Today, we've heard how many education institutions are already beginning to realize the benefits of AI. This includes improving efficiency and back offices, helping leaders update guidelines and policies, and supporting educators in developing lesson plans and assessments. In addition to the adults in educational organizations, we also need to get students ready for the modern workforce. I recently had a fascinating conversation with the Superintendent of Public Instruction in Washington State,
Chris Reykdal. Microsoft is based in the state of Washington, and we we're one of the region's largest employers, which is one reason why I'm so excited to share Chris's story. Chris, thanks so much for joining me today. I've been so impressed by your leadership on this topic. Thank you, Paige. I'm excited to be here. Can you take a moment to share a little about your vision for AI and some of the work you've been doing to bring that vision to life? Well, as soon as I started
to play around wit
h AI tools, I knew there were a lot of possibilities to use it to make teachers more efficient and to help students with their learning. I have a responsibility to ensure that all of our students are ready for the world of work with AI. So, we organized a group of education leaders from around the state to imagine several pieces of our system and how it can be enhanced. Our AI team has already launched initial guidance statewide, and it comes at a really exciting time because we're also rewritin
g
our learning standards in English Language Arts, Science, and Math. So the AI skills are embedded into the standards, they're not siloed into a separate supplemental area of our curriculum. It's not thought of as separate. We really want folks to think about those as integrated bodies of work. Yeah, having grade-level expectations about AI and information media literacy, that allows students to develop their AI capabilities as they learn core curriculum, not as a single stand-alone course in
high school. Yeah, it’s important because all of our educators are required to teach these standards, so ensuring that all students will have the opportunity to develop AI skills at the same time, it's a game changer. That's a key systemic step. And it's one of the things that most impressed me about the work you've been doing. Yeah, thanks, Paige. It's true, but like many things in education, integration into the standards is just a first step. To ensure we really do this well and get the stude
nt outcomes that we want, teachers have to be offered professional development on how to teach these new skills. So our next step has been to think through how we leverage our education service agencies that are all over our state. We want them to support the training of our teachers to these updated standards, and when we do that we get consistency around the state. Yeah, in fact, Microsoft
is one of the collaborators supporting those efforts. I think it's going to take public-private partners
hip to do this effectively at scale. And I know our team is really excited about that professional development work. Yeah, no question about it. I agree that thinking about teacher professional development is a fundamental part of the success of the work. We have to support our educators on the use of the tools and, frankly, also how not to use them. Yeah, exactly. And then I think we've got to go one step further. We have to think about institutional policies and practices as well, recommending
what tools are best suited for our schools, creating strong use cases
for how they can be used, creating policies around student, educator, researcher, and staff use. Everyone needs the support to do this well, if it's going to be effective and obviously we have to curate some really good resources to support the adoption of AI. And your guidance has the initial framework for all of those considerations. You know, really thinking through and supporting the implementation is going to be the key
to success in the implementation of AI in our classrooms. I spend a lot of time talking to education leaders about these topics and they tend to fall into two camps - those that want to embrace AI and make sure that their students have access to all of it and are building skills for life and work. And those who are worried about things like plagiarism and just want to shut it down. Yes, I'm definitely observing the same dichotomy and I don't think it's appropriate to shut it down because almost
every student and educator has AI in their pocket today. It's on their phone. It's ubiquitous. Even if they don't know it, they're using it. And every employer is going to want to use it with their workforce. Yeah, our state is one of
the largest technology hubs in the world. We have many leading companies headquartered here. If we want to continue our drive to statewide economic success and growth then our high tech sector has to have the support of our school system. We've got to keep that t
alent pipeline going for our employers. In the social media boom, we were, quite frankly, late to the game in education, and it kind of happened to us. Instead of teaching our students and educating our educators on the strengths and weaknesses of that. We learned some tough lessons. So, with AI, we’re proactive. We're excited about the work and we're leading with change as a minimal expectation. And then we know once we create the opportunity, the magic happens and the creation happens in class
rooms and it's a positive thing in learning. That's great, Chris. I agree. I can't wait to see how your work progresses. Thanks for joining me today to share Washington's story. In fact, we've included your case study in our Microsoft Education AI Toolkit so that others who want to learn from you can get more details about your work. I really appreciate your time. Thank you, Paige. I appreciate it.
Comments