AI in Education (Hour 1)

Transcript

AI in Education (Hour 1)

John & Gordy · Thu Jul 10, 2025

Kathryn Lake

You're listening to Civic Media.

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From the depths of a digital abyss, where truth drowns in a sea of clickbait and algorithms, a beacon ignites.

From the heart of Badgerland, from our studios on State Street in downtown Madison, Wisconsin,

It's John and Gordy on 92.7

WMDX.

WMDX 92.7.

John and Gordy just singing along with the tune here.

And we're apologizing now for that.

We realized that it's probably really irritating.

It's annoying.

And annoying.

That's our old theme song from 30 or 40 years ago or 50 years ago.

Who knew?

But it seemed to fit, you know, the media world show that we had on cable access.

Yeah.

That was a lot of fun.

Boy, you know, the thing is, you know, we were tied in with radio stations and TV stations.

Yeah.

And at the time we had a chance on cable access to invite everybody in from the media, any radio station, any TV show.

We were the Neutral Zone.

The Neutral Zone.

And we had TV weather people like Elmer Childress visit us.

Yeah.

All the

legends.

All these rock people, too.

Marcus Boffery.

Mark and Beth.

And the Evil Twins and the Obros.

Mark and Beth.

Yes, Mark and Beth.

Doug Moe.

Oh, Doug Moe.

Yeah, they all.

We had the Honor of Visions on a few

times.

Yeah.

We had attorneys

on.

And you can still see those old videos, right?

Yes, you can.

On your

website.

We were one of the first to actually feature the Onion News.

Oh,

that's

right.

Scott Dickers.

Yeah, we brought a

few people in.

We interviewed Scott Dickers and we interviewed a couple of the reporters.

The, oh man, these guys were really good.

And

they turned up a lot

of different stories.

Stories that most of the major media missed in Madison for some reason,

but

they had it there in the Onion.

Did we have Jolder Spain on once or no?

I think we did.

I can't remember.

I think we did.

He went on from being a reporter to a police spokesperson for Madison Police for many years.

Yeah, we had them all back then.

Those were the weird old days of Madison.

I gotta say.

Weird.

It was weird.

What?

I gotta say.

Dom?

Who, do you know who made that opening theme music?

Do you know who was the creator of that?

You know, I don't know who that, oh.

Oh, wait a minute.

That was me.

I don't know.

I don't know the lore enough.

Yeah, I did that when I used to play rock guitar and worked out of a recording studio in Bosquebell that no longer exists.

Oh, no.

That's too bad.

It's not a legendary

legend.

Well, Jamie moved it to Reedsburg, a museum.

He still has a recording studio, but Neve has all the old tapes.

Yeah, he does.

He has a

master

on that.

Wow.

Yeah.

That's what we're playing now, the master.

Yeah.

Well,

it's all right.

That's a call for my Samsung watch.

WMDX.

838 sunset time, just in

case you were just very

curious.

838,

yeah.

Setting your clocks and alarms to that.

I'll be in my gazebo.

OK.

With a

refreshment

or

two.

On that

again.

Yeah.

63 degrees currently on my watch

and

85 predicted high today and 67 predicted low temperature.

But even though the temperatures are about that right now.

Yeah.

It's still a little warm out there.

It's a little.

The humidity.

and do points are a

little high up there.

Yeah, and again, we have about a 20 to 40% chance of rain this afternoon.

That's a pretty good chance.

Keep an eye on that.

A little bit later on today, we'll talk to Jim Santel, attorney at law.

Oh boy, do

we have a lot to talk

about, honey.

Oh

boy.

You know, the thing is, it's not as many cases, but what we're really worried about is the long-term effects of some of the decisions that they've made.

Yeah.

I mean, we're all bracing for...

completely clearing out of the US government.

I mean, that's that's what's in store.

Apparently,

I'm waiting for this.

You know, I think right now Trump is distracted

with

just about everything in a two or three items just blow his mind.

So he's stumped.

He looks stumped most of the time.

He looks he doesn't look well.

He actually

doesn't.

You see, he kind of sits there

and

absorbs and listens to people and reacts, but he doesn't.

really projecting the ideas or details

to any

policies that he's putting in place.

