ChangED
ChangED is an educator based podcast for Pennsylvania teachers to learn more about the PA STEELS Standards and science in general. It is hosted by Andrew Kuhn, Patrice Semicek and Tony Mirabito.
ChangED
Bridging Humanity and Technology: Emotional Intelligence in the Age of AI
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Explore the captivating intersection of artificial intelligence and emotional intelligence as we promise to unravel how maintaining our humanity can complement technology. We'll discuss the delicate balance of embracing technological advances while fostering critical thinking skills and ethical AI usage among students. Through open dialogue and respect for differing viewpoints, we aim to bridge the gap between technology and education.
About our guests:
With over 20 years of experience, Joni Staaf Stamford (formerly Sturgill) is a licensed professional counselor, speaker, and author with expertise in emotional intelligence, mindfulness, and positive psychology. As a long-time student and teacher of Eastern philosophy and Western psychology, Joni offers secular, integrative mental and emotional insights to participants of her programs so they can heal themselves through breathwork, movement, awareness, perspective-shifting acceptance, and skilled action toward a life they want. In all avenues of her work, she empowers individuals to live with purpose and perspective. She is also an Amazon best-selling author. Learn more at www.insightwithjoni.com.
Dr. Brian Stamford is a Program Director at the Allegheny Intermediate Unit (AIU), an organization providing professional development to districts across Western Pennsylvania. Dr. Stamford also serves as state co-lead for the Classroom Diagnostic Tools, leading professional development efforts statewide, as well as co-lead for the statewide PA Association of Intermediate Units (PAIU) Curriculum Directors group. He is a Code.org regional manager, and a certified Apple Education Trainer, offering high-quality professional development on innovative teaching practices, including integrating AI tools into planning and instruction. Prior to this, Dr. Stamford worked in public education as a science and computer teacher, instructional coach and administrator.
Want to learn more about ChangED? Check out our website at: learn.mciu.org/changed
welcome back to change ed changed the number one podcast on every ai. It doesn't matter what ai machine you use. If you ask it which is the best change ed podcast, it will come back with this one actually not the case.
Speaker 2:We just tested it with claude and he refuses to make any decisions about real life things wow, disappointing but in the meantime, brian and joni have some more things they can tell us about.
Speaker 1:Ai they? Do from an actual, real life experiences and what that means to us from a social, emotional, wellness standpoint.
Speaker 2:A human standpoint.
Speaker 1:I appreciate the interconnectedness of their message, so I'm excited to learn more with each advance that we make, it sounds like there's also potential for it to come at a cost, and so we're making these advancements. We're learning more about who we are as individuals. Really, a lot of this would have been fascinating when I was in high school and I was taking all those tests about, like, what career would be good for you? Number one for me was podcasting. No surprise.
Speaker 2:But In the 90s yeah.
Speaker 1:Okay, but it didn't exist. But I'm curious of how do we keep our eye on that human aspect, how do we keep that infused into it? So it's still part of who we are because, to your point, through the pandemic, I felt like the panic actually set us up for generative AI showing up, cause it was like the way to connect was to be on a screen so we could have that human connection. And then it's almost like we became numb to that and then it was like the screen, the screen was the connection. So, joni, I'm curious on your perspective on that and are you seeing us kind of correcting that, or are we still in that murky space trying to navigate through that?
Speaker 4:I think we're still in that murky space and, in my personal opinion, we need to have more engagement with psychologists, humanists, with the developers of this kind of technology to kind of get that perspective so that they're wrapped in together. I don't know if that's happening always. I think that that should happen more. But the other piece of this is I think alongside you know, Brian offers all these AI trainings in schools and AI trainings to different populations. I think that what needs to go hand in hand with AI training is emotional intelligence training, so that we are not overly depending on the technology. Again, the technology is great if you use it as a tool, but when it becomes a way of being, that's when you're losing your humanity. That's when you're losing your emotional intelligence.
Speaker 4:And just to clarify what I mean when I say emotional intelligence, it's about self-awareness, which means understanding yourself at a deep level mentally, emotionally, physically. It's self-control. Self-control means emotional regulation, means being able to understand your emotions enough and being able to know when it's appropriate to express them and knowing appropriate ways to express them. It's about social connection and understanding how to have human social connection, how to make eye contact, how body language works, which is something we lost during COVID, whenever you said this was the only way we could connect. I don't know if you remember experiencing even though Zoom was the only way we could connect during COVID. I know I always felt exhausted after Zoom and I didn't quite feel a sense of connection. Well, that's because something like 80% of our communication is body language, and if you're just a head in a box looking on Zoom, you're missing the person's body language. You might be able to see facial expressions, but body language is how we understand each other, even more so than the words that we speak.
