we can. We really can. Good, Brittany. Absolutely. And no, I was going to say,

there's like eight, I think research is saying now there's about eight different levels of like

where students' abilities are at in any given classroom. So it's like a teacher having to take

material and have to make it at eight levels with making it interesting for kid that loves Pokemon

or kid that loves baseball. Like now we actually have something that does that. And today it was

in a classroom and there was a young man who was literally accessing seventh, there was a fifth grade

classroom. And he was doing, he's already made it through fifth grade math and already sixth grade

math on the Khan Academy suite. So he's actually accessing seventh grade math material.

You just said something to, yeah, Jess, snap, snap for sure.

Though to think about this, right, it's a Pokemon baseball. And it's just like, guess what?

So the kid loves Pokemon. But you know, and now you're teaching them, you know, maybe a unit

on baseball and you go, Hey, guess what, though? Hey, AI, help me create a fifth grade lesson

about, you know, the history of baseball, but use Pokemon as the, as the exciting part and weave

it into this personalized lesson for the student. And it does it. You know, that's pretty amazing.

Yeah, I mean, that's the kind of stuff where it's just like, you know, you're like, like, what is this,

what are these individual students interested in? Well, we really, really want to know now.

You know, we always did want to know, but it was like, as you point out, there's so many different

interest things. It's like, oh, my God, how do I tailor a lesson to every one of these individual

interests? Well, guess now I can, I can't. In fact, the student through a personalized

approach and taking advantage of their own learning themselves, being in control,

can look at something and we, as with a little bit of AI literacy, can go, I even learned

themselves to say to the AI, I don't get it. I really like going camping with my parents.

And like, this doesn't really remind me of camping. Can you help me teach me this as if I was

camping? And it will figure it out, you know, and so off Brittany. So tell us, you know, I,

you know, world was constant. So this is happening then in, in world was constant.

It's happening. I mean, we have schools that are, I mean, we started off as like a little pilot,

and now it's like, I feel like every day, it's like, what's going on? Like, what is going on?

And in this idea of rethinking or rebuilding like public education, I think each district that

we work with kind of faces their own problem of practice. We have a district that couldn't really

hire a physics teacher. So they, how can they take a teacher that has no physics background

and, and use AI to truly help teach the kids. We have districts who are like, you know, what? No,

we're going to teach math science, ELA, all the content. We're going to teach that and we're going

to reduce that time down so the kids get it all. But then we're going to like open up their school

day for like actual future readiness. Like, have them do a community project, have them do all these

like emerging technology skills. It's, it's, it's been truly incredible to witness just what

districts where they're coming in at. And then more importantly, how we're actually rethinking

just that traditional like sitting in desks, the old 1950s model of education.

Wow. So Brittany, I right now, I think of the listener right now in Wisconsin driving,

you know, listen to the show going, I, I, I, wait a minute, I didn't know. And I want to know more,

you know, so how do people get in touch with, you know, you is where can they go, you know,

last minute before we have to say goodbye. So give us the ability for people to reach out.

Yeah, absolutely. Obviously, I, I work at CSO4. I, I love my job. I love working with the

districts I'm working with. We just started a program called learning innovations for the teaching

of forward facing students. So it's liftoffs. You see it on my shirt. So it's liftoffs. And,

and we're slowly getting out there. I think we really want to broadcast what these teachers are

doing because they're doing incredible things to rebuild public education. And so you can find us

on Instagram. We have the handle liftoffs at education, but look for us taken over and innovating

education. Brittany walls, we're going to have all that contact info in the podcast description.

Busted pencils. Hey, Tim and Jess, we're going to break down when we get back.

I, you know, when you hear that, yeah, sorry, it's the last segment, but you know what? It's

busted pencils and fully let it. I don't, you know, and I don't like that sound effect when I do

that like that. I feel like I'm trying to be radio guy or something. Jess.

Busted pencils fully let it. Well, especially when you squeak up like that. Yeah. Sorry.

No, it's, but it's busted pencils fully let it education talk.

Educated educators talking. Education. There you go. I love that. Thank you, Jess.

