Coraggio Consulting
Loudoun County Public Schools, Minority Student Achievement Advisory Committee (MSAAC) Meeting, Wednesday, March 19, 2025

Date: Wednesday, March 19, 2025
Place: LCPS Administration Building / School Board Room, Ashburn, Virginia
Length: 2h 11m (video)
Official meeting video (Vimeo / LCPS-TV): https://player.vimeo.com/video/1067518880?rel=0

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 2026-10-13. Timestamps are [HH:MM:SS] into the meeting video.

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[00:00:30] - Good evening, everyone. Okay, the mic is working, yay. Good evening, we're going to go ahead and get started because we have a pretty busy evening, but I am very excited for tonight's meeting, tonight's meeting theme and topic.

[00:00:46] So welcome to the joy of learning new things. Tonight's meeting came about because we wanted to empower MSAC delegates, the community, parents, students, family, And even educators here at LCPS talking about, you know, what's already here, whether we are ready or not, which is the future and technology in the future and specifically AI.

[00:01:11] And so when we were planning, I just thought it would be great to talk about learning new things because I tell my children all the time, you know, if you don't learn something new, one new thing every day, then you're not learning and you're not growing. They roll their eyes, but it's true.

[00:01:28] You know, whether it's a new word, I've been known to send them screenshots of new words that I learned, and I'm like, I will be using this forever. I have learned a new word. Or, you know, did you know that such and such happened? And they're like, wow, you really believe in this learning new things. So tonight we're going to talk about something that I think is very important to our community.

[00:01:46] There is some stigma and concerns and worries and fears and anxieties about it. But I'm hoping that with our meeting tonight, you leave feeling encouraged, maybe a little inspired, maybe a little courageous to try it out. And you just feel prepared for what is going to be coming here at LCPS, but also in helping your children navigate this new thing, this new wave of technology and things in their education.

[00:02:16] So we're gonna do the general housekeeping stuff and then we're gonna dive right in. Also, I really love the QR code stopped working. Okay, I will try to get that fixed and then we'll bring it back up at the end of the evening, which means that, no, well, this is not sign-in.

[00:02:35] That would be for the February meeting minutes. So if you could scan that, I know I sent everybody the meeting minutes, but if you could just take a scan at that, if it doesn't work, please tell me.

[00:02:52] And if you just want to take a quick review of it, if you've already seen the meeting minutes and you've read through them, we're just going to take a vote and I will open the floor for a motion. If it's not working, every time I fix it, I apparently mess it up.

[00:03:16] Okay, I will edit that and I will fix that and we will come back to both signing in and the meeting minutes at the end of the meeting. Again, technology, it's amazing when it works, and when it doesn't work, it's a little annoying. So tonight's agenda, we're going to skip number one and go straight to the rest of our program.

[00:03:34] We are going to be hearing from general counseling about the integration of course planner. I know we've all kind of gone through that with our kids, getting them ready for, if you have kids in middle school and high school, getting them ready for their classes next year. And if you were like me, you were in the school building asking guidance counselors, what does it look like in 8th grade?

[00:03:53] What does it look like in 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th grade? Well, this is just an opportunity for us to just learn a little more in-depth about course planners. So when we go into next year, we feel a little more knowledgeable about it. And we can share it with our schools and our communities as well. So they can just feel more prepared and have a better understanding of how it works.

[00:04:11] We're going to be hearing from the administration about generative AI. We will have a presentation on data privacy for parents and students. I promise it's worth it. I promise. I had to make them do this for me. It was a favor.

[00:04:27] And then we'll hear about AI tools, practical uses, which I'm very excited because our final presentation for the night is the inspiration for this whole evening's meeting. When Tonya and I talked about it, she inspired me to go out and learn and to use it.

[00:04:43] And every time I have a conversation with her about it, I learn something new. So I'm really excited for you all to hear this presentation. So with that, I am going to turn it over. Oh, hey, look, now things are working. We'll get to this later, announcements.

[00:04:59] So before we get started, we're having technical difficulties. Please come back. Okay, what is AI? So tonight we're talking about AI and artificial intelligence. If I say AI, who with a show of hands is a little nervous about AI? You can be honest, okay?

[00:05:15] Who uses it every now and again, okay? Who maybe uses it all the time for stuff? Yes, I have been known to use it to help us plan a menu and my kids get really scared because they're like the computer made my dinner and those are things that they text their friends.

[00:05:35] They literally text their friends, the computer made our dinner tonight. I was like, it really didn't. I cooked it, but it helped. So, what is artificial intelligence? Artificial intelligence is when machines can think and learn like humans, helping them complete tasks that usually require human intelligence. AI can analyze information, learn from it, and make decisions or take actions based on what it learns.

[00:05:55] Now, we've all, who has seen the movie Terminator? I'm gonna go there. Okay, we're all a little scared about Skynet, becoming aware, that's not what this is. We're not gonna be worried about that. We're going to just learn about how it can be useful and effective in helping you with your students and their homework, maybe as a research, maybe inspire you to use it.

[00:06:18] I used it to plant a garden, just telling you. It has its uses and it can be helpful. So I just wanted to get out there what AI is. So our goal tonight is we are going to understand what AI is as a tool for learning.

[00:06:35] We're going to explore how AI can support students in research, studying, and learning, discuss ways to use AI responsibly and ethically because we don't want to just go out there and be like, yes, you can cheat. We're not telling you to cheat. You cannot cheat. You have to do your work is right. I said so.

[00:06:52] You have to do your work and you have to do it right. And then we want to make AI technology more accessible to all families because not everybody is going to go out and use these tools. And if we have a way as MSAC delegates to share with our schools and communities and people we interact in our day-to-day saying, hey, this can be helpful.

[00:07:10] You can use it to make a study guide. You can use it to help your child if they're written a paragraph and they're wondering about how to reword a sentence. And I was helping my daughter with Macbeth the other day, and she did not like how I explained Macbeth to her. And so we used it to kind of break Macbeth down, simplify what she was doing, understand it better.

[00:07:31] We had a conversation back and forth, and we were able to help her kind of break through and understand what she was reading. And she went out, and she completed the paper on her own. I was proud of her. She knocked that out of the park in one night. That's what we want to do is we want to make it more accessible, make it easier for you to understand what it can be used for, but also inform you about what's coming down the pipeline here at LCPS.

[00:07:51] So before we do that, we are going to jump into the integration of Course Planner. I'd like to introduce Ms. Heather Ross, Supervisor of School Counseling Services, and Ms. Tracy Wood, Coordinator of School and Counseling Services.

[00:08:40] Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Heather Ross. I'm the School Counseling Supervisor for Loudoun County Public Schools.

[00:08:59] And this is Tracy Wood. She is the Coordinator for School Counseling Services. We're very excited to share a bit about the integration of Course Planner to this evening. So, I did want to just first align the work that we have done in Course Planner and making sure that we kind of have centered the work around the goals of our division, one with the strategic plan 1.2 to make sure we have students who are aware of accessible pathways and we have made those pathways available to students, 4.3, really just ensuring that

[00:09:35] our community is being brought together when we're having discussions with students about planning their courses, their future, and on-time graduation, and then also aligning it with Dr. Spence post-entry plan to ensure that we are college and career ready. So first before we introduce Course Planner as a tool we'd like to take a moment to celebrate the successes that we've experienced by implementing School Links which is our new college and career readiness platform.

[00:10:06] In the beginning of the 23-24 school year, School Links replaced Naviance, which was our historical college and career readiness platform. And our goal really with going through the process of finding a new college and career readiness platform was to ensure that our student engagement in the platform and family engagement in the platform was increased.

[00:10:30] and we are so happy to say that it did to report 98 percent of kindergarten through fifth grade students and 94 percent of sixth grade through twelfth grade students utilize the platform to complete lessons and self-exploration regarding college and career readiness.

[00:10:49] Before this implementation we really did not have a college and career readiness platform for elementary students. So we're very happy that it is the same platform for a continuation of services from our kindergartners the first time they're thinking about careers to the last time they're thinking about careers when we're talking about 12th graders applying to colleges. This will be the whole college and career readiness platform in the spectrum that is the growth and development of our students. Additionally, we saw an increase in family engagement with 38 percent of guardians

[00:11:27] in elementary school and 23 percent of guardians in the secondary platform. And we were just looking at statistics today that has actually gone up to 41 percent because of the integration of course planner. So more families are engaged in this platform and in the work of college and career readiness by the integration of this platform. Student usage at the secondary level increased significantly. At the middle school, student engagement increased by 89 percent at the least

[00:11:58] and 30,000 percent at the most with an average increase of 8,900 percent. And at the high school level, student engagement increased by at least 196 percent and at most by 927 percent for an average of 388% increase compared to our historical platform. We're thrilled to watch the student and family engagement increase in our college and career readiness platform. It really has provided many unique and amazing conversations for students and engagement and the college and career

[00:12:38] readiness goals that we have for students in LCPS. The School Links platform supports college and career exploration for students in kindergarten through 12th grade. I know some people are like kindergarten, but they really, it's like having a career day, but it's built into this unique platform where they can see what their interests are and get excited about certain things and see where the things that they like to do can combine with the things that they could do in the workforce or, you know, after graduation. They explore interest inventories, activities, and

[00:13:15] assessments to self-discover their interests, skills, and values. And the depth of self-discovery helps support students post-secondary plans and helps foster goal setting for the future. One exciting feature of School Links is the dynamic college application manager. Having worked in Naviance previously and then utilizing the college application manager in School Links, it's much easier to navigate for the students. It's much more robust and it's easier for the counselors as well. It opens for our 12th grade students in August and helps support students, families, and staff through the complicated process of higher education applications.

[00:13:52] The college application manager not only streamlines the process, but it supports students in keeping track of their results. They can search for scholarships and keep track of those scholarships as well, and much, much more. For the class of 2024, school counselors processed a little over 33,000 college applications, and students also self-report their intentions of enrollment on our senior year-end survey. Roughly 89% of the class of 2024 declared their intentions of enrolling in a four- or two-year college, and we were able to identify which colleges and universities our LCPS students are commonly attending. Additionally, students who report workforce or military

[00:14:31] declaration can share a much more detailed information if they wish. They can let us know which companies they're interested in or which branch of the military they're intending on serving. These analytics help support the LCPS alumni network while also providing valuable information for staff as they support the future generation of students entering the workforce, their post-secondary institutions, and the military. Thank you. So we have experienced a significant amount of success with the implementation of the college and career

[00:15:06] readiness platform of School Links, but we really wanted to try to understand how might we grow with students building upon their course recommendations from one year to the next, to the next, to the next. And we have added that feature into School Links this school year.

