Matthew Worwood:
Hello everyone.

Matthew Worwood:
My name is Dr. Matthew Werwood.

Cyndi Burnett:
And my name is Dr. Cindy Burnett.

Matthew Worwood:
This is the fueling creativity in Education podcast.

Cyndi Burnett:
On this podcast, we’ll be talking about various creativity topics and how they relate to the fields of education.

Matthew Worwood:
We’ll be talking with scholars, educators, and resident experts about their work, challenges they.

Matthew Worwood:
Face, and exploring new perspectives of creativity.

Cyndi Burnett:
All with a goal to help fuel a more rich and informed discussion that provides teachers, administrators, and emerging scholars with the information they need to infuse creativity into teaching and learning.

Matthew Worwood:
So let’s begin.

Matthew Worwood:
Hello and welcome to our final episode of our listen and learn series for winter 2024. And as a reminder, our listen and learn series is a collection of super short episodes of the fueling creativity in Education podcast that are designed to offer listeners kind of targeted learning events connected to the central theme of creativity.

Cyndi Burnett:
In each of these short episodes, we will share one or two sound bites from past guests and offer specific takeaways that we think are applicable to educators professional growth.

Matthew Worwood:
Now this listen and learn series is dedicated to generative AI, which, as we know, became such a hot topic after Chat GPT’s release in November 2022.

Cyndi Burnett:
And to make things interesting, at the end of each episode, Matt and I share a single letter, so please take note of the letter. And once you have listened to all six episodes, decode the word and send it to us at questions@fuelingcreativitypodcast.com to win a very special prize pack from fueling creativity and education. And we may even invite you to be a special guest on the show.

Matthew Worwood:
So today’s AI theme is glimpses of the future, and it’s a little bit different. We’re not going to be showing a clip on this episode. We’re going to be doing an activity. But before we do that activity, I’m going to invite Cindy to talk a little bit about the concept of glimpses of the future and how it connects to creativity.

Cyndi Burnett:
So get glimpses of the future is one of the creative thinking skills that I use in my creativity skill set. And this skill emerged from the work of E. Paul Torrance, who was known as the father of creativity and education. So get glimpses of the future is all about predicting, imagining, and exploring opportunities and situations that do not yet exist. So today we’re going to be getting glimpses of the generative AI future.

Matthew Worwood:
And one of the things I like about the activity that we’re going to know, it’s a little bit associated with being a futurist. And we had Brian Alexander on the show in the listener Learn series, I think we had a clip from Brian Alexander, who is a futurist. And one of the things that futurists do is they try and map out and imagine future scenarios based on our existing knowledge of technology and behaviors that exist in, you know, on my LinkedIn page and on my website, weberclassroom.com. I’ve been playing around with this idea of AI scenario playquests, and they’re kind of like a divergent and convergent thinking activity that challenges to get glimpses of the future. So what you have to do is you first have to imagine a current learning event, and that might be something such as thinking about students in your class and how they generate questions in response to text or response to a video that they’ve watched, and that might be a learning event that you organize in the classroom. What you then have to do is think about an existing technology or potentially a future technology that is AI based, and think about how that tool in the future may enhance that learning event or potentially change that learning event. So Cindy and I have each thought of a learning event and thought about a potential AI tool that might enhance or change that learning event in the future. And as you play out the scenario, you get to think about the opportunities that may emerge, but also some of the challenges or unintended consequences that we would have to address if this were to happen.

Matthew Worwood:
So, Cindy, why don’t you get started and tell us your scenario?

Cyndi Burnett:
Matt, I had so much fun coming up with potential scenarios that we might play around with, but the one I decided to focus on is a situation that happened with my son, who is in 10th grade. He’s taking a course called AP seminar, and in this course, he is put with three other students, and they have to look at a social justice question, and they have to generate a question about social justice that they’re interested in. And what happened with my son and his three classmates was they couldn’t get along. They couldn’t come up with an idea that they all agreed on. So I thought it would be interesting if there was some sort of mediator AI. So something that maybe like a duck, so a physical duck that you put in the center of a group, and you told your ideas, and then this duck came back with potential ideas or questions to ask each member of the group to help them come to a consensus. So it’s sort of like a little generative AI mediator that asked more questions, that helped each student see things from different perspectives and helped them come to a greater consensus. So there wasn’t this argument and then maybe showed the students exactly what each other could see and the benefits and the downsides, and then maybe help them come to a conclusion together.

