Building an Inclusive AI Future in Education with Kunal Dalal and Wes Kriesel

Today we’re talking to Kunal Dalal and Wes Kriesel, who are administrators of AI and Innovation at the Orange County, CA, Department of Education, where they support AI education and integration for 28 school districts in California.

Kunal Dalal merges education and AI, driving human-centered AI integration at the Orange County Department of Education. Educated at Oberlin, Harvard, and UC Berkeley, he's evolved from school principal to headphone entrepreneur to tech educator. Dalal's entrepreneurial and community efforts, alongside his AI-focused initiatives like "The A.I. Parent" book, AI Days, and "100 Conversations in 100 Days about AI," showcase his dedication to enriching education with AI, advocating for an empowered, collaborative learning community.

Wes Kriesel is an Administrator of AI and Innovation at Orange County Department of Education. In his work at OCDE, Wes built Orangejuice.ai, where he shares stories from around Orange County about AI in Education. In addition, Wes is the producer for “Squeeze the D.AI”, the Orangejuice.ai podcast that covers AI in public education. Three guiding values for Wes’ work are: inclusiveness, storytelling, and innovation. Wes enjoys photography, his dogs, his Jeep, and spending time with his wife – in reverse order of importance.

Recommended Resources:
📚 orangejuice.ai blog by Wes Kriesel
🤖 Ethan Mollick, Amanda Bickerstaff
📖 Klara and The Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

Transcript

Alexander Sarlin: 0:04

Welcome to Season Eight of Edtech Insiders where we speak to educators, founders, investors, thought leaders and the industry experts who are shaping the global education technology industry. Every week, we bring you the week in edtech. important updates from the Edtech field, including news about core technologies and issues we know will influence the sector like artificial intelligence, extended reality, education, politics, and more. We also conduct an in depth interview with a wide variety of Edtech thought leaders, and bring you insights and conversations from ed tech conferences all around the world. Remember to subscribe, follow and tell your ed tech friends about the podcast and to check out the Edtech Insiders substack newsletter. Thanks for being part of the Edtech Insiders community enjoy the show. Today on Edtech Insiders, we're talking to Kunal Dalal and Wes Kriesel,, who are administrators of AI and Innovation at the Orange County California Department of Education, where they support AI education and integration for 28 school districts in Southern California. Kunal Dalal merges education and AI driving human centered AI integration at the Orange County Department of Education. Educated at Oberlin, Harvard and UC Berkeley, he's evolved from school principal, to headphone entrepreneur to tech educator, the law's entrepreneurial and community efforts alongside his AI focused initiatives like the AI parent book, AI days and the upcoming AI summit showcase his dedication to enriching education with AI advocating for an empowered collaborative learning community. Wes krenzel is an administrator of AI and Innovation at Orange County Department of Education. In his work and OCD, West built orange juice.ai, where he shares stories from around Orange County about AI in education. In addition, Wes is the producer for squeeze the day that's d.ai, the orange juice.ai podcast that covers AI in public education, three guiding values for West his work are inclusiveness, storytelling and innovation. West enjoys photography, his dogs his jeep and spending time with his wife in reverse order of importance. Kunal Dalal and Wes Kriesel, Welcome to Ed Tech insiders.

Kunal Dalal: 2:37

Hello, good to have good to be here.

Wes Kriesel: 2:42

Likewise, happy to be here.

Alexander Sarlin: 2:44

You say Good to have you because you guys are podcasters too. And I know exactly what that's like it is good to have you both here. So let's start off by each of you. I'm going to go one by one. Tell us about your background. And what brings you to this really unique and very interesting role of being an AI administrator at the Orange County, California Department of Education Kunal let me start with you. You've done a lot of things at school principal teacher, you are an entrepreneur with a headphone company. Tell us about your background and how it brought you to your current role integrating AI in education.

Kunal Dalal: 3:19

Thank you for that very copious introduction. That was very kind of you. Our titles are exactly how you said it. You got it right this time. We are administrators of artificial intelligence at Orange County Department of Education. We are in 28 districts throughout Orange County. And to answer your question about my journey, what brought me to this space right now. I started way back when as a as a wilderness guide for students who are coming out of juvenile lockup. And that was, you know, this, I had this job where I was cutting up racks every day doing science research, and it was starting to feel a little bit heavy for me. And then I called a friend of mine. And I was like, you know, this is really hard. This science work. I really like it. But is there something else for me in this world and my friend on the phone, he's like, you know, I'm doing this Wilderness Camp thing, where we have students who were sentenced, it really was that word sentenced to two months in Wilderness Camp. Maybe you'd want to come out here and try this. And so I packed up my stuff and moved out to Utah. And then, you know, it didn't take me about a few weeks to realize this is it. This is this is what I want to do. I want to be around young folks. I want to be in education. When I was in high school, I used to say I'm going to become a teacher when I can afford it. It's not a not a great view on on that profession. As far as payroll goes, but that took me into education. And then I became a teacher. I was a teacher in Boston and then in Berkeley and Oakland. And then I went into administration high school principal assistant principal, and then I was an entrepreneur for a little while. As one does, when you live in the Bay Area, you got to get that CEO founder on your business card at some point, and on your LinkedIn. And so I started a headphone company, and back and forth to China, the headphones that are on my head right now. And it was the hardest thing I've ever done. It's some people. I mean, outside of my kids, let's not, let's not talk about those downplay raising kids. But I do use an analogy there, because a lot of folks talk about how, you know, having a pet having a dog. And this is no slides, anybody listening here who's got pets or dogs. But when you're raising, I've raised a dog, I've raised a pair of headphones, and raising a pair of headphones felt a lot closer to raising a baby than a dog did. And the company dies, if I'm not on it all the time. And if I'm not aware, all the time, a dog will survive, a dog can go like you can give a dog to somebody else you can you know, you can rehome a dog, you can't do that with your own business. And so when I saw my first set of headphones at the factory table, when I was in China and I went into their into their little room, it was a lot closer to when I saw my first baby than when I saw I got my first dog, that I know that sounds absurd. But I think for a lot of folks who who have built a physical product, my guess is you might feel something similar. But you know what that really did, I wanted to take after that I was in some Silicon Valley companies and I was the education person, really, I'll talk about probably in some response later in the podcast. But what that journey has taught me is less about tech. Because I was always the tech person, I was the first person to have a projector in the front of the room when I was a teacher back in 2002. But what it really taught me it was about entrepreneurship. And it really taught me that this idea of building something and creating something for yourself that is out in the world for everyone to judge. And you have to own it for yourself. You grow with it, you evolve with it, but it's yours. And you get to see something that never existed in the world, now exist in the world. And you did that. That to me is what I learned through my journey as far as what the most powerful thing to do in education is. And so really, that's when I talk to students when I talk to kids, tech, is there. AI is there everything else is there. But the idea of creative entrepreneurship. I think that's the most central thing that that I sort of hold on.

