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[00:01:00] Hey everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. I’m excited to have a returned set of guests today. If you are new to the podcast, you’re in for a treat, if you have been listening for a long time, then you know how fantastic these guests are. I’ve got Rachel and Stephanie from the Learn Smarter Podcast back to talk with me about AI in learning.If you don’t know them, Rachel is a board-certified member the Association of Educational Therapists and the owner of Kapp Educational Therapy Group in Beverly Hills, California. She is a co-founder and co-host of the Learn Smarter Podcast.
She grew up in LA, and had a wonderful public school experience in LA United School District then went on to attend UC Berkeley. She found educational therapy after teaching preschool for 7 years and is obsessed with helping struggling learners thrive in school.
Stephanie Pitts is a board-certified Educational Therapist and the owner of My Ed Therapist, a [00:02:00] group practice in Redondo Beach, as well as a co-founder and co-host of the Learn Smarter Podcast. Known as “The Game Whisperer,” with a collection of over 200 games she uses with her clients, Stephanie expertly weaves fun and play into her work.
She is an LA native and received her B.A. in Sociology from USC and a Master’s Degree in Education from Pepperdine University. She completed her Certificate in Educational Therapy at CSUN and has been trained as an Academic Coach. In her free time, Stephanie enjoys spending time with her two dachshunds, traveling, and spending time with friends.
Rachel and Stephanie are back. We’re talking about AI in educational therapy and learning. This is super interesting, we’re talking about AI a lot in the assessment world, and I thought it’d be great to bring Rachel and Stephanie on because they are working with students on the front lines day in, day out, helping them do their best [00:03:00] and I know that AI has made its way into that environment as well.
Here are a few things that we discuss during the episode; we talk about some of the most common applications of AI for school-age kids, we talk about school attitudes toward the adoption of AI, we talk about parent attitudes toward AI, and we have a discussion about the philosophical views on AI in the sense of whether it’s ultimately a good or bad thing for learners. I think you’ll find that to be an interesting discussion.
As usual, we talk about a lot of other things, it’s always a dynamic and engaging conversation with Rachel and Stephanie. So I am happy to bring you this conversation about AI in learning.
[00:04:00] Rachel and Stephanie, welcome back to the podcast.Stephanie: Thank you so much for having us.
Rachel: Thank you so much for having us.
Dr. Sharp: Oh, that was good.
Stephanie: I tried to in sync, but it didn’t work but it almost.
Dr. Sharp: That was pretty good.
Rachel: We did all right.
Dr. Sharp: You did do all right. You’ve had some practice. I think this is y’all’s maybe fourth time on the podcast. You are definitely getting up there in terms of frequent flyers here on The Testing Psychologist.
Rachel: I love it. We’ve done it even on ours several times as well.
Stephanie: Yeah. Oh, I was going to say, what happens when we get like the frequent flyer?
Rachel: I want to get a five-timers jacket. You’re going to have to send us some swag or something.
Dr. Sharp: Absolutely. Yes, jackets it is. I’m excited to talk with y’all. We’re talking about AI and how y’all are seeing AI in your [00:05:00] world, your work with students, homework, and educational therapy. So there’s so much to talk about here.
I think everybody’s super excited and maybe scared of AI. I’m enjoying having conversations with folks in different worlds about what this looks like and how people are using it. So thanks for coming on and being able to do it.
Rachel: Always.
Dr. Sharp: I’m going to start with a big philosophical question that we’ll see where it sends us. Generally speaking, how do y’all feel about the use of AI in the work that you do with the kids? Do you feel like it’s a tool that all kids should be learning how to use? Are you more in the camp of, no, this is like cheating. We need to limit it and clamp down a little bit or some other perspective that I haven’t thought of?
[00:06:00] Rachel: This is Rachel talking. I look at it as I look at a lot of technology, which is that it’s a tool, it’s not going away. And so it’s our responsibility to teach the learners that we get to work with how to use it ethically, how to use it responsibly and to use it to their advantage, especially the populations that we work with, they need the shortcuts to get to the end result.AI isn’t perfect. You can’t always trust it completely. A lot of the learners that we work with don’t know that about it because it’s not a perfect technology yet. I’m down for going down that path with learners who are using it in a morally responsible, meaningful way. Stephanie, what do you think?
