Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County School Board, Technology Steering Committee Meeting, Thursday, March 16, 2023

Date: Thursday, March 16, 2023
Place: Loudoun County Public Schools / School Board meeting (see BoardDocs / LCPS-TV)
Length: 31m (video)
Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/809160498?rel=0
BoardDocs (School Board): https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/loudoun/Board.nsf/Public

Machine transcript (speech-to-text) produced by Coraggio Consulting. Not an official county record. Names and numbers may be misspelled; check the video at the timestamp before quoting.
Speech-to-text: whisper.cpp, model large-v3-turbo. Produced 2026-10-22. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:01] Good afternoon, I'd like to call, or good evening, I'd like to call to order the meeting of the March 16th, 2023 Technology Steering Committee. I am joined by my colleague, Ms. Brenda Sheridan, and Ms. Corbo will not be able to join us today. We'll move on to public comment, and I believe we have one speaker, and I'll give five minutes, so Ms. Weiskopf.

[00:00:43] Good evening. I was looking at page four of this PowerPoint you're getting, PowerPoint, LOL. The number one thing that teachers wanted PD on is keeping students focused and on task using technology.

[00:01:04] I don't think teachers want professional development on that. They want help on that. You know, we get parents who say they don't want social-emotional learning because they're teaching values at home.

[00:01:24] We, as a school, can't do this without parental help. This is not a professional development need. This is something that needs to be covered more in the student handbook that parents sign. I had parents complain about their children being able to find things they shouldn't find.

[00:01:48] In the before times, it's what I call before COVID, in the before times, students were talking about Discord. And I asked a student if she had downloaded it because everyone had. And she said, no, my mom told me not to.

[00:02:05] It was that easy. those are parental issues and we need help from parents that is not teacher professional development and I think that is it, Black Lives Matter thank you we'll conclude public comment we'll move on to the approval of the draft minutes from the February 16

[00:02:44] 2023 meeting I move to approve the February 16, 2023 technology steering committee meeting minutes and I'll second that any discussion all those in favor please raise your hands aye aye carry unanimously board members present with Miss Corbo absent for the vote and that moves us on to item for our action item of the acceptable the student technology acceptable and responsible use and so I'll make the motion I move that this technology steering committee approve and accept revised policy 8650 student technology acceptable slash

[00:03:22] responsible use and sent to the full board as an information item second any discussion no no i sorry any staff comments on this i mean we had a great discussion last time and i think all the staff has nothing to add unless there's questions so um i guess going to the uh comments made during the public comment today um how does this get communicated to parents and like um what kind

[00:03:58] of involvement do we have with parents in terms of sort of setting acceptable use and expectations for acceptable use. So currently you're talking about personal devices at this point, non-LCPS managed devices. And I mean like anything, any devices.

[00:04:16] For LCPS devices, the students must sign when they take that device that outlines what they're responsible for, what they're allowed to do, what they're not allowed to do, what those expectations are. Like, you know, don't damage, physically damage it, those type of things, and then what you're allowed to do. So that's when we hand the device to someone. and then we have this this policy and that governs what they're allowed to do is kind of like acceptable use across the entire district and then as part of this policy one of the things we talked about last time is there is a regulation in the works that specifically I did that specifically speaks to personal

[00:04:54] device used by students so we actually are reviewing that right now I think it's going to go to principal advisory in April time frame so we're going to getting school feedback on what that should look like and what we want to do we just want to highlight when it comes to student personal devices there's not really technology solution that we can put in place for those things that we can't block cell phone it really comes down to partnerships with parents and understanding and then schools and what so the goal of the regulation is going to call it specifically what steps schools can take or administrators can take when that situation arises but again there's nothing we can do to say block cell phone usage that's against FCC law so it really comes down to a

[00:05:33] partnership of what they're bringing to school and they're how they're using it and then different schools right now have different practices in place to different middle schools different high schools have different things on their websites that those principals have communicated with teachers so one of the things we're trying to do is be have a consistent practice across the district at each level that kind of fits okay so as you're as I'm listening to you you talk about need to have a partnership with parents but how are we having that partnership like where we get the students sign something when they get the device but is there something else that the parent also has to sign off to understand this is what their child has agreed to or and then sort of again I agree that we can't block what happens on personal devices

[00:06:13] other than whatever content filter we've got there and I've had the same discussions about like blocking cell phones like that's definitely illegal but going back to what was comment what was made at the note made during public comment a parent told their daughter not to download discord and the daughter was responsible and didn't do it like how are we incorporating parents in that aspect in terms of helping be that second or third voice in terms of guiding our students to make prudent technology decisions so we at this we would play the role of advisor and helping in disseminating information so there are some of this is in student rights and responsibilities some of this is in policies some of this is in

