WHAT THE TECH?!

Exploring the future of learning with Rachelle Dené Poth, author of a new guide to AI, AR/VR, and beyond.

INTERVIEW | by Mark Gura

Those of us who are deeply immersed in the field of education, particularly that portion in which technology is the enabler of deep, meaningful change, like to keep our ears to the ground to detect tremors emanating from developments bearing down on us. Sometimes such fresh insight comes along in the form of a book. One that I encountered recently had me had me wrapping my brain around emerging technologies other than the usual AI suspects. These ‘others’ are emerging technologies that have strong potential to impact what goes on in our classrooms, too.

The book is Rachelle Dené Poth’s, “What the Tech? An Educator’s Guide to AI, AR/VR, the Metaverse and More,” recently released by its publisher ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education). Rachelle, the author of a number of insightful books on classroom technologies, has become a prominent voice and, as we have a history of collaboration together, I approached her for a one-on-one conversation of this new book’s content and its implications for the field.

That exchange of collegial Q&A helped me get much further up to speed on a number of cutting-edge instructional resource and activity types. Further, I found this to be a fun and inspiring chat and I hand it off here expecting readers will follow suit.

What motivated you to do this book?

It grew out of my experience teaching an 8th-grade STEAM/Technology course that I created. I’ve been teaching it for 9 years.

Ah, but you started out as a Spanish Foreign Language teacher—how did you get involved in teaching STEAM?

My school received a grant to transform our library into a Maker Space. The administration approached me to teach there, explaining that my students would make cultural things with “hummingbirds”. I figured, who better for culture than a foreign language teacher?

I assumed “hummingbirds”—like those in nature—and just nodded my head in agreement saying, “sounds great, awesome, can’t wait.” Then I found out that Hummingbirds were student robots. By the third year, I’d become good at this—and the principal asked me to envision a full-blown STEAM course. I listed a handful of the things I wanted my students to learn: AI, Virtual Reality, Coding and a few more. He asked, which one? I told him “All of them!” I kept adding more tech topics until I got the course right, in my opinion. Eventually I realized a lot of educators will need to know about these things because they’re going to change the world and education.

‘Eventually I realized a lot of educators will need to know about these things because they’re going to change the world and education.’

Good answer! What I’m hearing is authenticity with a capital A. Not some writer sitting down to imagine what should be included in a book but a caring, responsible in-service teacher charged with creating a course who wanted to share what she created.

And yeah, the technology landscape is expanding so fast. I was the head of educational technology for the New York City school system before I retired, a great vantage point from which to view the field. There have been a lot of changes and major milestones. When the World Wide Web came out—boy, that changed things greatly! Teachers suddenly saw great potential to improve instruction through technology. And then Google began to provide essential resources free online along with the Chromebook model of affordable, connected student device, the keystone element to digitize education.

Yes, and then another impactful change, the Pandemic school closures five years ago. And, Oh, my goodness, then ChatGPT came out at the end of 2022 into early, 2023. And then all of these new AI-based tools for instruction came out. It’s been a fast-moving roller coaster.

Now we’re in the era of AI and I really have to say in all those years, this is by far the biggest, most ground shaking change I’ve seen. And yes, some of the rhetoric is overblown, Sometimes I even think you could go shopping for backyard barbecues, and some store will have an AI BBQ Grill. I kid! I kid! But you know that old saying, there’s the sizzle, and there’s the steak. And we’re seeing a lot of both.

So I wonder—and kind of worry. Particularly after looking at your book, that maybe AI is garnering a little too much attention in the sense that there are other emerging technologies being overlooked. That’s one of the reasons why I was really attracted to your book ‘What The Tech?’

I started to research AI almost 8 years ago. And I’ve been teaching it for over 7; the amount of attention it has attracted is crazy. And yes, importantly, there are other emerging technologies that are essential for teachers to know about.

Augmented and Virtual Reality, for instance. It was such a big topic. I’ve presented workshops on that for longer than AI. But I haven’t heard about it as much lately. And there are also topics like Blockchain, the Metaverse, and NFTS – people are wondering about Crypto, there’s Quantum Computing and I just wrote an article on Neural Processing units on computers; there’s so much.

There are schools that use some of these different technologies. People are learning and teaching in the Metaverse, storing information using Blockchain, and more.

I feel these are definitely topics that teachers should learn about, but may not necessarily know where to look for information.

And part of this thrust comes from the kids, too. They want to try these things, see what they can do, join the cutting edge of users. Even in Spanish class, which might be largely text, in their youthful enthusiasm I’m sure they think ‘Why not? Let’s use Augmented Reality in Spanish class. All of these other emerging technologies are vital and potentially have something uniquely wonderful to offer students.