[00:15:31] And why did we do that? We received a significant amount of feedback, not only from LCPS staff, but also from students and family members who really were looking for a more streamlined process and to have a bit more student voice and family voice within the integration of the process of recommending courses, choosing courses, ultimately with the goal of on-time graduation.

[00:16:06] So the work school counselors do will never be replaced by AI. I could say that tonight. And the reason why is because while the course planner brings an overview of on-time graduation, graduation requirements, and what students can plan for and aligns it with the offerings in LCPS, you're always going to want to connect with a staff member who knows graduation requirements like the back of their hand and ensure that a student's values, interests, goals past graduation

[00:16:42] are being utilized when implementing course requests for each year. We have opened course planner for fifth graders through current 11th graders. So if you have a student within that grade range, they probably have experienced course planner this school year. Fifth and sixth grade students, they plan for their next academic school year. And then in seventh grade, students begin to plan for on-time graduation. So we want them thinking about their and how their interests and goals align with not only their I'm sorry their interest and

[00:17:18] passions align with not only their short-term goals but also their long-term goals as well. So seventh grade students have access to all high school credit or high school bearing courses in LCPS so even if that course isn't offered at their LCPS high school they can see the type of varying offerings that we have have in order to support a student's passion and pathway.

[00:17:44] In year one of implementation, special programs were visible to those students who are currently enrolled in special programs, however we are looking at ways in which we might integrate and allow students to be able to view special programs who are not in special programs to really have a wide variety and understanding of what special programs are, which ones do we offer, and how they might align with their goals and interests.

[00:18:14] So in case you haven't had an opportunity to go through Course Planner with your student, we're going to show you a video of sort of how it works and what the students are able to see when they log in. So when they first log in to School Links, they'll then log in to Course Planner and they'll come to this page and they will click the "Let's Go" and that will start them on the opportunities to choose their courses.

[00:18:41] So it takes them to this first main page and all the way across the top is the listing of each individual type of class, so English, math, science, history. There's a spot for electives, there's a spot for non-credited courses, such as study hall or peer or SCA, things like that.

[00:18:58] And then there's a spot for sequential electives and then general electives, and also a spot that they can choose an alternate course in case one of their courses isn't available. So when they click mathematics, for example, they'll be able to see their eighth grade course, so what they're currently enrolled in, and then they can begin to choose what they would like for each additional grade level.

[00:19:17] So they'll choose for ninth grade, they'll choose for 10th grade. This is assuming they're a rising ninth grader. You can search for a course or you can scroll down. They'll choose their 11th grade course and then finally their 12th grade course.

[00:19:34] When they're done making the selections for their math course, they can either click continue at the top or they can continue across the scroll at the top of the screen that takes them to the next academic area. So this person is choosing science. Again, it shows their 8th grade science course, so then they will choose the course that they would like for 9th grade.

[00:19:54] It gives all the 9th grade science opportunities, and then if they do happen to choose a course that they do not meet the prerequisite for, it will give them an alert that it's missing a prerequisite. So for AP Bio dual enrollment, it has a co- or prerequisite of chemistry or research chemistry, so it tells them right in the platform that they have not met that co- or prerequisite and what they need to take.

[00:20:17] So then they can just click the trash can, that course will be removed, and they can choose a different one. So if you're looking for chemistry, you can just type in the first little bit. The chemistry courses will pop up, and the student is able to choose that. Once they've chose all their courses, it'll take them to the summary page, or they can jump straight to the summary page.

[00:20:37] And this is where it shows how the student is fulfilling their graduation requirements. So if a line is red, like the world language one here, it shows that they are not fulfilling that graduation requirement. So in order to do that, the student would either have to take a second level of Spanish or a third level of French to get the three years of one language or two and two.

[00:20:57] So once they add the third, then it turns green, and then you can see that that graduation requirement has been met. It's a great easy way to make sure that the courses that your student is choosing are lining up to our graduation requirements. If there is an alert, whether it's missing a prerequisite or something else is different, you can click right into that and see what the problem area is.

[00:21:18] And as you can see, there's lots of other tools available to students on the summary page. So once they complete their program of study, all of these things will be visible to them.

[00:21:38] Students can view or select courses right from this screen as well. So they can go into the math pathway and go back to math. They can go into science and go back to science. They can look at any supplemental programs, such as those special programs that were mentioned earlier. And then another very exciting feature allows students and families to make comments in this course plan. So students as well as families can click the comment button that you see near the top there on your left hand side. No, right hand side. And it will, you can post a comment to your student school counselor. Students can do that as well. So the counselors can then comment back or

[00:22:14] send you an email to answer your question. And that's very useful. In real time, you can stay informed of your students course plan. So when they're changing the courses, you'll be able to see it immediately. You don't have to wait for something to sync. You'll be able to see that they made that change. And once students and families have reviewed their course plan, they can submit that course plan to their school counselor. And then the school counselor at that point is when they start those individual academic advising meetings with each student to go through their graduation requirements, go through the choices that they've made, ask about their goals, maybe their future interests, and help them make sure that what

[00:22:50] they've chosen sort of aligns with those interests. Families will also be able to log into Course Planner right from ParentVue so it's easy to access. If you go into ParentVue you'll see a School Links and Schoology login area. Click into that and then you'll see a login to School Links. You'll be able to view your student's plan but you can't make changes to your student's plan but your student can make the changes but you'll be able to view all of their choices. So really the benefits of Course Planner provides students and school

[00:23:27] counselors, teachers, families, school leaders, really with a significant amount of benefits. It allows families, again, to see decisions that are being made by their child, by their student, in real time. And also aligning, they're able to see any college and career readiness indicators or interest inventories that they have taken within the School Links platform, and really work to align at home, oh, I see that you're interested in the STEM cluster. What type of courses would you like to take in order to support maybe a career in STEM? So those are all conversations

[00:24:06] that we really are encouraged by the benefits of Course Planner to now streamline a process where it felt like many of these decisions were being made by students at school and And then sometimes families were hearing about them and other times they weren't.

[00:24:24] So we want to just make sure everyone's on the same page, especially when it comes to course selections. So we want to make sure that students are also on track for graduating on time, empowering students to make really informed decisions on their course selections and making sure they're building those connections between their passions, their goals and their interests, as well as the choices they're making in every academic school year.

[00:24:50] students' interests, skills, and goals, and also engaging everyone in the process. So the timeline we have here, many of these dates are passed, and as you can tell, we're coming up on a really big date. April 1st is a pretty big date for Course Planner. So we went live with Course Planner on January 6th for grades 5 and 6, and then on the 13th for 7 through 11. And then at the end of January teacher recommendations were viewable in student view and parent view.

[00:25:25] And then in January and February, students were really taking that opportunity to not only choose the courses, but review them with their school counselors, with their families. And then really the academic advising started in February and in March.

[00:25:41] Academic advising is a term that we use to really encompass a way the school counselor will meet with each individual student. And to keep in mind, our school counselors have ratios at high school level 1 to 250, at the middle school level 1 to 300, and at the elementary school level 1 to 375. So they meet with each individual student to make sure that their career plan and their academic plan is on target and meeting the recommendations that

[00:26:15] we have and that the student is passionate about. So most of that is done and we're approaching onto the April 1st deadline, which is when Course Planner will close. So if you have not yet gone into Course Planner, please do so because it will freeze in time. You could still see your students choices, but on April 1st it will freeze. And then all of that data that we have will go over to our student information system and counselors and school administrators will then begin building

[00:26:49] the schedule for next school year. Can you make choices to your students plan after course planner closes? Absolutely you can, but you can't do it in course planner. You would need to contact the school counselor to make sure that those choices were or those changes were being resolved in our student information system. We know things change a lot and that's okay. We know that that that April 1st deadline is really just an opportunity for us to begin building a schedule for next year

[00:27:26] but know that changes will will happen. And your schools have and will continue to communicate throughout this whole process so we did begin family communication back in December and then in January and in February and really anytime there's a timeline deadline coming up our school counselors are sending out information to the community so you all should be receiving emails from your school counselors or sometimes the schools are embedding embedding them within the

[00:28:03] s'mores newsletters. However it's coming to you, you should be informed of the deadlines. When students were due with their plans, now counselors have a deadline, and then on April 1st, magically everything will be frozen. There are, I did want to point this out, even though the time has passed on January 15th, we did do two different seminars. Those recordings are on the School Counseling Services website, so you can always view them if you would like. We put, also put together a very

[00:28:37] comprehensive FAQ, Frequently Asked Questions. We put that on there to ensure anything that was brought up, any concern or question was also relevant in that document, represented in that document. Can I ask how many of you have heard of Course Planner or have even maybe, yay, okay, this is very exciting. We hope that you've had a positive experience. Please know that this is year one of a very massive integration. And so there are some things that we would like to fix

[00:29:14] for next year, but we appreciate your patience, your kindness, and really just supporting the overall goal of each individual student and making sure we get them to where they want to be and their passions and their unique interests are represented within their plans.

[00:29:32] Do we have that? Okay. I think we have some time for questions. If you had any, we would love to try to answer them. Yes. So I have a comment.

[00:29:49] I did see this. Like I saw my daughter trying to fill this out, but I think I wish we had this presentation before we went through that. She's a rising ninth grader. But the other thing is on your first slide was all the schools who've adopted course planner, But I see there were a few schools who were close to zero.

[00:30:08] So I'm wondering, is there a reason for that? So that first slide, thank you for that question. That's wonderful. The first slide was really with the school-by-school data was a comparison between the integration of school links and our historical platform, which was called Naviance.

[00:30:26] Much of that data was just the increase in usership. 100% of our schools are in school links, 100% of our schools are utilizing Course Planner. Okay. So if they were... So they may not have been finding...

[00:30:43] They may have, which is why we looked for a new platform. That data is very significant because some schools really, when they were trying to utilize our historical platform, they weren't seeing students engaged in the platform. So their usership was pretty low in some cases.