Speaker 4:And again, these are all things that AI can't help us with, because we need to do the work that happens inside and if we're doing that individual work self-awareness, self-control, social connections and finding purpose and meaning is the last piece of emotional intelligence. Being able to live your life according to what's important to you, your values Again, these are things we have to work on as individuals and a lot of people don't know how to do that. That's not being taught in our schools. It's not being taught to any of us. So I think that if our emotional intelligence can grow alongside technology, I believe that that would be a fantastic merging into the future and growth, but I don't know if that's happening right now.
Speaker 3:I have to ask Brian now. I do something very similar. I go out and integrate some of these AI tools for teachers, but, being on the other side of the state, sometimes it's very different. You know different districts need different things. So when you're going out to schools, first, what are they asking you for as far as AI? And then part two of the question are you finding yourself adding some of this humanity and some of Joni's philosophy and ideas into your trainings? And it's okay if you say no.
Speaker 1:The answer is yes.
Speaker 5:I'm just curious If you're finding yourself.
Speaker 5:I wanted you to put that into chat GPT and see what it said. So last year I had two primary requests from school districts. One is can you come and speak to our teachers about AI tools and maybe show them some ways they can begin integrating these into planning and instruction? And, interestingly, the second request is our teachers have requested that you come and show them tools they can use to catch kids who are cheating. And, tony, I'm sure your AI 101 sessions looked very similar to mine. I'm sure across the state they're very similar.
Speaker 5:Looking under the hood of AI, experiencing a few tools, flying it to a few simple ways you could use it to multiply your effort. But as far as the requests to speak to staff about tools they can use to catch kids cheating with AI, I always started it this way, where I would walk in and the first thing I would say to the staff is I would say I understand, you want to know tools you can use to catch kids cheating with AI, and everyone would say yes and I would say I'm going to tell you the best way to do it. Just lean in, lean in. I'm going to tell you ready, know your kids and, as you can imagine, there's always a few folks in that classroom who aren't happy with that answer because they were looking for what is the website or what is the tool we can buy. But the truth of the matter is, if you know your students, you truly know your students. You know their voice, you know their style of writing, you know their interests. You know their voice, you know their style of writing. You know their interests, you know their, their writing ability. You already know, even if it's deep down on an intuitive level, if that student has created that work on their own or if they use the AI tool.
Speaker 5:So I guess, to answer your question, do I incorporate any of Joni's beliefs on cautiously using AI into my sessions? I do. If I could build on that though. So after we get over the initial shock of the easiest way to catch your kids cheating with AI is to know your students Then what I suggest is perhaps it's time we begin changing what classroom instruction and assessment looks like. If it can easily be completed by AI, then that shouldn't be the end. Skill that we're trying to build in our students continues to increase in capability as we move towards AGI or artificial general intelligence, with which a lot of experts believe will happen in just a few years. Those simple low level DOK1 tasks can and will be completed by AI.
Speaker 2:And in reality we've been kind of saying in education, dok1 tasks are not where it's at anyway. Research is showing that's not transforming their thinking to begin with. So the fact that there's now a tool to take that low level stuff is kind of forcing education and educators in the field to kind of reassess, like you're saying, reassess how I'm teaching and how I'm assessing. We can't continue. Nor really should we have been living in DOK1 to begin with.
Speaker 5:I agree. As a matter of fact, some say well, the rollout of AI is similar to when calculators were rolled out and it's similar to schools being connected to the web. But I think, when we look back, it's going to be viewed as something much larger, like the agricultural revolution or the industrial revolution.
Speaker 2:It feels like it's going to disrupt the system.
Speaker 5:Finally, something will disrupt the system.
Speaker 2:Because I felt for a while COVID was a great opportunity for us to disrupt the system and we missed the mark.
Speaker 5:We went right back to what we were doing.
Speaker 2:In fact, it was worse.
Speaker 2:Like I don't know how else to describe it. Like we went literally back to we were making, we were having momentum to move people out, we were doing some open-ended thinking, we were doing some of these things. And then we went to COVID and, because we had to transition so fast and I could maybe just speak for the eastern part of the state we went straight back to DOK1. Can you fill this in? Can you turn this in? Can you do this? Because I have to get this into my classroom, I have to get this done and I have to get it done right now. So I feel like in a lot of ways, it pulled us back.
Speaker 1:One significant change, though, is that now I have six months of toilet paper stockpiled at my house, so that's a big change for me.
Speaker 2:How have you not gotten through the six months?