Stephanie: I totally agree because it is a tool. [00:07:00] It’s just the Google on steroids, how long has anybody been using Google to find out the answers? We have. I agree, it’s definitely about how to use it responsibly, but how to use it in a way that’s going to work for you because it’s not always about having it write an essay for you. That’s not ethically not into that, but getting some of the information that you want to include in your essay is much easier than flipping through a book.
The learners that we work with, if they’re looking for a quote, they could be looking for hours and lose track of time and then they’re not getting anything productive done. I don’t think the skill of finding a quote, I’m using that as an example, is something that we need to hone in on having them [00:08:00] practice so much as what are they going to do with the information. That’s more of how I treat it.
Dr. Sharp: I totally agree.
Rachel: I don’t mean to interrupt, Jeremy, but just because it’s an available option, you still have to ask it something. And so the learners that we work with don’t always know what to ask so it’s not something that is necessarily what I’m seeing right now. It isn’t their first go-to.
Stephanie: No.
Dr. Sharp: See, that’s interesting.
Stephanie: And they’ll ask full questions like several-sentence long questions sometimes, and it gets a little muddled because they don’t know what to ask or how to ask it. And so that is definitely something that I’m seeing and trying to work on with them.
Rachel: Stephanie, we’ve talked about this for years because they don’t [00:09:00] know what to Google either. You can say google it, but they don’t know what to …
Stephanie: Or search it up.
Dr. Sharp: Search it up. A side note, I feel like that phrase “search it up” has become popular over the last six months. I feel like my daughter picked it up somehow and her friends are saying. It’s no longer google it or look it or search, it’s search it up.
Rachel: I am feeling so old because that’s the first time I’ve ever heard you say it. I’ve never heard it before. Maybe it’s just the first time though, wrapping a conversation about the phrase.
Stephanie: No it’s been probably a good year or two, at least, of the kids correcting me when I say google it and they say, search it up. I went, ooh.
Rachel: Okay. All right, let’s meet them where they’re at. All right, fine.
Stephanie: I got to be with the lingo, guys.
Dr. Sharp: Oh my gosh. It’s a full-time job.
[00:10:00] Stephanie: I can with the rizz, I can with the breeze.Rachel: Oh, I hear this.
Stephanie: That’s another thing.
Dr. Sharp: We can do a whole podcast.
Rachel: We can do a whole podcast on language.
Dr. Sharp: You’re right though, I was listening to a podcast the other day that was talking about how googling in itself or searching it up in itself is a skill. We take that for granted or I do in a way, that people just know how to successfully google. If you don’t have that down, then using AI is going to be even tougher because the prompts and the language are a little more nuanced and complicated.
So y’all are finding, it sounds like, some kids not all, sounds are working with it, using it but it’s still imperfect.
You’re still finding a lot of challenges with it. Is that fair?
Stephanie: Yeah.
Rachel: Yeah. [00:11:00] There’s certain things that as we are digging more into AI, we are learning about it as well. Let’s say that you go into ChatGPT to ask a question and you want to find peer-reviewed articles on a certain topic, ChatGPT will just make up citations.
If learners don’t know that, you can’t get it to authentically search, but you have to push it to be like no, I don’t want an idea of what a peer-reviewed article could be, I want an actual legitimate one. It can discover that for you, but you have to know there is a lot of gaps in it.
Stephanie: There’s a lot of follow up questions that you need to ask to get it to what you really want it to be.
There’s multiple steps in using ChatGPT, for instance, [00:12:00] if you’re trying to get to an answer. It’s not a one-stop shop.
Dr. Sharp: Right. How are you seeing students use it primarily? Those who seem to be into it, what are they coming to you with? How’s that coming up in the work that you’ll do?
Stephanie: I have a kid who uses it when he’s reading and he needs to do notes on the reading, but it is so much reading and so time-consuming to stop-go, stop-go. He’ll do it after and pull up the main points of the reading and then he’ll make the notes off of that. So he’s using it that way, and it works very successfully for him, and he’s much faster.
Rachel: I don’t see how that’s any different than us telling a learner, go find the summary of something so you [00:13:00] know what you’re about to read.
Stephanie: It’s literally like CliffsNotes back in the day.
Rachel: Yeah. I see learners going to it to ask for clarification on a topic that maybe they don’t understand, helping them to maybe interpret prompts that are difficult, because that’s of the things that we talk about a lot, especially in their later years of school, middle school, high school and college, you’ll get a prompt, but there’s no question, and that’s what they’re looking for. What am I supposed to answer if there’s not a question?
