Starting Honest Conversations as a Former Educator

For those of you that have been following along, I just started an account with both Medium and Substack to try to push myself to write a bit more and reflect a bit more… so hopefully you will be seeing more of me, but if you have accounts there, would love some support there to keep me accountable.

To kickoff these new spaces, I wanted to re-introduce myself..

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Hello everyone, my name is Ted Kim and I am a former educator and technology coordinator, now working in product management at an early stage, EdTech startup in Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Beginnings are hard.

My very first official post begins with me staring at the recommended statement above, realizing that it holds a meaning far deeper than simply how I feel about creating this space.

Beginnings are truly hard. This is how I feel about most things, but leaving the classroom led me into so many “beginnings” all at once.

New career, new industry (kind of), new city, new apartment, new friends… the list continues, but the reason I felt compelled to begin here of all places through writing, really started from a strong sense of feeling lost. Not lost from a what am I doing perspective, nor from a fulfillment perspective, but a deep seeded anxiousness that felt familiar from my time working in the classroom. A good friend of mine told me that working in Product Management is lonely, and similarly, I have made so many connections to that same loneliness I felt as an educator.

In the past couple years working outside of the classroom, but still with classrooms, I found that there are so many lessons I have learned, but also so many great conversations and topics that I want to reflect upon. Difficult and challenging topics that really test my understanding of the education industry and the impact I want to have.

Ultimately, I hope that as I continue to reflect and share through writing, that we can help create a space to process and discuss all that is happening at the junction between education and technology. Additionally, I have met many transitioning educators that I want to bring validation to all the ways my skills as an educator have translated into the work that I do presently.

I currently hope to write minimally biweekly, and would love to hear from you all any questions, preferred formats, frequency, and all things feedback related. I will be the first to admit that I by no means have all the answers, but am nonetheless curious in trying to understand the world around me for all the new beginnings yet to come. This is our space now, thanks for keeping me company.

Ted.aily: AI in Education

The newest wave of news in AI has started to find its way, more publicly, into the classroom today. And although it has always been present, lurking like Smeagol in the shadows, it has found its way front and center stage in recent times. The implications that have come flooding as a result, are vastly different in both extreme directions, though largely seeming negative (as the media covers).

Those of you following along my journey may know that I recently left the classroom to join the AI front, so while my opinions may be biased, part of my responsibility as a Product Manager has been to steer our company in the right direction with how AI can be utilized within the classroom to support learning, rather than undermine it.

First and foremost, I want to acknowledge the worries and distrust of AI in the classroom - there is always validity to a teacher’s concern over what is best for their students, and there is a lot of distrust in AI based on frustrating conversations with chatbots, customer support bots, and various smart home devices. I would humbly request that before you turn to pitchforks and torches, to consider that much of the worry around AI may not be for the reasons people believe. A teacher’s job is a million in one, and the introduction of tools like ChatGPT and other outward facing platforms add more work to a teacher’s already colossal list of responsibilities. And while it often comes off as teachers being jaded and technology adverse, in reality, most teachers simply want to teach students to the best of their ability, and they are tired, overworked, and underpaid.

So what is “Artificial Intelligence” (aka AI)?

Artificial intelligence is the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems, according to an article linked by Ed Burns (Ed Burns | TechTarget.com). And while there are multiple facets of AI, the most commonly referred to component is machine learning. This is commonly used in many testing platforms, assessment tools, diagnostics, and generally most analytics/support in modern day technology. This piece has always been extremely valuable and allows for schools to look at enrollment data, benchmark diagnostics, course placement information, as well as trending student data to make high level decisions to support the school culture and learning environment.

More recently, speech recognition, natural language processing, in addition to advancements to machine learning and other facets of AI have become more consumer facing in the form of tools that have been the driving force of current controversy. Here are a few observations about AI that I have made that hopefully helps put some perspective as someone who has now sat on both sides of the fence:

1. AI in the form of a Large Language Model (LLM) requires training and there are better trained models than others. GPT leading the way at the moment with others like Anthropic, Gemini, Claude, etc. Everyone should be aware of the products they use and how their data is being utilized to train or not train AI models.

2. Consumer accessible AI is not always great at differentiating good information from bad - and some tools can be better directed (via prompting or fine-tuning) than others.

3. There is a lot of unknown with AI - even the most brilliant technologists don’t know everything there is to know with AI.

4. AI is here to stay - which is sometimes difficult to swallow, but the reality is that as educators, we have a responsibility to help students navigate the changing world around them and to give them tools to be able to critically think about how they are interpreting the world around them.

All in all, there is a lot to process when it comes to Artificial Intelligence in the classroom. And while I definitely don’t have THE answers - I think it is important for the education community and the technology community to be open to discussing how we can utilize this to best serve our students and how we can continue to develop in a way that is responsible and reiterating on the feedback of people directly in the classroom.

I hope in the coming months to compile some resources for teachers & families, but am always open to dialogue so please reach out - tackling AI in the classroom is a multi-faceted topic, so we should continue to lift each other up and share our learnings both from the technology perspective as well as the classroom perspective.

Cheers to new opportunities in furthering the education community in its intersection with technology!

Ted