Cyndi Burnett:
So that was my idea for a playscape.

Matthew Worwood:
Oh, I absolutely love that, Cindy. And first of all, I thought it connects really well with our episode with Patricia Alivera, who thought about the idea of these physical robots that exist inside the classroom. So you’re talking about AI, but AI within the form of a physical robot that actually, I love the idea of it sitting in the middle, being this mediator and the fact that you’re thinking about group dynamics. I mean, that’s know we try and teach group dynamics, but I think everyone can relate to the challenges of groups, particularly when it comes to selecting one of the multiple ideas that’s been generated by the group. Now, Cindy, one of the things that I like to promote with these AI scenario play quests is obviously there’s some great opportunities with that, but what are some of the challenges that might exist that we might have to think about how we might overcome them as well in the future?

Cyndi Burnett:
So I think one of the challenges that could come up is that we rely too much on the technology. So if we’re in a scenario in which we’re working in a group and we don’t have the duck on hand, that we’re not playing to those principles. But I wonder if the duck, to overcome that. I wonder if the duck could actually teach you strategies to help you and identify those strategies, especially in learning environments, so that you could take them into practice later on.

Matthew Worwood:
Cindy, I really like that idea, and the reason why I really like it is because when I’m raising my three boys, I’ve thought a lot about conflict resolution and those kind of, like, social dynamics that exist in a group. I think they typically, for me at least, used to take place outside the home environment and sometimes outside the classroom environment, where you’re kind of like playing soccer on the field or you’re walking to and from school and you interact with a new group of people, and you’re having to kind of work through that conflict together. And in today’s world, I sometimes wonder whether or not kids have a lot of opportunities for conflict resolution, because I think that’s my, I don’t want to go off on a tangent now, but that’s looking at the interactions. If we’re spending more time on some of these tools, these devices, or we’re a lot more in structured play with sports, how many times do students actually, or young kids get into situations where they have to resolve conflicts. Obviously recess is important for that. I certainly have seen it in some of the see, I’m going off on a tangent now, but I’ve seen it some of the online gaming. It’s one of the reasons why, within limitations, I allow my middle son to actually go out and play with his friends on roadblocks because I’ve actually heard them doing some conflict resolution. But to your point, I love the idea of having this tool assisting groups identify the best idea and being that mediator.

Matthew Worwood:
But you are right, because if we become too dependent on that mediator, what might the impact be on ability to even select ideas and resolve conflict within groups when we don’t have that AI mediator around? So I think that’s a really good challenge to think about. So thanks for sharing that.

Matthew Worwood:
Do you want to bring more creative and critical thinking into your school? Look no further than our podcast sponsor, curiosity to create.

Cyndi Burnett:
Curiosity to create is a nonprofit organization dedicated to engaging professional development for school districts and empowering educators through online courses and personal coaching.

Matthew Worwood:
And if you’re craving a community of creative educators who love new ideas, don’t miss out on their creative thinking network. Get access to monthly webinars, creative lesson plans, and a supportive community all focused on fostering creativity in the classroom.

Cyndi Burnett:
To learn more, check out curiositytocreate.org or check out the links in the show notes for this episode. So Matt, let’s hear.

Matthew Worwood:
I’ve played on a few of these, and I really wanted to think a little bit about an AI scenario that was really rooted in creativity, but also some of the things that we’ve covered on the show. We’ve done a few episodes that I think center on the idea of kids designing solutions, whether it’s in a project based learning environment or utilizing some type of design thinking methodology. But then we’ve also done some episodes where kids are interacting with problems outside of their immediate environment and even their country. So we’ve done some work around students traveling to different countries and learning about the culture and problems that exist in a society outside of their own. So thinking about that, thinking about project based learning environments, I started to think about how language translation tools are evolving with generative AI, and you’ve got instant translation capabilities. I think most recently I just saw on LinkedIn, someone was sharing a video of how generative AI allows immediately puts sound into sign language so it can immediately turn that into a voice. And thinking about that, I suddenly found myself thinking about, wow, for the first time, we may have children in the US my home state of Connecticut, for example, that get to go and interact with maybe a school in southern Italy, and the children are able to collaborate, doesn’t have to be in real time. We’ve got tools like flip video, for example, that allow you to interact asynchronously.