Stephanie: It’s very confusing.
Rachel: It’s very confusing. How do I start? We teach them in our practices how to break it down, how to interpret a prompt, but you can also bring it into ChatGPT and have it derive its own questions from it by simply saying, [00:14:00] can you turn this into answerable questions for me? And that, to me, is also ethically and responsible way of using it.
Stephanie: Absolutely.
Dr. Sharp: Can you give me an example? I’m not sure if I know exactly what you’re talking about, using it to break down a prompt.
Rachel: Okay.
Stephanie: Oh, this is a goodie.
Rachel: We’ve done lots of episodes on it, but let me give you an example. So you have a learner who’s in 11th grade. They’re writing on moth and butterfly. They’re reading that as the course. It’s a full page prompt, and there will be, this is what the topic should be. It’s just a bunch of sentences just explaining what you should think about writing about. And then it’s a third of the page on formatting and then a rubric at the bottom.
Because there’s no who, what, when, [00:15:00] where, why or how statement or question, these learners that we work with will look at this. First of all, it’s overwhelming to them because it’s all signals based. There’s a lot of language on the page and they’re feeling burdened already with having to retain information from the book that they may or may not have read, if we’re being honest, and now they’re being asked to respond to it. It’s very overwhelming and complicated.
So what we teach learners to do is, particularly in that initial paragraph, where it’s just a description of what they want to write about, we take each sentence and we turn it into a question. What that does is it allows them to go back and understand what the teacher is wanting from them or the assignment.
It gives them some guideposts to at least get started down the path. That is absolutely a skill that all learners have to learn because [00:16:00] that’s how learners miss component parts of what’s being asked of them oftentimes, or they’ll get bogged down. A lot of the learners that will work with will immediately focus on the structure and format. Let’s say that they’re offered the opportunity to …
Stephanie: That’s the clear part.
Rachel: That’s clear. Let’s say you’re offered the opportunity to either write an essay or do PowerPoint or Google Slides. A lot of the learners that we work with, they’ll make the slides, they’ll make it look pretty, they’ll format it, but they have no content prepared because like Stephanie said, that’s the part that’s clear.
What AI can come in and do is help clarify a lot of this stuff. We’re not knocking the teachers, sometimes the teachers are trying to leave it open-ended because they want the learners to be able to go where they want but for learners that we work with, who struggle with executive functioning skills [00:17:00] challenges, or have reading disorders or writing disorders, it’s very complicated. They don’t want that.
Stephanie: Or autism or ADHD
Rachel: Or autism or ADHD or auditory processing, whatever’s going on, they don’t like open-ended.
Stephanie: Yes
Rachel: And so we can use ChatGPT to narrow things down for them.
Dr. Sharp: Yeah. I like that. I hadn’t thought of that as a use, but that totally makes sense. Especially, kids executive functioning concerns struggle with ambiguity and those open-ended questions.
Stephanie: And even sometimes, I’ve done it with kids where we’ve talked about how to format what paragraphs would cover what. We’ve used ChatGPT to talk about that because when they have a little bit more direction and it’s a little more clear, it becomes easier. They can follow directions if they understand what’s being asked of them. And so that’s where it really can [00:18:00] be such a useful tool for them.
Seeing them learn how to problem solve is how we’re teaching them to be autonomous, how to hold themselves up. What do you do when you don’t know what to do? That’s a great tool to use.
Dr. Sharp: That’s a great point. I know there are folks out there, maybe educational purists of a sort who’d be like no, that’s cheating. It’s like the other side, you got to do all this on your own, but I totally agree, it is a tool to leverage the skills that you have and play to your strengths.
Stephanie: It’s like wearing glasses, I’ve recently had to start wearing glasses all the time and this is a new thing for me, but it’s not like I’m cheating with my eyes. I’m just using a tool.
Dr. Sharp: Right. That overlaps with the way that I have used it a [00:19:00] little bit myself even, for me, it’s a lot easier to edit than to create, if that makes sense. I think that’s true for a lot of folks.
Stephanie: Just a little side note, in graduate school where Rachel and I met, we’d have assignments and I would not know where to start, like how to make it look or what the formatting or things like that. I would struggle with that tremendously.