[00:06:53] common sense media instruction that occurs at schools different parents have different opinions about what's appropriate for their kids at different levels so where one parent may think that discord is bad for their kids on their personal device we block it on our LCPS devices and on our network but if they were to drop off onto their cellular service and use that on their personal device that really comes outside of LCPS governing that and it really becomes up to that parent and that student choice depending on how those devices are even set up so the expectation is not since lcps doesn't manage the device we don't manage the network that it's on when it's on the

[00:07:29] cellular there's it's really about what those what the parent and what the family is allowing what they what that student can do thank you any other discussion all those in favor of the motion to send this to the full board as an information item please raise your hand and say aye that will carry you unanimously a board members present thank you very much and we'll move on to item 501 technology feedback loops thank you to share my screen here so our first

[00:08:07] topic of today is technology advisory and feedback loops this was a topic that was requested so we just want to bring some information about how we gather feedback and how we take actions or corrective actions after we receive that feedback so the first thing I want to highlight as far as teacher feedback is this is our first year of a teacher feedback group where we have in partnership with our ed tech office so the Department of Digital Innovation and the Department of Instruction I'm collaboratively seeking direct feedback from a from teacher reps at each school that are not the IFTs and bring them in so they've met once this year I'm the goal is to meet twice a year as part of

[00:08:43] that advisory group the first meeting focused on their feedback so basically what's working well and where do we have opportunities for improvement they are digesting that feedback and scheduling I believe the second meeting is in April after spring break and then at that meeting they'll explore those main themes and then we'll probably have some action recommendations that come out of that committee or that group so that's one thing that's new this year that we're doing this to solicit direct feedback versus a survey or anything like that we also do use bright bites survey data that's what we'll see on the next slide this is this is more helpful for our ed tech office who helps drive what

[00:09:22] professional development that they need at schools but it does collect data on where schools are having pain points with technology the survey is filled out by teachers the slide that is in the deck is from FY23 so I think that was filled out March of 2023 no it's from FY22 sorry so it's filled out of March of 2022 the next survey will be sent out after spring break again so we'll be able to have that direct teacher feedback as well as the survey feedback to take any corrective steps and then the other feedback loops are we're engaged with the superintendent's advisory groups those would be student teacher and principals so there are different topics that arise at different times that kind

[00:10:01] of drive the agenda for that but we attend when needed and solicit feedback I think one was on communication practices and one of the items that DDI will be moving forward with is some sort of status page that lets everyone kind of go to like a company would have so the feedback was like how do I know when things are down and we're like okay let's implement some sort of online status page that everyone can kind of go to to self-reference versus no one knowing when a system or service is down and we also have IFTs and digital experience specialists in schools so every school has a DDI staff member that works with their school community the goal of that person being in the school is the partner with the school so that they are getting direct feedback from

[00:10:39] those classrooms from this administration and we are still growing those skill sets out there so we are expanding those services to ensure that they're building those partnerships and it's not just a tech support role it is a trusted advisor role as well and we also get a lot of feedback from our incidents and service requests we trend those that data and we see where our major pain points are we track things as problems that are enterprise issues that need to be fixed and that's more for taking corrective action than it is for say a new technology implementation so here's I'm kind of speaking for Mike

[00:11:16] Hendrickson tonight as there have a conflict with launching your leadership session at Brambleton tonight which is kind of a large conference for them but would be an example of our bright bite survey and what teachers are saying they need professional development in again i just provide it as a example of the type of feedback we get and where we some of the questions that are asked and how those are presented so when we asked free form what additional support do you need to be successful more planning time for technology integration was included i know that's something that's more on our edtech role side than necessarily

[00:11:54] our ddi role side but we had like a request for faster and more reliable internet service so that is a multi-layered situationally dependent every use case by uk use case so i can say that when you look at the district as a whole we have 100 gigs of internet we're using about 25 so we still we're only using 25 but what we find is when we dial down to specific situations that there's maybe one school who's using an auxiliary gym for one testing event that normally has 30 kids and all of a sudden has 300 kids in there and that the network can't support that so we're finding more pockets of where we need to make improvements the versus like an

[00:12:34] organizational enterprise wide improvement but we did see a need to upgrade wireless networks for our secondary schools which we did complete this year that feedback actually came from teachers and from students directly as part of those student advisory groups with the with the principals and with the superintendent and then in the your comments or feedback are welcome we do hear a lot that having instructional technical support in the schools is working well and it is most of the time excellent so that's good feedback that we like to hear there so and that's all we kind of have on that topic if we're

