Technology Essentials in Education Episode 27:
AI Guidelines at the District Level

Hello there and welcome to Technology Essentials in Education. My name is Monica Burns and I'm very excited that you are here today for this conversation with Mike Lawrence.

Mike is a fellow Apple Distinguished Educator. I've known him for more than a decade now and today I chat with him about what it looks like to lead EdTech at the district level.

He has had a very interesting career path, which you'll hear about on today's episode, running professional learning at a non-profit, being in the vendor world, and now serving as the Director of IT for a district in California.

So this gives him a fantastic, wide-ranging perspective that we unpack in today's episode.

If you are curious about what EdTech looks like, decision making, leading professional development, supporting stakeholders in various roles, this is a conversation you won't want to miss.

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Welcome to the podcast. I am so excited to chat with you today about EdTech, specifically at the district level.

Mike, can you share a little bit about your role in education? What does your day-to-day look like?

Happy to, and I'm thrilled to be here. It's great to see you again. My role in education, a little bit of my history, I started as a high school English teacher and then went to the county office and focused on EdTech and mostly professional learning.

Then I had the extraordinary opportunity to work for a non-profit EdTech association here in California and produce events and continue that vein of professional learning.

When that was done, I got the opportunity to jump on the other side and be a part of helping build the tools that I had been a part of using and then facilitating their use at the non-profit, both on the marketing side as well as the sales side.

Then when I got through with 70 years of that, I thought, you know what, I really miss seeing my impact directly.

I saw an opportunity at a school district for a chief technology role, the director of IT, and leaped at the chance to be able to see that impact directly and give back to the community.

My day-to-day really covers the gamut. My department covers instructional technology as well as the technical side.

For fun, I also run the print shop. We have a graphics department. Then we have two videographers that I call our storytelling team.

My day-to-day could encompass two or three tasks in each of those realms, sitting in a director's meeting or in a cabinet meeting or meeting with my superintendent.

It's a very tightly organized district and they value technology. I feel that my role is heard and sought in most of the conversations, which is ideal.

It's what I've told folks. This is how I would structure a district technology role if I had the power. It's been a blast. It's not boring and no day is the same.

I bet. Just from the district that you work at, the way that you are connected with so many folks, both inside of that space as well as from some of your prior experience, you've worn, like you mentioned, so many different hats in education and then EdTech more specifically.

All of those different types of experiences, I would imagine, has influenced your day-to-day now. How does having that nice, wide range of experience, real quality time in all of those roles, shape the way you approach district-level technology decisions?

I would say it's a constant. I'm constantly thinking of experiences or learned opportunities or my past mistakes that I think that I've been able to learn from.

All of that comes to bear. There was a recent meeting where we were trying to organize essentially a systemic change project. Boom. In my head came the RACI chart concept that I learned as a marketing person.

R stands for responsible. A is accountable. C is consulted. I is informed.

I thought, okay, there's so many moving parts in this project, so many different departments. We really needed a RACI chart.

That was a new term for many of my fellow educators. The communications officer, he's like, oh, yeah, I know that because he has a marketing background, so no surprise.

It was really fun to be able to pull that and apply it here in this year as an educator to help with systemic change.

It's examples like that often. I would say the reverse is also true. There's so many things that have happened in education that I missed because of my time at the nonprofit or the vendor world that I'm constantly learning.

I think the biggest thing I bring from my past experiences is that of a learner. I highly value the ability to be a constant learner.

When I was hiring trainers doing a lot of that professional learning, I would look for fellow learners.

If they came at me and they said, oh, no, I know everything there is to know about this tool or that tool, we wouldn't use them.

I wanted my folks to go out and, yes, lead and facilitate and train, but also come away with two or three things they learned so that they could apply that training better in the future.

Hopefully, all of us could go, oh, yeah, that's a really good idea. I'm glad you learned that.

My ability to be a learner is probably the highest skill that I brought to the equation.

That and a certain level of humility because having been in this space for as long as I have, I know I don't know everything.

Whereas if I had been hired in this role in my 20s or 30s, I think that I would have come at it with a different arrogance that, thankfully, has left a lot of my work, I'd like to think.

Coming in with humility, curiosity, and a willingness to learn is probably the biggest thing that I've developed over my years in education.

I had it to begin with, but I really developed it in that time.

Especially moving between different types of roles. You're constantly picking up new information, realizing that you don't have all the answers at the start, and being open to a suggestion, a different way of thinking, a different way to organize information, new frameworks that might have not been in your area of expertise before entering that particular role.