Jess. So what do you think? Brittany walls, nor, you know, rural Wisconsin. Let's point out,

she said, you know, rural Wisconsin, rural Wisconsin is, is all over Wisconsin. It's, I know,

right? It's five minutes outside of every city. What, and what Green Bay, Milwaukee, Madison,

I mean, I know there are other places that would like to call themselves cities, but

um, oh, all right, let's not diss on the cities of Wisconsin. But yeah, I mean, we're,

you know, we're all Wisconsin. Lots of different places. So Brittany walls out there, CISA 4,

serving, you know, right now, 10 different school districts where they're doing some pretty

incredible AI types of innovations. You know, as you were listening to her, I know,

I could see you nodding in the video that we're looking at doing the snaps. I mean,

she was great, wasn't she? Absolutely. I'm so excited. Just to, to hear what is happening in this

state to move education forward. I mean, we're a state where public education has not gotten

a cost of living increase in so many years. I mean, we hear this all the time when we talk to

Wisconsin Public Education Network that our public schools have been so starved for funding for

development in order to bring these policies into light to help children actually really learn

to get some of the schooling out as Johnny would say and get the learning in. So what Brittany and

CISA 4 are doing is, is incredible. And you know, I, I tend to be a little bit more in line with

Johnny when it comes to AI, but I've definitely, you know, come around a little bit to recognize

the benefits of it and to see the way that it can be used to individualize learning. Like,

Brittany was talking about where any given classroom, especially with classrooms that tend to have

so many students in them that you might have eight, nine, ten different levels of understanding

of any subject matter. Right. And however many students you have in that class, that's how many different

special interests you're going to have. So to be able to come up with lesson plans where, you know,

each child can have something at the level that they're at with the things that they're interested in,

it's going to help learn in. It's going to happen. And this is the part where, you know,

it's really exciting to hear about that. She said the teacher who's the fifth grade teacher is so

excited about wanting to still remain being a teacher because of seeing the, you know, the ability

to reach all of those kids that for the longest time, every teacher out there has always wanted

to reach every kid. But, you know, you said, you know, 20, you know, and 20 kids in a classroom is

actually quite, quite small, but even just imagine 20. And you're trying to individualize instruction

and teachers will tell you it's like, I can't, I just can't do it. I do my best. But, but, and then

all of that effort to do that really turned this into, you know, the kind of the teacher burnout

where we are teaching like, I can't do this anymore. But here now, I look at this into, once you get

teachers truly AI literate and moving in the direction, they start to see like the fifth grade

teacher Brittany pointed out that, wow, not only can I possibly reach these students, I can do it

in ways that truly individualizes instruction. And I can do it in a way that is way more efficient

than ever before to the standpoint. And you know what, and with the efficient, we, I'm going to say

I typically hate the word efficiency. But in this realm, it's, there's also an effectiveness aspect

to the efficiency where it's like, you can work with those individual kids, have their interest

being the things that drive their curiosity and learning of what we talk about these,

these tier one instructional aspects that typically can be quite dry and mundane. And so the idea

of saying, Hey, you know what? I love Pokemon. I got to learn all the state capitals. Hey, AI, help

me out, create like a game about the state capitals that uses Pokemon concepts and boom.

Right. I mean, that's incredible. And I, I honestly, I look forward to learning more about this.

And in my own teaching, starting to use some of those AI tools to be like, yeah,

even though I have a really, really small class size, I can still use these tools to streamline

and to process everything that I've curated over my years of teaching to say, I need a lesson

plan for this addressing this specific thing that's going on in the news and bringing in these

interests from these of my students. Oh, man. It's just exciting. So it has great guests.

Cease of four Brittany walls enjoyed actually having her. In fact, as we pointed out, we're

going to definitely have her back. And hey, pay attention across all the other civic media because,

you know what? We think she's worth being heard on multiple shows. It's Brittany walls. Yeah,

check it out, AI instructional services, education, technology, direct us, Cease of four.

And now it's time for your moment of Zen.

We don't all have to do heroic things. All we have to do is little things. And at certain points

in history, millions of little things come together and change takes place.

Thanks for listening to Busted Pencils on this Saturday. Oh, you know,

and if you happen to be downloading it and listening to it, whenever it is, we appreciate

the support. Make sure you go to the civic media website, download the civic media app.

Also, hey, yeah, check it out. BustedPencils.com. It's up. It's there. You can see all kinds

of other interesting things. You know what, too, there's even some swag available. If you want some

Busted Pencil swag, go to BustedPencils.com. Hey, hang out next week too. Make sure Monday

home room, Wednesday class and session, Friday, uh, hurdles and home runs. It's BustedPencils.

Thanks for busting them.