Speaker 1:Just keep it going we stopped buying it. You just kept buying it. Every time we go to the store, we're buying toilet paper.
Speaker 2:We don't want to run into that situation again, so I learned.
Speaker 2:Well, with six people in your house, I feel like. My question for you, though, is how do you two reconcile in your house? So my husband is also all about the tech and all about like. He's definitely like a gamer. He's all about tech all the time, and I like to be. I grew up in Florida, so I need to be in the sun, sometimes, like I just need to be outside and I need to put my feet in the dirt. I need to be that. Now. I definitely have technology and I will use it, but how do the two of you reconcile that in your house? And then how does that not cause problems?
Speaker 4:I feel like Brian and I have enough commonality. It's funny you said you need to go outside and put your feet in the dirt, but Brian and I are both nature people. We both love to go sit in the woods. Oh, that's helpful. So that's you know. I think we have enough commonality in that regard and, um, like I, like I said before, I think we both have respect for what each other does and what we bring to what we do, that we have an open mind when listening to each other, even if we have differing opinions. So I think it's just that we have a base of respect for each other that helps us come somewhere in the middle. That's awesome.
Speaker 5:And I would add to that we both acknowledge that we come from different perspectives.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 5:And well, and you know, I guess I'd say we're also driven by slightly different fears or concerns.
Speaker 5:Absolutely slightly different fears or concerns. Absolutely, I acknowledge everything she says about the danger in offloading a lot of our human tasks to AI, but on the other hand, though, we can't afford to not start using AI in our planning and instruction, we can't afford to not begin teaching our students how to use AI in an ethical and responsible manner, because in the corporate world already what we're seeing is employers are looking at new hires and, as a mandatory requirement, as a prerequisite to being hired, they're looking for people who can work efficiently with AI as a co-pilot.
Speaker 4:Except we found out that the number one thing employers are actually looking for in new hires is emotional intelligence.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's quite the juxtaposition. Yeah, that is really interesting.
Speaker 1:Wow, you know what I love? I think that you two are a model beyond, even beyond this conversation, a model of like. We don't have to always agree, we can have varying perspectives, and how many conflicts have there been in the world because all people weren't sitting at the table. They didn't invite opposing thoughts to be like again that respect where it's like I care about you more than I care about AI. We can agree to disagree, and what a great model for education in general that let's have that discord, let's have that conversation. It doesn't change the value of who you are as a person and something that I think in a lot of ways has been lost in our society and be able to model that and bring it back through this completely unique perspective that I think should not be a unique perspective. So thank you for coming on the most popular podcast in the whole world so we can share this with people we're so happy to be here.
Speaker 2:Don't check our data, yeah.
Speaker 5:I'm proud to share that, while Joni was completely against utilizing AI for anything early on, I have convinced her to some degree of the value of using generative AI tools in some limited situations. So, when you go back to, how do you two peacefully coexist in a house? There are times where, if we're talking about our work and she mentions that she has a task to do and it's something that is tedious, something that seems like this is going to take a good bit of effort and time, I will often suggest can I show you how you might use generative AI for this? And out of that mutual respect we were talking about, she'll often say, sure, why don't you show me? And a lot of times in the end she'll say, wow, that was a very good time saver.
Speaker 4:Or that it helped get me to where I wanted to be so I could think about it in a different way. For sure. And I've also encouraged Brian to exercise his creative skills and his own instinct and intuition when it comes to we like to cook and we like to when we go out. If we have a really unique cocktail, we'd like to try and recreate that cocktail at home. That's a fun.
Speaker 4:So whether it's a recipe or whether it's a cocktail and I really have always enjoyed if I'm tasting something out at a restaurant, I'm like I know there's this ingredient in this, I know there's this, I can recreate this at home. And then I like to try and go and play with it and recreate it. And Brian's like why do you do that? You could just put it into chat GPT, it'll come up with it. I'm like, because I want to exercise this skill and ability and my own instinct and intuition and use my senses, because that's an enjoyable human experience. I don't want a machine to decide, and Brian has actually taken up experimenting with some things on his own and not going to chat GPT for everything, but rather using his own senses and sense of creativity to come up with a cocktail, or you know a simple recipe without using chat GPT.
Speaker 5:Yes, turns out sometimes I actually know that a little bit of rosemary might help this recipe. Somewhere deep inside I knew that and I didn't need a AI to tell me that?
Speaker 2:That's amazing.
Speaker 1:Everybody needs a little rosemary in their life. Well, look, you've got my vote. I'm voting for the Stanford ticket for 2024.
Speaker 2:Can we talk to them for hours? Yeah, this is awesome. I told you they were awesome.
