038: Transforming Education through Technology and Connection with Dr. Sarah Thomas

Welcome to SEL in EDU.

Where we discuss all things social and emotional in education. I'm Krista and I'm Craig and we are your hosts on this journey.

This podcast is created in partnership with Pennsylvania ASCD.

All right, all right. All right, all right. What is going on? Sel and EDU family? We are so excited to have you here again for an incredible conversation we're going to be having soon. How are you doing, krista?

Oh, I'm good. I'm good and I know we've talked about this before, but we do a check-in. But we also know that the podcast is going to drop a couple weeks later. So right now I am gearing up to be an empty nester this weekend. Both of my boys are my 18 year old is heading off to school tomorrow. My 22 year old is heading off on Sunday. So I'm taking in the goodness of being with them in these last couple days and also figuring what life is going to be like when they're away for months. So, but I'm super proud of them and I never thought this day would come.

So how are you doing? Oh well, I'm doing pretty well. It feels warm and Mahata has seen your young men growing up over the years and that is like it has me blushing just to think about the journey. And they have an incredible mom, Awesome, Thank you.

For those of us who may have or may have the listeners who may have just popped in, craig and I have known each other since 2012. So when I mentioned, I mean he's known my kids or have seen them for 11 years. So you know, it's been quite a journey.

Yes, oh my well, I am as excited as one can be to just want to just be in great company. Today we have an incredible guest who is going to join us. Right now it's summer, but by the time you hear this it could be fall, so I'm excited about the fact that one. It's not 100 degrees, at least where I am here in Boston, and I'm anticipating apple picking season coming. I love apple picking, so maybe by the time this comes out, people might be out with their bags and packing up apples of all sorts and all that good stuff. So we'll see, we'll see.

Yes. Well, I want to follow up on that and invite our guest into that conversation as well with apple picking. So, without further ado, we are incredibly excited to have the amazing Sarah Tom. So Sarah is a regional technology coordinator in a large district in Maryland and the founder of edumatch, which I can't wait to ask you about. This organization empowers educators to make global connections across common areas of interest. She has spoken and presented internationally, participated in the technical working group to refresh the 2017 ISTI standards for education and is the recipient of the ISTI making it IT happen award. Sarah is the co-author of the ISTI digital equity series, closing the gap and the 2023 Maryland society for educational technology. Outstanding leader using technology award winner. Woo, Thank you so much for being here, sarah, welcome.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm super excited to be here, so I really, really loved meeting you in person at ISTI and now, you know, reconnecting on this platform.

Yes, that was the highlight of my ISTI trip, so I didn't actually go to all of the conference, but people told me you have to go to the convention and just walk around the convention center. So I did and I'm like, oh my goodness, this is Sarah, this is fine. So I'm so happy to meet you across all the social things. And so one I've been following you through edumatch and I would love for our listeners to know more about edumatch. Would you mind sharing a bit about your vision and how it's evolved over time? Yeah, totally.

So edumatch is kind of like the little company that almost was not so long story short, it came about on a Friday night I was chatting with a friend of mine on the Voxer app and you know she had. She was looking for tips for a teacher in her district who was wanting to do gamification and math and I said, oh, you know, my cousin did that and you know he could probably talk to you about that, and we know this other guy who can talk to you about that too. And I was just like, wait a minute, is there something that's going to connect person A to person B to person C? And so I looked. You know, of course there were Twitter chats, there were Voxer groups, there were things of that nature, but there was nothing that like facilitated that direct introduction. So that's one like kind of the prototype of edumatch was born and I just kind of set up a Google form, had people tell me about themselves and I would tweet it out you know different things about them, using hashtags, and as people signed up on the Google form that I'd like match, you know I'd tag other matches and stuff like that and then folks were just like, okay, well, could we start a Voxer group, could we do a podcast, could we have an ed camp, and all of these ideas, you know, we just kind of went with them.

That led to the publishing. Eventually we had a nonprofit, we still have a nonprofit and let's see what else. And then the professional learning is the newest branch. So and I was just thinking today, edumatch is actually three companies. So this just hit me, today Edumatch is three companies under one brand. But there's the edumatch, you know, original edumatch. There's edumatch foundation incorporated, which is the nonprofit, and there is edumatch professional learning, which you know. They're all three separate entities but they are all under one umbrella.

