AI Advocates

S1 E11: Reimagining Productivity with Microsoft Copilot

• Lisa Dieker • Season 1 • Episode 11

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In this episode of AI Advocates, hosts Dr. Lisa Dieker and Dr. Maggie Mosher share their hands-on experiences with Microsoft Copilot, highlighting why it’s become their go-to AI tool for educational settings. They dive into Copilot’s key strengths including its ability to summarize documents, create rubrics, generate images, and assist with accessibility tasks like adjusting reading levels and text to speech. Lisa recounts real-world stories, like helping someone generate an ADA accommodation letter, while Maggie explains how the free version stands out among other tools. Whether you're an educator, student, or tech enthusiast, this episode breaks down how Copilot can make AI both practical and personal in everyday learning environments.

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Reclaim your time….., time…., time.

Lisa Dieker:

Welcome to AI Advocates. I'm Lisa Dieker.

Maggie Mosher:

And I'm Maggie Mosher.

Lisa Dieker:

And we are with you today from the University of Kansas FLITE Center. And Maggie, we're going to talk about my personal favorite, what is it?

Maggie Mosher:

Copilot.

Lisa Dieker:

Copilot. So, and some of you might be like, "Oh, I have a friend who isn't a lover of, you know, certain brands of anything," but I'll tell you why I really have dug into Copilot is because I'm at a Microsoft campus, and so I was just listening to a really nice podcast myself and three experts, really high level experts in AI said, "Look, you should not be dating around. You should pick one AI tool, get to know it really well." And so Lisa Dieker, the cheap one, is chosen to do Copilot because it's free on my campus, and I have the advanced version. And Maggie, I know you've been using it any reason you like it, besides, it's cheap and free, and we both work at the same place.

Maggie Mosher:

I like that they're often free versions, like Copilot, they have freezers, but Copilot's free version gives you 15. ChatGPT gives you five. And if it's not like a time of day where it's busy, it'll keep going. Whereas ChatGPT, no matter what time of day, my five is my five.

Lisa Dieker:

Yeah. And I think with our version in our university, we get 100 a day, and I've never used those up. I don't know about you, but, but if you're not familiar with Copilot, this is why I like it. I like it because I kind of feel like it's the one place, kind of like if you use OpenAI that I can do images, I can do summaries, I can make a rubric. I can have a picture and lower the reading level. I can have it read aloud to me. I can upload a document. True story, a person was trying to file a complaint for workforce disability. So they took their job description, and they then took their disability, and we uploaded the job description, and it created a perfect letter to take to their physician to ask for ADA accommodations at work. And so I really like it because I find it very nimble and it's super easy to use. And the last part I love the most about it is it gives me what I call Lisa Dieker wasn't thinking prompts like, "Hey, have you thought about maybe this letter should talk about the place of employment or and it gives you, and it's never, it's never ever assumption, all of almost all the GPT generators do that now. But I found Copilot's to be kind of friendly and very leading in a way. And it kind of has gotten to know me. It also archives, because I have the university version everything I've ever done. So if I want to go back and say, "Oh, I'd like to add to that paratraining tool I made." I can go back three months ago and say, "Hey, here's nine new things I learned. Can you add to that?" So that's my personal favorite. That was a lot about Copilot, but it is one I really like.

Maggie Mosher:

I know. I love it too, especially with the students I'm working with currently in the high school who have disabilities. They're getting ready to pick on jobs. And you taught me this the very first time I could put in my resume, and it would write cover letters that are detailed to where they're going. So not only employment, they'll say, here's my cover letter or resume, here's my resume. I'll attach it. And with my version, I can attach as many things about me as I want. But the free version, you can attach something the resume, and then say, "Make a cover letter for this resume for this institution." And then you can say things you want it to highlight too. Like I want you to really talk about how I'm a good communicator, how I have skills in technology, how I have gotten a 4.0 you know, whatever you want it to really highlight, it'll highlight, but it'll also take the skills from that university or that job that it's looking at, even the job description, and say these are the skills I have that fit your job description. So it it sounds like I spent a really long time looking over what they want and taking my resume and fitting it. Again, never use that as your final product, or take that and say, "Okay, now you need to look at it and you need to say, is this accurate? Do you need to change anything?" But overall, like, it's a really good cover letter.