Alexander Sarlin: 7:29

Huh? Yeah. And you're both in this incredibly unusual role. And I think that diverse set of experiences probably brings a very diverse perspective. You've seen the tech side, from everything you've seen tech technology side, you've seen the education side close up, and now you're working in this incredibly integrated way. Wes, tell us about your background and what brought you into AI and public education. You also do a podcast you're producing the squeeze the D AI is Am I saying that right? Squeeze the Dai

Wes Kriesel: 8:03

we always say squeeze the day d.ai.

Alexander Sarlin: 8:06

Squeeze the day D squeeze the day podcast. Tell us about what your experiences and what brought you to your current role.

Wes Kriesel: 8:16

Yeah, just starting with the podcasts and working kind of backwards. In around 2010. I worked for a virtual school. And I really learned a lot about being able to serve students when you couldn't see them. What kind of things could you produce? That would be helpful video. That's when I started video editing, podcast editing. But really the last 28 years have been in public education. Although I kind of wonder if there's some relevance to like, right out of college, I didn't know what I was going to do. And I served as a youth pastor for a couple of years. And I often think about that kind of nurturing the whole person looking after their soul. If you believe in that, I think that's still part of how I look at education. And so I think, since then, I've realized that most people, especially in an ed tech space, or an AI space, if you will don't. They don't feel like they know what other people are doing. They're interested in finding out new ways to connect to students and improve learning but they maybe don't know, their struggles are very similar to someone else's or their questions, even though they might approach the answer differently or similar to other people's questions. So I think storytelling ends up being a big part of what we can offer in a leadership role. And then that's also just part of recognizing that my one voice my one perspective, is not the sole value that I offer. Much like yourself, telling stories, giving other people a place to talk and share is is huge. It

Alexander Sarlin: 9:49

really is and I think you know I'm hearing Creative Entrepreneurship, storytelling, sort of humility, I think intellectual humility and realizing that this this world, especially this AI education world is evolving so fast. It's so complex, no one person has the answer. If we bring everybody together, maybe we begin to have an answer. So let's talk about some of the initiatives you mentioned. You know, you're at the Orange County, California, 20 plus districts, I think you said 26 is 2828 districts. So let's talk about some of the things that you've been initiating and working on in this role of quinoa. Let me start with you, you have this 100 conversations in 100 days about AI initiative. You guys are both planning a student led AI Summit, this all sorts of things. Kunal, let me start with you. Tell us about some of the projects that you've started in this role and how they are contributing to a more informed and empowered community of educators in the AI space.

Kunal Dalal: 10:44

Yeah, I mean, so I'll let us talk about 100 conversations. That was his, that was actually his entry plan for his work. Honestly, it just speaks to Wes and his absolute focus on the community. He came in, and he said, Hey, I'm gonna have 100 conversations with 100 days about AI, I have nothing to suggest to anybody. I'm not trying to sell anybody anything. I'm not trying to train anybody. I just want to listen, I'll let him talk more about that. But I'll talk about the AI summit that we're having, which is April 25, which is a week from today. And I know Wes and I

Alexander Sarlin: 11:17

are planning that.

Kunal Dalal: 11:20

But you know, we were at we've been to multiple AI summits. And they're coming thick and fast these days. But one of the things that we did with one of the summits we went to this was a AI K 12 deeper learning summit in Anaheim, is we brought students we brought about a dozen students to the conference. And during some of the keynote, keynotes, you know, they were talking, then they were talking and then they were pontificating, and then talking again, but the students were sitting there thinking, they're talking all about students. And we're right here, like, but like, we're sitting right here, like, you can just, you can just ask us, instead of being like, A, but I think students does it. But students are best this. We're right here. And so that really sparked it. There was no beginning it just sparked. And then it happened, this idea of, hey, why don't we have a student led version of this because the students we had are part of this organization. Organization. Let's, I'll use that term loosely. And it's a group of students in Orange County, that are doing AI work already. So they're building apps, they're building websites, they're they're doing all kinds of really, really interesting things, storytelling, all kinds of stuff. And so these students already have stories to tell they're, they already have experience using AI. And so we said, hey, why don't why don't we do a summit that's for students, by students. So students are doing the keynotes. We have these three incredible young women. We're going to be doing the keynote students, they're going to be leading all the breakout sessions. They're being co facilitated by sometimes industry partners, sometimes their teachers, sometimes some other mentor, and we have 14 breakout sessions, we've got keynote, we've got a little student panel, and then we have, I think it's up to 30. I'm not don't quote me on that. But it's something I guess you're gonna have to quote me on that since I'm on here. But the but but I think we have almost 30 vendors who are actually going to be in the in an exhibitor space. So they're going to be able to walk through and get their little baggies and their little swag and talk to sales reps and all that, just like anybody would do any of us adults would do at a conference like we just did over at ASU GSB. And so it that's, that's the idea. And I think the students are really excited. We are excited and very nervous. Because this as it says, have it done before it came together really, really quickly. There'll be at the JW Marriott at Anime. So yeah, we're pretty excited about it. And

Alexander Sarlin: 13:46

Will people be able to access it either during or after the conference? If they're listening to this? And they aren't able to be at the hotel itself? Who is there going to be access to it? Yeah,

Kunal Dalal: 13:56

so we're gonna be live streaming, live streaming a bunch of the breakout sessions. So you could join right in or you can watch the recording afterwards?