[00:13:09] happy to answer any questions if there are any thank you very much for this I guess one thing about the Wi-Fi upgrades and such that's been a multi-year plan I assume that we're just or is this still something that we're trying to do more research on and improve so instructional use at schools is ever evolving and shifting and changing so what we are doing are trying to not just keep pace with hardware upgrades which we are you know Wi-Fi 6 capable hotspots and every single secondary school every classroom every large space you know I think

[00:13:48] auditoriums have nine access points so they're they're built to handle load in those areas but what we find is that as we shift to corner of a hallway being used as an instructional space that maybe doesn't have the appropriate coverage that those are the areas where we're still trying to work with schools so it is an ever-evolving so I think we'll always be it'll always be a a continuous improvement model but I think for the most part we have a solid baseline from which to build those at a school it may be one or two pain points that we work through and we also have ways to if we're working on is communicating out if you have a large event let us know then we can come and provide temporary solution for you for your testing windows and those type of

[00:14:28] things so we have those capabilities it's really just working with our infield support and our principals so we can be in better coordination for those events Thank you. And then going to the BrightBytes survey, that is specifically a technology usage survey, correct? Or is there more to it?

[00:14:47] It covers many, many different facets of instruction. It covers software utilization. It covers, I have looked at the report recently, but don't have it off the top of my head, but it does cover more than just technology usage at schools. And I'm sure that I can get something from our ed tech friends and bring that back for the next meeting if that's desired.

[00:15:12] Not really, but I guess I was just going to, that was a preamble to sort of asking about the specific survey question you have listed here. Are those topics for professional development, I guess, you said is teacher reported interest. Does that mean that they were the ones that provided all those suggestions, or is it a survey where these are all the options and you can pick whatever interests you based on what the survey writers have determined?

[00:15:36] So, from my recollection, it has both. really the ed tech team uses this to one gauge effectiveness of software title usage in schools and then two see where there's opportunities for professional development and that's where there could be a free form field i need to go back and look i know in years past we used it for students to identify who did not have internet connectivity at home so we could help determine what what a percentage would be so we could procure hot spots for those type of things so that's how it's been used in the past when they answer those questions thank you if you could provide more information about i guess the the parts of the bright bite survey that um correspond

[00:16:15] to what this committee would oversee i think that'd be helpful some more context um and then with that we'll move on to the ai and chat gpt uh thank you very much so the um artificial intelligence ai and chat gpt has been a pretty hot issue in nk12 there are many organizations that are talking about it um we are seeing it on our region four directors meeting we've seen it on statewide chat groups we've we've attended many conversations about it as this is a technology that's kind of evolved so quickly and even some of this information we're going to present today is out of date as of chat GPT 4 which

[00:16:55] just came out this week and some of the things that we have stated so so what is it it's an artificial intelligence tool that generates text based off of user prompts so you can type in write an email for me in this tone about this thing and it'll generate that text for you and then you can take that and use it for what you will so it's there to basically generate text it is based on data that is internet source data valid through 2021 at this point so it's important to keep that in mind it's not it's two years old at this point for the data sets that it's relying on to build these answers and so it's it's limited

[00:17:34] in what its scope can be but it also takes data from all these sources to compile answers it's not trusted sources or only reference sources it's anything that's available to that it can consume for that so we currently block access for staff and students on our network and on our devices so anytime an LCPS devices on or off network it still has content filtering applied to it some of the concerns that we have for restrictions of use are the vendors terms and conditions it is one it's a it's a beta product its current terms and conditions do state that no one under the age of 13 is permitted to use the tool and that

[00:18:13] basically is because they collect data and that violates COPPA for under 13 and then anyone under the age of 18 must have parental permission so that is signed parental permission for that user to use that the tool so that would be an area of concern for LCPS to sign for students to use those a lot of the use cases we're seeing now are in higher ed where students are over 18 and then they can do that themselves as part of that class as part of those AI or critical thinking classes the data collection practices currently are against LCPS DPA agreement I have I doubt that they would they would adhere to our agreement with

[00:18:52] the amount of money and funding and how widely used that they are that there's any sort of customized and customizable way to reign that in at this point and then requests live forever they don't really have a way to how sensitive topics or controversial topics are handled and content can't be managed so we couldn't say access this content but don't ask this content it's either on or off at this point so really limits the management tools that are in place for it also it's not always trustworthy it'll generate answers that are made up it is based on human content pulled from the internet we've seen many responses that reflect the biases of authors and it'll do one thing and not do something