You went from leading that statewide nonprofit to working now inside of a single district.

Can you tell us a little bit more about what made you want to come back to the district level? What surprised you about being on that side of things again, especially as you mentioned, some things have changed in education in just the past couple years, the AI of it all, for sure, that I'm sure has made this experience feel so different.

I think it was a number of things. I mentioned wanting to make an impact and seeing that impact. That was certainly the number one reason.

To give you a few more, post-pandemic, I lived the pandemic while at a vendor. That was certainly a unique experience. We did everything we could to help school districts in that extraordinary time.

After the pandemic, we're now in a one-to-one environment. Many districts are questioning, should we continue one-to-one? Should we find a way to make it sustainable?

I wanted to jump into that challenge. I wanted to figure out, how can we take the best of what we learned from the pandemic and continue to a new normal, a better normal, and not go backwards, not allow this tech lash, as some are calling it, to take us backwards before where we were pre-pandemic?

I thought that's an exciting challenge. Again, it's proven to be. We're looking at, how do we have a sustainable student device cycle? How do we have a sustainable staff device cycle?

Those are the challenges I'm working on right now. How do we shift to leasing? Could there be new devices out there that we hadn't considered before that might make more sense now? Let's rethink some of that.

That certainly was a reason to go back. AI is another huge reason.

I saw what was another transformative technology, one that is unlike anything you and I have seen in this time, in this space.

The closest comparison would be the advent of the web in schools. All of a sudden, you're connected beyond the four walls of the classroom. That was hugely transformative.

I feel AI was another opportunity for me to jump in.

The other thing, too, that really helped me in my adjustment back into the school district was this community, this network.

You have a similar network. The ability to just reach out and say, how is everyone else dealing with this? This can't be the only district that's dealing with this question. What do you do with it?

Bringing that level of the network that I've developed to a district-level.

So that's a really high-level role, I think, would really help the school district and really potentially make a positive impact on student lives.

So that was a lot of the pieces that brought me back.

I kind of would like to end my career this close to students rather than go back out and consult or work in the vendor world.

So that was one of the final pieces that I was starting to look at.

Okay, how many more years before I retire, and where would I like to do that?

And I thought, yeah, okay, I've got a good number of years left. Let me apply to the school district.

And just, it's so interesting you said, too, just about your network, right, and being in a position in your career where you have a network that you can really lean on, bounce ideas off of someone working in a district that might look really similar to yours or might look very different to yours, or have different kinds of state mandates or different trends that are happening right in their region.

And so it's such an interesting point that you made about kind of your list of reasons or considerations that you were kind of taking into this shift, is that you're now at this point of your career where you'd have plenty of people.

Maybe it's asking for help. Maybe it's asking for ideas. Maybe it's just sharing, right, what's happening.

And maybe someone will then reach back out to you once they try the same thing and it went a different way.

Right. So there's so many benefits to being at that stage of your career with that kind of network now in a district role.

And, you know, you mentioned earlier about your role, including a few different components.

And so I'm wondering what does the relationship look like between the IT department and the academic services team in your district?

That's it's not always the case that that's similar everywhere you go.

And how do you make sure the technology decisions are truly driven by teaching and learning goals rather than the other way around?

Well, I was very grateful that, you know, in my research on ABC and then when I arrived, it's clear that they built it the right way.

IT reports up through academic services rather than business services or the CBO, which is true of many districts and has a direct relationship with the superintendent.

I serve on cabinet. The superintendent and I meet monthly as well as I do with the CBO.

So even though I don't report on the business side, we all know how important infrastructure and technology play a role together.

So I meet with him monthly and I meet with my superintendent as well.

So that's a really good groundwork that ABC had already established before I got there.

They saw the value of technology being in the room where those decisions are made.

And so all I could do is take and expand on that.

My direct supervisor is the assistant superintendent of academic services, and we have a solid relationship.

And I think she values what I bring to the table and I certainly value her years of experience and leadership.

So it's very good. And I think the point you made about seeing the students as driving the use of technology is crucial.

And so I brought my whole team together, my first department meeting, and I clarified who are our customers.

I asked the team and I wanted to hear where they landed.

I was very grateful that they pretty much offered up students, parents, and supports and staff at the school sites.

Those are the first three they said. And I was like, correct. That is the correct answer.

Well, this is a great department. So I inherited a fantastic team that my predecessor had built.

And I'm just hoping to build upon that. But I recognize that's not always true.