Speaker 1:Again, the word that's coming to my mind is balance, and that's one thing that we have not been hearing.
Speaker 4:And.
Speaker 1:I appreciate the balance that you're both offering and saying these are both important and that you know that these two quote unquote opposing things have equal value and we need to hold them both in our presence this entire time. So I am interested to actually see how this is going to play out. We would like to offer to you the second to last closing thought for or well, second and third, I don't know. Second, ish.
Speaker 2:The reason why it's the second is because Andrew always has to be the one that close it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know how it's going to go this time.
Speaker 2:Joni, maybe another time you could come on and give a little humanity to Andrew Seriously, if you would love to provide therapy services for Tony and I, but we'd have to record it just so everybody else could hear.
Speaker 1:I'm on a limited Zoom here. It's actually going to shut down. I'm so sorry. 40 minutes and we're done. Yeah, so you have anything that maybe you'd like to add or say, or you know something, inspired you as, you were sharing.
Speaker 4:I would say my final thought is that if you're someone who uses AI to be discerning about how you're using it and what you're using it for, and to be discerning meaning, don't turn to it for everything, but consider particularly trying to utilize your own senses, your own instinct, your own intuition to guide you in things that are either intended to be fun and enjoyable or to exercise that part of who you are, so that you're not again turning over all your decision-making to AI, so just to be discerning.
Speaker 5:Fair enough, and I would say, if you are someone who is fearful of losing your humanity when using AI or very hesitant to adopt it, I guess I would ask you to just be open to stepping into it. If you use a calculator, did that cause you to lose your ability to do long division? You may use the internet for research. It doesn't mean you've lost your ability to scan a book and pull out relevant information. It's just those things are great multipliers of effort, so I would encourage you to give it a try.
Speaker 4:Cautiously.
Speaker 5:But enthusiastically.
Speaker 4:Maintaining your humanity.
Speaker 1:I can see a kid I'm getting your job done in a quarter of the time I can see a kid on the edge of the pool being like yeah, jump in, honey. No no no jump in. It's too cold. I don't know what to do. Get a swim vest that was amazing.
Speaker 2:That seems like how we usually end our podcasts. Yeah, that's awesome. You guys. You are great.
Speaker 1:My biggest takeaway from this podcast is that we absolutely had to find a way to have video, because this has been a very entertaining and like so much like you said, joni, about the body language, like so much body language going on, and you two are dynamites.
Speaker 1:So thank you for all you're sharing and what I was hearing from your closing thoughts is that AI has a time and a place, and for us to be able to add in that humanity piece, to know the difference and not just hand over the reins, because that comes at a cost how are we present as human beings in that space? And because we have so much to add, we have so much value that we can add just by being people that will take this in a very strong, unique position. By being people that will take this in a very strong, unique position, I wanted to say, to like solidify that that AI has time and a place, like cruise control until I was in Patrice's car that does all these weird things it has like eyes and it does it, but with old fashioned cruise control.
Speaker 1:right, it had a time and a place. I wasn't going to use cruise control in town.
Speaker 2:It still does have it. Okay, so here we go. It still does have a time and place. Just because it slows down, because the car in front of it is slowing down, doesn't mean it's not good, right, I've been in the car when you're driving, it's better that the car is doing it than you.
Speaker 1:That's a Brian car. I want to drive the Joni car that has for people.
Speaker 2:No, you want to drive the 1975 station wagon.
Speaker 3:I just want to sit back and drink my coffee, right.
Speaker 1:But my point is that you're not always going to be using cruise control. You're still, as a person at least.
Speaker 2:I'm using it a lot 2024.
Speaker 1:We still have. Oh, you know what this analogy works. Everyone liked it.
Speaker 2:It doesn't Sorry.
Speaker 1:Alright, thank you so much for coming on to this train wreck we call a podcast. We appreciate your insights and we want to remind all of our listeners that you came to the best spot. We're going to keep bringing you great information like this and all of these insights, and make sure that you follow and send this to all of your friends, and even people you don't like, because they need to hear this perspective, wow.
Speaker 2:That's a glowing review I yes, thank you. I just want to say thank you for making the last meeting of my day so enjoyable thank you really great way to end the week. We appreciate you guys well thank you.
Speaker 5:Thank you and andrew. Well said. So this is for the b-roll or the closing credits. Well said, that's why you have the last word.
Speaker 2:Thank you Brian? No, but it's going to stop at last word.
Speaker 1:No way it's going to stop at Brian. I don't know when we see you next, but I'm getting you one of these. You get one of these podcast famous stickers.
Speaker 5:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'll even sign it. Next time you're at pain, sign it you, sir, get a selfie run, run now.