AI Advocates

S3 E3: Rethinking Professional Development in a Changing AI Landscape

• Lisa Dieker • Season 3 • Episode 3

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In this episode of AI Advocates, Lisa Dieker and Maggie Mosher explore how professional development is evolving and how educators can reclaim their time by taking ownership of their learning. They discuss how AI tools and peer collaboration can help teachers reflect on their practice, grow professionally, and improve classroom experiences beyond traditional workshops.

This conversation invites educators to rethink what meaningful professional development can look like in a changing landscape with AI.

Key insights include:

Self-reflection that drives growth: An app called Socrait helps teachers analyze their own classroom interactions by tracking talk time, praise, interruptions, and how often students are called on. 

Personalized professional development with FLITE STEM Coaching: Lisa highlights how FLITE STEM: Coaching allows educators to tag their own teaching behaviors, reflect on video, and explore more than 770 math and science resources. Teachers can choose short, targeted learning experiences that address their specific needs.

Supporting social skills with VOISS Advisor: VOISS Advisor offers educators guidance on teaching and assessing social skills using evidence-based practices. With videos, lesson plans, rubrics, and IEP aligned goals, teachers can build instructions without adding extra stress.

Learning from peers: Lisa and Maggie emphasize that some of the best professional development already exists within schools. Short peer-led sessions, classroom visits, and shared conversations often provide more relevant learning than traditional training.

Using free AI tools and training: Educators do not need expensive programs to get started. Many platforms offer free tutorials and resources that help teachers explore AI, coding, and instructional tools alongside their students.

Resources:
Socrait - https://socrait.app/login
FLITE STEM: Coaching - https://flitestemcoaching.org/
VOISS Advisor - https://voissadvisor.org/

Social Media:
X - https://x.com/KUFLITECenter
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/people/Center-for-Flexible-Learning-through-Innovations-in-Technology-Education/61563791019174/
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/aai-flite-center

Unknown:

Reclaim your time time.

Lisa Dieker:

Welcome to AI Advocates. I'm Lisa Dieker.

Maggie Mosher:

And I'm Maggie Mosher.

Lisa Dieker:

Hey, Maggie, so we're talking about our favorite thing is hanging out with teachers. Maybe teachers don't always think it's their favorite thing, but professional development. So let's talk about not in a room with us, that would be fun, by the way, but honestly, we love teachers, but, but how do they do it on their own?

Maggie Mosher:

Yeah, professional development area of education, which is really a big part of my heart, because essentially, I grew up in an area where teachers got very little professional development. It's one of the reasons I say that when I present I try to give too much information at one time, is because we used to get one time a year to get all the information for the entire year, and we didn't have professional development online like they do now. So every moment I was holding on to every word that our PD person gave us so that I could learn something. Now I can go anywhere and get free PD, but one of the things that I like right now is an app called socrat. It's S-O-C-R-A-I-T and it was actually introduced to the app by one of the one of the middle school teachers that I had been training, and ironically, I then was at a conference where I was speaking, and the person who created the app was speaking to, and she's teacher. And I love things created by teachers because they think like teachers, and they know that we don't have enough hands, and so we need to watch a million people in one room. And how do we do that? So what this app does, and again, it's S-O-C-R-A-I-T and it's a purple little thing that comes up, because there's like three socrats, but a purple little box that comes up. And what it does is it records the teacher. It's free for you to record up to 45 minutes. And it records my class. It's FERPA COPPA compliant, so it stays on my computer. It doesn't go anywhere. But as it's recording my class, it tells me how often I use certain students names, so how often I call on one student versus another, how often I give positive versus negative praise. It literally will graph me and say how often I interrupt, how much talking I'm doing versus everyone else in the room. So I thought for all of my meetings, I'm going to turn it on for the next five meetings and see am I over talking for the podcast, I should turn it on and see if I'm talking more, you know. So essentially, it's a really great tool for self reflection. And I think PD, one of the things we like to be able to do after we have good quality PD is know ourselves and what do I need work on? And that's one way to find out. What do I need work on? Do I need work on better praise, more praise? Do I need work on making sure that I'm not singling out kids? Do I need work on proximity? Am I saying names a lot because I'm not close to that student who needs me close to them? What do I need work on? And then what I need work on? Once I know that, then I get to go to the PD part. So I'll have you tell us first, what's your favorite PD tool?