He slowed down a little bit.

In fact, we have a cut, I think, a little bit later on where he was asked, well, how did you come up with that decision?

And always the worst possible answer you could ever get to.

Oh, you know, here's the thing, you know, and I'm going to mention this later during that story, but just for those listening early and don't get to listen in

our

second hour.

Jen Psaki.

You know,

I didn't

like her at first.

Actually, she had a rough start.

Yes, she

did.

But I'm noticing a pattern with Jen Psaki.

Yeah, she's getting better.

And she is not only, you know, just kind of reporting the hot items, but she has a rye sense of humor about all of them.

And she's actually presenting, this is what I think, she's presenting the absurdity of government at

this

point.

And I've got...

This great piece.

Now,

it's a little long.

I don't know if I'm gonna play the whole thing, but she makes comparison after comparison of what Trump is doing to the reaction of the press and the reaction of what people think

about

his policies.

And it's just, it is absolutely gold.

Yeah, she's finding her wheelhouse.

She's finally gotten comfortable.

And, you know, she was press secretary for Biden, right?

No, Obama.

Okay, I think.

I don't know, I can't remember.

I thought you were really old now.

It doesn't matter.

Maybe it was by initially.

Yes, maybe.

Anyway, our research department will look into

that.

Research department will be texting us

very soon here.

I'm looking into it now.

And of course, the other breaking news, Overlight.

Oh no, I know.

Just sit down for this one.

It's just too good.

It's too good.

There's word from NASA.

Yeah, John.

Yeah.

Tell us, NASA.

Well, guess who the new administrator?

The interim administrator

for NASA.

You know, they have rockets and stuff.

It's going to be Sean Duffy.

Sean Duffy.

Sean Duffy's taken on

another responsibility.

Oh, my

God.

I think he's in

charge of like six departments now.

What could

go

wrong?

What could go wrong?

You

know,

I don't

know why.

You know, we got that call from CJ who couldn't hold on yesterday.

But I wanted to know if he's like, changed his mind about things.

I mean, you can drink the Kool-Aid so long,

you can be

a cult member for so long, and then

suddenly you're

just saying, oh my god, this can't be happening.

I can't

keep making excuses for these guys.

I know.

But, uh, well, so congratulations, Sean Duffy.

Our hats off to you, and he had some state-of-the-art.

Okay, well, you know, he did have a statement.

I jotted it down.

Did you?

Yeah, go ahead.

This is his mission statement.

Let's launch.

Oh,

God.

It ain't rocket science.

It's Sean Duffy.

This is truly the onion.

Oh, my God.

This is the onion.

Yeah, it just doesn't

get any better

than this.

We're also going to be checking in in just a few minutes in about 15 minutes with Tim Slacker from Busted Pencils and get all the latest about edumacation.

He's going to educate us.

Well, I want to ask him about the dual enrollment we talked about yesterday, you

know,

where you're you have classes in high school, but they also apply to credits in college.

Right.

And they're disproportionately located in areas where white affluent people get these dual enrollment programs, but the poor areas don't get them.

And I pointed out that this is a great example of why banning DEI is a bad idea because now we can't

spread this out to lower income areas where they actually have dual enrollment as well.

They don't have as many of those programs.

So now they can't improve on it.

They can't actually make it happen because it would be helping minority people

out

and we can't have

that anymore because we don't have

those problems.

I don't know why

I'm even thinking there is

a

problem like that.

It's not a problem.

So anyway, we're going to ask Tim about that and also Tim and Johnny are talking.

a lot about AI.

And that is one big issue, and we'll be getting to that.

I have an idea on AI, by the way, so now I'm going to present it to Tim and see what he has to say about it.

All right, now let's get to the big program.

Item here.

Yes,

the juvenile corner.

Yeah, what do we got here from?

From Dom this morning we have what's where what's what's not worse?

What's

what?

What's what?

What

is

it?

Would you

would you would you think this is rather would you rather think this is worse?

Would you yes, it's would you rather?

Let's let's let's get this.

All right, all right.

This name I

can't what is it again?

Would you rather here would you rather would you?

Rather.