[00:19:31] else and it literally will just make up answers it doesn't know so that's one thing and there's lots of examples of that as you read articles and it's one of the conversations that we've had about it so how are students using it well right now students cannot access it on their LCPS device and they can't access it on the LCPS network that doesn't stop them from going home and using it on a personal device or private network that isn't our not something that LCPS manages and then they could request content to be created for an assignment such as write an essay in this style for this thing and the tool is ever evolving so some of the examples that I read in an article are

[00:20:11] student could go and type a certain grade level and then they could say make four grammatical errors so it looks like a student wrote it so it even is smart enough to go through and if they you could really fine-tune that content as you get into it so how are we mitigating across the district right now so it's important to remember that it doesn't have data after 2021 so writing an assignment on World Cup outcomes or something like that would not be something they'd be able to do at this point so if there was a creative writing assignment so we've been working with our ed tech office to kind of partner and how what those what

[00:20:47] those activities could look like for students who could possibly be doing that and then really discussing academic integrity as part of that so right now chap gpt is not able to self-reflect so if a student has to write a self-reflection or their what that would look like to them can't write about anything after 2021 it can't predict future events and up until this week could not use visual materials.

[00:21:11] That was one of the updates that kind of came out this week. It's still in its infancy, so it's a beta-beta version of that, but that is something that's probably on the horizon. So we do see this as something that's here. It's not something we want to be afraid of, but it's something we want to make sure we have appropriate tools and supports for.

[00:21:29] And there are use cases where it can make sense, and there's use cases where we want to make sure that we're fully situationally aware of it. We know they're not going away. We want to stay engaged in the conversation. I was just in a statewide or multi-state tech director meeting yesterday that discussed it, pros and cons, what people are doing, how they're supporting their district and their organization.

[00:21:55] So we'll continue to participate in state-level and even national-level focus groups, continue conversations with current vendors such as Turnitin, which are building, integrating. I think our vendors are seeing that this is something that they need to include as part of their product, is AI detection. It is getting more and more difficult, but it is something that they're working on building in so that as they submit those, just as we're checking for plagiarism, we could check for AI-generated content.

[00:22:19] And we're going to continue to see what other neighboring school divisions are doing. I don't know of anyone in Loudon that is specifically allowing it I know some school districts who have not taken one stance or the other so that's just kind of passively allowing it so no one has taken a stance that they are endorsing it and allowing it as part of their district so we're gonna okay we're considering providing access to staff in the future so that they can use the tool there are some benefits I think people like the state of Utah just is is researching, allowing ChatGPT to assist with lesson planning and those type of things.

[00:22:54] So those are email generation, those type of text generation where it can be helpful. But again, I don't think it's, it's not there. It's not ready for prime time yet for an enterprise use at this point. And then, again, how can we AI support staff productivity where we aren't doing some of those tasks over and over and over again, but this tool that is very sophisticated can kind of do that.

[00:23:15] So that's kind of our current status, where we're at, an overview of the tool. And we're happy to take any questions. - Thank you very much, Ms. Sheridan. - I appreciate the update on this. We heard about this at the VSBA convention in November.

[00:23:31] And so I'm glad that we're aware and taking action and as much as we can, 'cause it sounds like as soon, you know, reminds me of radar detectors. As soon as they get better, then the cars get better, however that works. So that is what this reminded me of.

[00:23:47] And I actually like the idea of staff being able to use it for productivity. But then I'm curious, would that, I assume you could still block students without blocking staff? That's correct.

[00:24:02] We have different blocking policies based off of grade level and staff or students. So you could do something for middle school or high school or staff that are different. It really comes down to them evolving their terms and conditions, because we will not agree to anything that puts us in any sort of negative light.

[00:24:18] So those who are using it have used it in personal manners or businesses have kind of accepted that risk. I don't think that's something that we are willing to do to say that our staff data or our student data is going to be vulnerable in any way. So until those terms and conditions really come around, we're kind of at a no.

[00:24:34] I think that's really always good to reiterate that we're not putting anybody's personal data at risk. So thank you for saying that out loud. Thank you. So a couple questions. One of them is the slide on slide 8.

[00:24:53] It says LCPS currently blocks access. That is just for like chatgpt.openai.com, right? It's just that particular service, or is there a blanket ban on whatever wraparounds, whatever proxy services, whatever similar services that aren't specifically from OpenAI?

[00:25:12] Are we blocking those as well? So there's a handful of other services that we are aware of. They are mostly social media generating services, such as generate a tweet or those type of items. So we're having conversations about what those look like. We're not seeing them being used, and they're not as heavily discussed as what ChatGPT is.