[00:31:00] Other schools had more success with it. This we have seen just drastically, the students and families more engaged in. I appreciate that question.

[00:31:15] - I have a couple questions. I guess the first one is around metrics. On the early slides, there were some really high percentage levels. I think one was like 1,500%. Were those of all LCPS students, or was that a sample size, and was that during a specific period of time?

[00:31:36] Can you share a little? - Yes. - I think it's, I don't know if this is it. - This one or this one? Yeah, I think it might be this one and then the one you just had up. So this slide is really looking at the increase in student usership from our historical platform to our current platform.

[00:31:56] And so you'll see, like, there is a significant amount increase because really even when we get close to a couple of our middle schools, like Harmony and Simpson, it didn't look like they grew very much. But that's because they were using the historical platform pretty frequently.

[00:32:12] So then you could see some schools, like Harper Park, they grew 30,000%. So that tells us that that school really wasn't finding our historical platform very useful, and they have found this platform to be more useful.

[00:32:27] So it's really looking at just the comparison of student usership. So this rolled out in January for use, or just to communicate it out? So this is actually referring, this chart that you're seeing here is actually referring to our School Links platform as a whole, which we have adapted.

[00:32:49] We're in year three of integration. Yeah, so this is not representative of Course Planner, which is a tool within School Links. Right, so I'm sorry, then I did have those two confused. So I guess related to that, when you were talking about, I guess the counselor, the information from the school, I know I've seen in my school information about School Links.

[00:33:09] And I know with the superintendent had like the, I think they're called school talks. Yeah, successful. And I know I heard about school links there. But I don't know if I've seen anything like this in this level of detail, which is great for the course planner. And so I was just kind of scanning through my emails from my school.

[00:33:27] I'm like, well, you know, could we have done a better job at the school getting this information out? But was this kind of done this similar type of workshop at the schools or did I have expected that? There was, we had multifaceted communication attempts. We had it going out at the district level that we pushed out to every single family in LCPS.

[00:33:49] So those happened at different time frames throughout this integration of course planner and of school links as well. And then a lot of the individualized communications about when are we starting course planner.

[00:34:05] Your student saw me in class today, and they should have a completed course plan. Please log in if you'd like to see it. All of those really came from the school level because those were on different timelines. Yeah, I know those. I guess I like the presentation tonight.

[00:34:23] It's very helpful to kind of delve into what it is. So I didn't know if the school had offered something like that or just e-mails. That's a good question. Some of them did, and then others pointed to the division-level conversations that we had because school counselors were also new to this platform, and so they really have relied on our office to provide a significant amount of the education just because they are new to it as well.

[00:34:52] Yeah. Okay, thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Since it's the first year of the platform, we don't have the historical data like this. We'll have more data at the end of this school year to see what the engagement was, but at least at the high school level, 80% of the course plans have already been approved, which means the students have submitted it, they've met with their counselor for individual academic advising, and they've approved the course.

[00:35:14] So I definitely am seeing more engagement and more conversations around that than in previous years. Okay, my last question. So the videos that you referenced that are on the, I'm going to go out and look for them, but are they like this presentation?

[00:35:30] So, yes, and I'm not sure if you all in your agenda have any, have the presentation and the links, but these are active live links, so you can click on that, and that will take you directly to the School Counseling Services website, where the recording for the January 15th, both the 5th and 6th grade families and the 7th and 11th grade was recorded, and they are still posted.

[00:35:56] Absolutely. Could you go back to that one slide that she was referencing? What was the date that that information was pulled? That one. Whoops. Yes. So this was actually pulled before our integration of Course Planner. It was pulled in December.

[00:36:12] Okay. So if we were about to start it, and if we're not using the full pieces of it, the numbers would go down. So if we only did maybe the course planning, not necessarily the career paths and the clusters and all that, that could be why some of that data is also low? Like we didn't use all the pieces of it?

[00:36:29] Yeah, we just opened Course Planner in January of this year. So we expect that this usership will actually increase even more than what we're seeing right now. Thank you for that question. Oh, yes. Thanks for this presentation.

[00:36:49] It's very useful because back in the days we had to wait outside our counselor's office. Sometimes sit on the floor. So this is really great that we have this tool. Last time you were here, someone asked about post-secondary opportunities.

[00:37:09] And I saw that you said it helps, like, with college application. You mentioned scholarships. Can you talk a bit more of how the tool – I think you said it will be open in August? So the college application manager opens for 12th grade students because that's when they do their college applications.

[00:37:31] So in the college application manager, they're able to search for schools in a variety of different ways. So they can choose whether they want a large school, a small school, what type of environment. Do they want it to be rural? Do they want to be in a city? All these different things, they can narrow their college choices down.

[00:37:47] And it's also within that platform that they'll connect, if they're applying through Common App, they'll connect their School Links and Common App accounts. And that way, School Links knows when they've applied to a school via Common App. SchoolLinks tells them how many teacher letters of recommendation they need, and they request those teacher letters of recommendations in the platform as well.

[00:38:07] It's directly in the platform that the school counselor will send their transcript and their letters of recommendation. The teacher letters of recommendation go through that too. So it's just a really easy way to streamline the process. They can find out data about the schools. They can find nationwide acceptance data, but also LCPS acceptance data because it tracks data for the past five years.

[00:38:29] So instead of comparing themselves to the nationwide statistics, they're comparing themselves to their LCPS statistics. So it gives them a better idea of what, if that's a target or a reach school for them. And there is a place for them to search for scholarships, district scholarships, and outside scholarships.

[00:38:51] There's quite a few there. There's a couple ways that you can look at it. I helped a parent the other day do it in the list form because that was a lot easier for them. So they can also scholarship match. So they can put in some of their information. It will match the scholarships for them. And then within the information about the scholarship, it tells them how they need to apply.

[00:39:11] Like, do they give the information to the College and Career Center assistant? Do they apply right on the website? Is it a PDF they need to mail? Like, it gives them that information there as well. And I want to thank you for that. I want to also add to that that this is not only helpful for our our staff who are managing 33,000 college applications but it's extremely helpful for students and families to help understand which applications are in process which ones are complete and then I also want to explain that the

[00:39:44] college application manager the purpose of that really is to track and plan for the college application process, what all students have available to them is exactly what Ms. Woods was talking about, which was the availability to search schools. They can still do all of that actually beginning in elementary school. They can start looking at colleges. So that portion is available to all students. It's not until our student information system tells that a student is a senior and should be really thinking about the college process if that's their

[00:40:24] path that then they have the availability to have that portal open to them said it's open for the 12 graders in august is there like something for the 11th graders who are planning prepping maybe early admissions yes right so they can research the schools and and look through the platform to those things that I was talking about, like a big school, a small school, where do they want to be, things like that. What opens in August is the application manager portion for them to actually

[00:40:59] start the application process. And so the Common App doesn't open typically until August as well, so they wouldn't be able to do it prior to that. There are some things that they can do prior to their senior year. I encourage students to research schools, go on some visits, and then also talk to the teachers that they're hoping to get letters of recommendation from because the teachers start getting that information really early so identifying those teachers and getting some information from them and then looking at the writing prompts in common app they can start formulating their essays and things like that so what opens in august is what heather was saying

[00:41:35] it's just the application for them to start submitting their information we also have well we didn't focus much on School Links today. If you go on the School Counseling Services website, we also have some past presentations that we've done specifically on CAM, which is the College Application Manager, which is what you're referring to, as well as School Links as a platform for what students can view and then also what families can view,

[00:42:08] parents and guardians can view as well. All right. Oh, thank you. Here we go. Thank you all so much we really appreciate it okay um so we're going to be moving on to the next presentation um i would like to um introduce uh mr um who's right here aaron smith chief

[00:42:53] technology officer who's going to come and talk to us now good evening i'm aaron smith i'm the chief technology officer here at loudon county public schools i've been here 25 years so before that i was a student here for 13 years so i've seen a lot of loudon a lot of technology changes through the district i'm with me tonight is mike henderson he's our supervisor of instructional technology um and we even though we work in separate departments the gen ai topic touches we have to work really closely at the hip and that's with some of the stuff he's going to bring

[00:43:31] up here and begin showing you so the first thing um we're really here to talk about generative ai i know ai is kind of how everyone's referring to it but ai has been in education for a while and we are now starting to bring in generative ai solutions into schools so current status we have a policy that I believe is in front of you guys tonight that was just introduced at curriculum instruction committee meeting last Wednesday and so we're actively collecting feedback on the generative AI policy and figuring out what that needs to look like we're also updating things like student rights and responsibilities with what appropriate use should be how to cite AI if

[00:44:09] it is an applicable tool so we have a lot of things in in the works we've been doing this for about a year now with a cohort from other school divisions in Virginia so we're all kind of sharing best practices and ideas about how we're going to do this. One of the first things that Mike's team actually stood up was this AI and education blog site, which is available on our LCBS website, and really is a kind of a guide, an early entry, if teachers want to know how they can kind of start to use these tools, what this kind of looks like, what are some of the do's and don'ts that we don't want them to do. So is there anything you want to point out specifically? Sure. Good evening.

[00:44:44] happy to be here and engaging in this conversation with you all tonight so this is a website that we built and it's really designed for teachers students and families to get a little bit more of a foundation in general generative artificial intelligence what it is how it can support student learning how it can support you know teacher practice how it can support other employees and the work that they're doing in the workplace and and we have lots of of resources and information we've built out here. One thing specifically I'll point you towards is in this toolkit for schools,

[00:45:20] the address, by the way, is blogs.lcps.org slash AI. You can also search for artificial intelligence on the main website, and you'll find a link to this through our instructional technology page. But the URL is pretty easy to remember. And one other thing to point out here is in our toolkit for schools.

[00:45:41] One thing that we produced for our schools this year is our 2024 Generative Artificial Intelligence Guide. And this really goes pretty deep into our approach to artificial intelligence, the supports that we have in place for teachers and for students, important considerations for teachers who are beginning to explore this technology.

[00:46:06] So it really is, it's intended to be kind of a comprehensive guide for teachers to help them navigate this new landscape and this new technology in their classroom. So there's a lot in there, but I think it's a good read for families as well as teachers to kind of get a sense of what it is that we're doing with artificial intelligence and not in kind of public schools.