Okay, take it away.

Dominic Lee.

Sorry, I got

a little more reverb on that.

A cowbell.

More cowbell.

More cowbell.

All right, first question.

Would you rather listen to an annoying laugh for a whole day or get tickled for an entire hour?

Tickled,

I

guess.

I hate getting tickled, especially on my side.

I can't get tickled.

I would rather listen to that annoying laugh for the entire

24 hours.

Yeah, human touch is not something I'm used to anymore.

So I would go with the laughter.

Question number two.

Question

number

two, would you rather... That was a cry for help.

I don't

know.

We're going to brush by that.

Would you rather have no eyelashes for the rest of your life?

or your butt cheeks pierced.

Which one would you rather have?

Eyelashes, I

don't think I have them now.

Eyelashes.

Get rid of the eyelashes.

I think I burned them out when I was lighting joints in the old days.

Eyelashes and knife routes are gone.

Yes, I would rather have my butt cheeks pierced.

All right, question number three.

Really?

Really?

Wow.

No, there's got, we've got to probe deeper into that.

I think this might also be a cry for help too.

Yeah.

All right.

Really, you'd rather have your butt cheeks pierced together.

I feel like it wouldn't hurt that much.

It's a lot of soft tissue down there.

You know, I think we've got to look at some of these questions because it says a lot about you, Dom.

All these questions are pertaining to me.

We need to preview these for you.

Third and final question, would you rather

a ponytail down to your ankles, or have a massive Adam's apple.

I'm just thinking about the scenario here.

Oh no.

I would like a ponytail down to my ankles.

I want to be tangled.

I feel like that'd be really cool.

Yeah, I think so.

That

Adam's apple,

that'd

be very awful.

You can roll up the ponytail.

Yeah, you can.

Look, there's another misspelling on it.

Whoever spells for CNF, the graphic, can't spell

missing.

Yeah, it's Myzine after Texas floods.

Who works overnights at CNN?

Do they not have a spell check?

It's

the Chaplain for the United Cajun Navy.

I didn't even know that.

I didn't know that either.

Cajun Navy.

I think they need a leader.

Sean Duffy is available.

I understand.

He's not doing anything else.

Okay.

But we got a text in here from Doug.

You can text us on the Civic Media app, which of course is always free to download and free to use.

Doug texts in.

John and Gordy joined the Manisphere update.

Oh, yeah.

He's been trying to get us in the Manisphere.

Join the Manisphere program that

we have.

Yeah.

He says your live broadcast from the Harley-Davidson homecoming is tomorrow morning at 6 a.m.

Well, this is late notice

for

us.

You need to ride in on motorcycles.

You know, the motorcycles need to be Harley-Davidson's.

We appreciate that just getting started on the what is it Thursday morning?

John and Gordy in the morning coming back back in a moment.

Kathryn Lake

You're listening to Civic Media.

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Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

And don't forget to check out our website, WMDX Radio.

We've got some great things happening there.

You can sign up for a pizza party with us and Sugar River Pizza.

We're getting ready to draw the first winner here any day now and you can still enter though.

Just go to our website WMDXRadio.com.

It's brought to you by Sugar River Pizza and WMDX and of course,

Sugar River Pizza is also up for Best of Madison, as are we, John and Gordy.

We don't know what's

going

on with that.

We won't find out the results for, I don't know, a few weeks, a couple of months, they don't really tell you until they're done counting the votes.

We haven't heard back from the person on the inside.

We're waiting in this thing alone.

Yeah, that's right.

We got somebody over there we know, right?

That we can

do.

Yeah, we can do it.

Just a little bit.

Okay, anyway, just go to WMDXradio.com, sign up for the pizza party.

We'll come to your workplace or office with a bunch of pizzas and have a good time with John and Gordy and Sugar River Pizza.

Yeah,

okay.

Well,

you know,

we're writing their coattails, so I understand that we've been accused of writing the coattails.

Well, they've won Best of Madison for their pizza.

Yeah.

At least a couple of years, maybe, maybe more.

Well,

it's our way

to, you know, to get back on the pizza bandwagon again.

Because, you know, we were heavily into pizzas one time.

That's right.