[00:25:30] So as of the time being, it's ChatGPT, but that's open to be changed as the administration sees. So the other thing that I would say is this isn't a category that has a ton of, there's, Google has a tool that we're blocking currently.

[00:25:48] This is, Microsoft has basically leaned heavy into OpenAI and the ChatGPT. So these are really the big ones that we are seeing, and we'll continue to monitor the market, but our vendors aren't even quite sure from an auto-categorization of, do you block these things or do you not block these things?

[00:26:04] So they're still kind of in a gray area, and we leaned in to block them. Yeah, I mean, that's interesting because, as we had the discussion a couple meetings ago, it's almost impossible to block everything. So I'd be curious to see that. One of the other changes is that a lot of these large language models are now available some kind of on-device.

[00:26:24] Have we seen that? I assume they can't run on the Chromebooks just because of, like, the physical constraints of how low-powered the Chromebooks are. But is that something we're also looking into, like what can be installed or sort of run locally that could generate this kind of text? So on an LCPS Chromebook, students can only install things that are in the LCPS Chromebook store.

[00:26:42] So we would have to allow that app specifically. Staff are still restricted by the content filter even when they go home, so they can't go to ChatGPT. They can go to OpenAI to get information about it, but they can't go to ChatGPT, which is an actual tool, to look at it. So we're blocking the tool usage.

[00:26:59] And then any of those applications, if it's an LCBS-managed phone, iPad, laptop, Chromebook, those resources are blocked from going there. All right. I guess COPPA, COPA, that's the Child Online Privacy Protection Act, right?

[00:27:18] Just want to make sure. Correct. COPA or COPPA. It basically draws a line at 13 years of age and says what you're allowed and not allowed to do. A lot of that is advertising, data collection, targeted advertising to specifically protect those students who don't know any better so that we make sure that the tools that they're using aren't doing those things.

[00:27:40] Okay. Some of the other things that are coming out is the fact that this is getting integrated into Google Suites and Microsoft Office tools. Have we looked into how that affects what students are able to do? Are there ways to toggle that in and off in our Google Apps suite?

[00:27:56] So for now, it's toggled off, but it's an ever-evolving landscape. Like, ChatGPT will be integrated with Bing. And at that point, right now, we're directing Bing searches to Google Safe Searches so we can do a protected image search and those things. So we may end up having to make some choices of not allowing certain services as they get integrated.

[00:28:15] And that's a lot of times what we see is they put the application out there, but they don't put the tools to manage it out there. So we want to make sure that we can manage it and control it before we just allow it for all. We have seen that with other tools in the past where we kind of didn't have a choice with like a Google Meet to expand it to everyone before it had some management tools in it.

[00:28:33] So we would like to be in that making sure that it is 100% ready to be managed, not just 100% ready to be used. Okay, thank you. And I guess with the fact that we're the instructional, you say writing in class, is that like handwriting or is that like we're just typing with no network access?

[00:28:52] It's just being in class where you know that they're on an LCPS device and they can't do certain things. So there are certain practices. If they're writing right in front of you, you know they're not generating content. Not that that's a great solution, but it is a solution. Also, like I said, writing about current events versus older events, writing self-reflections.

[00:29:09] Those are strategies we've heard other districts talk about. And everyone's still in the same phase of data gathering and having conversations about what does this look like. Just keep them, there's still, academic integrity is still, you know, there's nothing stopping anyone right now from having someone else write an essay for them and then submit it as their own work.

[00:29:30] So this is just an AI way to do that versus paying for someone to do that for you or something like that. So we still want to lean on our plagiarism tools, on our processes in place that we have to review these things. And then I think our vendors are feeling the pressure because every school district is asking for these kind of AI detection capabilities.

[00:29:49] Okay, thank you so much for this. helpful good information I think it would make sense if we bring this up in the future probably in two months just because I imagine we very different in two months so I'm gonna just preemptively ask we talk about this on the for the May meeting just you know unless it's there's nothing's changed all but I don't think that's gonna be the case so it's evolving daily so I absolutely think there'll be something different to talk about one of the concerning things that just happened today was Microsoft releasing their AI AI ethics team, the entire team is gone now.

[00:30:22] So now you have a bunch of people who are saying we can do something and not a bunch of people who are saying we should do something. So we really the market is going to kind of drive what that looks like and I think it's going to be daily evolving as far as what these tools look like and what their use cases are. You said release isn't like they introduced them to the public or they fired them all? They fired them all.

[00:30:41] Who wrote the pink slip? So it's an ever-evolving landscape. Alright, thank you so much. I appreciate that. And with that, we'll move on to item six, new business. There's no new business. And so we are adjourned. Thank you, everyone.

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