Alexander Sarlin: 14:03

I mean, I really admire one of the first things I think we connected on when we all first met is that that what you just said, Kunal about, they're all of the this is a community right? The AI in education community is wide ranging and one voice we have heard surprisingly little of in this conversation, I think people are starting to recognize this is actual students who are the in many ways, the ones using technology, innovating with the technology, also in the hot seat around making sure that you know school policy affects them positively. And it doesn't get them in trouble and all sorts of things. And there's so many reasons why students voices should be centralized in this world. But But I don't think it's happened that much. There was a AI conference last year run by some college students, also out of California. And that was another really interesting initiative, but I have seen very little of high school of K 12 Students really leading AI work. So I'm incredibly thrilled I can't wait to be at this conference myself. I won't be there physically. But I will be on the live stream every every moment. Wes, I want I want to use that as a segue to your your 100 conversations project. Because I think that's a similar thinking there. It's, you know, how do you get as many voices as many opinions and perspectives in the room at the same time, or at least asynchronously, so that we can truly understand the effect this technology is having on everybody? Tell us about that project and what you learned? Yeah,

Wes Kriesel: 15:29

I think what's interesting about 100 conversations is it's one on one or like, when Kunal is there, it's maybe three of us. And the amount of information you can get from somebody and the amount of space you can allow them to wander and kind of explore their own thinking is very, very different than any type of group setting. So if you want to do a teacher training, go for it. But I've been in professional development for 20 years. And I'll, I'll say that the effects are limited when you have an intention, and a group of 20 or 30. People Oh, shoot, we're just actually talking about education in general, the effects are going to be limited from one person to a group. So my goal is to understand what people were thinking. So I really wanted to do these one on ones. And then shortly into that probably 2025 conversations in, we start asking people like, but what about your students? What about your students? What about your students and we actually met a student named Kieran, Anastasia High School at Costa Mesa, who he he said, chat GP changed my life. And we're like, Okay, say more. And he said, I started in January 2023, asking if he could write me stories about anime, kind of these worlds I was interested in and then he is sort of involved into a creative director saying write me stories. He's spending hours a day. And Kunal asked him like, was there a moment you knew that you're you were different? And he said, It was the day my English teacher gave me a final it was handwritten five paragraph essay I always had. I felt zero imaginations or ability to handle tasks like that in writing. And it's like, I just flew across the paper, a pin on the paper, and I wrote seven paragraphs, not five, I was done in 10 minutes. And that moment, I think, he said, rewired his brain and I think Kunal said, maybe you rewired your confidence. You know, it's an interesting debate, but he said, My vocab increase, because I have more words, like chat. GPT loves words, and so I'm immersed in, but for, for example, Kieran story then propelled us to go well, if you can do that, why can't we ask other students to jump in and start using chat GPT as a reading tutor, so we actually have an AI reading, pilot going on around the county working with small groups of like, fifth graders here, middle schoolers here, ninth graders here, just on the premise that if you tell chat, GPT, what you're interested in, you give it your reading level, and then you just immerse yourself in those stories that are of your design, you have agency and you have kind of buy into that reading. So that's been an incredible outcome. And then the other one really has been classified staff or in some other places, it's maybe called Office professionals, admin assistants. So I've been doing job shadowing and trying to understand what their roles are. And this I would give a shout out to La Habra City School District, the superintendent invited Kunal and I into a future leaders meeting, talking to like groundskeepers classified staff about AI. And from there, we realized we didn't understand their roles completely. So we did Job shadowing, I would have them, ask them to send me their share links from their chat. So I can see kind of a Cognitive Task Analysis, how they're using it. And so we do from that has developed, we do a weekly zoom call called office space, shout out to the movie of that title. And so we have 60 or so secretaries, admin assistants, who are on the list, not all show up every week. But it's a space where we're having this county wide conversation about how to whatever they're struggling with across the county, I guarantee you, if you're in an office, struggling with something, somebody across the way has the same problem and maybe a better workflow. So just trying to connect people who are trying to solve problems. And really, it doesn't sound like I'm talking about AI a lot sounds like I'm just talking about kind of design thinking or, you know, problem solving some sort of human engineering. And it maybe that's true, and we'll see where it goes. But AI has been helpful for a lot of these people just finding out what it can do for them. But

Alexander Sarlin: 19:47

I think that open space, a couple of points really, really, really jumped out to me in what you're saying. One is that idea of having one on one conversations and really going deep with people has a very, very different effect than a bit A high level of group conversation or you know, Kunal, you said earlier, you know, people pontificating around students who are around educators or around staff without actually bringing them into the conversation. So I think that people really, really talking deeply about this very strange moment is is incredibly important and sharing good perspectives. And then I literally get get goosebumps when I hear about this student who starts with an interest and says, I like anime. Tell me more about that. I love anime too, by the way, you know, I made like, tell me more about let's do some fanfiction. Let's let's build some worlds. And then it completely changes their self perception, their academic self efficacy, their ability to confidently tackle an academic task, like a five paragraph essay, like, that's the dream, right? That's the dream of what AI can do for our students and our in our world, right is meet people where they are, what they're interested in, and then get them to be able to empower themselves and get skills and get communication abilities and make something of it. It's like, it's just so such an exciting and you can only get a story like that by having those one on one conversations and really going deep. I that's really powerful. So where can people access some of these people who are not in the county in the OSI? Are any of these published everywhere? We talked about the the summit, but your 100 conversations initiative? Like? Are you planning on putting that out in the world? Yeah.

Wes Kriesel: 21:27

So Alex, we have a website, Orange juice.ai. So some of the stories are there, the link to the podcast is there. Originally, the goal was to take all the transcripts because everything's audio recorded, take the transcripts, and then use an LLM to kind of look for trends. And that is still the the goal. However, the trends were pretty obvious is that kind of middle management positions, were not acting, they were kind of listening and waiting. And so that was kind of the big trend. So we started ed tech leaders network, that was one of the outcomes is that we have a monthly meeting of all the EdTech directors, coordinators, ptosis, just to hear each other and kind of do problems of practice. So yes, though, check the website. And that's

Alexander Sarlin: 22:15

orange juice like orange juice.ai. That's your that's simple as that. And that's the name of the summit as well, right? The orange juice AI Summit.

Kunal Dalal: 22:24

So the summit is called the I think it's now called Student AI convening. That's what we're calling it, but it's on OSHA's website. It was one of the tabs over there. Yep.