That's right.

The pizza bandwagon is calling our

name.

So now we're going to keep.

in that mode and we're going to be delivering pizzas.

It was always fun in the old days to do this.

And I think people are going back into the office places around downtown Madison and east side and west side.

We want to join you with a bunch of pizzas and have a good time.

So enter the contest.

Well, I can't wait for that.

Yeah,

it's going to be fun.

Alright, I accidentally ran across a video of how they make Teslas, you know, and it was I don't know whether it was sponsored by Tesla or not, but it left a few things out as they were showing us the robotic assembly of Teslas and it's really almost all robotic, but they didn't

have like a primer when they painted the cars.

They didn't seem to think about primer, they just started painting.

I'm thinking, wait a minute, don't you have a primer at all?

A

primer, yeah.

Yeah, I don't, in Teslas, why wouldn't they, why wouldn't they do that?

Well,

I don't know, they must.

Unless they rust out quickly later on, I don't know, you know, I don't own a Tesla, my neighbor has two of them, white and the black ones.

I see

them

around quite a lot.

Well, I'm in the market

for an EV.

Yeah, you are.

I think

you're taking

a Tesla tomorrow.

I think I'm buying an EV.

Yeah, a Tesla.

No.

Oh, it's cool.

It's a it's a Kia EV6 and it's very high tech and it's

really,

really loaded up.

It's actually the EV6.

Wind that's what they call it the wind and it's a it's a tech package I didn't know that but I was attracted to the fact that all of these tech items are included with it Including blind spots, which I love if you're making a right-hand turn camera comes on and shows you that area of The turn where you're going to go and it's you know shows the sidewalk It shows the crosswalk and everything and you can see whether anybody's there so you don't accidentally hit them You know if you're making a right turn right that happens a lot of

in this town.

Does it

have a self-driving mode or no?

It almost does.

We were told how to do this.

And what you do is you have it on and you're driving along.

You have to accelerate though.

But you can stay in the lane.

It reads the lane.

So you don't have to hold the steering wheel when you're on the belt line or the freeway.

It just stays it.

Yeah.

So

it's really great stuff.

I love this thing.

And I might just walk away with one on Friday.

So, yeah, unfortunately, it's a red one.

I wanted the black one.

Another red car?

I don't want

a red

car.

You look like you belong to the fire department

driving around.

Come on.

Really?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I know.

I know.

We had our eye on a black one here in town, but it was overpriced at one of the dealers.

So I was going to show them the actual price of a car that's similar to it, exactly similar to it.

Right.

But I decided not to.

You know, the hell with them.

You know, if they don't want my business, that's fine.

The other reason I'm buying this, by

the way, is

because of the rebates.

The big

rebates.

The rebates come to an end on September 30th.

So you get a $4,000 rebate for a EV that is under $25,000.

Wow.

So it's a used EV, $25,000 is a cutoff point.

If it's under that, then you can get the $4,000 rebate.

And then of course, if you're buying new, there's a $7,500 rebate.

But you got to get in on it by the end

of

September.

And that's the only reason I'm getting

it.

I want to save $4,000.

That's it.

Well, keep us posted.

And we'll have to take a picture of it.

Drive it in.

I feel like our current cars, like the Flintstones cars, were pedaling our feet on the ground now, comparing it to this EV that I

was in.

Pretty cool.

Like in the future all of a sudden.

Wow.

29 past the hour, when we return, we'll talk to Tim Slecker from Busted Pencils on John and Gordy in the morning.

We can change the world.

We are re-aged.

The world is

nighting.

To get better.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

W.

MDX, John and Gordy in the morning, a beautiful day in the capital city, Madison State Street looks clean as a whistle up

there.

Yeah, there's some joggers out there this morning.

They're having a good time.

We've got partly cloudy skies, 63 degrees, highs in the low 80s.

Maybe, maybe some light rain this afternoon or a pop-up thunderstorm.

We have Bob reacting to our discussion about EVs, the

possibility

I'll have one on Friday.

He said, I bought a Chevy Equinox EV.

I love this car.

But there's, you know, it's so great.

