I had the wonderful opportunity to make a return visit to one of my favorite places, PITSCO, for a new collaborative project. Educators, PITSCO employees, and college students preparing to become educators made their way to the PITSCO campus for a two day event focused on Artificial Intelligence.
This Artificial Intelligence Ideation Summit was a chance for me to push my thinking, be challenged in my own thoughts, and connect with people from various backgrounds to improve education and our understanding of what needs to be done to prepare our current students for the world of 2030. The goal of this post is not designed to share all my new insights in AI because I am actually devoting the month of February to AI on my blog, but I will tell you that AI is something that we must all begin to understand and process so we understand the implications AI has on our personal lives and the educational world.
What I want to focus on is something that I believe needs to happen more in education. We need more opportunities such as this to bring in various people with various backgrounds with various expertise together so that we can all benefit and improve our thinking and understanding of the world. For example, much of the work we did during this time was in our teams. We were assembled into 5 teams that contained educators, PITSCO employees(from IT to sales to curriculum to portfolio and everything in between), and college students. Collectively we had to work together to come up with 20 ideas that could be infused into the educational landscape. Brainstorming is not always difficult and this was not hard either, but the next step of taking these ideas down to 3-5 and then developing a pitch around them really brought us together. As we vetted each idea, each member brought in insights from our backgrounds that benefitted everyone.
I found it empowering to see how important all of us are to allow education to thrive. We need the teacher voice to bring in the realities of the classroom that those of us who are not in the classroom cannot comprehend. We need the curriculum specialists to let us know what has been created, what is missing, and how the ideas could come to life. We need the production crew to let us know what all goes into manufacturing and producing the ideas. We need the voices of those excited to teach to remind us of the joys and energy we all had as we entered education for the first time. In the end, we all were reminded that we are in these jobs for the same reason – to enhance education for students so that they can be ready for the future.
I thought to myself time and time again how important it is for me to expand my conversations to people outside of education to keep a pulse on things happening outside the education bubble. As I have conducted several interviews for my AI series I am reminded of how much is happening that I need to bridge to education. It really helps us see the world in new ways.
Bigger picture – these conversations should be happening with everyone all the time. Despite being more connected than ever before, people live, think, and talk in silos. We sit in arenas with like minded people. We need to branch out. We need to expand. We need to have our ideas pushed and pulled. This is what makes us better humans. This summit reminded me that I need to do a better job of this in my personal life and in my job. I have the opportunity to create these types of situations and I have now made it a goal to myself to make it happen.
In closing, as I have stated in previous posts about my travels to PITSCO, I am reminded about the importance of treating people right. Make people feel like they belong. Treat them like extended family. Do the right thing. If you do these things, then you will be amazed at what comes out of the minds of people who feel safe, supported, and belonging.
And more importantly, I cannot wait to begin to share all that I have learned in AI as it has really shifted my thinking for the future. Thank you PITSCO and the local college for bringing us to gather to collaborate, connect, critically think about tough topics in a creative platform through hands on immersion that allowed us to leave a better person and educator. As I type this previous sentence this should be the experience all students experience in their classrooms and I look forward to continuing my work to find ways to make this happen.
Leave a Reply