[00:46:27] this is intended to be a living document so as as we change and grow and learn this this document will will change and grow over time as well uh so um you know it's something you can come back to to see how our approach has shifted as uh you know we grow in our practice as a school division awesome so uh one of the just what our roles are here with this so i'm really on the like the what and the security and the student data privacy and making sure that whatever we put in front of a student is safe. And Mike is really here to help with like how that instructionally gets applied inside the classroom. So one of the things I did want to speak to is why we haven't deployed a

[00:47:07] student-facing solution yet. Just because we aren't confident in some of the student data privacy things that we need to ensure. But we have operationalized generative AI. An example would be we use a system called Onboard internally to us which we put all of our software reviews in. So a teacher wants to use something. They want to make sure that it checks all the boxes and it's approved. They put it in there and we had a backlog because we couldn't get through the terms and conditions of all of the requests that we had. So Mike's team actually built a GPT that goes through and automates that for us to get us 95% of the way there. And we've been able to clear our entire software review backlog because we've started to use these tools operationally. So

[00:47:46] that's just one example. And we have an internal work group that includes staff from every single department that kind of share how they're using it, whether it's helping them, you know, generate content or it's helping them have a thought partner where they're kind of interacting with it so lots of different use cases that we have internally and go to the next sure what else would you like to talk about so I think well so mr. Smith mentioned that we we at the school division have not provided an generative AI tool for students to use as of yet it's something that we're

[00:48:23] working towards but we want to make sure that we're doing it in a way that's safe in a way that's responsible in a way that is going to help our teachers and our students feel supported with the use of a tool like this and not just feeling like they're left out on their own to figure it all out so we're taking some small steps to to to find ways to put some tools into students hands see how that works see what we can learn from that and then and then figure out how we move to perhaps scale that or or adjust our approach and try something else. So we do have, so while we don't have a tool that we're providing to our students to use yet,

[00:49:01] we do have teachers who are doing some interesting things with providing some background knowledge to our students about generative artificial intelligence, having conversations with students about generative artificial intelligence. Our teachers know, just like you as parents know, and we know as school administrators and leaders, that our kids are trying this stuff out, right? They're trying it out sometimes with the support of their family and we heard some examples of that earlier with how families are figuring out how to use some of these things as supports for student learning at home. Students might be exploring independently.

[00:49:39] So we do have places where teachers are starting to have really interesting conversations with students about generative artificial intelligence and what's okay and what's not okay and finding ways to model skills for students like how to develop a good prompt and and they might have students practice writing a prompt and they might put in artificial intelligence and while the student isn't the one interacting the teacher can take that prompt put it into one of the artificial intelligence tools we have available for staff and then they can look at those results with students and have a conversation around okay what was this output is this useful did it give us what we thought it was going to give us how might we change

[00:50:14] the prompt to get something different that more meets our needs so so there are some interesting instructional things happening with artificial intelligence some interesting conversations happening and we're looking forward to to scaling that as we move forward and to kind of link in with that we've have been doing professional development with staff for a while even embedded in our FERPA training that all staff have to take or like do's and don'ts of sharing PII inside of some of these tools we do have tools that we provide to staff and we recommend that they use those tools so we say it's like swimming with a lifeguard and when you go and use these other tools that's kind of like swim at your own risk and so we really want them to focus on these tools we have contractual

[00:50:52] agreements with them they are you know walled garden environments where you know they're not feeding the model with the PII or that type of information in case there wasn't an accidental upload of that so we've been really trying to educate teachers and prepare them for them to get them ready I know your team is working on a lot of professional development that's part of the cohort that we're working on it's like all right we got a policy that we're ready that you guys should have access to now and that now what do we look like how do we get teachers ready for when this students have access to a tool Yeah, so on the professional development front, some examples of things we're doing with teachers.

[00:51:25] We have every countywide professional development day that we've had on our calendar so far this school year, we've had artificial intelligence sessions as options for teachers. And they have ranged from things like, you know, what are the contents of the guide?

[00:51:43] What are kind of the do's and don'ts? And what are those things that we need to be mindful of when we're thinking about generative artificial intelligence to how do we write a good prompt and how do I take what I've learned about writing a good prompt and use it to support my work and my practice in my classroom to like how to take and use generative artificial intelligence tools to build specific things that can help me support my practice.

[00:52:08] We've also got a cohort of teachers that we're working with that are kind of getting pretty deep into this stuff and the idea is that we can then see what instructional examples come out that we can pull out to use to share more broadly with other teachers so those are some some of the things we're doing to support professional learning and teacher growth and I think with that that's a pretty good summary of how where we are so far where we're at today kind of what our next steps are is to get a policy in place we definitely want a policy to drive that work before we bring on on board any sort of application especially anything that's student facing and then really engage in those conversations and those PD sessions a lot of these tools that we are looking

[00:52:46] at they still have like age restrictions to them so you're talking what was 18 is now 13 so it really is going to need to be dependent on terms and conditions of the tool and what the structural need is for that when we look at that but we are piloting a few things just to get an idea of how they work so I think we're kind of setting ourselves up to be able to make some of those decisions and appreciate any feedback that you guys have into that policy because it is just presented last week so it's it's out there and we were ready and excited to get it passed.

[00:53:15] So with that, we'll take any questions. Yeah. I was just wondering, what's generative AI and how is it different from just AI? So generative AI is where AI has the ability to create content, whether that's words or it's a video or it's music or pictures. So generative AI is anything that creates. So if you think about how we were using AI before, it would be like an adaptive test where students got an answer wrong and it's like, okay, I'm going to send you here versus here and that's type of AI, but that wasn't really creating the content.

[00:53:50] Generative AI is really creating brand new content that's never existed before, which is one of the challenges of that environment because it can be used for good and it can be used for not so good. So we're trying to make sure that we're really able to have transparency into that and we can have those conversations with students.

[00:54:21] Yeah, I think this site is a great window into some of the things we're doing as a school division. You know, we have the policy up right now for community feedback. I think taking a look at that and giving us that feedback that we can then take and turn around.

[00:54:39] And then, you know, we have opportunities to engage if, you know, if you have suggestions or questions. You know, Let's Talk is a tool that's available through our website that parents who have some specific things they wanted to contribute to the conversation can share through that platform.

[00:54:57] I'm just asking, what does that timeline look like for actually getting tools and things into the students?

[00:55:18] Because being a part of the industry, it's going so fast, and the students are picking up on things. So I didn't know if there's like a notional, not rushing anything. So I think that is a challenge because it is evolving so quickly.

[00:55:34] That really makes like PD, like what teachers, like the first in our work group, the first thing we do with the first hours, everything has changed over like the last two weeks because it's so evolving so quickly. And so we're really trying to set a good baseline so that we aren't having to go backwards and go back to the drawing board where we do implement.

[00:55:51] I do think we have some timelines that we want to be a leader in this space and have some tools for students that our community and our district are comfortable with. And so that is a driving, I know that's a push from Dr. Spence in order to like, hey, how can we leverage this tool for one, to improve student outcomes, but two, just make sure that all students have access to this.

[00:56:11] And so hopefully next school year, we're able to deliver something, but we're also seeing these terms and conditions change so quickly, and what costs of things are, and how you are even able to get some of these. There's a lot of cool things that are coming to market, but there's no procurement vehicle for them.

[00:56:31] They don't conform to traditional organizational procurement, so we're having to work through all that side of it, as well as what's the best instructional tool for kids. The only thing I'll add is that you might see that things kind of evolve in phases, where we might be able to provide access to students for certain types of tools, while we're still working on providing access to others.

[00:56:59] Like, for example, we might be able to provide access to our students to do image generation, perhaps, or something like that, where before we're able to do full-blown chatbots where they can generate text-based content and things like that.

[00:57:17] So it might be an evolution or where we're kind of taking smaller steps as opposed to just having a set point where we just have everything all at once. I have a question about the privacy component.

[00:57:37] I know you said that you guys are conversing and working with teachers, and it seems like now the teachers are the ones that are sort of controlling that input like what do you think they have in that conversation but eventually when you put the tool in the hands of the students um like what how are we putting parameters around them sharing private information protecting them from predators or like what what are we doing in terms of um protecting that space um for younger children

[00:58:16] who may not understand what's out there when they share certain kinds of information? I think that's one of the challenges of the space evolving so quickly is there isn't a tool like Gaggle that will sit over top of an AI tool and give you transparency and monitoring.

[00:58:34] So those are definitely like the point counterpoint that we're trying to balance back and forth. From a data privacy, we're not going to put anything in a kid's hand that we don't have like a signed DPA or a contractual agreement with or something that governs the use of that data that says you can't learn from it and you're not going to use it and it's our data so just in case something accidentally happens it's not to the world we are it's in our controlled environment that we can manage that but that is a concern as like how do you get that transparency and I think that's one of the things we go slow to go fast so that we can make sure we have those securities in place so trying to balance giving students opportunities or making sure we're protecting

[00:59:08] them and it's almost like every day it's kind of going back and forth so that is heard and it's one of our talking points that we go over all the time too. I think even teachers are going to want transparency in what students are doing for, you know, how they're creating content or assignments and those type of things. So those are going to be important, critical decision points when we do end up with a tool. And what I'll add is many of the vendors that we talk to that are building generative artificial intelligence tools for, specifically for students and teachers and classroom use, one of the questions we ask is what guardrails and guidelines do you have in place inside of your tool?

[00:59:48] And many of them are thinking very creatively about how they build some of those guidelines in. So a couple of vendors that we have talked to have protections in place where it will kind of pre-process the information a student puts in. If it recognizes anything that might seem identifiable, it doesn't send that information out anywhere else.

[01:00:09] It kind of stops it, and then it reminds students, hey, don't forget, don't put identifiable information in here. So that's one example of some of the approaches that the vendors are taking, and they are being, I think, mindful and trying to be cautious in their approach, as are we.

[01:00:26] And so I think it's going to create some interesting opportunities, but we just have to make sure we are being very careful about how we move forward.