Alexander Sarlin: 22:33

Gotcha. Yeah. And as always, we will put links to all you know, we put these links in the show notes for this episode. Hopefully, we will do our best to get this episode out before the summit. So people can hear this and go to it, we were gonna scramble to do that. But if we don't, you can still go there and see the recordings and see some of these initiatives, because it's really, really, really exciting. Can I want to I want to double click on one aspect of this that I think some of our listeners might be interested in, which is, you mentioned early on, I think you are two of the only people in the entire country who are have a sort of AI specific role in education system. I think in the future, there will be many such roles. But there are not that many. So far. I'm curious about where you think the world is going and how listeners to this podcast might go about sort of accelerating that in their own context. And if they're an educator trying to focus on AI, if they're an administrator, trying to move into a role like yours, if they're a tech person, you know, how can they help school districts begin to embrace AI the way that Orange County already has?

Kunal Dalal: 23:40

Yeah, I mean, what a what a complete? What an immense question with no real answer, right. Like, I think we're starting to kind of prototype answers at this point. Right. Like, and I think, you know, first off the role. Yes, it is a unique role. We have not found anybody who is yet in this space. I 100%. Expect that. I hope that will change over the summer, I expect it to. And so what this role has offered is for I think, a for all the school districts who are in Orange County, at tech leaders, teachers and all that it's a visual sign the county office, that is unique to the to the country, I think elevates a elevates AI, but also elevates the entire idea what innovation might look like coming from a county office and therefore, what it might look like at a district level and therefore what it might look like at a site level. And so there's the symbolism of it. But also there's this western I have a certain freedom being at the county office, that a lot of folks who would be embedded in a district do not have in California, my guess is this is similar in many states, the counties don't make policy for districts, districts have their own school board, they've got their own superintendents, they've got their own parent bodies, they make their own rules. And then we as county office come in and support where we can. And so that gives Western AI a fair bit of freedom. To not feel like we have to set up a bunch of rules, we have to set up a bunch of policies, we can actually come into places and inform almost in a consulting role, but then also, when needed, go in as one on one trainers or group trainers, and all of that. And so it's offered this this real wraparound kind of space. And also, I was talking to a couple people in the hallway, their issue, and they said, Oh, your job site title sounds so cool. So what is it? You do? And you know, we do so many things. But it's can sometimes feel a little incoherent because AI is incoherent right now. Right? And so it can sometimes feel like that. But then I saw one of our edtech directors walking down the hallway, and I was like Jordan Gerardo, come here, come here. Can you tell these people what I do? I'm having a hard time figuring out how to describe that how to how to capsulate that. And so he said, and it was very, it was very uplifting to hear how he described it. He said, What was it I do is we build out and support networks of folks who are actually insights and in district offices and in classrooms, we make the space for them to all come together, we help lead discussions or just give space for them to lead discussions. Again, we have more time to actually keep up with AI, for lack of a better way to say it than folks who are in the district. And so we can we can bring things to them, we can tell them our insights and all that, but it's up to them. So we build we create space for that network. And then the thing that I think really affected me, as he said, and you to bring the human element, every time you bring the humanity of teaching back into these meetings and back into the AI conversation all the time. And I think that's something that Wes and I pride ourselves on is centering the human AI is just a giant mirror on our humanity. Right. And we are learning more about what it means to be human through AI than I think we have in a lot of things. And so that's that's a lens that again, we have the freedom to explore. And so that's that's what we get to do. You

Alexander Sarlin: 27:22

can hear it. And the way both of you talk about your initiatives is that you know, he it's student centered, it's educator centered, it's staff centered, it's and the idea of making space for the conversations, I think is so important right now, and something that is not often, you know, mandated or supported. And that's why I mean, to your point before Wes about why people feel siloed. And they're like, I'm not sure exactly what to make of this. Is it just me that doesn't know what to make of this? Or does everybody not know, and if the space isn't made to have that vulnerability, everybody stays siloed? And does it at their own pace, which is wildly different, or ignores it or is afraid of it? And so I think that description is really valuable. And I think that concept is really valuable right now, let's talk about this sort of bringing the conversation together piece because it you know, it is something that is clearly a through line of your work that humanity and the space for conversation. I feel like I'm trying to do that as well, in my own way, right, bring together all these different perspectives. If you could say, three things, I'm gonna go for three. And I'll we'll go back and forth there both of you three things that you feel like have surprised you about this work since you started the role. What were you expecting that didn't come to light or the opposite? What what sort of popped up and made you feel like, oh, okay, there's a real there there. We did not see that coming. I'm curious what your reaction is to a question like that.

Wes Kriesel: 28:48

I think it was the first week I started the job. We went out to lunch and somebody asked what are three pillars or three words that guide you? And I was like storytelling, inclusion and innovation. And so when we started the podcast quickly, I realized I wanted not just me, not just Kunal, but I wanted other voices and not and not just guess. One of the things I found out by interviewing CTOs is they felt like there was just a lack of voices around AI, including like no CTO focused AI podcast. So we recruited to IT staff from local districts, and worked out an MOU so that they can come and host every other episode is Jeremy and Alex. And not only are they like we're more ed tech, we're more Educational Administrators. Not only are they like site techs and network analysts, so you have that Jeremy's Mexican American Alex is African American I'm why canals Indian American. So and then our student interns mark is lack Finn is Polish American. His first language is Polish in our Congress sessions I have been blown away about my need not to say anything. Like, when I just hear them go at it, I'm like this. This is the best. And because you have this kind of rich mix, and then it's we have 16 year olds. Alex's. I'm gonna say mid 20s not going to ask her exact age, Jeremy says 30s, Kunal 40s, I'm in my 50s. Like, you have this crazy cross intergenerational, where it's interesting what the students will say. And we always joke Kunal and I, we call ourselves the analog elders, like we really came from a land where there was no digital. And so this cross generational approach is we need to replicate that in more spaces. And usually, we have sort of kind of a siloed generational thing happening. And again, that's another way of saying the importance of student voices. But it's also classified, it's also people in different sectors within the education system. So most amazing thing has been letting a rich mix exist. And there's probably a bad pun, but it's like fertilizer, you know, just to get in the rich earth and let things grow organically.