Right. I know my students are interested and ready.

So let’s talk about some of the emerging technologies you put in the book.

You’ll recall from your guest-speaker visits to my graduate course, ‘Technology Integration for School Leaders’ — I draw a sharp distinction between generic technology use in schools and technology used for teaching and learning.

There are all of those killer apps that every school acquires to do things like record attendance, schedule classes, create menus for the cafeteria, do the yearbook, and on and on. But I’m a dyed-in-the wool teacher, always focused on instruction and was happy to see in the book discussions of teaching and learning with technologies like the Metaverse.

When I first joined ISTE, I think it was in 2014, people were meeting in Second Life. We all had an avatar in that virtual world. That drew my attention to the possibilities of learning in a virtual space. And I know that kids relate to this strongly, for instance, many are involved with Roblox.

Good example! Roblox is an online platform where users can create, share, and play games created by other users. It’s a platform on which a community of users generate content and interact socially. It’s popular, I think there are tens of millions of kids using it.

So, for those teachers who are informed and interested, there are things like Minecraft Education Edition, a version designed for educational settings. And it’s used by educators worldwide to teach various subjects, foster collaboration, and enhance student engagement. Teachers utilize it to make learning more interactive and creative, covering subjects like STEM, history, language arts, and more.

There are teachers in my school that have had students do their projects using Minecraft, and it’s pretty cool to see them using it to work on something for history or science.

Now there are even metaversities. Last summer I virtually attended a ribbon cutting ceremony for a business school in California and they live streamed it on YouTube. They had a whole campus in that virtual space that looked exactly like a traditional brick and mortar university. Teachers and other staff were virtually there and there was a virtual ribbon and scissors to cut it. Pretty cool.

And we talked about that in my STEAM class. I asked, “would you like to go to school in the Metaverse, and if so, why? or, why not? My students found it pretty interesting.

I like that it’s easy to see connections to standards-based curriculum in the things you include in the book. I see lots of problem solving there. There’s math involved and many other types of connections. But the technology that surprised threw me the most Is Blockchain.

Oh, I know. I often explain to colleagues that I’m not an expert in all these different technologies, at least not at a high level. But I think teachers will benefit from knowing and teaching about them, having some activities that can get students engaged and learning about them.

Yeah, I agree. Teachers simply need to get sufficient understanding through things like your book. I mean, they’re not going to become Blockchain experts. But maybe it’s a good thing for them to understand what it is and what their students ought to know.

The world now really requires us to teach two things: One. content area curriculum, you know, math, science, ELA, and social studies, for instance. And by now we are deep, deep into the mature phase of using many types of technology to teach them.

But also, broadly, we need to teach the kids the technology itself, particularly the emerging technologies that populate the table of contents of your book.

And when I first saw Blockchain in the table of contents, I thought, Wow! And reflecting on it, why not? It’s an important thing in our world. Cryptocurrency runs on it. And there are other applications. Certainly, some kids would do well to learn this technology.

I teach it. I give my students examples. I ask things like, “What can you store on it? What does it look like? Is it like a digital ledger? What can you use it for? transactions, records, anything else?”

You’ve got me wondering what your steam class would be like. I imagine that it’s not a lab-based course. I’m sure your students have laptops or tablets, but they’re not using them all the time. There’s probably a lot of discussion, imagining, students jointly focusing on a whiteboard. That type of thing. So in in a setting like that, I guess you inform kids that these technologies exist. And you…

We jointly wrap our brains around what the things that we focus on mean.

‘We jointly wrap our brains around what the things that we focus on mean.’

Yeah. What do these technologies mean in our personal lives, in our society? I’ve been noticing over the past few years digital literacy standards, New York State’s, for instance, that include what are really Social Studies connections focusing on how technology is impacting our lives.

And my course calls for a lot of student exploration. I assign students a topic and have them become the expert, find out information, and report on it to their classmates.

Good. And what about NFTs? That’s in the book, too. When I saw that, I thought, Yeah. Students making things, project, based learning.

I remember when ISTE did its first virtual conference, maybe 2 or 3 years back Richard Culatta, ISTE’s CEO in opening the conference talked about NFTs. But I wonder now, is this maybe another one of those really viable, interesting, worthwhile technologies that’s been eclipsed by AI?

You know, there’s lots of supplementary resources that are out there for it. I find interesting videos. But when I do professional workshops or when I teach my students, some may have heard of NFTs, but don’t actually know what an NFT is. So we spend time discovering that it’s a Non-Fungible Token. What does that mean? That you can’t just exchange it like you can money. It can function as a certificate of authenticity; shows you have ownership of it. Some schools are using this technology for things like issuing micro credentials, diplomas, and certificates. Some students create NFTs as Art, and that’s also a great way for kids to become an entrepreneur; they sell or fundraise by selling their NFTs.