Matthew Worwood:
But the key point is, with the instant translation capabilities, you can ask questions of children about their space, about problems that exist in their environment. It could be, how do you get to school? How do you go about sports? It could be a whole bunch of problems that exist in their immediate environment. But you get to interact with people from other countries, and the barriers are significantly reduced because of these new tools. So I started to imagine the idea of kids helping kids, which I know is the name of a charity in Connecticut, which I really love, but this idea of some project based learning environments where kids are working with other kids to solve problems that exist in their.

Cyndi Burnett:
Space, I love that idea, Matt. And I’m curious, have you looked to see what’s already out there that exists? That’s similar to.

Matthew Worwood:
Think, and I think that’s part of the AI scenario playquest. There are certainly education projects, and we’ve had educational projects on the show that are doing similar things. Likewise, there are some really exciting language translation tools that are existing. I mean, I wrote on a blog article recently that I think we’re really close to the universal translator coming out. You and I have both spoken about the fact that there’s tools now that assist us, if we wanted to, in translating this entire episode into another language. But I think that these tools still aren’t readily available in a classroom environment yet. I don’t know if I’ve seen any projects yet where they’re really combining the two. But as I said, all you would probably need is something like flip video to suddenly incorporate some of these AI translation tools.

Matthew Worwood:
And now you’ve got the platform that will actually facilitate that interaction.

Cyndi Burnett:
And I wonder if that’s something we’re going to see emerge much more so in 2024 than we have in the past.

Matthew Worwood:
Yeah, absolutely, you’re right. I mean, that is definitely something that we could see emerge over the next couple of years. And I think it’s really exciting.

Cyndi Burnett:
I think this could be such a gift for the world, to be able to connect with students in other places and to see how they live and help them with problems that they face and talk to them about the similarities and differences that they have based on their own culture. I think it’s very exciting.

Matthew Worwood:
You know what, though? I’ve just thought of an unintended consequence when we’re talking. What does that do to world languages, like the learning world languages? I need to take some time to think about that, but obviously I think.

Cyndi Burnett:
We’Ll still have world languages. I just think it’s going to be easier to communicate with one another.

Matthew Worwood:
No, but I mean learning them. I mean learning them.

Cyndi Burnett:
Do we need to learn them?

Matthew Worwood:
Yeah, I mean, that raises a question.

Cyndi Burnett:
That is a good question. Do we want our children to learn another language? Are there going to be great benefits to it? I would say yes.

Matthew Worwood:
So that’s my immediate thought as well. I can think certainly about the benefits. And again, of course, can you imagine, oh, wow. Can you imagine a situation where we have become dependent on these translation tools and then suddenly those translation tools stop? Wow. That would be a really big concern as well. So, Cindy, I think that concludes our listen and learn series, winter 2024 edition. Next week, we’ll be providing our introduction to season eight, and then we’ll be starting season eight as the new academic year for at least higher education begins. I know people in k through twelve have already begun the academic year in 2024, but before we do that, we have to give our final letter for our code word.

Cyndi Burnett:
Yes. And to remind our listeners in this listen and learn series, we are raffling away various prizes. So first you need to make sure you listen to all six episodes and listen at the end for the specific letter, which will help you identify a code word. So we’ve given out all the letters except for one, which we will give you right now. And if you know what the code word is, you’re going to email us at questions@fuelingcreativitypodcast.com along with the word and a few sentences of what you’ve learned from this listen and learn series. And we will be awarding those prizes at the end of January. So make sure you submit by January 31. So, Matt, are you ready to give us the next letter?

Matthew Worwood:
I am. Are we ready?

Cyndi Burnett:
Yes.

Matthew Worwood:
Drum roll.

Cyndi Burnett:
Sorry, I had an early drum roll.

Matthew Worwood:
There it is.

Cyndi Burnett:
Tea time.

Matthew Worwood:
Tango.

Cyndi Burnett:
TikTok.

Matthew Worwood:
Translation.

Cyndi Burnett:
Translation. Let’s end there. And that concludes this episode of the feeling, creativity, and education podcast. My name is Don. Cindy Burnett.

Matthew Worwood:
And my name is Dr. Matthew Warwood.

Cyndi Burnett:
This episode was produced by Matthew Warwood and Cindy Burnett. Our podcast sponsor is curiosity to create, and our editor is Sam Atkinson.