[01:00:44] Well, I think this is great, and I know it's probably really difficult to figure out how to provide them the tools yet provide the parameters is there training going on or going to be going on for the students that we know that they're probably going to access it almost like the do's and don'ts are going online you know we can't control every single thing but you know watch out for predators don't befriend this person it's your tools like that training so So when you do come out with your tools, even if they go outside of the safe tools, they

[01:01:21] know how to operate properly. Thank you for that question. We have a few student-facing resources and lessons that our schools have been using. We use the Common Sense Media Digital Citizenship Curriculum in Loudoun County Public Schools, And that curriculum is starting to incorporate some elements around artificial intelligence and we've had some schools use those resources with students, but we're also planning on doing more.

[01:01:53] So that's something else that we're considering as we're thinking about how do we roll out tools to students is what supports do we need to have in place for teachers to have those conversations with students. So thinking about what additional lessons we need to design, how to get those to students, how to encourage teachers and schools to make use of them.

[01:02:09] work that's ongoing. Another question over here? Sorry. My question is somewhat connected, but a little disconnected.

[01:02:25] So in this moment where all these things are changing as far as the data centers goes, where the legislation is, I know AI is a very resource-hungry product. And so, you know, I live in community with Rockridge and Rosalie, and so now we're fighting about having the power lines going through our neighborhoods and on school grounds.

[01:02:50] And because AI is so resource hungry and you talk about pushing it out into the entire school system, kind of what does that look like? You know, because we understand that it's going to drain a lot of power and because the legislation is starting to shift around what data centers will look like in community with us, like, are we planning out in that way?

[01:03:15] So for our view on that, none of this would be internally hosted or we would have a direct where we were paying for a server or compute or anything like that as part of this. We would definitely need a vendor who would come in and provide that for us. But part of one of the reasons that it is a little hard sometimes is because it does require all those resources and that makes it expensive on the other end.

[01:03:37] So we only have limited licensing of like pro or advanced because we just can't afford it for the entire district. So when we're looking at this, we're seeing the technology get better, we're seeing like the chipsets get better, we're seeing different options out there for chipsets that will help with that compute, but that is a challenge, like even sometimes now you get in and it's slow because there's a ton of other people in there, or you're in line or you've already used your tokens for the day, so you've got to wait until the next day to do your searches and stuff like that, so that's just part of like the difficulty of implementing it.

[01:04:11] So I would say we are cognizant of it, but those would be conversations we'd have with a vendor who would ever be providing that to us, and those would be things probably as we're doing contractual negotiations that we would just make sure, you know, that we are compliant with where we need to be compliant. How do you choose and vet vendors?

[01:04:37] Because, you know, it's such a weird space that, you know, you don't even know cybersecurity-wise, like, who you're really dealing with sometimes. I just had a question since I know this is an area that people are probably going to be marketing to.

[01:04:55] Our goal would be to issue an RFP so that we could solicit bids from vendors who would meet. So we'd develop a set of requirements and say it has to have like the transparency or the student safety, those type of things embedded in the tool. Then we would issue that because, again, a lot of the procurement pathways aren't there.

[01:05:13] So you have to do an RFP to collect that vendor so you can do business with them. And then through that process is like contractual review, data privacy agreements. They would be vetted by our IT security team and our accessibility team and our network configuration team, like all the teams to make sure that it would function well here and that it would be safe for students.

[01:05:31] So that would be embedded into that process, but that's not going to be a quick process. So just from vendors to reply, us to have those conversations go through the entire requirements or the entire negotiation process is one of the reasons that it's going to take a little bit into next year for us to have something, because that just takes six to eight months to go through that process.

[01:05:49] But all of those items would be embedded in as part of that process. Our procurement team manages that. We have standard operating procedures for those things, and there would be contractual agreements signed with that. So that would help protect us, our data. There's a lot of red lines between lawyers that get involved.

[01:06:04] So it takes a little bit of time for that too. So yeah, but that's how we would handle that situation. Thank you. It's kind of along the same lines. And I just am wondering about the kind of ethical concerns of AI.

[01:06:23] I wonder if that's being implemented in the training of the students, of the staff, and kind of in the contracts themselves, right? because we've seen that AI has been used as a tool for surveillance, for military operations, for, yeah.

[01:06:40] And so I think it's very important that as it continues to grow and as we try to implement this into our schools that our students are aware of the power of the tool that they're using, but also that there are some ethical concerns and kind of encourage them to know those and to dig into those as well.

[01:06:59] I think that's a great point. I think it's not just students, it's also staff. I don't know if you guys saw the Baltimore situation that occurred where a staff member deep faked their principal and then used that audio recording to get them put on leave. So ethical use is not just a student concern, it is a staff concern.

[01:07:16] So that is high up the list for us. You may see it listed as appropriate use. You may see it listed as, there's some bias and other related terms that we're trying to embed into those things, but that is important. And that's one of the areas of, like Mike is saying, just because you can type in something into that tool doesn't mean you should.

[01:07:38] And how do we put protections around that for students? And that also turning that into an educational item. Like, you try to do this, hey, a reminder, this is the appropriate use of that tool, and you don't want to do this. So those are the type of things we'd be looking for in a tool that we would deploy. All right.

[01:07:59] Well, I'm not going to wait any longer. No. Thank you guys very much. Yeah, thank you. Okay.

[01:08:35] So next, I would like to introduce our next speaker. Mr. Ryan Kunkel is an international association of privacy professionals, certified information privacy professional, that is a mouthful, an advocate for privacy as a fundamental human right.

[01:08:50] Before Ryan's civilian career, he spent 11 years in the U.S. Army as an Arabic linguist interrogator and then as an Army infantry officer with deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan. Since separating from the Army, Ryan has spent his career in banking and financial services. He is currently the head of data privacy at PBS or PBS Kids, as our kids like to say, where he is implementing a right size privacy program.

[01:09:13] He has earned his MBA from the University of Notre Dame and just recently a master's in jurisprudence from Cornell Law School. It's my pleasure to introduce Mr. Ryan Kunkel.

[01:09:31] Oh, and Naima Kunkel. Thank you, everybody. Pleasure to be here tonight to talk about, I think, something obviously about data privacy, but it sounds like it's resonating with a lot of people here.

[01:09:46] So happy to answer some additional questions as needed. And I am here by my faithful helper, Naima. And in case you didn't know, yes, I am Aaron's husband. Just in case that was not clear. I wanted to spend about 15 minutes or so just to give a really high-level overview of data privacy and really what it means for parents and children.

[01:10:09] Privacy is one of those areas where you can get really deep into the weeds. I know you talked about red lines with lawyers. I'm going through that right now, and it's making me go crazy. So, and it also can get, it gets really deep into data. Data protection has just a natural cross sectional threshold with AI, cybersecurity, et cetera.

[01:10:32] And next up will be Naeem on to discuss our agenda for the night really quickly. Go ahead. - The agenda for tonight is we're gonna start with the introduction and then what is data privacy? Why is privacy important?

[01:10:47] What are cookies in ad tech? Where am I right? Questions in an appendix. Thank you. So we kind of covered the introduction, but before I go to the next slide, can anyone answer what is privacy or specifically what is data privacy?

[01:11:04] If you just can give a super brief answer, if I have any volunteers. If not, I'll pick somebody. Yes, please. I see it as, like, the ability to control what of your data is shared, what of it is kept private, and for you to have, like, autonomy over your own data.

[01:11:27] Yeah, that's really close. And this next slide kind of shows that. And I apologize for a lot of the words here. But that's an excellent answer. The left-hand box, the one that has the most words, that's a textbook definition from the IAPP or the International Association of Privacy Professionals.

[01:11:46] It's inclusive of the policies, procedures, the internal regulations in order to comply with the various federal, state, and even local laws and regulations. And the middle box, I think, more broadly speaking, it's the right to be let alone so that any information that you share, you should have that control over your own personal information no matter how or where you share that information.

[01:12:13] And specifically for tonight's overview is for children and their parents, it really means you have control over the data that you do share. And just keep in mind that can be anything that you share, not just at a school, but, you know, everybody's online. I know our kids love Roblox, and so as a parent, you don't always think about, hey, maybe I should read these terms of use or how on the Roblox side, they're actually sharing my personal information that includes my children.

[01:12:39] Are they complying with some of the federal laws like COPPA or the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act as well? And tonight, I just really kind of wanted to give that general awareness of why is privacy important for me. So, kind of as I touched on that online safety component, you know, I think it's just really important to just be generally aware that when you're online, just know that your information, even if you're not entering your personal information in any capacity, say on a form to submit, your information is being tracked.

[01:13:13] And that is by cookies, pixels, snippets, or even tags as well. And I'm going to touch on that in a, I believe, on the slide after this. And then, yeah, so I'm talking about ad tracking. And also about why is privacy important to me, it's about knowing what your rights are.

[01:13:31] Here in the United States, we don't enjoy the same protections that our partners in Europe have. So they have what's called the GDPR, the General Data Protection Regulation. So many acronyms.

[01:13:47] But here in the States, it's really meant for the states to decide how do we protect our consumers' information. And this is above and beyond the various state laws that include biometric information and also a state like Washington State that has a very robust My Health, My Data Act where it does protect your health information above and beyond what HIPAA does at the federal level.

[01:14:09] And this slide, we did want to play a Lego Kids video here, but if you can pull out your phones and scan that QR code, it's a video from Lego Kids.

[01:14:25] It's approximately a minute and 20 seconds, but it gives a really great overview that's really oriented at children and also their parents as well. And it talks about cookies and ad tech. And as I mentioned, even if you're not submitting your own personal information, your information is being tracked and processed. And I'll just give you guys a minute to take a quick look at that as Captain Safety is.

[01:14:46] So as you're just watching that, that's one thing that we're trying to do at PBS.

[01:15:10] And I think the obvious answer to use as a mascot for a quote-unquote cookie policy is, of course, the Cookie Monster. So we're working on that internally, so maybe in about a year, check back at pbs.org to see if we have that up and operational. All right, next slide, and my handy assistant here is going to read through this really fast, and then I'll dive into the details.

[01:15:41] Ad tech is cookies, pixels, tags, and snippets, cross-device tracking, targeted advertisements on your devices. How do I prevent my ad tracking? Always reject cookies. Yeah, so that last bullet I'll kind of touch on.

[01:15:57] So as I mentioned, when you're on a website, if anyone, and I'm sure everyone here has heard of cookies. Cookies are, it's essentially a little piece of code that is embedded on your device that is then linked to the website that you visit. And so I know a lot of times we jump on a website and we're impatient and we just want to hit accept all and then just get to where we want to look for.