So I try to connect with others that might be in different environments and see if I can offer up suggestions and ways that they could be involved.

I did a session at a conference about MTSS and essentially trying to demystify it to EdTech folks like myself.

Yes, I'm an integral part of that, I would like to say.

And our LCAP plan, which is our local control accountability plan here in California.

And so the two are inextricably linked. And of course, because technology is like oxygen, it's throughout.

You can't not involve your technology folks as you're putting together that data, but also as you're examining how students are acquiring literacy skills and how they're developing there.

So all of those pieces play an important role. And so this in the session, I felt like I was the MTSS whisperer and said, here's why you should be involved.

Here's how you can help. It's not just you're good at spreadsheets, aren't you?

That is, of course, a part of it. But far too often, that's the one and only.

Let's bring in the EdTech person. They're going to spread. They know how Excel works.

So it's like, here's the many things that you know already that you can apply here.

And so I brought things up like design thinking, which is very popular.

We've seen a lot of design thinking sessions at EdTech conferences over the year. Well, here's how it fits in with MTSS.

This is what it looks like. Oh, by the way, UDL, Universal Design for Learning.

That's something that we as EdTech folks are very fond of. We were early adopters.

Well, many districts are just starting to roll that out. So guess what?

You become the local expert. If there's no one else in your district, you can step up and say, I understand what it means to you.

All means all. And I understand how to create a tool that helps.

Those with different needs, diverse learners, but also all the other students can potentially benefit all the captions.

You think about how beneficial captions are to all learners, not just those with hearing impairment.

So those are some of the things that I found by being so connected with the academic services.

It was a little bit of a surprise, though. I will say that even though we're structured that way, we hadn't always been structured that way.

So occasionally I encounter resistance or really just naivete.

One quick story was there was a training happening in the special ed department.

And I said, oh, could I send one of my folks to your training? And they said, oh, no, we're fine.

We don't need tech support. And I was like, no, no, no.

I wanted to go and learn because when you run into trouble or you need an account set up for that, I want my people to know.

So I'd love to send someone to sit next to your people as a learner, not there for tech support.

And they said, oh. And it was like a whole new way of considering.

So it's something that I know we all don't have the bandwidth to do, but you can get your support people invited into trainings that are curricular in nature.

It will help them when the time comes, because not only the platform that they're learning in that environment, because, of course, there's software in every place, but also just the why.

Because sometimes we don't get the why when a ticket comes in.

I need access to this or this student needs to open this up and this port needs to be open, whatever it is.

If we understand, oh, they're trying to analyze a student's needs and create an adaptive solution for that particular student or students.

We understand the why immediately. And my team can leap to work because the ticket may have come in with incomplete information or incorrect information.

And my team could go, oh, actually, what you need is this.

And so they bring someone else along or they open up a port or whatever the task might be.

So that was an aha moment for me because I thought, OK, that was the right thing to do.

And I need to do that more often.

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That's such a great example because it illustrates just it's not always resistance. It's just like you don't know what you don't know.

And, you know, it's funny you say that, too, because it made me think just, you know, first and foremost, it's nice to have some common vocabulary right across the team when you're asking for help.

And now I have that context. I know sometimes when I do professional learning for groups, I'll ask, like, what words are you using to describe this?

Or like, what are your big district-wide things that would be really helpful if an outsider used the right one of those terms to describe something instead of like another term that kind of means the same thing?

Like, let me use your language to talk about this work. It'll help all of us connect and the learning going.

So I love that idea of having someone come in and just like understand how this is being described, even if they don't know all the buttons to press all the time.

They're just part of the conversation. They're not an outsider when someone does need some help or support.

And I never want to hear one of my team members say, what's an IEP? Exactly.

I like all of them, even if they don't deal with it on the daily to understand it and to be able to have a conversation.

Another great example. Like in order to talk about the software, talk about the hardware, I talk about these other pieces.

You know, having some context is huge.

And I'm curious, how are you approaching AI use at the district level? What are teachers, what are students maybe doing right now?

So we hit the ground running. The team, before I arrived, the team had actually put together guidelines rather than go for policy.

As many districts, you and I know, have decided, as we did, guidelines are the best route because AI is changing weekly, if not daily, and policy is way too slow to change.

So let's make broad as possible policy and let's provide guidelines, guardrails, whatever the language you want to use, to give those tools and resources to teachers, to administrators, to support staff as quickly as possible.