Kunal Dalal: 31:18

One of the things that surprised me, and it's, it's sort of dawned on me more in the last month or two months or so, is how critical families and parents are to this process. And I know that sounds that to me, when I say that out loud, it sounds obvious that I should have been thinking this all along. When we talk about school, we talk about education, we never downplay the importance of the community and of family and of, of organizations like that. But I published this little, almost pamphlet type thing last year called the AI parent, just talking about how AI was helping me in parenting. And it was just like, a super basic thing. Oh, I'm using chat up to here. I'm making some images with my kid, that kind of stuff. But more recently, with this debate about AI in schools, it's really dawned on me. And I know, Wes is it's like Wes, and I are going to be leading some parents stuff here in Orange County soon. But it's really dawned on us that if we can actually rather than stressing so hard about AI being this gotta get it right in schools, we've got to get right in the schools, we have to get it right in the schools. What if we step back and actually said, Wait, what can we do to actually build AI empowerment and fluency, in homes, in communities. And if parents are using it, if families are using AI, you know, just things like, hey, let's do a weekly meal plan on Sunday. And let's sit down on Sunday, everybody take a picture of what's in the what's in the pantry, what's in the fridge, go on to AI and go create a weekly meal plan, let's sit down around a dinner table on Sunday, and let's work out a meal plan. Or like some of these kinds of counseling conversations that we talked about emotional support a lot of opportunities there for family, just like Family Growth, right ways to talk to one another. And then, you know, I wonder if families start to talk about AI and use it as a partner in family life, then that might actually depressurize this whole conversation around AI in schools, because we know AI is happening at home. And we know we're not taking away AI from students. And of course, we'd have to work out how we're going to build out resources. So everyone can, everyone can equitably get this. But that actually seems less of a lift for me, when I think about it than it does to figure out how to recreate this entire behemoth structure of education around AI and having to be so focused on making sure that schools are the place where these young folks are being educated in AI. So that's something that was surprising to me. I mean, I knew that it was relevant, but I didn't it especially with how heated this debate is and how long it's been dragging out. It really is more and more clear to me that actually let's let's go a little bit even more fundamental than, than that.

Alexander Sarlin: 34:10

When I hear you talk about the role of families and home, you know, Home Access in this, it brings me back to the early days of internet when online learning or search or you know, just the ability to is like feels like ancient times. But like, you know, the ability to use the internet for education was just starting to take off and I think that didn't start in schools. It didn't it started at home. It started with access to at least among many people. It started with access to the internet at home. Then it started going into schools in a very, you know, structured and safe way i don't know I'm sure the two of you remember the WebQuest days of education. And then what happened as to your point Kunal is we created a little bit of a quote unquote digital divide. Then there was a lot of work to do broadband initiatives and make sure people could actually get it at home. and all that stuff. So I guess my question coming out of that is, if we are at this sort of tipping point this pressurized, you said it is pressurized it needs depressurization. If we're at the sort of pressurized moment where we're this is what I feel it at ASU and was what it feels talking to a lot of AI innovators. It's this precious moment where I think there's a there's a time period where education can the education and edtech field can sort of convince the world that AI is positive externalities outweigh its negative externalities, that it's worth it. And I think one of the things that is so interesting about all of your work is that you're working with students, you're working with educators, you're working with school staff, you're working with district administrators, you're you're creating space for those conversations, you're working with parents, as you just said, and my take has been that if enough people really love and are excited by AI, that when bad things start to happen. And the school start to say, You know what, maybe we shouldn't be doing this here. There's enough positive will and enough positive use cases, and people are excited about enough about it to say, even though these things are possible, let's still work it out. Rather than throwing out the baby with the bathwater. It's sort of an alternative scenario to what you just posited. kridel I'm curious what the two of you think about that, like, do you think that there is going to be a sort of backlash moment, and the type of work that you're doing is going to help smooth the path to not, you know, really putting the brakes on AI in school hard? Wes, let me start with you with that one.

Wes Kriesel: 36:35

Sure. There's been a couple of headlines recently, following some AI, nude image generations. And the, you know, I have a Google alert for Orange County and AI. So I see these, and the headlines are really, really misleading. And, and so that's they're saying things like schools are not prepared, when in fact, schools have been dealing with students doing inappropriate things with technology, since it came out. A colleague of mine says, you know, students, when we gave them pencils, they drew naked pictures. They're classmates. And so do we ban? Do we ban the pencils? So there's, there's this already the the interest in the public eye is to go, oh, no, what's going wrong? Because that's, you want to know that so you can protect your loved ones and protect your community? And I don't have a perfect answer. I do think though, there is a spirit of playfulness that I think AI allows us to get into where you can actually use it for some interesting initial experiences. Like the even the the things that can all talks about as AI, parent book, story generation image generation, even talking about doing that with your family members, is something that we've really not done in that tech trainings, we're always talking about need to get Google certified or Apple certified. And it's how well you know the tool. And in these cases, we're actually talking about relationships. And so that's a playful space. It's a trusting space. And so the more we can talk about how AI can improve our relationships, that's one way to sort of ground the conversation in humanity, if you will, you know, I just saw on social media another shout out to La Habra City School District, which is actually where I am right now. The superintendent was doing some sort of like, you know, if the kids raised enough funds for, you know, charity, he would do a slime dump over his head. And so you know, he's, he's there on the field, and all the kids are cheering, and he's having the slime dumped on him. And, and so, in that case, like, that's a good analogy of how I see is like, we have to get dirty, we have to be a little bit foolish, we have to be a little bit clownish because we're, we're leading others by our example. And if we're all like doom and gloom, I don't think that's an accurate picture of how to live life. And so the scary thing is, we don't really know what the future is going to be. But that's always been the case. And so you basically choose the character you want to play in this moment. And so I think being playful being joyful, using humor, and just being experimental and trying to bring people into that space is going to win more people over. But it's, it's a vulnerable position. I