That's incredible, and so can our listeners. If they're still interested, can they still connect on edumatch to be able to find people who have common interests and to learn from one another?

Oh, totally yeah. There's multiple different points of entry. We brought back the person of the day, which is where we first started, so there is a form available. I haven't been that great at keeping up with it, truth be told, you know. I tried to try to bring it back now in the age of chat, gpt and everything's automated. I'm still trying to debug the code, but once that gets rolling, then you know we'll be able to do it, you know, and just have it kind of automate itself. But there's other points of entry. There's a Facebook group. We still have the Voxster community. We still have I'm going to call it Twitter. We still have a Twitter you know account. We still have Instagram. We're pretty much everywhere. So we'd love to connect with your listeners.

Yeah, thank you, and we'll make sure that we have those links attached to the notes for our session so that people can continue to connect with each other.

Fantastic, thank you.

I am curious how, before we, you know, get deeper into the conversation today. How is your heart? Are you holding on to this?

That is. Thank you so much for checking in. I'm doing pretty well for the most part. You know there's peaks and valleys, peaks and valleys, and I've gone through them all this week, but I would say ended up net on top. So that's a good week. That is definitely a good week. And what about you?

Well, this right here is a gift. I recognize that this moment right here is a gift, and so having an opportunity to just lean into it, lean into the conversation, lean into, you know, whatever comes, is where you know we need to be today. So I'm most grateful, totally, totally. So what are the? I'm gonna get to your blog one of the recent, you know, pieces that I saw that really galvanized my thought process and I'm curious, but I guess for folks right now who are trying to harness the genius of chat and GBT, for you, who you know is an incredible genius of attack, social, emotional learning, equity work you really do a deep dive into what it means to be a leader in these days. That's gonna connect up one of the blog posts that you've posted.

So I'm just curious for you and for our listeners who are also gonna lean in. The AI world can feel scary, it can feel very daunting, it's all encompassing, but I'm curious for you what have you felt or what do you feel is exciting for your entry point? What are you pushing, I guess, as like, hey, I want y'all to try this thing out, like, don't get scared of it, and what are some things that you have some curiosities to when you think about just our ability to leverage AI, leverage chat GBT in our classrooms, in our schools, in our communities today.

Oh, my goodness, that is such a great question and I feel like I could talk for like an hour on that alone. So but I'll try to restrain myself a little bit and I'll just kind of hit on your question on a few different ways. So in my district work, then I am now the AI point person for my district and I was kind of selected for that role because I've embraced it a lot in my personal life as well as through EduMatch. We did a community forum for EduMatch back in January where we brought a panel together and we were all talking about artificial intelligence and I think that this was pivotal because at the time a lot of people didn't really know what it was. We were all trying to figure out the implications together, things of that nature, and I was speaking primarily of generative AI stuff like the Chad GPT, the mid-journey, et cetera. And that conversation kind of brought about some other conversations. I was able to speak on some panels. So I'm very grateful for those opportunities. But yeah, there's just so much.

Right now we are in a position in my district where we are looking at how we can address it from all stakeholder levels. So talking about our students, talking about our educators talking about our parents, so making sure that security, privacy or paramount. But I think that the approach that we're taking and I don't wanna misspeak, but I believe that the approach that we're trying to take is to just say, okay, be mindful of this, be mindful of this, be mindful of this, but we wanna create that culture of innovation. So definitely, embrace it, explore it, be safe. We'll teach you how to be safe. But so that's kind of where it is on the district side of things.

Now I'll just take a little detour and jump into the Edgematch side of things. So your question is extremely timely because at the time of this recording this week, the Edgematch Foundation Incorporated Board, our nonprofit 501c3 Foundation, unanimously voted to sponsor a virtual artificial intelligence exploration through Edgematch. So we're gonna have, in other words, an AI conference, so to speak, virtually, and it's gonna be. The tentative date, which I think will stick, will be October 7th, from 12 to four Eastern Standard Time. And we picked that time strategically because we felt that most of the people, most of the folks in our community, would be able to attend. We do have some international folks, so we're also recording it and we're gonna make the recordings available as well, but we want to definitely have this and in the nature of equity, then it is a free conference, so everyone will be able to attend for free. There is an option to support the work of the foundation. Folks wanna give a donation, and that's always appreciated and with that donation we'll be able to support the grassroots work of educators. But yeah, so we have that.