So I was grateful that we already had a document, it was already aligned with where I landed on it, that AI really is best utilized when a qualified human is working with it, understands how to ask the right questions, understands how to ask AI to analyze its own bias.

So we had this equation when I arrived, HI plus AI, and human intelligence plus artificial intelligence.

And we've now revised it to be HI plus AI plus HI plus AI, and so on.

Yeah, I like that. It's an iterative process.

And you can't just do one query and then go, okay, great, copy, paste. It's not that.

It's always, okay, well, let me check here, let me adjust this, this is not my voice.

And you check your own data, because I've caught AI being wrong many times.

Oh, yeah. Right. Even the, are you sure? Response can make a big difference.

Sure. Or, hey, could you look at this from a different perspective? Or could you check your own biases?

And it's remarkably transparent, like, you know what, you're right, I miscalculated that, or I used this.

I asked AI recently, I was working on something, and it used the term deadline, and it used something else that was sort of reminiscent of militaristic language.

And my resolution this year is to remove all references to militaristic metaphors.

So I don't say boots on the ground, I don't say on the front lines, I've just taken that out of my own language.

And I didn't know I had that resolution. So it's giving me some of that language, deadlines.

So I said, could we avoid anything that references the military from now and forever, and I said, oh, really good point.

We are talking about education and students learning. So AI made that adjustment and sent me back something better.

So we're having those kinds of conversations about human and AI interaction.

We're talking about trust and transparency rather than blocking AI.

The slogan I use in my school district is start a conversation, not an accusation.

And we give them tools so that the teacher is asked to post a badge when they publish an assignment or slides or review questions, if they used AI to develop those and be open about it.

Yeah, I had AI generate a list of 10 quiz questions to help us study for the exam together.

Here's my badge that says I used up to 40% AI.

Then when you ask the students, okay, I'd like you to present your assignment or give me back your work, tell me if you used AI, they have a badge and a language that they can have that conversation.

Because humans, the teachers especially, are the best AI detectors, and we know that the technological AI detectors are flawed.

They're often biased against second language learners.

I will say that I haven't went over everyone. There are teachers that are like, everyone put away your computers, we're going to have an essay today, get a piece of paper, and I'm working with them.

I think that there's a time and a place for that.

Maybe at the beginning of the year is a baseline, so you understand what your student's writing looks and sounds like.

But I'm trying to get them to move forward and be comfortable with acceptable use, ethical use of AI.

If you know that that student, so I taught English, right?

So if you know that this particular student has trouble with transitions between paragraphs and thoughts, then maybe have them work with AI to offer some alternative transitions.

Once they've written their paragraphs, not have them write the paragraphs, have them say, okay, Mike, your transition is a little clunky here between point two and point three.

How about this? And so that's a great way.

And then the student could report back, hey, Mr. Lawrence, I used your suggestion.

My transitions hopefully are better because I worked with AI and I learned in the process not to repeat, you know, besides or another, like the same transition words.

And then they would have the same cognitive challenges that you expect to have a student, but also they'd be learning without me standing over their shoulder saying, you know, is there another word you could use for very is there another word you could use for I don't have the time.

No teacher has that kind of time.

So that's what we're trying to roll out is we've got a badge system.

We've got AI trust you, which is a plug in that Laguna Beach Unified developed and we installed and it allows that for that conversation, it facilitates that conversation.

And our teachers are being tapped regularly to present.

We had three present on their use of AI just at Spring Q a couple of weeks ago.

And Chad Lane's Mr. Lane's is presenting at ASU GSV on our AI program.

So it's caught some attention because I think even though we know we have a long way to go, we might be a little further along than some districts.

And that idea of transparency, of modeling, of open conversations, I think is a really massive shift right from where people might have been two or three years ago of keeping that secret or gatekeeping or whatever terminology you want to use to describe it.

And that's not necessarily the best way for anyone to learn or to grow with all of these new things that are happening.

So as we are kind of wrapping up together and someone's listening and they're maybe a new tech director or they're thinking about becoming a director of technology or envisioning what that world might look like for them.

What are the first two or three things you tell them to focus on?

I was really grateful that the first thing I did when I took over in this role was I realized that we had about the same number of schools as I had staff members in the department.

And I wanted to go out and visit the schools and I wanted to get to know my team.

So I put the two together and I said, OK, everyone on my team pick a school.

Maybe it's one you attended. Maybe it's one where you used to work. Maybe it's one where a sibling is a student, whatever the reason or for no reason at all.