You hit the accelerator and it just goes, you know, you're not waiting for the pistons to kick in and all this,

all this

stuff we normally take for granted.

Thank you

for that text Bob from Akanaka, Milwaukee or a kind

of

walk.

I think that's, oh

yeah, there it is.

That's the correct way of saying it.

Okay.

Okay.

All right, you got something there Gordy?

Oh,

okay.

It's important to get that out.

Yeah, I know.

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All right.

Let's go

to

Dr. Tim Slacker right now from Busted Pencils.

You can check out their program at podcasts.

And do you have an adjustable bed frame?

I don't know.

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I don't know if I'm qualified It takes a lot of training, you know, yeah, I mean, you know, you're you're talking what it said volume 9 or something Yeah,

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Have a good time.

That's right.

Yeah

Right.

Well, OK.

So many things to get to, but your recent podcast is talking about AI again and teaching it in the classrooms.

And it was a fascinating discussion with you and Johnny.

But something occurred to me when you're talking about AI and introducing it into the class and how to teach it and just where to go with it.

I was wondering if we couldn't

regulated but have a an accredited AI source for education right I mean you have you know you have maybe credible people who put out good AI material right a good AI bot but you have been Elon

who is influencing his AI bot dramatically.

And it almost sounds like him at this point.

So you really, it brought to mind that maybe you can't trust some of the developers of AI equipment.

Well, come on.

I mean, that's what we do on busted pencils.

If you're using AI, it's the busted pencils accredited AI stuff.

There you go.

That's exactly it.

I mean, if we're talking about it, no.

Yeah, what do you go for?

What you're talking about is the sources, you know, and like curriculum, right?

The idea, even of a teacher, you know, when they teach and there are materials to pull from, where are those materials coming from?

Have they come from an approved source?

And, you know, in one way, there have been some schools that have said, let's just talk about regular curriculum.

said you know teachers you cannot use anything other than district approved curriculum sources so you know you can't go out

to the

internet and find sources you can't bring in your own reading materials or things like that because you know the only sources that are approved are from the district and so there's some sense of saying okay so then these must be

I guess legit sources and we can use them.

The problem, though, with that, John, and I'll point this out, is that, you know, what you're doing in that sense is saying we don't trust teachers to make decisions about using and what types of content to bring into their classrooms, because, you know, I mean, those teachers, though,

They'll bring in some kind of woke DEI indoctrination tool.

And then next thing you know, we'll have a bunch of second grade communists.

Exactly.

Or I think

it's

as

Elon called his now, it's Mecca Hitler.

That's what Grock said he was.

You know, I mean, grok.

No, I mean, seriously, whether it's AI, whether it's bringing in, you know, a YouTube video with, you know, a clip from, you know, a famous historian addressing something dealing with the Lincoln assassination, you know, how do we determine what is quality?

I think what's happening with AI and what you're pointing out, though, is that it really has, there's a different level here.

because I could, if I'm a skilled AI user, I could use AI to create really incredibly looking documents, curriculum materials that appear to be accredited or even, you know, original source material with deep fakes and things like that, showing students possibly, you know,

Abraham Lincoln in a, you know, a new video appearance that had been lost for years.

And here's Abraham Lincoln speaking for the first time live or, you know, on, on the internet.

And so, yeah, I don't, okay, you got me purple.

flummoxed a little bit on this one.

You know,

I'm just thinking that, you know, AI is trained in a certain specific way, and if it's trained with only educational materials, then that would be a great source for schools, right?

But if it's something that's used a lot of different sources, especially like movie sources, like, you know, would an Abraham Lincoln vampire hunter, I believe it

was.

Yeah.

So, you know, you don't want that part of Lincoln's history anymore.

So, but if it's trained, if it's trained with only educational materials, then that may be a way to have it accredited or some kind of source that you can trust for your classrooms, right?

Well, I mean, you are seeing that occur right now.

I mean, a lot of the major curriculum companies are dabbling in AI.

And so in that sense, you know, there's a trust level that you're doing.

One of the biggest teacher and

student use tools, there's actually two right now.

It's Magic School Bus AI.

And that teachers are using that quite frequently in students.

And the material there, you get some kind of a level of trust.