And the day before that then I was speaking with some of the great folks over at Flip and just kind of bouncing ideas around and I just set up a Google site, but it's powered by Flipgrid, like everything behind it just links to Flipgrid With different roles for people to go in and say whatever their role is like. Let's say I'm a teacher. I click on where it says teachers and introduce myself and just kind of share my thoughts, my wonderings, what have you about artificial intelligence? And we're hopefully in conjunction with the virtual event, we'll be able to fill it up with all of these great thoughts from folks and then, fingers crossed, synthesize that into a report and just kind of put that back out in the community. So that's kind of a very long answer to your question, but it's a topic that we're very passionate about because it's a game changer in education right now.

Thank you.

Thank you. I'm excited about this, too, because we are going to ensure that we get this out before those October dates, because we want the listeners to get access to these free resources and to be able to put their voice out there and hear what they're thinking, what they're wondering, what they're dreaming of doing, given all of these resources. That can seem to be scary, but I really do think when we use carefully, can help us do things more efficiently. That can help our students become more innovative, more creative, better critical thinkers, and so I really love that mission and thank you for keeping equity in mind too and being able to offer that for everybody. Appreciate that.

Thank you so much. Yes, indeed, yeah. We definitely want to make sure that everyone who wants to participate can participate.

Yeah, thank you, and so we'll make sure that we also get the links. I did see that you would put that out, that this was coming, so we'll make sure that we'll get the links that we can put up there so that people can access everything Also, thank you, thanks. So I have two questions and I'll let you kind of pick where you want to go with it, because I saw that in some of the work that you focus on gamification, and that was one of my first entry points into technology as a tech coach many, many years ago, and I loved it for the engagement and motivation for students, but then also how it connected to social, emotional learning and could really help students find their voice and to be able to share their voice through technology. And, along with that, one of the sessions that you spoke on was called making friends in a hurry, and I don't know if you remember this, but it was. I saw you were. You called it using the fast friends procedure, and there was a researcher who came up with that.

And so I think about how can we use technology and gamification to really make connections with people and to help them find who they are and to create a sense of self, and I'm also thinking about as an introvert myself. I'm like even going into PD, I'm like, oh God, who am I going to talk to? And do I know people and are going to make me get up and do ice breakers, which I understand the point. But I'm wondering if you could talk on one of those two pieces either around where you still see gamification maybe able to happen in education or still happening, and then what you might recommend in terms of connecting people in the classroom or connecting staff using technology.

So both very, very good questions and they speak to to passions of mine. So, regarding the gamification, then I always like to quote Jane McGonigal, who is, you know she yeah, I see your face, she is just so awesome and a leading researcher in the field of gamification, and I love what you're saying about how, like, gamification means so much more than just the game. You know, it can really effectively help people shape who they are. You know, and I remember there was like a video that she has that I use in my presentations a lot of times and she was talking about like different things to gamify and she was just like well, you know, we incentivize what we want to see, and do we want people to be more productive with emails or do we want them to be a better kinder? You know human beings, so a lot of those things, keeping those in mind when we create our games.

One thing that she that happened in her life that really resonated with me as well, because she had the same thing happened in my life. She got a really bad concussion at one point and she did not know, you know, if she was going to come back from it, how she was going to come back from it. So she gamified it, she made a game called super better and she gave herself points for being able to do certain things and, thankfully for me, my concussion wasn't that bad. It was a very bad one, but it was not as bad as hers. I did recover, but I wish I had that, that super better resource, because I feel like that would have made the journey just that much more enjoyable and maybe even more productive even so.

So yeah, and just to kind of speak to your second question as well, about the need for connection, I can totally relate to what you're saying, because I'm also an introvert. It's very hard for me to speak with strangers and I know that fast friends protocol just kind of throws that like in people's face and it's very, it can be very intense, but I love the fact that when people do commit to it, then it really, it really brings down the guards and people are able to, you know, effectively make a friend in a very short period of time, because the research pretty much scaffolded is a list of, I want to say, 36 questions, going in order from from least vulnerable to most vulnerable, and usually when we have sessions we don't have time to get all the way through the list, but people might get to like question 10 or whatever, and then from there they have a foundation where they can, you know, build a friendship or, you know, even just a connection off of. So I think that that that works very well. We've used it in settings where people did need to go a little deeper and established and it's worked out wonderfully. So I swear by that thing.