[01:16:22] Generally speaking, that's the wrong answer. So with my last bullet, always reject cookies. Yes and no, but generally speaking, you do want to reject cookies because you have the ability on a lot of websites that must comply with various state privacy laws, et cetera, or specifically with the GDPR if they have an international presence in Europe.

[01:16:40] It's a regulatory requirement to have that on their website. Because what a cookie does, say you're like Aaron here, and you're looking up shoes on Amazon, as an example, And then you get on Instagram later that night, and all of a sudden you're hit with, why is this ad here for, say, a pair of Nikes?

[01:16:59] That's because of that cross-device tracking. And if anyone's heard of Google Ads, GA4, which is their analytics platform, what it does is that it parses together snippets of data. Even if it's hashed or anonymized, there is still that potential capability where they can, on their end, on Google's end, parse that information together and create a user profile.

[01:17:22] And then on their back end, they can actually target you with some directed ads. So that is the power of ad tech. Pixels is another one, and you've probably heard of Facebook or Meta Pixels. Those are the ones that are a little bit more targeted, if you will, specifically in the use of ad tracking.

[01:17:40] That is a, so a Pixel, at the end of the day, it's linked to the ad platform, like a GA4 or Google Ads, and then it's linked to the websites that you're visiting. Now that information is unknowingly to you stored on your personal device, so computer, your iPhone, iPad, etc.

[01:18:00] And how that works is that they're gathering your IP address, your geolocation. A lot of times they'll disclose that in your privacy policy, but how many times are we actually going on a privacy policy to take a look? and once they have that information it's really up to you to again know your rights to know what companies can i go to to actually request my information to be deleted can i access my personal information etc and that's where it gets a little fuzzy and that's what makes the privacy job very much working in the gray if you will and i'll kind of touch on that here in a bit

[01:18:35] and again my trustee assistant what are my rights state privacy law federal origin to protect Children's Privacy, Family Education Rights and Privacy Act, Students Online Personal Information Protection Act, Video Privacy Protection Act, and Opt-Out.

[01:18:57] Opt-Out, yes, Opt-Out. So here in the state of Virginia, the VCDPA or the Virginia Consumer Data Privacy Act has been in effect for approximately three years. If you've heard of the California Consumer Privacy Act, which is really the first of its kind state privacy law that's similar to the GDPR in Europe, it's...

[01:19:18] It's to the point where it allows consumers, so the difference between a federal law like the GDPR to a state law is that you must be a resident in the state of Virginia to go to, say, a target and request your personal information.

[01:19:34] You can actually request for your information to be deleted as well. Now, there's a lot of nuance here, and this is why everybody loves to hate lawyers as well, because they get involved. There's a lot of exemptions, so like the CCPA, like the VCDPA, the Colorado Privacy Act as well.

[01:19:51] And there's a myriad of currently 19 state privacy laws in effect. There's a state privacy law in Maryland that will go into effect later this year. There's exemptions for financial institutions, so think of banks. No matter how much you want your information deleted from Capital One or JPMorgan Chase, there is a federal-level exemption that prevents them from actually doing that.

[01:20:14] There's also some different thresholds that you have to meet in order for your information to be accessed and or deleted by, say, an organization like a Target. Target has to be processing the personal information on you or us as consumers of over 100,000 consumers and or selling over your personal information over the threshold of $100,000 per year.

[01:20:39] And you hope that companies like a Target or a Walmart, et cetera, are not in the business of actually collecting your information, processing that for their own needs internally, and then selling that information to a third and a fourth party. Some of these other regulations are in effect, so yes there's FERPA, I'm sure a lot of folks here have heard of FERPA, so the Federal Regulation to Protect Children's Privacy, and there's also more on a state level, but Virginia is inclusive of this law, is the Student Online Personal Information Protection Act.

[01:21:11] So when you think about privacy at the school district level, like LCPS does have its own privacy policy. I think it's always important as a parent to always take a look at that to see what rights you have, not just for you as a guardian and parent, but also what rights you have to control your children's information within the confines of the school district itself.

[01:21:32] And the Video Privacy Protection Act. So when you, I'm sure like everyone's here is watching Netflix, Amazon Prime, et cetera, like PBS Passport, the Video Privacy Protection Act, this is a law that's rooted in a 1989 Supreme Court case where a federal judge was nominated and some wild person went out and found their video rental history from a brick-and-mortar blockbuster store.

[01:22:00] So some of us parents, of course, remember what that is. And they published that information online. And following that case, Congress acted and they passed what's called the Video Privacy Protection Act. How that's being used today is with streaming devices, and this has come up quite a bit for us at PBS because we have to ensure that if you stream any kind of video through our platform, we have to have consent and gain that active consent that, yes, I consent to watch this information, knowing that you will collect what I'm viewing, and that's where you need to get into the weeds

[01:22:38] and read the terms of use and a privacy policy that are they collecting the personal information on me as the consumer. I can say at PBS we don't do that, but there's other places like an Amazon Prime or Netflix where it kind of behooves you to kind of dig into that just a little bit more. And again, at the end of the day, just understand your rights to go ahead and access your information and or delete that. And when in doubt, if you're on a, you know, just like cookies, if you go to a website or you get an email or you get a text message, there's a federal regulation called CANSPAM. You always have the right to opt out. So and or just like with marketing, you can always

[01:23:17] unsubscribe from those emails. So at the end of the day, it's just better if you don't want to receive those kind of communications from any type of external agency, just go ahead and opt out. So that was really kind of quick down and dirty. I do have an appendix attached to this with further information on the Virginia State Privacy Law, Maryland State Privacy Law, FERPA, SOPIPA, and also CAPA, which is the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. Aaron's going to share this deck afterwards with the audience, but at this time I'm happy to answer any questions you have. As I mentioned, privacy gets really deep into

[01:23:55] the weeds. Aaron knows. I'll talk about it for the longest time, but it was actually kind of hard to talk about it very broadly here to this audience, because generally I either want to talk about it in a legal terms and or just getting deep into the data. So yeah, if there's any questions, happy to answer. Yes. Yeah. So yes or no. Most consumer facing websites.

[01:24:31] So what I mean by that is the website that's intending to sell you a product will utilize some of that technology. That's one thing that I wanted to call it as well. You have the ability to go into say Google Chrome and actually turn off those signals that prevent those cookies from actually being collected on your personal device but you would have to do that excuse me on your on your personal computer your iPhone and or iPad as well that's also one thing to note with a lot of those various consumer facing privacy policies they'll have written in the privacy policy itself information about ways where you can actually go in and turn off the collection of those cookies

[01:25:10] and pixels etc within your device itself generally via the browser. I think Vine is more a comment than a question like there was a article circulating at the beginning of the year about how to take your information off of meta and so I went through the exercise and the level of alarming it was because basically like any email I had ever attached to it they were able to like connect because like

[01:25:50] I'm in the early days of Facebook someone copied downloaded all of my pictures and posted them on another page. So I'm very cautious. I have all the privacy settings, all the things. When I went on there, it was like every company that I do business had uploaded information about me that was connected to me, even though my meta account is not even in my real name. And so it was just, so I'm just saying, I recommend going through the process to look at what because it gives you the opportunity to opt out and it was like um use your

[01:26:28] information for advertising purposes because I opted out of all the things but that little bit of fine print it was just absurd the amount of information that was available about me and like almost every organization I've ever done business with like every email I've ever gotten from a store or wherever was connected to my meta account, and my account wasn't even connected to me.

[01:26:56] So I appreciate, like, the awareness of this, especially because the kids are using all of these things now that they click it before you've looked at, wait a minute, what are you looking at? And so you have to put the settings in so that, you know, to block the specific privacy for the sites they are allowed to visit.

[01:27:17] So this is really helpful. Yeah, and, you know, by way of example, in Europe, Meta, Google, Apple, and who am I forgetting? Google have all been fined significantly by the GDPR enforcement agency, and also there's a law in Europe called the Digital Markets Act that has significantly hindered Facebook's or Meta's ability to operate like they do here in the States because at the federal level here in our country we don't have any such laws like that that hinder the big tech companies from just going out collecting your information and then selling your information.

[01:27:52] In Europe, they will try to do that, but they're getting hammered by the regulators, and they're being fined in the billions of dollars for that. So for people like me who don't know where to start, right, feel like this is overwhelming, how would you go to, for your example, Target and say, I want to remove my information?

[01:28:15] How would you do that? Yeah, so with these consumer state privacy laws, like a CCPA or just even here with the Virginia Consumer Data Privacy Act, go to Target's website and then go to the privacy policy. You're going to see within that privacy policy, and trust me, it's not easy to read, and it's almost intentional in a way, and I don't know why it's allowed to be like that, but go to the privacy policy, and you'll see a section called consumer rights or your rights, And you're going to see either a place to submit a submission form to access your information or delete your information or actually call in.

[01:28:52] So there always has to be two methods. That's very prescriptive to the CCPA or the California Consumer Privacy Act. Other state laws aren't quite as prescriptive like that. But generally speaking, there's always two ways to do that. But always go to the privacy policy and just take a look. Other questions?

[01:29:13] Yes. You talked about Roblox and this generation really working with that tool and how there are so many, like, cybersecurity threats in there. Can you talk more about how we can protect our children when they download things and they just feel like they could just click on anything and it's okay?

[01:29:41] Like, how do we sort of mitigate that? Yeah, it's a good question, and I think one that a lot of us think about. And I think one of the only things you can do, just because, you know, these little iPhones are like nothing we had growing up, obviously, and, you know, the world is essentially at your fingertips.

[01:29:59] The best way you can do is, you know, just, one, just be aware of what your kids are, you know, have access to, generally speaking, again. And then also, if you have parental controls, make sure you use those parental controls and limit their access. Make sure they can't get on an Instagram, and then they get sucked into the algorithm.

[01:30:15] and or, you know, they're going on a Roblox and then inadvertently putting their very specific, you know, personal information in there to include, like, the home address. So those are just some of the easy ways to do it. Beyond that, you know, once these companies have their information, especially here in the United States, there's really limited ways for you to be able to, you know, get that information back or delete that information.