Lisa Dieker:

Yeah, and a little tip, because I might have recently got an application that at the bottom it says, "Did you like how Copilot created this, this letter?" It's like, "yes, I do, because now I know where it came from." So again, I think your point is there. And honestly, when I use something from Copilot, I always take it and I actually paste it, if I'm going to use it, like for a letter, into Word in unformatted format, so it doesn't have that Copilot look. But it also then forces me to look at it and say, let me read it over. Don't forget to sign it, you know, don't forget it says, insert date here. Like, don't forget that piece. But, yeah, I'll tell you. The other thing I have been doing, like, we just had to write a report on one of our projects. I took the link to our website, and this is our report from last year. Here's our data. I just had a one page of data, and here's the website updates, like, like, here's a cart website. Can you give me three things I should say in this report? And it was fascinating, because I was like, I would have never said one of those. Like, it said you should really show how many more renew resources you have in your report. So it also is a great thought generator, as are most of these if you use them. And again, I don't think there's anything magical about Copilot, but if you're a Microsoft district, I just had a bunch of teachers, and they're like, "Oh, Copilot sounds cool, but we don't, we can't afford that." I'm like,"Are you a Microsoft school?" And they're like, "Yeah." And I'm like, they're like, "Oh, it's an app." So again, you just have to download it. Let's talk a little bit about the phone app, because Ithink it'll be fun for our listeners.

Maggie Mosher:

I was gonna say, Microsoft, the copilot has an app on your phone. And not only does the app allow you to ask it questions and answer, write it in, type it, I can even attach things on the app. I can have it say I am working with a student, and in that moment, they are not interested at all in what I have to say or do. I often will ask Copilot just on my phone. I just talk into it and say, "What do you think would interest a student who loves blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and is in this grade," and immediately it'll give me a joke or some way that I can tie her back into and make relevant what we're having to learn that she's in this moment not seeing a relevance to.

Lisa Dieker:

Yeah, and that's similar to what you can do with, you know, asking your phone, but what happens normally is it sends you down a rabbit hole, of you got to pick the website, whereas this gives you a direct answer. So I have a funny story. Mine has now been trained enough by me, because it knows me that the other day I said, "I have a really busy day. Can you give me a suggestion of what I might do?" And it said, "Well, I've looked at your your schedule, and it looks like you have a

break from nine to 9:

30," because I put my day in and I they said, "I think you should take a break and go on a walk." So about three o'clock, I get this message that asked me if I don't want to walk, I'm like,"Stop! No I did not, and so I'm going to now." But you know, I like the fact that for a lot of our students having some little personal assistant, and I know we can make a bot and all of that, but it's kind of already got that built into it, which is great.

Maggie Mosher:

And I will say having it on the palm of your hand too. My brother-in-law works for the Department of Defense, and he often is answering all of my questions. I always wondered how, and he has a really good chatbot on his phone, and he can give you the answer immediately, but with as a teacher, if I don't know something, I always tell my students, I don't know the answer, but I use it as a tool, just like they would. I say,"Oh, I don't know the answer to that let me see if I can find out quickly." And let me and then I talk to them about what was used to discover this information. So one of the things about Copilot, I like too, is you can train it, like you said, but I can put in all of my PDFs on the one that's in Microsoft, I know it won't take that information the free one, it will be but the one on Microsoft, and use those PDFs to train it, to give better answers.

Lisa Dieker:

Got it. I love it. Well, and then my last funny one is recently, I had a pretty inappropriate call with a salesperson. Let's just say they hung up on me and I was the customer. But I did in the middle of it, I put myself on mute, said, "Got any suggestions to keep me from saying something that I shouldn't say?" It said,"Take a deep breath, smile and do not say anything." And I was like, that was about it. But I think about that for some of our friends who don't have good social skills, maybe we all need a little Copilot friend to help us once in a while.

Maggie Mosher:

And Copilot is very good at helping us to save time.

Lisa Dieker:

Yes, and as we know, time is money. Well, thanks for joining us for this session of AI Advocates.