Kunal Dalal: 39:33

think to add on to that we talked about, there's so many different ways that we want to talk about AI in education, good, bad, negative, oh, focus on this focus on that, oh, we can't do this until we have an ethics document or policy document. And if you're not doing it that way, then you're doing it wrong, and you're making things unsafe and, and there's so many different takes and so many different ways in which folks who are leading this work or even adjacent to this work, are thinking and often I see a sense of I see this antagonistic look at someone who's not doing it exactly the way you're doing it who doesn't have the exact lens that you have. And in fact, I think that in a moment like this, where we're talking about education, right, we're talking about, the biggest thing for all of us, human learning is probably the most central thing to being a human, our brains are so big, that we can't hold them up when we're born. Like, our brains are so big that our skull has to collapse on itself to get out the birth canal. That's how big our brains are. And so thinking and learning is our thing. That's, that is our thing. And so in this space, where we're redefining learning, redefining the most fundamental thing about us. It, I think it's actually rather than sit here and decide, you know, what the right thing way to do it or wrong way to do it is, I actually think it's really important for all of us to appreciate that we all inhabit different spaces in building up this organism, that some of us have a different perspective, we might say, hey, focus on this focus on that, I might say something completely different. But we're still parts of the same organism, we're still we still have something to learn from another. And some of those might live in tension with one another. But I think that's a good tension, like at this point with something this big, we have to have productive tension. Because if we don't, then likely, it's going to look like it's looked in the past where power interests are going to just like rollover, the less privileged and the less resource. But in order for that to not happen, we have got to stop trying to like, say other people are doing it wrong. Oh, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. But no, no, hold on. We don't know anything about this. We know nothing about this is the first time we're redoing education since like the 1800s. So let's listen to everyone. And we're all part of the same organism.

Alexander Sarlin: 41:49

That's a really interesting comment. Yeah, I part of the same organism. I feel like that a lot these days in ad tech. That's

Kunal Dalal: 41:58

what you do. Alex, that's what you do. You bring the organism organism together. So I appreciate that. Exactly.

Alexander Sarlin: 42:04

And it's like, you know, you have all these different, especially right now you have literally hundreds of Ed Tech, and AI companies and startups. And then you have all the other ed tech incumbents, the the canvases and the Pearsons. And the Cahoots and quizlets, you know, that are incorporating AI Duolingo, you know, jet AI and other kinds of ai ai tutors like as fast as possible. It's like, the entire ed tech ecosystem is sort of, like a macrophytes, like embracing AI trying to get its head around it. And I'm, I'm really excited about this as a moment. I am personally also nervous about the sort of dichotomous media narrative, like I think you both sort of mentioned that. We know that there's a million perspectives that there's a million different options of what AI in the classroom even means. And it's been in the classroom for years and Google, you know, sweet, but because it's so new, I think there's this sort of feeling of like, you know, AI was out when it started in schools where they were like, it's a cheating tool, it's out, we ban it, then few months later, oh, it's in, it's the future. We're into it. And now I think that the needle sort of swinging somewhere in the middle, and I look at it, and I'm like, I just really want us as an industry, both the techies and the founders, and the administrators and the superintendents and educators to find a way to at least keep it on the positive side of the ledger, because man things are going to come. And I mean, I think your point, Wes, about the pencils, you know, you give some you give somebody a pencil, they're gonna draw naked pictures. And certainly when the internet went into schools, that was a primary concern for all the right reasons. It's like, it's really about narrative to me, it's not about the actual truth. I mean, the truth is, this stuff is here for good. And it's going to be used in a gazillion different ways. But the narrative I feel like we have to own I'm curious how the two of you think about your role in helping shape the national narrative, not just within Orange County, the national narrative of AI in education, especially with the kind of work you're doing with like the students summit and your other publications? I want to ask both of you this, but but but Wes, let me start with you.

Wes Kriesel: 44:12

Yeah, I think it goes back to inclusion, working with classified staff office admin, working with students, trying to make sure we're looking at the diversity of voices from race and ethnicity perspective, talking about using these tools in our different jobs. We have to be stocked up on stories from multiple perspectives. I can't go in and say, well, in this one district, we did this one thing, like I have to be ready to go and that means I have to be with people sitting side by side. Like right now I'm with a fifth grade class and we're doing their part of our AI summit, but they're presenting on VR Oculus quest, and I'm talking with English learners about how do you see this and Acting you're learning. And they're going to be in front of seventh through 12th graders and why, why it's a seventh through 12th grade conference on AI? Well, these students, this is where they're entering. And this is where they're going to be part of the conversation. And we've used chat GPT. And every session I've had with them to help get ideas to help do warm up questions. And I'm making AI a part of their experience, even though they're kind of onboarding, they're on an on ramp into this larger conversation. But they're going to be informing us. And I, I want that conversation to start early. I think one of the takeaways from Ethan Malik's book was kind of invite AI to everything that was a good tip. And one of I would say the promising practices here is when a district says we're going to put it on every leadership agenda, we will play with the tool, we will talk about it every time we meet that smart and I think that's part of us, continuing to be responsible for this the way the narrative shapes you can't, you can't go to sleep on this for a day.

Kunal Dalal: 46:06

No, you can't not even not even for like an afternoon it feels like at this point. But like, it's when we're thinking about the narrative that obviously like second everything Wes just said, and then I'd add that there's like this, I feel like there's competing narratives, right? And this is part of our society, right? Like we have a capitalist society where we're sort of the ideas and everything are in, in a marketplace. And they can they can feel competitive. And certainly in the AI education space. LinkedIn has been one of those like competitive town squares, almost of like, whose ideas are going to get out. And at the same time, when you read everybody's ideas, you get this incredible, I think this really wide, vast swath of what is happening, you see what teachers are talking about, you see what administrator talking about, you see what that tech leaders are talking about old school ml machine learning, like computer scientists that have been doing this for 30 years. Like there's so many incredible perspectives. And for me, the net that is the narrative, the narrative is that this has involved us so deeply, that we are all taught, you can't walk down the street and there won't be people talking about AI, right, which I thought was going to be the case last summer because I was so obsessed with it. But but you know, Now certainly it's the case, like last year, when I was telling my mom that I'm publishing this AI parent book, she was like, What? What is What are you even talking about? And now she's like, I think you did a good job. Good job getting in on that. We had NBC come into westernize office to just do a little piece on on the work that we're doing. And when they came in, they did the story. Cool, cool. And afterwards, I was at home with my son. And they told us what was going to come on. So I turned the TV on. And there there's less and I on the news. And you know, my boy, He's four years old, he did not care about Western AI on TV, the only thing he said was Uncle West is way taller than you. And I was like, yes, yes, he is. And it's also the angle of the camera. I'm not totally short. But yes. But what he did say is the second they said AI, he just smashed his head toward me. And he was like, Bobby, we do AI, I do AI I'm good at AI. And I was like, you are really good at AI. Because of all the little things that we do here and there with him. All the little things that he actually kind of shares with me, because sometimes he's like, Hey, can we get on and like, I just thought of something. And, and so that to me, when I saw him, I looked at him and I think his head is not first going to go to the negative uses of AI. His his his mind is likely not going to go to a place where he's like, Oh, I'm going to bully somebody with this, oh, I'm going to find some way to get over on somebody with this. He is thinking of it as as joyful, as West as playful space. And if that can be the narrative that this is a joyful, playful space with the recognition that boy do we got to think about safety, because this thing can get out of hand really quickly. And we got to think about all those other pieces, but lead with joy. And then I think joy will follow. I don't know. Yeah, I