Rachel, on the other hand, that is her strong suit and she’ll bust something out in 2.5 seconds and then she’ll say, here, Stephanie, do it like this, and then I would go, oh, okay. And then I would do my own.
Rachel: By the way, this still happens. As we are developing our own podcast episodes, I’m the one structuring it. I’m like, okay, this is what we’re going to talk about each component part and then Stephanie will go in [00:20:00] and fill in the gaps a little bit.
This has separately taught me that, that particular skill of creating is not for everybody. And so that’s why we’re such good collaborators because we each bring different … Because let me be honest, I’m not interested in the nitty gritty a lot of the time. It works for us. From you, how are you using it?
Dr. Sharp: I do a lot of create an outline. I have to do a two-hour presentation on autism assessment in kids for whatever audience. We’re getting into the weeds with AI, but the trick is hey, pretend you’re psychologists doing this speech, you’re going write this thing.
Stephanie: In front of this amount of people.
Dr. Sharp: And then I’ll do the thing like ask me 10 questions to help you [00:21:00] understand what this should be about and get more information. Ask me questions, I give the answers. And then it’s create an outline for a two-hour presentation. And then once I have that outline, then I can go in and be like, I don’t like this, or I do like this. Give something to bump off of and then fill in all the details.
Rachel: It’s great for creating a framework as well. If you know how you think about something but you want to give it like a snazzy ABC framework or pop framework or whatever, it’s good at coming up with ideas for that as well. That’s a great use of it.
It’s great for generating outlines, but you have to know what to feed it. You have to know what information it needs in order for it to be meaningful to you. And then you have to have the critical piece where it’s not cheating, I feel is [00:22:00] like, is the piece afterwards where you’re throwing out what doesn’t work and you’re bringing in what does and it’s just idea generation.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Dr. Sharp: Right. Y’all work with a lot of kids and teens, I’m curious, you said some kids are using it, most are not. What is the general vibe with AI for kids in y’all’s experience? How are they looking at it and thinking about it?
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Stephanie: It depends on the age.
Rachel: I agree. I also [00:25:00] think it depends on how strict and clear the school is. There are a lot of schools that we work with locally to us who that honor code is so clear. There’s so much fear about overstepping and not living within the honor code because it is so emphasized so sometimes there’s reluctance to engage with it.
Stephanie: Very much. Also some schools that provide computers, it’s blocked so sometimes we use my computer.
Rachel: I feel like I understand why the schools would block it, that’s why there has to be a larger conversation about responsible digital citizenship, [00:26:00] because ignoring it, when they go to college, they’re not going to have a computer that blocks it. And when they’re working in the workforce, they’re likely not going to have a computer that’s blocked.
So if we’re creating entire people, part of that is being responsible digital citizen in the way you’re using it. So I think what I am finding more often than not is the reluctance. Keep in mind, the population that we work with is narrow. These are kids who are struggling for some reason. They want to live within the bounds and they also, I feel like, want to do what their peers are doing. They want to be “typical”. Their friends aren’t having these conversations with each other.
Stephanie: No, they’re not. Even within our own [00:27:00] practices, there’s a difference because most of the kids in your practice go to private school, most of the kids in my practice do not. There is a big difference in the honor code, for instance, and consequences are much higher in a private school setting than they are in a public school setting.
Rachel: We’re talking about the people that we work with locally. The majority of the clients that we work with nationally are in the public school system, but I was absolutely talking thinking locally.
Stephanie: It depends on the situation, unfortunately.
Dr. Sharp: I was going to ask about that; what you’re seeing in the schools, at least, locally. I know it’s going to differ across the country, but it sounds like there’s a pretty good bit of variability in how schools are approaching it, too.
Rachel: I think schools take a while sometimes to figure out how they feel about something. With technology moving so fast, [00:28:00] let’s be honest, sometimes the adults don’t know how things are being used and then there’s one bad apple ruining it for the bunch.
Stephanie: It’s reactionary a lot of times. I know everybody’s trying to do the best they can. It doesn’t always look the same. It’s not always the right answer. I completely agree with teaching responsibility and teaching how you can use it because going forward as it progresses and gets smarter, it’s going to be helpful in a lot of ways where a lot of the population we work with, that is where they really struggle.
