Being Coachable When You Have No Idea What You're Doing #EdTech

In my last post, I wrote about feeling like an imposter and how that is something many people feel at one point or another in their career journey. Leaving the classroom after over 20 years was scary. I finally felt like I knew what I was doing and I had crushed most of those imposter feelings. Then I decided to leave the classroom and start all over again.

Now I'm a rookie and those feelings are back.

The good news is that I've been a rookie before. If I take the same approach I did as a teacher and surround myself with amazing people who are willing to mentor me, ask lots of questions, and be willing to learn, I should be in a good spot.

Since I started my corporate life, I've gone from Curriculum Manager, to Community Manager, to Senior Manager of Advocate and Champions Program, and some new duties this past month will likely lead to another title change. I have been surrounded by amazing mentors who have been helping me grow along the way without it ever really feeling like I was being taught or mentored. I'm invited into meetings to see how things work, I have been given parts of projects to manage, and the next thing I know, I'm managing entire projects.

Looking back at it now, I can see the scaffolding.

As a teacher, this is something I did with students all the time. You don't just hand a student something completely new and complicated and tell them to figure it out. You give them some support, see what they can do, and slowly pull back as they become more comfortable.

It turns out that is exactly what people have been doing with me.

The key to this growth has been being coachable.

One of my managers said I am one of the most coachable people he has worked with. I thought that was funny because it was said as if being coachable is an option.

Apparently, it is.

Maybe that is the teacher mentality in me. There are things I do not know and I want to know them. I have to figure out how to learn them and go from there. That just seems normal to me.

As a teacher, things didn't work all the time. Lessons bombed. Students didn't understand something that I thought was perfectly clear. A new tool came along that I needed to figure out. I would ask questions, get feedback, make some changes, and try again.

That's the job.

I didn't realize until entering the business world that being willing to do those things is actually a valuable professional skill.

I've also started to realize that being coachable means you have to be willing to admit that you don't know things.

That is tough when imposter syndrome is hanging around.

Imposter syndrome tells you to hide the things you don't know because someone might figure out you don't belong.

Being coachable requires you to admit you don't know something because that is the only way you are going to learn it.

I'm trying really hard to listen to the second one.

The business world is interesting in that upward mobility is an expectation for many people. Teaching is different. Once you have your classroom, you are pretty much set. Unless you want to become an administrator or move into another position, you can be a teacher for the next 30 years. You can get better and better at what you do without your title ever changing.

That was one of the biggest adjustments for me.

I was so happy to start as a Curriculum Manager. I'm good at building curriculum. I had been doing some version of that for years, so it felt comfortable.

Then there was a chance to manage the community. I've spent years being part of different education and edtech communities, so it made sense to take that experience and leverage it into building out a community.

Every step along the way, there was someone offering little nuggets of advice and opportunities for growth.

Sit in on this meeting.

Take this part of the project.

What do you think about this?

Can you handle this?

As a textbook people pleaser, my answer was usually yes.

Then I would do everything I could to make sure it was done to the very best of my abilities.

The important part, though, was what happened next. Someone would give me another little nugget of feedback. I would take that feedback and use it on the next project. Then the next project would be a little bigger. I would get more feedback and use that on the project after that.

It was basically the same cycle over and over again.

Opportunity. Try. Feedback. Learn. Bigger opportunity. Repeat.

I get asked pretty often about how a person can make the transition out of the classroom and into the business world. The more I think about it, the more I believe being coachable is key.

Teachers who are thinking about leaving the classroom can get caught up thinking about all of the things they don't know.

I don't know business.

I don't know marketing.

I don't know sales.

I don't understand how corporate teams work.

I don't know what half of these acronyms mean.

I didn't either.

I still don't know plenty of them.

But I think teachers sometimes overlook one of the most valuable skills they bring with them when they leave the classroom.

We know how to learn.

Teachers are constantly learning, adjusting, trying new things, failing, getting feedback, and trying again. We do it so often that we might not even think of it as a skill.

It is.

Maybe the way through imposter syndrome isn't convincing yourself that you already know what you're doing. Maybe it's being comfortable admitting that you don't know what you're doing yet and finding people who are willing to help you figure it out.

That's what I did when I was a rookie teacher.

I asked questions. I watched people who were better than me. I tried things. I screwed things up. I listened to feedback. Then I tried again.

More than 20 years later, I'm a rookie again.

It turns out, I already know how to be one.

The Imposter Syndrome is Real #EdTech

"Pretty soon, everyone is going to see that I do not belong here."

Whether it was as a student, an athlete, a teacher, and now in the business world, some version of that sentence has always run through my head.

The feeling that you do not belong can hang over everything you do. Every meeting and every presentation feels like a performance where you are just waiting for someone in the audience to start booing because they have finally figured out that you have no idea what the heck you are doing.

It can be exhausting.

Despite accolades, top marks on evaluations, positive feedback from managers, and plenty of evidence that I might actually know what I'm doing, there is still this lingering feeling that it is all a show and someone is eventually going to figure me out.