Alexander Sarlin: 49:22

go if I hear you both saying playful, integrated into our lives, you know, invited to everything part of our daily existence and relevant to a wide swath of stakeholders. It's not English language learners, school staff. You mentioned groundskeepers, like, I really think that you're onto something very, very core there. And it's, what's great about it is it wouldn't have been my answer. I think you're onto something that I would never have come up with on my own, which is the way to make AI feel acceptable and inclusive and exciting and not, you know, more good than bad to use my metaphor. Earlier is to make it feel joyful and make it feel like everybody's there. And everybody's getting something out of it. And it's fun that my favorite thing I think I saw at all of ASU at the air shows this use case that one of the vendors had made with a with a teacher, where they basically created an escape room in from inside the human body, where you're in the body. And you have to find your way out of the body through some natural orifice. And of course, it's you know, interactive, it's choose your own adventure, and everything is generated in real time. And I was like, That is playful that's like that. To me. That's like the definition of a playful use of AI. So yeah, I get it. And I feel like you're, you're shifting my thinking as well. Let's talk about you know, I know that AI is on your minds all the time. But let's get nuanced here, we always end our interviews with two questions. And the first is what is the most exciting trend, and specifically kind of coming trends, something that people might not already have their eye on? What's the most exciting coming trend that you see in the EdTech landscape right now? But I'm gonna challenge you both to you know, obviously, you're not just gonna say, AI. What is something that you sort of spotted? And you're like, oh, nobody's talking about that yet. Even the Twitterati, even the LinkedIn, you know, everybody talking on LinkedIn, like, what's something that you think from your particular perspective, you're like, ooh, that's, that's something that I've heard very little about. But I think it's growing. Either of you could start there. I know. That's a it's a tall order question.

Wes Kriesel: 51:27

So one of the things that I have been thinking about is creating immersive environments with text to 3d, or text to 360. So we just invest in some apple vision Pro, obviously, I'm working with this group student group here with VR at La Habra. But the idea that when you see Surah, and you go, okay, I can go text the video, like I know, text to immersive environment that I can access through 3d headset is, is here it's imminent, and having it's kind of like we say, like your, your coding schools, your coding academies, need to completely stop and have a, you know, a moment of silence for coding, because you really, you really are now talking to computer and natural language. And so your students can your third graders can say, make me an app that does this using Python. And it's it's, it's a different game. So I'm thinking our students, as they're developing language, they are generating immersive environments that they can put each other in. But it's a collaborative space. That's the one thing that is I think people always think the metaverse is individual and you're isolated, and you're disappearing into your own individuality. And I say nobody really, really wants that people want to be socializing. And so creating immersive environments with each other for each other.

Alexander Sarlin: 52:53

That is so cool. I imagine a, like a classroom where you know, 12 different students, students are studying different countries. And what they do as the project is, each one of them takes the rest into the country. They're like, Okay, we're gonna go to Russia. We're gonna go to South Africa. Let's go look at Brazil, and they guide them through. I mean, wow, now we're talking like real sci fi. That's exciting stuff. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. No, how about you?

Kunal Dalal: 53:17

Yeah, I think I mean, I'll give you one exciting thing. And one concerning thing, I think, an exciting Well, there's probably a lot of both of those. But I think one exciting thing that I think a lot of folks who are steeped in AI are talking about but I did not I barely saw any of at airshow or ASU GSB is agents and AI agents, they already exist, but like, but in the term in the probably near term, we're looking at potentially public access to AI models being able to create fairly sophisticated agents. I mean, Devin already exists, but that's like a very caseville specific agent. But I'm talking about like, in your own LLM experience, your your your Chatbot is able to sort of self propagate agents, and be able to build out a robust kind of research and get job done structure that will make kind of this single line of chat, LLM look a little bit, you know, babies and diapers. And so. So that's something that I'm it's exciting, right? Because it's what are the what are the possibilities there, they just took the possibilities that we have right now. And now you've magnified it by however many orders of magnitude. And so students will be able to get things done, get advice, be able to actually have the AI agents debate one another and be able to learn things that they will never be able to learn otherwise. So I'm excited by that. But on the on the flip side, I don't think that we as educators talk enough about what that means for the workplace and what that means for this future that we're, we're preparing our students for. We are still talking about standards that were developed a century ago. And we but we are also talking about a workplace where when AI agents become ubiquitous and likely first gonna go to the people who have the most, you know, obviously have the most funds and are able to actually pay for how much it's going to cost to make these agents go. What does that mean for our students? What does that mean for what we're teaching them? And I was a little bit disappointed at ASU GSB, that I wasn't in any session where that sort of larger ended and it is almost an existential question. And I think, I think that's appropriate, our system built on capitalist productivity is going to be completely upended by artificial intelligence agents. And as we continue this process of our students learning, are we asking, learning for what are we asking that question enough? And I don't know that we are. Yeah.