I do it every chance I get.

That's awesome. Put a link up to those 36 questions as well.

I need to be edited because they're not necessarily educational friendly. But you know, walking out some, some, some questions here and there.

Yeah, and, and, and I think that's a good one.

Okay, go ahead, craig. No, I was just. You know, for those who are like, I think people might want to know what's this fast friends protocol and what are these questions? Because I went ahead and looked at I was like, oh, all right now, so whether or not you are friend dating, or you might be looking for your friend dating, or you might be looking for your friend dating, or you might be looking for your friend dating, okay. So I was like, oh, this could be interesting.

Question 10 just for those who also had a curiosity If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be? I guess I was like I'm not gonna date with my now husband. I love it.

Many of them, as I can remember, but it was Well, thank you knew what I was doing. I'm not gonna ask low courage questions Instead of jumping right, because I'm a like, let's just get to it. I want deep conversations, but that's really scary if you don't have that trust, like you mentioned. So you know, as educators, how can we maybe tweak some of those or put a couple up and let kids pick? You know, I feel more comfortable answering this one rather than that one, but I love that recall, thank you.

So I'm still looking at the questions. I was like, oh, okay now, so just for folks who are, you know, just go ahead and give you a little tease. So there's three sets of questions. First set of questions is just general. Like you know, we can have, you know, a nice little little, something like that, and it is good to know, you know what, what constitutes a perfect day for you. But then there's second set which pushes a little bit more. Like a sample question is what do you value most in a friendship? You know, and that's like okay, okay, you know that you can get with it. But the third set of questions, that right there you can come away with a fast friend of conversation, like you know what. I don't know whether or not we mix in the match of the day, so just an example of a third court like in the third set of questions, tell your partner something that you like about them already.

I love that.

It worked for Dr Sarah Thomas. She got married.

Hey, yes, yes Beyonce or anti Beyonce. He put a ring on it.

Nice, okay, chris, go ahead. You had another question.

I'm just, I'm just laughing. I, and you know, when I reflect back, I had read a book about these questions as well, and I think to get to that deep level of questioning like those last third, it can sometimes take 7080, 90 hours of being in somebody's family, and so really this is a way of shortening and being really intentional about connecting people. And when I think about a classroom, I mean I, when I was teaching high school, I had seven classes a day, 53 minutes, 25 to 35 kids in a class, and if we're not intentional about how we're creating those connections and giving students a chance to connect socially and academically, you know it's not necessarily going to happen on its own. So I really liked that this was a piece that you were promoting, sarah, because it's a nice protocol for students to use, to think about inside, outside circles or you know, we have a new triad here working together. Let me give you a couple of these questions, kind of get you a little bit more comfortable with each other, before we dive into academics.

I think totally, I hear you.

So I was actually just revisiting a piece that you shared. It's from the teacher's desk and you all would have to check out the link so you can spell teacher the way it is in your post, how to think outwardly and at this point in time, I know for me I transitioned out of my full time gig as, like an executive director and superintendent, like I'm an education consultant, as a prenuer you know many, many titles to get to the same thing of having having an opportunity to really take charge of what you know my charge in this work and how I go about partnering with others to help them to activate the greatest passions and visions. And so this question here, or this blog, really pushed me a lot, because you talk about a workshop that you actually participated in and that was called leadership and self deception, and so in this particular post you talk about the outward and inward. You know self and lens that we have in this work and we know so many teachers have felt themselves and educators and school leaders are finding themselves pushed beyond. You know places and spaces they've ever thought that they were going to be in.

People are doing a lot more introspection to how they're showing up in today's classrooms, especially in the environment that feels so charged today, whether or not we're talking about artificial intelligence, equity work, belonging LGBTQIA just so many different things, so many educators still trying to find their way. But I found that this was really refreshing for those who are really pausing for a moment and looking inward and also thinking about their outward self. And so it's really curious, as you prepare for this school year, for folks who are going to listen to this at this point in the year again could be early fall, it could be people just starting up, you know their, their classrooms of school year. I'm curious about the adult SEL work that happens for you and what you might be promoting in regards to the work that you do with your school or the district or even beyond. And I'm curious about what do you feel is very key and critical to today's educators and leaders as they think about adult SEL for themselves and also with the promoting in the communities and cultures they're they're they're nurturing.