Cool. Those are some great examples. And you know, I think it’s particularly refreshing for schools to be leading the way in something like this.

Moving on—I see that chapter 5 is Web 3. 0, which is a term I don’t think most people are familiar with. So what is Web 3. 0, and how does it work? Just give me the 12 second version, haha—just kidding!

Well, It’s the third iteration of the web. Web 1.0 was back in the nineties and early 2000s. It was just static websites with content for viewers to read information. Web 2.0 brought us social media, buying and selling things online and YouTube—a lot of it from big groups like Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Facebook.

Web 3.0, the next generation of the internet, is built on decentralization: a more open, transparent, and user-centric web where users have greater control over their data and online identity.

I can see this is really going to be different and powerful… it’ll change so much in our online lives! Because of the AI data gathering, everybody has their own unique experience. Recently, I went to my own institution, Touro University’s Graduate School of Technology’s website and instantly there’s a chat bot on my screen asking “How can I help you, Mark?” It’s taken me some time to get used to this, but I see great advantages. And I can see that this is great stuff for students to think and learn about now.

ISTE | GET YOUR COPY HERE

The kids need to understand all of this. Especially the younger kids in elementary school whose formative education will include Web 3.0 as they prepare to enter the world of work that will be shaped by it.

Do these things live in your school? I mean badging and micro credentials with NFTs and Blockchain, the emerging technologies?

Well, I teach that stuff. Although I don’t see it much systemwide yet.

That’s actually a good answer. You have your students learning about important things although they haven’t shown up yet much in schools. Your kids are ahead of the curve which brings me to the last subtitle from your book’s table of contents. I saved the easiest for last, haha: Preparing students for the future.

So. I’ll share with you that I’m fairly well caught up on how tech is progressing and what varieties are showing up in the world. But keeping up’s a struggle. My inbox and my LinkedIn and Facebook info streams probably look like yours: out of control! So many announcements and news items about new developments. I have to strategize to deal with it. Clearly, change is something that’s happening in greater amounts at greater velocity. So how do we prepare students for the future?—that’s one of your headings in the Table of Contents.

For one thing, I often look at the World Economic Forum to see the job skills outlook. And among the current top 10 are AI and Big Data. You can’t hide from AI or any of the other emerging technologies because they’re here, now. Some may not stick around. But in all of these topics what I emphasize for colleagues is giving the kids an opportunity to learn about them, see the pattern of what’s developing and why, and let them know that they don’t have to be the expert, simply focusing on what they need to know practically.

Since I started, AI has grown and surrounded them. We want them to be safe when they’re using these different tools. And we know they’re going to use them. Do they need to understand cybersecurity? Of course they do. Do they need to know about the Metaverse and Blockchain? Maybe. But it’s about giving them opportunities and making sure that as we’re teaching technology we’re still focusing on those other essential human skills that are part of that top 10 job skills report. They haven’t gone away. They’re big concerns. Especially with AI, kids still need to learn the how to of Creativity, Critical Thinking, and Problem Solving whether using tech or not!

‘It’s about giving them opportunities and making sure that as we’re teaching technology we’re still focusing on those other essential human skills.’

I absolutely I love this theme. You’re preparing students to prepare themselves. And yes, it’s very astute to go to the World Economic Forum’s list of trending desired job skills. And to use that to inform what you offer students. But at the same time, we know that whatever you show kids who are 12 years old right now—it may not be there in any form we can predict when they hit the job market. You’re showing them how things change and letting them know that you’re only giving them a snapshot.

And where we’re probably heading. And that we have to be as prepared as we can with the knowledge that we have. Making the students the fact finders; that’s my favorite thing to do. Sometimes in class, I play like I don’t know the answer to something important, and I encourage them, “You go find out. You tell me—because I want to learn from you.”

Yes—exclamation point!

—

Mark Gura is Editor-at-Large for EdTech Digest and author of Creative SEL: Using Hands-On Projects to Boost Social-Emotional Learning and of The Edtech Advocate’s Guide to Leading Change in Schools (ISTE), and co-author of State of EdTech: The Minds Behind What’s Now and What’s Next (EdTech Digest). He also authored Make, Learn Succeed: Building a Culture of Creativity in Your School (ISTE). He taught at New York City public schools in East Harlem for two decades. He spent five years as a curriculum developer for the central office and was eventually tapped to be the New York City Department of Education’s director of the Office of Instructional Technology, assisting over 1,700 schools serving 1.1 million students in America’s largest school system. In addition to his role at EdTech Digest, he is currently a professor at Touro College Graduate School of Technology.

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