[00:29:00] I remembered when people started to record and it would create the notes straight for them and the, oh, that’s cheating but now we’re doing it. Voice to text was cheating, but now it’s not considered cheating anymore. It’s got to go through its process and its time of people accepting it.Rachel: We’re board-certified educational therapists. Our job is to make it easier fundamentally, so that learners can access the information that they need to know and show their knowledge. That’s our job. It’s both components. It’s helping them receive the information, but also showing off what they know, so they can get credit for what they know.
And so this is another resource that we should be taking advantage of. It’s another way of [00:30:00] making … We always say we’re down with the shortcut. If we can do something easier, let’s do it in an easier way.
And just because it doesn’t look like the traditional way that the parent did it, this always comes up when parents are like, they should be studying for this class X amount of minutes a week or X amount of minutes a day. We’re always like, it’s not about time spent, it’s about that quality of learning that can happen in a much shorter period of time. It’s an analogy of it can look different than what we thought learning should look like.
Dr. Sharp: The more that we learn about it and figure out how it can be useful, I feel like it is democratizing learning quite a bit. It’s opening doors for kids who may have gotten stuck on some of these other skills needed to study or learn or whatever it [00:31:00] may be. It’s a great shortcut to showcase some other skills for kids. That’s the hope.
You said something interesting a little bit ago about how these kids are not talking about AI with their peers.
That mirrors my experience, but I would love to talk more about it because, I was telling Stephanie before we started recording, I have a very soon to be 13-year old and he’s on Snapchat like a lot of kids are, and they introduced that SnapAI early on, a year ago, probably maybe more.
He messed with it for a little bit and it was funny, but then he forgot about it. I haven’t heard anything about AI from my teenager in months. It sounds like that mirrors y’all experience too; kids are not necessarily talking about it with their friends. It’s not a big deal.
Rachel: That’s my experience is that when I take it up as an option, I’m like, have you asked [00:32:00] AI about it? They were like, how do I do that? They’re not exploring it yet unless they’re really techie and into that stuff, in which case they’re all in and they’re showing us how to do it.
Stephanie: Oh yeah, for sure. Or they have used it too, and it’s been so beneficial that they are then talking about how it’s helped them tremendously, so I think it’s one way for you.
Rachel: That’s a big stopgap sometimes for these teams to getting a job is they don’t have anything to put on a resume, except they totally do. They just have to think about it creatively, but that can help.
Stephanie: Yeah. And formatting, right?
Rachel: Yes.
Dr. Sharp: Yeah, there are so many capabilities. I’ve been using it to summarize articles. You can upload a PDF, like a research [00:33:00] article and tell it to summarize key points, main points, stuff like that.
Rachel: There’s an app called Blinkist? Have you heard of this stuff?
Stephanie: Mm-mm.
Rachel: Jeremy, knows about it. I haven’t used it yet, but my understanding of it is that it basically takes these books and summarizes them. These are the main points you need to know. It’s like a 20-minute podcast about it. Is that accurate, Jeremy?
Dr. Sharp: Yeah, that’s fair. It’s basically like audio CliffsNotes for books, but it’s pre-AI. It’s been around for 5 or 6 years. Maybe it was using AI, I don’t know but yeah, it’s that same thing that I find super helpful. With Blinkist, to go down that rabbit hole for a second, it wasn’t detailed enough for me like I wanted.
Rachel: You got to [00:34:00] read the book.
Dr. Sharp: Yeah. Exactly.
Rachel: Got it.
Dr. Sharp: That’s the cool thing about AI is I’ll go to it sometimes and say, hey, summarize this book. Tell me the main points and it’ll do that. And then I’ll say, give me more detail on point 3 and what that looks like, or give me an example or whatever, and it can do that. That’s valuable.
Stephanie: It’s having a conversation with AI. We need to teach them how to have the conversation with the AI so that they can ask the question so that they can get the information that they do need.
Rachel: Stephanie, it’s funny because I’m asking AI to make a resume for you right now, I’m like, this is only partially accurate. I’m looking at what it’s coming up for you.
Stephanie: Oh, interesting.
Rachel: That’s partially accurate.
Dr. Sharp: I like this, a real time experiment. How did you do that? What was the prompt for that?
Rachel: I put in the prompt, can you make a resume for Stephanie Pitts’ last 20 years of professional work experience?
[00:35:00] Stephanie: Did it get me?Rachel: Yeah, it’s you. Has My Ed Therapist and has Learn Smarter Podcast.