Totally. Before I start answering this, I have to give a huge shout out to a good friend of mine, mandy Fray like, who has taught me so much about adult SEL. She's written four books, one of them being the fire within. That talked about stories of resilience and how people came back from adversity to be even stronger and I learned about, you know, stuff like post traumatic growth and just all different kinds of things. And she has another book, reignite the flames, and I feel like her books are in. Her work is extremely timely, especially now, like granted, she wrote these books like.

I know the fire within was 2018 and reignite the flames I can't remember. I want to say like maybe 2019 or 2020, something like that. But in that then I mean after coming back from remote learning, hybrid, you know, pandemic, like that was a collective trauma, that that that we all faced and you know, and coming back from that, then our profession is very. Now we're at a critical state, like I am just hoping and praying and knocking on with it that folks recharge their batteries over the summer and are coming back, you know, feeling in a better place than than a lot of folks left at the end of last year. I know that a lot of people were burnt out, a lot of people, a lot of attrition. You know there was a lot of vacancies just around the country and so that's a very tough situation to be in that and there are no easy answers for that one, I know a lot of times, you know, we talk about self care, we talk about, you know, wellness and things of that nature, but it takes, it takes all of us, it takes all stakeholders to to help to create this environment for educators.

I know, way before all of this happened, my very first years when I, when I was a beginning teacher, then I didn't feel safe, you know, I didn't feel professionally safe and I was not able to be the best educator that I could be. And until maybe year four or year five, when I was in more nurturing environments, environments that allowed for me to take I'm not calculated, calculated such like has such a bad connotation to it but take risks in the interest of my students. You know, learn things, try different things that I learned at PDs and professional learning and things of that nature, without the fear of oh you know, if this is a workout, that I'm going to get in trouble. You know things like that, little things like that. You know that that goes a long, long way, and I understand that the stakes are high for everyone, but just just a little grace just goes so far.

I think that that's one of the things that we collectively have learned over the past couple years especially so. So just you know taking care of each other. And who said that? Jerry Springer. I p to Jerry Springer.

Take care of yourselves and take care of each other. Yeah, yeah, that might be the best way to sum it up, but yeah, we all need each other and we all need communities. We all need that support network, whether it's in our school and or outside of our school. So, you know, a lot of folks right now are connected. If they're not, then I would highly recommend for them to get connected to a personal learning network. If they're using social media, there's a community of educators there somewhere, I'm sure in most cases, so, yeah, so those would just be kind of like my inner ramblings on that question.

No, I was just.

I was going to add that you know what you share as just some steps for folks that you are, you know, engaged in following this workshop of just talking about practicing empathy and knowing that today it's even it's so needed, and also whether or not you are at the beginning, middle or end of wherever whatever is the chapter for you, and then listening actively, and I think that if so many more folks just listen, like not coming with your own agenda, not trying to project out what it is that you feel is important to you, but maybe you'll garner so much more by listening.

And that might be what's listening to your body. It may be listening to someone else and maybe listening to some of your podcasts and webinars and things like that, like how do you listen and garner and how do you actually be ganging for you in small and big ways, and there's some other things. So we're going to pop this blog posts into the resources that folks can check out, but I found it just to be really timely, as as I read and reread this piece that you wrote and I think about the broader scope of where we are in today's environment, Thank you so much.

And similarly, craig, I was thinking too that from a tech perspective, I think sometimes okay, maybe this is me, but in my experience you know I had tech directors and who were very tech focused without seeing the integration and the instructional piece, and so it was all about kind of the hardware and and then I had some amazing leaders who really saw the intersection of the technology and the curriculum and the instruction and really worked on creating that safe space with the trust and empathy and the grace. And I'm wondering, Sarah, in your position in a large district, could you talk to either specific examples of how you cultivate that trust with staff and help them build that sense of well being and safety, or what would you recommend for people in similar positions, like, what suggestions would you recommend to them?