Lisa Dieker:

Yeah, well, I mean, I'm gonna be shameless and plug our own work. So if you're a math or science person, we have PD tool called FLITE STEM Coaching.org and it's F-L-I-T-E I do know how to spell but it stands for something else. So FLITE STEM Coaching.org and we'll put these on the links to the podcast. But what, what we have developed is a software where you can tag your behavior. You can put your biometrics in there. We can analyze your face to know if you're happy from a video. You can go out and choose your own adventure there. But the thing I really love is it's got over 770 resources for those of you who work with kids with disabilities in math and science class, so you can do your own PD. And what we really did is we thought hard, and they're about short, medium and long, and they're videos, they're blogs, they're articles. So you can say, hey, I've analyzed myself, I've looked at my video, I've tagged my behavior, and I'm really stressed every time I ask a question, because I'm not good at open-ended questions, which are so important in math and science. So I then can go out and put in open-ended questions, and it will give me the best resources. And again, that seems like really teeny, tiny, narrow AI, but it's big because it says that's what we want kids to do. Like, I'm really big into right now explore boards where I say, here's the topic, and here's the nine things you can choose to explore the topic, but you have to know these things. So if you watch this video and it didn't give you all that info, you'd have to go somewhere else. So that's what I feel like professional development is moving towards, is more of an exploring.

Maggie Mosher:

And what I love about the tool that you mentioned, too, is as a coach when I was or an administrator when I was going in and doing reviews, often I'd see something, and I'd want to show them in that moment, but I can't stop time and be like, come over here. Look at this. See what you just did. But I'd want to tell them, hey, right now, when that happened, could you try this? And so in that moment, I can do that in live times, like, can we try this? What about this? And then they can go back and watch it later, which I love. And then we also have, speaking of projects that we have another free is Project VOISS.org and we have VOISS Advisor. And VOISS Advisor is a free resource for educators to teach them evidence-based practices to help with generalizing social skills. No, we all need them. I need them. It generalize all of these social skills. It teaches 182 social skills in the VOISS extended reality AI, and then in 142 scenarios. But then the part that's the teachers, the VOISS Advisor. It gives them videos on how to do an evidence-based practice, like role playing or social narratives. How do I do that in less than five minutes? It shows a video of it. It gives lesson plans. It gives IEP goal suggestions. It gives so many tools that I can then modify and make work for my my students. One of the main tools that I love is essentially, it has rubrics for almost up in behavior. Like, when I was trying to measure behavior before, I'd have to always do time on tasks, like, how many times do they do the behavior? How many times and they have to go in and look at that, or I'd have to give a parent a survey or questionnaire, like a start to. Now I have for every behavior, I have a different kind of assessment, a different form of assessment, and it's already created for me. So I love places like that as well.

Lisa Dieker:

Yeah. And you know, again, if you haven't checked out, like Code.org, if you're wanting to learn the basics of code, and do remember almost every large language model software that is out there, you can ask it to write code for you and run a code so you're like, hey, let's try to make a game as a class, or we don't like this program on our smart board. How do we change it? And I think that's what's really fun, is I think we're at a point too, where we learn with our students, because there's no way to keep up with everything's going on, and I definitely think that's true as we work with older students. But I'm not so sure. You know kindergartners all came knowing how to operate an iPad. I'm pretty sure they're going to know how to operate AI, very quickly.

Maggie Mosher:

And you're knowing too. You teachers as everything. SchoolAI, Magic School AI, Eduaid, even Copilot. They all have videos that are free that will train teachers on how to use that AI tool, and it's completely free.

Lisa Dieker:

Google Gemini Pro has some great way. Yeah, Yeah.

Maggie Mosher:

So if you're not sure how to use a tool, guess what? Most of them have free videos on teaching you how to use that tool. So that's one way we can save time.

Lisa Dieker:

Yes, and I think my last thought is, you don't really need us. We like to be the creators of fun things, but, but honestly, I learned from this podcast, like I was like, oh, I should probably go watch the social skill code on interrupting your podcast partner. You know, again, it's those kinds of things that I think is where we are. And so the next time you might say to your administrator, hey, instead of us having somebody come in, could we have an hour and three different tables? And this one's on trying FLITE STEM: Coaching, this one's on trying VOISS, and this one's on what's your favorite AI tool, and let's all learn from each other, like that's what I think is, you know, eight minute sprint presentations from your teachers, you may learn more that's related to the kids in your building than having someone come in.

Maggie Mosher:

And it won't cost them money like and my last piece on that is to remember that you guys are resources for each other. Sometimes the teachers around you and other schools near you, they are your best professional development. So, you know, try to find if you know a teacher and students love that teacher and are really engaged, take time to go watch that classroom. You know, ask for a planning period to go do that. Ask the administrator if they'll watch your room for a few hours while you can go do that. Sometimes they will. I loved to do that as an administrator. Helped me to get to know the students, and it would give PD time. So also, know you're your best resources, and we hope to be giving you as many resources. And thank you. A shout out to that teacher who said that they wanted a list of which episodes talk about what tools. Thank you. We did that, and so I'm grateful for all of you for reaching out and telling us what you need.

Lisa Dieker:

So save time money and lean on each other, because again, AI is good. Teachers are better.