[01:30:38] It's just like these large language models for AI. Once that information is uploaded, that stuff's gone forever. So at a company, at my last company, if we put up proprietary financial modeling information into those large language models, that stuff is gone forever.

[01:30:55] So you just got to be aware, try to set the controls in place where you can't use this, you can't do that. And then just try to continually reinforce it. Can you talk about the algorithm and how we can protect them from being sucked in?

[01:31:13] Yeah, I mean, so I'm not, you know, a true expert on the algorithm. I just know that, you know, I believe there's some AI that's, you know, used with that. And I know Tony's going to speak next on AI. But with the algorithm, yeah, it just, it reacts to what you say on Instagram, what you like, what you comment on.

[01:31:33] And it will keep feeding you more, like, cat and dog videos. If I'm laughing at these dog videos, it's going to keep feeding me that because it knows that's what I am mostly engaged with. and then a more engaged user is likely to spend more time on the platform. And that's why AI, or excuse me, Instagram, even Facebook, that's why they have all those ads to try to sell you things on their platforms as well.

[01:31:57] And that all kind of fits in line again with that ad tech. So they're tracking your information, and then once they got you, then they're trying to sell you product. And largely speaking, with Facebook, the majority of the revenue is actually derived from selling ads.

[01:32:13] Any other questions? Otherwise, we're going to have more information on AI next. All righty. Thank you. So we are going to jump right in, and I'm going to turn it over to Ms. Tonya Bledsoe.

[01:32:41] I am so grateful and thankful for her inspiration for this meeting, and I'm looking forward to her presentation. So please welcome our very own Tonya Bledsoe. Ready to take a deep breath now that we've been scared out of our wits?

[01:33:10] No. Those are some really, I joke, but they're really serious topics that we do definitely need to pay attention to. I'm going to, let me just hit my presentation. So I am a part of, I am definitely a part of the wave of, you know, being in the industry for AI. I use it every day.

[01:33:46] I see the benefits and I see all of the side effects of AI. So there's no, usually when I do these presentations that give you the good, the bad. But I'm going to pause and say, actually, let's record this. I'm going to pause and say, how many people remember when these first came out?

[01:34:10] And I think some of the rumors were, we're going to get cancer. We're going to, sometimes we were saying, you know, we can't, we're not, you know, we're carrying around bricks. We're not, we don't want our kids to have it. You know, there was a lot going on. It took us about 10 years, but now how many of you, if you left it at home, you're going to turn back around and go get it, right?

[01:34:34] Technology is ever-evolving, and it comes with good. We know that there's things on these phones. They're listening to you when you're not paying attention. There's a lot going on, and so what I, the stance I took with AI is I need to know all of the good and all of the bad as much as I can, and then work within those parameters.

[01:34:57] So, I'm gonna say, please, please, read all of the LCPS policies and things that should be there. I'm gonna make some statements, and those statements are my own statements, not with LCPS, but I am very encouraged by all of the work that LCPS is doing in this space.

[01:35:22] I felt, because in 2023, generative AI became so popular, And I was home, I got to really play with it and do a lot of things with it. So I slowly adopted AI. I know it's not the same when you're busy, you're running around, the kids are always the first to certain things, and you're trying to really figure out what to do with it.

[01:35:50] There's a lot of fun things I do with it, and there's a lot of serious things out there. So in terms of, I know someone mentioned earlier, so I'm going to start with some more serious things. the biases, it's still in the data. The data that trained these AI models, it was biased before it's the internet data. And we already know that the banking data, the data anywhere in the world had biases in it. That's the data that they started out training these models with.

[01:36:21] So one of the things, when I think about that, I say, I want to be a part of it so I can call it out. I want to understand what's happening so that I can go to company X and say, hey, why are you putting this out like this? Because if we're not part of the conversation, then we will have no say and no power. So that is the way I choose to work within those things. Second, my daughter is tired of me telling her about all the ways that she needs to be responsible. She's 13 years old, and

[01:36:57] every time I turn around, I'm like, no, you can't, you know, you shouldn't use it this way. Which, Tonya-ism, I would like us as parents and teachers to say to make sure the kids are using it responsibly, because I fear sometimes they're like, the first inclination is to say, you're cheating, you're doing it wrong, you know, it's kind of a bad thing. It is just like any other technology you have to be responsible with it and parents we have to be the ones to help with that

[01:37:32] at home because we're giving them the phones we're giving them the laptops we're giving them the iPads we have to be part of the solution in terms of that so that's my disclaimer so to speak but like I said I mean I think everybody has said it it's it's it's not a one we can't there's not one fix to all of the issues that come with this. Biggest issue is it's coming fast and that's the biggest issue that I see that to keep up you know we we got phone policies at school but it took a

[01:38:07] while. This is moving faster than they can get those policies together so I think that's the only thing that I I'm not sure how we're going to work towards that but it's good to see the movement there. Okay, so AI in education and why it matters, it can help with personalizing or learning. Some of the tools that are out there, it really can help a student not move from where

[01:38:41] they are and then make sure that they're able to, you know, get that foundation. What I've seen in some of the tools in Khan Academy, I know a lot of our students use it, they really have embrace this they won't let your you move from concept to concept without the student input so i know teachers and i am not a teacher by trade but i know there's differentiated learning and having to do all of that so i think these tools can help in that area um and you know help with

[01:39:17] some of that administrative burden um anytime it is accessible anytime now maybe you guys have the best students in the world but there are many nights that my child has come to me nights you know after 10 o'clock and she's struggling with math problem or she's struggling with this or that and okay I am very young at heart but I don't remember algebra from back in the day or I learned it a different way so I then have to figure out do I go to I think there's the tutor online

[01:39:55] to see if anybody's available or I mean after scolding you know about 15 minutes of scolding of why we waited till the last minute you still want to help your child so I have turned to an AI and said hey thank you to all the teachers that provide a study guide that should have been worked on here's a study guide can you provide me extra problems do not give and I'll she'll use my phone. Do not give her the answer, but prompt her to walk her through how to solve this problem.

[01:40:32] So it's a tutor when you need it. So that's another way that I use AI. Recently, I took the science slides to make flashcards. I was able to do that. I also made a podcast from the science slides so that she can listen to it as another way of doing that. These things were done in seconds. You know, So I feel like it's a way for me to help in those times.

[01:41:01] So those are some of the ways, and it's available whenever I need it. Future readiness. We are moving to a technological or going further into a technological error, and I feel like these tools, we need to incorporate it in our learning so that we are ready for that next step.

[01:41:24] I have a saying. I don't know where I remember where I got it from, But there are many jobs that are being removed or, you know, diminished. But if you look at the statistics and all of the reporting out there, they'll tell you that more jobs will be created.

[01:41:43] They'll just be at a higher level and more technology space. So we need to prepare our kids for that. And I like to say, AI won't take your job, but somebody who knows AI will. So we have to prepare our kids.

[01:42:01] And then time and efficiency. I work with a lot of small businesses, and the first thing I tell them is, you're a solopreneur, you're an entrepreneur, you can use these tools to gain time back. And based on the teachers and things that I've worked with, especially with the administrative burden, I think there are spaces for teachers to gain some time back to focus more in the classroom.

[01:42:26] I am not a teacher. I don't pretend to be one. But in some of the spaces that I am, teachers are doing some cool things with AI to get the kids engaged. One history teacher created a GPT that mirrored the 60s.

[01:42:44] And so then the kids went in, and they can interact and ask any questions and get more information. It was a different way of learning. Teachers who do a lot of IDPs, that administrative work, I've seen where it really decreased the amount of time that it took for them to do that.

[01:43:02] all within the boundaries of whatever security is, you know, allowed. But I think I see great promise in that. Side note, I really think the teaching in, we will probably, this will probably force the way that education runs, not right today, but in years to come.

[01:43:27] So I think it's gonna be interesting to see how all of this unfolds in the future. I mentioned a few of the ways that AI can empower teachers, which is lesson planning, assessments, creative material.

[01:43:45] I know Canva is used a lot, and Canva supports a lot of these things, and Canva has AI built in to help with a lot of this. So these are just a few. There are tools. As was mentioned earlier, there are a lot of tech that created a whole new space.

[01:44:07] I don't know if it's that new, but EdTech is a very booming and big business today. And they're creating tools for schools and working with school districts to implement them. I will touch on one that I know of, but I think there's so many out there.

[01:44:26] But just to give you guys a kind of idea of what one of those tools will look like. I mentioned homework and studying languages. I was trying to, but I didn't have enough time to practice, but I've done this before.

[01:44:44] Some of the tools, so if you're working with students with different languages and you just don't have that person there to do translations, these tools are now allowing you to do real-time translations and having conversations with parents and maybe your students also where needed.

[01:45:06] I think that's really cool. one of the tools I'll show you is if you create the lesson plan or maybe you have something that will be helpful to a parent you can send that create the plan and then have it converted to Spanish or whatever language and send that home with a student or maybe have a conversation with a parent there so I think these are things that would have taken a little bit more effort to do that you know now we're able to do with the minimum effort again I think that means you gain more time to be back in the classroom with the students and have that more those more

[01:45:44] interactions wrong way um college and career explorations i will show and talk about a tool perplexity.ai it's for research it's free um and one of the things so a lot of the community organizations will have me come and talk to students one of the things that i have them do in practice is say hey what is your what do you think you want to study in the future or what is the thing that you're most excited about and then I ask them to do research on what

[01:46:20] will that look like in about four to five years with the advent of technology. One of the examples I talk about is influencers. When I was growing up an influencer was not a job or a thing right and now that is a full-time job for someone to be an influencer whether we like it good or bad But it is a thing you can actually, you know, make money and do things as an influencer.

[01:46:50] So now the trick is preparing for those future jobs. A lot of data scientists, data analytics, that whole category has exploded into so many more different things. Cybersecurity. Students may not even know that they want that, but if they at least start doing the research, they might see all of these options that they wouldn't have even think about as they're preparing.

[01:47:19] And then we as parents can help to guide them. So some of those things, I'm glad we have a tool that helps us match our students with their career plans, but these tools can also help with that. If you're sitting at home, you're having a conversation. Drones.

[01:47:35] I have a friend whose son is actually going to college for drones, but not only that, he's flying them in competitions and doing all kinds of things and working with different companies. So just the myriad of ways now that that has become an opportunity for kids is great.