Alexander Sarlin: 55:53

I don't know what Devin is. Can you tell me what that is? Oh,

Kunal Dalal: 55:56

yeah. So yeah, Devin. So end to end software agent, where you just text in, hey, I need, I need a YouTube video done about this, or I need a video or I need, it's actually software. So it's coding. So it's more like I need a script written for this to create this workflow. You can give Devin a listing from like Upwork, or any one of those, any one of those sort of like contract sites, and it will literally read the description on Upwork. And go through the entire process and have the product done at the end. And you didn't have to talk to it at all, you can talk to it. And what's another amazing thing about Devin, is it, it gives you status updates. So it'll tell you oh yeah, I'm working on this. I'm working on that. And so it's it's it's impressive. It's again, it's only for one thing, it's just for writing software right now, which is no small thing. But this is going to be they're going to these, this is going to exist in FinTech, this is going to exist in banking, this is going to exist in in medical, I mean, it's going to be everywhere. And and so what are we doing? Fantastic

Alexander Sarlin: 56:58

point. And you're I didn't see much about that as your show to John Bailey, who is sort of an ad tech veteran put out a deck recently. And one thing jumped out to me from it. That reminds me of what you're saying, which he said that you know, it the Google paradigm, right? The internet search paradigm is what why do you go to Google Google acts like a librarian, basically, right? You tell it what you're interested in, and it finds resources for you. And you know, that was miraculous, you know, unbelievably miraculous. But to your point, AI is not a search engine, it can be used as a search engine. But you can create personas and roles for almost anything, you know, coders, project managers, teachers, tutors, you know, anything, you could create a team around, you be like, you know, I want to reach you know, I want to do this project, I'm going to play this role. And here, I'm going to make three other roles that I'll do this as a team for me. And it seems like so relevant to everything you're saying about, you know, the future of the workforce, because that's what the workforce will probably be like, too. And the power of AI that I don't think we've even really begun to get our heads around our I'll say that for myself, I haven't begun to get my head around it. Because it is really exciting. It's like if Google's librarian, these LLM 's are everybody else, anybody? Yeah,

Kunal Dalal: 58:11

we call it the messy mindset. When we teach it Western AI, we say Google mindset versus the messy mindset, Google mindset. We've been 20 years indoctrinated into a space where shortest number of keywords pithy, like figure out how to get all that. And of course, you're also infused with the worry of too much SEO and you're not going to get authentic results. Whereas generative is generative, right, so like be a little messy. It's actually generative AI works really well, if you don't fully know what you're looking for my

Alexander Sarlin: 58:38

my big epiphany moment with MLMs. Whereas when I started researching what we build, we're calling like the perfect prompt. And the perfect prompt included telling y'all to ask you as many questions as it needs to so that it understands what you're actually looking for. And I realized that that was the moment when a might when this sort of messy mindset idea clicked in for me, I'm like, Oh, right. You don't even need to know what you want to start talking to this thing. You can add, you can just start brainstorming. Hey, I'm thinking about this. And it's like, Oh, interesting. What about Yeah,

Wes Kriesel: 59:12

it's crazy. So a great parallel or touchstone to that is our student Kiran, who said, I changed my life by learning to read and write better with Chet GPT. We had a follow up lunch with him when we said, Okay, we're going to do this reading pile with other students kind of break down how you get started. And he says, Well, I always do character building. And I always say, chat, GPT asked me 20 Yes, or no questions about this character that I am about to start with. And we're like, Shut the front door. Because what happens is, is I take my phone and I turn on voice chat mode. And when I'm with the pilot group of students, I say, here's what Karen did. We're going to do it and I pass my phone around and they just they answer the question about is your character may Male or female to your character have a small family does your character have a pet? And you see all of them lean into the parts of the story. They're that they're building. But I tell them, I said, you're putting the cognitive load on the Chatbot. Because we're all going to create a story. But we don't have to be faced with this blank page anymore. And so you see, the students just gravitate to that structure when you present it and why yes, no questions is because we can do it quickly and build more efficiently. But there's, they see quickly, there's, there's so many ways to work with this. And it's just, you know, like, a genius like, you're here. And he just said, I'm going to I'm going to make it work for me.

Alexander Sarlin: 1:00:40

Yeah. Yeah. You turn around the relationship. Yeah, you say, This is what I want. Now, you helped me figure out how to make it happen, rather than you know, I have to figure out what I want. And we're gonna give me an answer. That's it's so different. I wish we had more time. I wish we had more time. We this is so much fun. You should all come back. And everybody should check out orange juice that AI and the summit. Hopefully this is in the future as you're hearing this, but if not, it will surely be a consistent event. Last Last Last Last Last question. What is a resource you would recommend you would you recommend for somebody who wants to dive deeper into the topics we discussed today? Kunal, let me start with you. Our blog,

Kunal Dalal: 1:01:18

I'll plug my blog, again. We've got a lot of good stuff. There are, as you said, AI, but I think also, this is this is a massive question, because there's so much stuff, how do you keep up with AI? Like, what what does that even what does that actually even me, because AI world is now moving at the speed of AI, not human speed. And so there is no real meaningful way that anyone can can really keep up. And so I actually shift the question around like resource as being a self resource. And I know that sounds corny, but I think that the people who are keeping up are the people who are keeping their own Northstar aligned and keeping their own values intact, keeping their own, who they believe is important and who what they believe is important, intact. And then going out and figuring like and then going out to, you can go to even molecule blog, you can go to, to our website, you can go to made a bigger steps, prop library, there's a lot of resources like that. But for me, the biggest resource is yourself. AI is a huge mirror. As we said, it is gonna lead to literal, existential questions about yourself. You've got to hold yourself tight. You gotta give yourself a hug. Because that's that's sort of what AI that's what AI is doing for us.

Alexander Sarlin: 1:02:38

I totally agree. Yeah. I mean, you got to know what you want. People ask me about graduate school. That's always my advice. Go in knowing what you want. Don't expect them to tell you what you want. What are you going to want to learn? Go in knowing what you want. If you stay true to what you care about, then they'll fill in the rest. But if you go in blank, it'll stay blank because you need it. I don't know what to do. How about us, please? Yes.

Wes Kriesel: 1:03:00

So I'm gonna go with a book recommendation that is fiction. And it is Clara in the sun by Kazuo Ishiguro and Anaheim Union High School Superintendent recommended that to me, I listened to it on audio and it is deals with artificial friends and a family dynamic. And I just think it's a way to look at our own world without looking at our own world. So it's, it's very helpful. I'm an English background. So you know, I'm gonna recommend a fiction book.

Alexander Sarlin: 1:03:30

Fantastic recommendation. I love that. But I love that author and that book as well. Yeah, I yeah, yes. Very enlightening. My father loved it, too. I got a recommendation to read that from my dad. And now we both love it. Fantastic. Thank you both so much Kunal Dalal and Wes Kriesel. We really appreciated you being here with us today on Edtech Insiders.

Kunal Dalal: 1:03:52

Absolutely. It's been our pleasure.

Alexander Sarlin: 1:03:55

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