And the other one is from the Khan Academy, ConMigo.

which is the Khan Academy's AI.

And so those are really, you know, where you say trusted sources of AI content, AI generated material, AI interfacing, because that's the thing with AI though, too, right?

You're not just going to AI to find sources.

You can be using AI to create sources to, you know, so it's a combination of saying, okay, you know,

what are the best tools for creating content to teach kids?

And then where are we getting the best content?

And how do you know whether or not you should should trust that content?

So it's a it's a great question.

But I would also say before AI and me myself as a teacher, yes, I would use the district approved curriculum.

But then I would also find stuff to supplement and or enhance that curriculum on my own.

as a teacher who was certified by the state that I was working in and therefore qualified to make curriculum and material decisions.

And I think that's something we really want to continue to hold on to because that's the difference of what it means to be a professional is having that autonomy to make those types of decisions.

Right.

Aren't there two organizations that represent teachers?

Well,

I was gonna say so they're breaking news.

I don't know if you're referring to this but actually AFT American Federation of Teachers.

It's not that anymore AFT Randy Weingarten big announcement this week and You know, it's something that we're hopefully gonna be covering on Busted Pencils in the future.

They are on board with approving AI when I say approve They're working

with AI to address what you're talking about, John.

The sense of saying, you know, is there an authority behind...

AI and AFT has gotten you know into that and you know we've had Randy Weingarten on the show before and so we're asking her to come on to actually talk about what does it mean for AFT to be doing some type of an endorsement of AI.

Well that's good that

they're on board.

I know that I think it's Bill Gates and American Teaching Federation I believe is at it.

They're getting together I believe.

Well, I mean Bill Bill Gates has been saving education for like 39 years now, so You know he's it's he eventually one day will solve the education problem we know

Well, okay.

How

has he been saving it now?

I mean, what are you kidding?

No, he has for the I mean, he has for the longest time, you know, whether truly genuinely concerned about educational attainment or really meddling from the sense of going, you know, I alone can fix this.

Yeah.

You know, whether it's been Microsoft enhanced materials and or doing a lot with the Gates Foundation money, putting out money in grants out there.

to steer American education in a certain direction and you know some of it has not been all that successful and a lot of people have said that a lot of this money has been really directed towards moving education in a way that very much resembles what

Bill Gates himself thinks is important as opposed to a public school system and a community and a democracy making those decisions.

So there's a, you know, there's a fear of a rich potential oligarch taking control of American education.

Yeah.

And that's what I was worried about.

I know that the other teaching organization was more on the conservative side, or at least, you know, it has been known to be more conservative.

and Bill Gates helping them out with AI, I thought was kind of an odd combination, well not an odd combination, probably an assumed combination.

But

you've forgotten though, I mean, if it's a conservative organization, they deserve a leg up because that's the type of DEI we support.

Absolutely.

Yeah, so balanced approach to everything.

We've got

to have more

of that conservative thought in our schools because it's

just

not enough there.

And as we know, Linda McMahon is

promoting A1Sauce.

A1Sauce first

for

everybody.

Introducing more conservative thought, which is...

DEI for them.

Hey, you can't ever get enough A-1.

Steak sauce for everybody.

Okay, 6.48, we will continue.

At least replace his eye by meat.

Gonna need A-1 sauce.

Back with more with Tim Schlecker on John and Gordy in the morning.

Kathryn Lake

You're listening to Civic Media.

Find the latest news, information, and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website,

civicmedia.us.

Anywhere.

Yeah, just anywhere when you think about it.

Clouds are kind of thickening up here this morning over State Street and downtown Madison, cloudy skies now and temperatures in the low to mid sixties will climb into the low eighties by this afternoon.

Maybe some spots rain or possibly a couple of thunderstorms later.

All right, we're talking to Dr. Tim Slecker from Busted Pencils.

And

I do want to mention if you're watching this on YouTube or wherever you can watch it, Tim has pencils poked through his head.

Yes, it does look like that.

And

what I think is, did you do that intentionally?

It's true.

That's pretty cool.

Yeah, it looks perfect.

That is

really perfect, man.

I don't know if you do that purpose.

Did you do that purpose?