I love what Craig had just mentioned about listening, listening and you know, just just connecting and creating a culture where we're all human beings first, you know, and just being able to recognize that and recognize the fact that not everything's going to go. You know perfectly, every single time, especially when we have devices involved. You know, but really in life you know nothing. Nothing, always, 100% of the time, goes according to plan and when that happens, just being able to just take a step back, take a breath and come to a solution together, like listening, listening once again, listening to people at all different in all different roles, involving our students in these conversations, involving parents in this conversation, so that we're able to find a resolution that meets the needs of, as you know, as many people as possible. It won't be, it won't be 100% of people 100% of the time, but being able to just be flexible and have that grace and show that grace and show that respect and compassion to folks, I think goes a very long way.

Thank you, I think fantastic. There were a lot of great gems and takeaways there.

Thank you so much.

So I was sorry. I got caught up because I was looking at there's a post you made early in the early in the month that talked about. You know some of your favorite songs and so you know I love the connection of music and s EL and you know I'm all I have a. You know I've developed a little bit of a playlist. So For the team, your post August 4, you talk about 2000,. You know our early 2000 songs that you sometimes cry to you. Now one of the three. I'm very surprised about that. I want to know a little bit more about why that's all makes you cry. Because you got, don't you forget, glenn Lewis, love that still right, rafael Sd. That's about you now.

What emotion surface for my whole job.

I'm just crazy because when when I okay, I just had a daughter last July, not not this one to just past, but July before that and those one day when that song came up in my car and I just, you know, everything made me emotional at the time when I was pregnant, I was just, oh gosh, this all reminds me of college. Not that I was like out there dancing to this song, even though I kind of was I'm not going to lie, you know, we were all 20 once, so yeah, but that's all had me kind of thinking of old times. But that's funny because I put that post on social media, because I have like a very dry sense of humor sometimes and a lot of times people don't know what I'm joking or what I'm telling. The truth, you know when I'm being straight up, and I think that most people took me seriously on that one. It was just like a one time cry just because I was like, oh yeah, so much time is past.

I think that's, you know, that's one of those great questions that you can ask folks in the beginning of the year. So I mean, it's a great. You know, it's a great icebreaker for those who are like, how do we break the ice? And, you know, building community and connection, and like, what song gets you emotional, you know, as they come up, and so Sure, sure.

Love that.

Love to you know, just a continued conversation around.

I know that you're a big advocate for equity work and digital citizenship and at this time I know we are trying to work with our wonderful educators, who are entrepreneurial in their own way, because every school leaders like, hey, this, like we want to see you kind of make these kind of moves, like we really just want to see some alignment, but got some folks a little off the fringes, like you know, I'm gonna kind of do my own thing.

And so, at this time, when we talk about digital equity and I know that you're a very big champion for that and I would love for you to kind of enlighten folks today, like what does that mean? How can we connect that to continue in a bill? Really great collaborations among educators, whether or not they're in their classrooms or not, and we're also talking about how do we continue to foster the kind of social, emotional skill sets and that happen among young people as well as our educator community, especially in this environment where everyone wants to say what they want to say and all these things and mediums. However, we want to make sure that folks have access, they are, that their voices are not quelled, and then we continue to cultivate, cultivate innovation at this time. So I'm just kind of curious about what does it mean? When you talk about digital equity, how does that play a role in today's classrooms and schools?

Yeah, totally so. Regarding digital equity, then a lot of times when folks have conversations about it, then they kind of stop with access to devices, access to band, with access to funding. But it goes a lot deeper than that. There's things like access to transformational learning opportunities, for example. So when we're thinking about what are we, you know, what are we doing with our students, like a lot of times people might put a lot of money into these programs that might do drilling kill, but that's not the same as investing into, you know, authentic learning opportunities for our students. So something like that and, in addition, access to high quality teaching and that goes to us being literate as educators in order to help our students kind of navigate this whole digital space. And it's wild because I started out co wrote the book with my friends Regina Schaefer and Dr Nicole Howard back in. I want to say we started working on it in 2017, and I started doing presentations on it, like in 2018.

And one of the things that I talked about a lot was the deep fakes, because they were just starting in 2018. But now, if you see the deep face nowadays, they are just but beyond belief, you know, to the fact where they're actually putting them in TV shows to bring people back from like 4050 years ago and you can't tell the difference, you know, and it's just is. It's crazy because you know, I remember being a kid and folks saying don't believe everything you read because people can manipulate that. Don't believe everything you read because people can manipulate that. But video never lies, and now it does so. So how do you know teaching ourselves how to navigate these things so that we can help our students in this space? So a lot of that, you know that all ties into into digital equity.