Maybe you've just never been to that school and you want to go pick a school and then I will pick a day and we'll go and do a walkthrough together and I'll drive and then I get ten minutes in the car with you there and back.

We can debrief after and we get to see the school. The principal sees the new director of IT, gets to connect with you again.

Perhaps they've never met you.

And we did that and it was painful and difficult as it was to do 29 schools with it ended up being 33 campuses because we have other campuses that do different things and I have 33 staff.

So it was a lot to do in the first two months of my job before school got out in May.

But I did it and I'm so grateful I did.

I now have memories associated with physical locations and meeting this person on my team.

Oh, they've got a family or they used to teach or whatever their background is or they've got aspirations.

They're going through college and getting a degree right now. Fantastic.

I learned all these pieces about the individuals on my team that I have the honor of serving and then also I got to meet the schools.

I got to go walk through classrooms. So that was the best.

Learn your people. Learn their stories. What's their own narrative?

Oh, I'm overworked. Oh, you know, I wish I had the opportunity to do X, Y, or Z. What's that narrative?

And the phrase that we use is go see the work because in those journeys I discovered and I asked a couple of naive questions and I'm still working through trying to shift our thinking on some of those from that first couple of visits.

Another is just look for systems debt.

I've discovered sometimes by accident, sometimes painfully that there were gaps and we need to close those gaps.

We need to adjust. We need to upgrade our equipment.

Look at your, you know, if you don't have expertise in routers and networking and infrastructure, you know, it's really not my background.

Find the expertise within your department and potentially even ask outside experts.

We hired a team to come in and do an audit and be comfortable and willing to find those gaps.

And if you're not embarrassed by what you find, you're not looking deep enough.

There's no shame in it.

I'm not saying anything negative about my predecessor or our current team.

Everyone does this. We have preferences and priorities and we have to say no to certain things.

And so I just wanted to make sure that those things that they had said no to were not things that were going to come back and bite us.

And then the last one we already touched on is build a community.

If you don't already have a network, build a network or reach out, call up or go visit other school districts, IT departments and ask around and build that network and that community.

So you have a place to learn, but also someone to lean on like, hey, how did you guys deal with this?

Or have you been having these kinds of cyber attacks or what are you looking to do next with ADA compliance for your website and whatnot?

So that community can be super helpful in practical ways and also help you vision out for the future, especially if you find folks that are more innovative than you are, like seek them out and certainly offer to help as well.

Don't just go to take because it's a two way street, but those would be the things that I'd advise.

It's a big job. It's more expansive than I realized, but I already mentioned being a learner, and so that's how I approach it.

And that's fantastic advice for someone who's maybe in the thick of it right now and looking for a reset, as well as someone who is considering or thinking about what their future role might be.

A lot of the folks that take this role come from the technical background and don't have the classroom.

So I would reverse it and say, even though you might be uncomfortable in the classroom, go and see classrooms, talk to teachers, ask them how their technology uses.

Because it's what I'm trying to do on the technical side.

But many folks that end up in this role lack that curriculum, but have deep experience where I do not in the networking and the technical side.

So be sure to flip to the other side.

And particularly right in a role like yours where you're able to be kind of on both sides of something that is sometimes split between two different roles.

So, Mike, where can people connect with you? Where can they follow along with what you're doing? Where can they learn more about your work?

I increasingly find myself on LinkedIn. That's probably the best place to find me.

You can just go look for me there. If you don't find me, I've got Mike Lawrence dot me.

It has all my social links and a little bit about me and my background.

That's a pretty quick way to find me. That'd be great.

Perfect. Well, thank you so much for your time, your insight and all of the things that you share with listeners today.

It was lots of fun chatting with Mike Lawrence today, and I am sure that you got some gems from this conversation that you can take back into your own work.

But let's finish up this episode like we always do with a few key points to help make this attack easy.

First, approach your role as a learner first and bring humility and curiosity to every conversation.

Structure technology so it reports through academic services, keeping teaching and learning at the center.

Visit schools and get to know your team early to build trust and understand the work on the ground.

Use guidelines instead of rigid policies for AI so you can adapt as the technology evolves.

As I said, lots of fun chatting with Mike today.

He's a fantastic resource if you're curious about EdTech at the district level.

So make sure to follow along with his work.

A big thank you to Jotform, the presenter of today's episode.

To learn more about Jotform and how educational institutions can get a 30 percent discount on Jotform Enterprise, head to Jotform.com slash enterprise slash education.