No, but as you're saying that, I'm like, OK, let me move my head a little

bit.

There you go.

Perfect.

Yeah, we need a screenshot of that.

OK.

All right.

Well, why don't we get to it?

We don't usually do this.

Let's promote your Saturday program.

It's a whole hour long.

And it sounds like a really interesting show this Saturday.

Yeah, it's a great show.

We have been, you know,

In touch with in fact is started with a CISA for Director Brittany waltz We had originally had her on the show for some unique things that CISA for But in Western, rural, Wisconsin was doing with AI She turned us on to in fact they have an a whole team up there and they're called liftoffs li fto ff

s liftoffs and that their websites liftoffs learning dot com and we talked to one of the founders of this program super intendant in the white holes uh... yeah the white hole school district mike bigley about the work they're doing and

It's it is something I mean you gotta listen you gotta hear what's going on there because what they're doing is in truly groundbreaking something that needs to be highlighted actually, you know celebrated and because

they are in a rural district to me breaking through the or breaking out of the old restraints of schooling, which is this kind of Carnegie unit seat time, you know, you do 40 minutes of math, you do 50 minutes of this.

And, and they're saying, Hey, look, you know, as early as kindergarten, we're starting kids on a personalized learning journey.

They're using artificial intelligence as one of their tools.

And they're, they're

You know, God forbid, but they're letting the students work well or work a lot together and going at rates that work with the students themselves.

And he pointed out this great success story in eighth grade with eighth grade, the math curriculum.

The all of all every one of them all the eighth graders finished the eighth grade math curriculum Before the school year was over and then they decided hey guess what since we have all this at this extra time they introduced Algebra early and you know what what's pointing out is is that saying you know what hey?

This whole idea of 25 kids in front of you taking a curriculum and being paced at the rate of, you know, hey, we have to keep them for 45 minutes.

It's an artificial constraint.

And that's the word that Mike Bigley really uses, is that what we're doing with liftoffs and the partner schools up there working.

taking away the constraints of schooling and empowering education and they're using AI as one of those tools to really kind of promote this personalized learning and What's awesome here is that this is in rural Wisconsin?

Typically where they try to tell schools hey you can do without you know do less or do more with less They're up there going you know what here's the deal.

We're gonna do more

With less truly and we're gonna blow the socks off of the rest of the world because Our kids are awesome and we're gonna give them an awesome opportunity.

So focusing on what's happening up there Just just incredible.

I mean if you listen to Mike Bigley talk to Johnny and me on Saturday He is you can understand why such amazing things are going and what what kind of connects this is is that

Ashley furniture, you know local Wisconsin company.

Yeah, they're they're fully involved in supporting Mike Bigley and liftoff's team So, you know, we really like about this.

This is a Wisconsin story.

We're all Wisconsin and You know the things they're doing Really should be in I'm sorry and national media spotlight and if anybody doesn't go boy, that sounds like remember the the two-hour AI school that we had talked about

They're doing that in that sense they're they're saying you can do one but they're not charging forty thousand dollars a year per student To do they're showing that in a public school in rural public schools when you take away the constraints of old thought processes things about kids and how they learn or what they're supposed to do

U2 can actually do a lot more with kids, keep them fully engaged, empower them.

all in a public school setting as opposed to a really unique private school setting.

You can tell I think it was an awesome

show.

We'll definitely have to check that out.

I just read where all these new devices that are coming out, the phones, web browsers, are all coming out now with AI.

The browsers are going to contain AI and it's good to train children on AI so they know what to expect.

That's it.

All right,

Tim.

Dr. Tim Sluck.

thanks for joining us.

You can listen to Busted Pencils with new podcasts on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and Saturday on the Civic Media Radio Network.

Tim's holding the pencils in his head.

Back with more of John and Gordy in just a couple minutes.

Kathryn Lake

The national news cycle never stops, but it can be hard to find news about your local community.

Civic Media is dedicated to providing quality local and state news coverage across Wisconsin.

With the Civic Media app, you can get notifications about local stories that matter to you and your community.

Find the free Civic Media app in your phone's app store and choose notifications from the menu to tell us what kind of news you want to hear about.

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