[01:47:57] What I want to share, so how I have used it in my family, is last summer um i'm gonna just tell this story really quickly last summer i was at the beach and my good friend said hey there's this thing called kids panor does taylor want to do this and i was like sure what does she have to do she has to have a product to vend and they'll have a table and everything set up for her and we were on vacation i remember it was the fourth of july weekend and

[01:48:33] this was at the end of July. And I asked her about it, and she actually said yes, which I was kind of surprised about. And I said, what are you going to sell? And so she had had a bad experience with face products, you know, the get ready with me trend that was happening. We really tried to make sure those products were safe, but it burnt her face.

[01:48:58] and so she was like I want to make products that are safe for kids so she we embarked on this journey to make natural skincare products and I said okay let's ask you know an AI what what can we do how do we get the materials where do we get it from how do we even get the ingredients and what ingredients and it built us out everything from the ingredient list to links to where to purchased that ingredients. We tried it. We told it, hey, we didn't like how that feel or what that,

[01:49:37] and then it made adjustments for us. It told us how to, what jars to buy, where to go make the labels. It just gave us a lot of stuff as she was practicing. She did a lot of the work in terms of mixing and trying out the different things, but in three weeks, we were able to vend at the event with products and labels.

[01:50:01] And it just was something I thought was really cool for her to see how she can actually utilize this for the good and how we can help her to start thinking about entrepreneurship. So that's one of the stories I actually put into a book about how this was done.

[01:50:21] What I'm saying is that we can use these things with our child. So all of that was done with us having conversation back and forth. this wasn't something she went off and did by herself so we were you know monitoring how it's used. Fact-checking. I always talk about you have to fact check. I think in the early days and still today they talk about hallucinations in the data and the things that are coming out of AI. Sometimes it pulls from

[01:51:00] different things. Since we're here I'll use this example on the school board When the school board elections happened, and Ms. Deans was added to the school board, I wanted to know, was she the first African American to be on the school board?

[01:51:19] And they said, no. I was like, okay. I said, who was the first African American? And it actually brought back someone who was not African American, but was definitely a part of all of the activities happening.

[01:51:35] And was a school board member, I think she was a school board member in the Sterling District. And so what it did is it showed me all the pictures of the person. And yes, she was at MSAC, she was involved in things in NAACP.

[01:51:52] So it inferred a lot of information to come up with this person must be the first person on the school board. So definitely you need to fact check. And so I would use like a chat GPT, and then I would use a perplexity that pulls more from real research, from websites, government websites, and it tells you exactly where it's pulling the information from.

[01:52:18] So it's not, these tools are not to be just trusted with everything that comes out of it. The other thing I say is you have to keep the human with the technology.

[01:52:34] This is not one of those things where, you know, I see a lot of times where folks will say, oh, you know, write me an email about X, Y, Z. I tell people a lot of times, without putting in personal information, I put in a lot more context into the tool so I can actually get real information.

[01:53:00] You know, I will, like, when I started the business with Taylor, I said, I have a 13-year-old, you know, young lady trying to, I gave a lot of context about what was going to happen and the type of event just so I can get, and sometimes you get two lines back, but that's because you're giving it more context so that you can get better results.

[01:53:16] you have to you're the expert there are times I ask it for things and I'm like how could you give me this response and you didn't tell me about security and you know it actually sometimes makes jokes and say you're right how could I do that it makes an analogy that sometimes doesn't really work but you have to be the human you have the expertise you know your child you know what you're going after so i i call it more of a collaboration tool than you know something that you're just you utilizing and i think these are the things we have to talk to our kids about now just keep

[01:53:53] reminding them just like we keep reminding them about crossing the road not talking to strangers these are things we have to start reminding them about so i know i am getting close to time um So some of the tools, I mentioned them already.

[01:54:13] We have Canva that already has, and I think was alluded to, you can do images with Canva AI. Perplexity, research, I use it all the time for research. So definitely, it's one that I would recommend, and it's free.

[01:54:32] Khan Academy utilizes AI, and I believe many of our students use that today. MagicSchool.ai is the one really that I was a part of a cohort that went through some training with this for teachers.

[01:54:50] They work with school districts. I don't know if that's one of the ones, but I just wanted to give you guys an idea of, you know, what some of the things that are out there. MagicSchool.AI does lessons plans and IEPs and all kinds of things, you know, without you putting in any, I think, personal information.

[01:55:14] I haven't vetted all of the security, but it's just one of the ones that I had the opportunity to be a part of. It does, I think recently they've added a student portal so a teacher can actually open up, they can make assignments and have you add it to a classroom so that they're controlling what you're doing and seeing what the kids are doing so that's kind of where the technology seems to be going i can show this is my last slide and i can show a few things

[01:55:46] real real time um and i'm check do you want me to do questions or show tools yeah oh does anybody have questions while i it's more of maybe a comment than a question but um in this space First, I meant to say this before, happy Ramadan to anyone observing.

[01:56:21] I hope you're able to, you know, break your fast during this time. And also in light of Chahar Shambesuri, which was yesterday, where I submitted my weaknesses, I am stepping into my strength for the new year, Norruz, tomorrow. And I wanted to thank you, first of all, for your presentation, because I think it's very important to understand the biases.

[01:56:40] And also, with regards to our minority students, what kind of information is going to be generated, And how can we, as this committee, kind of make that space equitable for our students? And I say this because from 2024, 2023, 2024, and this year, many of our middle school and high school students are asked to write research papers on genocide.

[01:57:11] And it's still, today, our students are not allowed to write about the current genocide in Gaza. And that is, despite having reputable sources like the United Nations, Amnesty International, and various others, these things are not allowed into our system.

[01:57:33] And those are biases that we have already within LCPS. And so I'm wondering kind of as a group here, what is our responsibility? Because, you know, I think this AI and all of this implementing will further the gaps in opportunity and representation for our minority students.

[01:57:55] And so I think it's important to not let this be a barrier to our mission, which is the fair and equitable learning experience for our students. So thank you for this presentation. I thought that was great, especially the example you gave to give it context.

[01:58:11] Anyone else? So if we use AI as a tool, do they have the site that they use the AIs? Yes. Oh, I see. Yes. And so, like, say you made that, you know, your daughter did the business thing.

[01:58:29] So, like, later on, say it becomes a real business. Oh, it's a real business. Then what happens then? It has a website and everything. Does she have to say that she used AI to help that? No. Okay.

[01:58:45] No. And a good example of this is books. So Amazon will not let you go, hey, AI, write me a book about education and tech education. And then it spits out the book, and then you turn it in as a book and you want to sell it.

[01:59:05] You cannot do that. You cannot do things like, hey, could you create for me an image of Martin Luther King? Actually, ChatGPT will tell you no, that is copyrighted information, and I can't do that. Now, it might create you an image that kind of resembles Martin Luther King, but it won't do that image for you.

[01:59:26] So there's a lot going on in that space, but yes, you cannot blatantly just not change, even if you create an image and you want to sell it like on cups or things like that, you have to change it in some way to make it yours.

[01:59:43] Now, that's the intent of the rules and the laws that are coming down, that you have to be creative and do something different with it. I don't know that we here in the United States have been really good at, I won't say prosecuting, but really managing that today.

[02:00:08] But yeah, you have to cite your sources, And this is why I'm going to do a real quick perplexity search. My child is interested in social science.

[02:00:28] What colleges visit? I wanted to show how this tool in particular will provide us some information, but it will link you directly to where that information is coming from, so you can keep digging deeper.

[02:00:51] Not many of the tools will do that. So it provided me MIT, Stanford University, and the little sightings here will tell you, will give you a link directly to that information.

[02:01:10] All of the sightings are also at the top. It's pulling from 13 different sources. So this is a tool that I encourage folks to use when they're trying to do research and doing things like that. For businesses, it gives you real-time information If you want to find a networking event near you, it will give you a list of networking events.

[02:01:34] Beg par? Yes, it is free. So this is definitely one of the tools. If you want to see what Magic School looks like, I don't know.

[02:01:50] This is one of them. It does a lot of different things. But once again, for teachers and any educators, follow LCPS. But that's kind of what the tools look like. today they have a student portal. So I have come in here and asked it to generate things to help Taylor study. And I think everyone knows you can go into Magic Media and create, you know,

[02:02:26] pretty, pretty flowers. And this is in Canva. And it will do that. It'll generate a picture for you to make your content, you know, fancy. So those are some of the tools I wanted to touch on. I It was not fully up to date in everything that LCPS was doing, but I just wanted to share that with all of the guidelines that everybody talked about today, you have to keep that in mind.

[02:02:58] But it was the same for every other technology. We have to, anytime you go in any technology, you have to be aware of the do's and don'ts, the biases, all of it. With the good comes the bad, unfortunately, in this space.

[02:03:14] I am always happy to answer questions and talk more about this. I don't know. I think we're at time, so if there's any questions. Oh, my information slide. You're welcome.

[02:03:37] While Tonya's pulling that up, I just want to let everybody know that I will make sure to get you all the slide decks and all of the information. Make sure all the links work so you can go out and explore on your own and with your family and your children. And if you do have questions, because I know we're right over time, please email them to me and we can get them to everybody that spoke with us tonight to get you more specific questions or get you more specific answers.

[02:04:05] But I will make sure that you have the presentations, links, all of the information there so you can share that with your schools and your communities, but you can also have that for your own personal reference.

[02:04:36] Okay, I know it is after 8 o'clock. I want to thank you all for sticking with us and participating in this discussion. I hope you found some things interesting and useful. I hope we help shed some of the fears and the stigma about it. It can be overwhelming because times change faster.

[02:04:54] I tell my kids all the time there are things that are absolutely in existence now that we weren't even contemplating when we were young. We were still waiting on the Jetsons and flying cars when we were young, so here we are. So I want to thank you all for joining us tonight.

[02:05:09] If you have any questions or you have any concerns, please, as always, feel free to reach out. I will trust that you all are here. I'm not going to bug you about signing in. If you want to, just shoot me an email saying, hey, Erin, I was here. Just so you know, please drive safe, get home safely, take care of yourselves.

[02:05:26] We are not meeting in April because that third week is spring break. Enjoy your spring break. Enjoy your rest. We will see you back same time, same place in May. Have a good evening.

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