For me, it's crazy because now I'm seeing that people are creating videos. I want to say this that somebody figured out a way how to do it in mid journey. Like I was a month from mid journey and you know I'm getting like all of these crazy images that are so lifelike and realistic. So pretty soon we'll get to a point where it's going to be seamless, you know where, where folks are just just creating whatever they can imagine and they they have like a thing on I forgot the name of the tool right now, but it's on discord where folks can like have AI just create a whole song for them. Like it will create music. It'll create the singer, you know, and they have AI that will make it sound like like a certain singer or rapper is is making a song. So it's it's pretty wild out there right now.

And how do you, how do you encourage those who are nervous about what feels authentic and created, general and like is generated from the human being versus AI. And so I think that for school, at least for school leaders and we're thinking about this, like I saw post, or yesterday, the day before, where Someone, a teacher, saw that 50% or more of the like prompts, the responses from students were generated by AI, versus the being created by the students themselves, and so how do we find balance? What would you, I guess, advise teachers and staff members and leaders who were thinking through this? How do we get comfortable with this generative world that creates this level of innovation as far and wide as the mind can think and conceive, but also do it in a way that yields integrity as well?

Yeah, I don't have a source to cite this quote from. I heard some. I say once trust but verify when it comes to just really anything like I think it was in a business book like trust, but you know, double check, so back check. You know everything that comes through. If it looks too good to be true or if it looks too out there, then you know, look for sources to back it up from reputable sources. But in addition to that, then with the students generating the assignments through through artificial intelligence and I hear a lot about that, you know that's that's happening quite a bit.

But I think that that one thing that I heard that really resonated with me, with somebody saying help them to use these prompts to create better work. Like, have them, you know, give them a good understanding of the foundation and then, wednesday, have these tools at their availability, that they can use the tools to refine their work and make it even better. So not to do everything for them, but you know they have to have that baseline understanding of how to do it in order to to bring it to the next level. And I think that that's my goal as well, like the things that I know how to do, then I'm going to use these tools to help me do them better, help me do them faster, be more productive with them, and I think that that might be. That might be an approach to our students is still early on in the game with generative AI, so you know, we're still figuring out best practices, but that's my initial, initial approach.

You know, we love to ask our guests what do you believe is your superpower?

Oh, my superpower. I would say, um, that's a good, that's a good one. I feel like I need to think about that a little bit, but I guess my initial response would be Okay, I'm actually cheap. My friend told me yesterday where he thought was that I did really well. So I'm going to take what he said. And he says that I take ideas and I run with them and just make them happen, and so I will accept that, like I don't always make them good, but I would definitely be the first to you know if an idea comes through and if I have the bandwidth to give it a shot, you know, and get really, really excited about it. So, yeah, I guess that would be it.

Okay, we will take that. We will take that, thank you. So, folks who are trying to, who are excited and motivated and I'm just telling you, I'm on Twitter, aka X, like whatever you want to call it today and I, what I really appreciate about Sarah, your, you know what people can garner just in the first few scrolls is that you are a continual learner, like you're. You're sharing podcast, you're listening to, and I mean there's such variability and I think that you are running an incredible organization as doing phenomenal work as well. They have a number of really great books and online courses and digital learning and community that exists. And so, folks who are really trying to stay connected with you, what is your recommendations on how they can stay connected to you, plugged in or even reach out?

Absolutely, and thank you so much for your kind words and thank you, thank you all for having me on here. Like this is. This is super, super great to be able to chat with anyone who wants to connect with me. I am happy to connect. I am on all the socials at Sarah the teacher. So that's Sarah h da T e c h you are, and my website is Sarah Jane Thomas. Calm and edge matches, edumachorg.

Well as the electricity family. It has been an incredible time with dr Sarah Thomas. Please make sure you check out all of the things, all of the gifts, all of the gems in our host of today's podcast, and we are excited that you will actually connect Sarah in so many ways and promise it is a gift that keeps on getting so until we return again for another conversation and another time to get nestled together, real, real close. Right, we will wish you and your loved ones all of the light and love they need, and so just continue to hold yourself real dear and real tight, and we wanna wish you well as you continue to stand in the light. We love you. You take care.