Stephanie: There’s a lot of Stephanie Pitts in the world, because I get dead emails all the time. I’m surprised it actually chose me.
Rachel: No, it did because various schools, it absolutely did. It knows you. We’re very linked, our websites both come up.
Stephanie: Makes sense. Yeah.
Rachel: Anyway, real-world things come back.
Dr. Sharp: It’s great. It makes me think though, too, of, I wonder how long it’s going to be until this is integrated into computer class? Like they’re actually teaching kids how to prompt engineer or use AI. It seems like it’d be a valuable.
Stephanie: I hope they do.
Rachel: I hope they do too.
Stephanie: Because like typing was…
Rachel: My famous story about my dad when I was in 8th grade insisted that I take a typing class and I’m [00:36:00] so offended because I was like, I’m not going to be a secretary. It was very feminist as an 8th grader. He thought I was being cute and he’s no, you’re taking those classes. He never insisted on anything. He’s laid back about most things except that and my bra strap showing. He did not like that.
It was such a critical skill. I’m so grateful that he pushed it on me. It’s one of the reasons I can bust out those graduate school assignments so fast is because I type really fast. This is what I’m talking about in being responsible digital citizen.
We need to be using these things and then screening for kids who are maybe avoiding the work, but I would argue that the kids who were nervous are going to write their whole essay on ChatGPT. I [00:37:00] don’t think they will if they have another way of doing it because we come from a fundamental place where we believe that if students can, they will and if they can’t, we have to explore and get curious about why it’s not working for them.
I think kids want to meet expectations inherently. They want to do the right thing. They want to please the adults in their life. They want to please their teachers. They’re not looking to skip the line. They just need it to be a little bit easier. And so if this is a way of making it easier, the reason that they would go in and write it to begin with is because something about it is hard for them. So that’s just an opportunity for us to get curious and support the different ways that they have to do things that work for them.
Dr. Sharp: I like the way that you frame that. If nothing else, it’s a learning experience. It gives us information about the learner and [00:38:00] what they gravitate toward, what’s hard for them.
Rachel: Yeah, because if they truly didn’t care, they wouldn’t do it. If they’re taking the time to go and put it in and try to turn something in, that says something.
Dr. Sharp: That’s a good point. That’s true. I love that y’all come from that place, it’s like the Ross Greene stuff, kids do well when they can.
Rachel: Yes.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Rachel: They do.
Dr. Sharp: Yeah, I agree. What about parents? Do parents play any role in this? Have you had to have conversations with parents at all in the work that you’re doing anybody pushing back or wanting AI to help in your work with kids?
Rachel: The short answer is I’ve not had a conversation with a parent about it.
Stephanie: I have not either.
Rachel: If I had to guess what the reaction would be; I think it would be a teachable conversation. [00:39:00] I don’t think they’d be inherently excited because they’d be worried about the cheating aspect of it. They’d be worried that their learner would not use it as the tool it’s intended to be but no, I haven’t had any conversations or pushback.
The truth is that parents want things to be, they want their kids to thrive, be happy, safe and have esteem and so however we help navigate that, we have good clients that we work with for sure in that.
Stephanie: Yeah. Agreed.
Dr. Sharp: Yes. That’s good to hear. I would imagine that a lot of parents are in a similar place. I feel like I live in this bubble of everyone is talking about AI and using ChatGPT for everything. Like my wife and I are super, my business is [00:40:00] but I imagine it’s the same as everything else; there’s a big percentage of the population that probably doesn’t care at all and doesn’t use it on regular basis.
Rachel: I think there’ll be a tipping point just as there’s been a tipping point with everything else. I’m just not sure we’re there yet? I don’t know. Stephanie, what do you think?
Stephanie: I was thinking when you were talking about the tipping point of the smartphone and like all of that or Facebook.
Rachel: Jeremy’s an early adopter, that’s what we’re deciding here.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Dr. Sharp: I absolutely am. You got me tagged. I love it. I love technology.
Stephanie: It’ll become the norm. It’ll be the thing that we all learn how to use and then it’ll get fancier after that. Sticking with it as it grows, I guess.
Dr. Sharp: Talking about me being an early adopter, I wonder, for you two [00:41:00] how you’re relating to it. Do you feel a responsibility to know what’s going on with AI? If your students were to bring it to you or want to use it, have you put in much energy into learning it and knowing how to manipulate it or whatnot given the work that you do?
Rachel: It is a good question. I’m looking at my history with ChatGPT, certainly, if I look at the majority of things that I’ve asked for it, a lot of it sometimes is business-related questions, but also help me find executive functioning games online like this game. I want more examples of games like this. So things like that.
In terms of whether or not I [00:42:00] feel a responsibility, no, because I’m okay with the learner coming into session and teaching me something too.
Stephanie: Me too.
Rachel: I think it’s great when they are able to have that moment of showing off a little bit and that can sometimes spark my interest and take me down a rabbit hole, or I’ll say to Stephanie, so and so showed me this, what do you think? I don’t feel like I need to have all the answers on a new piece of tech. If they’re bringing it in and I could see the potential of it, that’s when I get interested and excited about it. It took months, even. The more you use it, the more you use it, I feel like. My current stays top of mind of oh, let me just, right?
Stephanie: I go through phases myself. I agree with you. [00:43:00] I’m learning a lot of things with how some of my older students use it. I agree with you, I think that’s great because they feel good about it and they’re excited to show me.
Rachel: We all about […] strategy.
Stephanie: They’re in the weeds a little bit more. I get it. I’m always excited when they show me something because then I can use it.
Dr. Sharp: That’s a good way to think of it. We’ve talked about a lot of different aspects of this. What have we missed? Anything out of left field, any random, cool, unique aspects of AI and educational therapy, or how you see students using it, feelings around it.
Rachel: I see it as such a valuable tool for helping [00:44:00] our learners share their knowledge and sharing what they know. I don’t know if I have anything out of left field about it. I feel like, as a field of professionals who are working with this population, we should be embracing things that can make our learners’ lives easier, better, more productive. When this is used correctly, all those things can be true.
Stephanie: I want to use it more.
Rachel: Yeah.
Dr. Sharp: Absolutely.
Rachel: We’re embracing this.
Dr. Sharp: Yeah. Good. You’re progressing.
Rachel: Yeah.
Stephanie: Fair enough.
Dr. Sharp: It’s funny, as you’re [00:45:00] talking, I was thinking, talking about the tipping point, I wonder if we’ll get to the point where this is something that is included in a 504 plan or something like that even in schools where it may not be as widespread to allow students to use it for whatever reason. I don’t know, just thinking through all the possibilities.
Rachel: I think we’re going to be seeing more of that. I think we’ll be moving in that direction and it’ll be interesting. I don’t think it’ll be coming from the parents necessarily. I think it’ll be coming from the school. That’s my prediction.
Dr. Sharp: I wonder if that is the tipping point when schools start to embrace it more, it’s like having computers in the class.
Rachel: Yeah, we’ve accepted that that’s their reality. I see that happening.
Dr. Sharp: Yeah, this is fine.
Stephanie: I’m ready for it.
Dr. Sharp: You’re ready for AI. Absolutely. I appreciate y’all talking through it. [00:46:00] You have such a unique perspective that is different than ours. We see kids in these very circumscribed environments for testing but y’all are working with them on the front lines day in, day out and seeing what they’re up to, what they’re struggling with.
I appreciate you talking through AI with me and maybe in a few months we can talk about how it is impacting your business as well or other side.
Rachel: There’s so much to talk about. It’s been very helpful from a business perspective. So I would love to do that.
Stephanie: For sure.
Dr. Sharp: Nice. I’m always grateful to have you guys on. It’s great to talk to you. Hopefully, we’ll talk again soon.
Stephanie: Thanks for having us.
Rachel: We’ll get our five-timer jacket. It’ll be great.
Stephanie: Yeah.
Dr. Sharp: That’s right. Yeah, the next time is going to be five. Got to get that jacket.
Stephanie: I love this.
Dr. Sharp: Awesome. Thank you all.
Stephanie: Thank you.
Dr. Sharp: All right, y’all. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode. Always grateful to have you here. [00:47:00] I hope that you take away some information that you can implement in your practice and in your life. Any resources that we mentioned during the episode will be listed in the show notes so make sure to check those out.
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Please note that no doctor-patient relationship is formed here and similarly no supervisory or consultative relationship is formed between the host or guests of this podcast and listeners of this podcast. If you need the qualified advice of any mental health practitioner or medical provider, [00:49:00] please seek one in your area. Similarly, if you need supervision on clinical matters, please find a supervisor with expertise that fits your needs.