I share all of this because I know there is someone else out there who feels the same way. Maybe you need to hear that those feelings are mostly a bunch of BS.

Take a moment and think about all of the people in your life who seem like they have their crap together.

Now think about how many of them are probably figuring things out as they go.

Are there people out there who actually have it all together? Possibly, but I've never met one.

I think most of us are doing our best with what we know today and hoping that is good enough until we know a little more tomorrow. Maybe we're not really "faking it until we make it." Maybe we're just learning as we go and hoping nobody notices how much learning is actually happening.

Teaching is a perfect example of this.

Those first five years are basically spent treading water. Everyone knows the new teacher is going to struggle in a bunch of different ways. You are surrounded by veteran teachers who seem like they have it all together, and you assume they were probably like that on their first day in the classroom.

They weren't.

They struggled too.

The good ones help and mentor you when they can. If it is done right, you might not even realize they are helping you grow. They share a lesson. They give you a suggestion. They tell you how they handled a student. They stop by after a particularly terrible day and remind you that tomorrow is another one.

Then, somewhere around year five, something changes.

You realize you can actually do this.

You look back at some of those lessons from your first few years and realize they were terrible. Just absolutely terrible.

But they were the best you could do at the time because you were trying not to drown in the Education Ocean.

Eventually, you learned how to swim.

After more than 20 years in the classroom, I was pretty comfortable in that ocean. I knew what I was doing. I knew what I didn't know. More importantly, I had enough experience to know that I could probably figure out the things I didn't know.

Then I left the classroom and jumped into an entirely different ocean.

I'm a rookie again.

Of course I feel like an imposter sometimes.

I'm new at this.

Maybe that is the part of imposter syndrome I need to get more comfortable with. Feeling like I don't know what I'm doing doesn't necessarily mean I don't belong. Sometimes it just means I'm doing something I've never done before.

Maybe I'm not an imposter.

Maybe I'm just a beginner again.

I also think there is a healthy amount of imposter syndrome that can be good for us. A little bit of self-doubt keeps you honest. It makes you ask questions. It pushes you to learn. It reminds you that there are people in the room who know things you don't, and maybe you should listen to them.

The problem is when you feel like a fraud but refuse to do anything to level up your learning.

After a while, that isn't imposter syndrome.

That's a decision.

So, I'm trying to get comfortable being a rookie again.

I don't need to know everything right now. I do need to keep learning. I need to ask questions. I need to surround myself with people who know more than I do and be willing to listen when they offer advice.

I did that when I was a new teacher, and eventually I learned how to swim.

Hopefully, I can do it again.

I think the key is being coachable and that will be the topic of my next post. 

Where have all the tweeters gone? #EdTech #EdChat

This Summer, I've had the opportunity to spend some time with friends that were part of the OG education social media movement. We all have been friends for a number of years, but more passing ships in the night as we all got busy with family and careers. 

All of us had a few moments were we looked at the education landscape and longed, to a degree, where we could jump on twitter during a conference and see all of the learning around us. We could use one of dozens of hashtags to share something or learning something. Twitter, and blogs, were where educators could be found. Today, that doesn't seem to be true. 

Blogs as we knew them are few and far between and Twitter chats died and X is now a hellscape. Many of tried to make Threads or Mastodon or BlueSky happen, but it was a successful as making "fetch" a thing. I often wonder if I am just an old guy longing for the past and ignoring all of the places where educators are excelling and sharing their stories. 

I've seen the Instagram videos and TikToks and Youtube shorts where people are showcasing their brands or giving 30 -60 second tips and tricks, but the discourse seems to be gone. Twitter was a place to push thinking and challenge accepted norms. You could use it to share your long form thoughts from your blog and people could engage with that content. Is this sort of connection simply lost? 

My last post was entitles Evolutions and maybe the edtech space has just evolved into something that I simply can't recognize and maybe that is what is supposed to happen. 

Andy Bernard from "The Office" has a wonderful quote from the series finale, "I wish there was a way to know you were in the good old days before you've actually left them."

I worry about the lack of a space for teachers to share their ideas with others and get feedback from people with totally different lived experiences. I know that all of those interactions I had made me a better teacher and, now, it feels like everyone went back into their silos. The lack of connections will have a negative impact on our students and l wish I knew what the answer was to this solution. Maybe it is time to start over and bring back MySpace. 

The Nerdy Teacher - Evolutions #edtech

I picked up playing Pokemon later in life. I was a little too old when it game out, but I found it through teaching as kids traded cards and played the games. One of the key concepts of Pokemon is the ability to evolve over time. Some Pokemon take special circumstances to evolve, but almost all Pokemon can evolve in the right situation. The Pokemon will look a little different, but it is still connected to its previous form and, now, it has new skills. I feel like I have evolved and TheNerdyTeacher has evolved with me. 

This page has been pretty barren the past few months. I have been struggling with what to do with this site. I left the classroom in October 2024 to join SchoolAI as a Curriculum Manager. Since then, I have moved into Community Manager and now the Senior Manager of Champions and Advocate Program. That lives in the department of field marketing and as far away as I could have imagined from my ELA and Social Studies Certification over 20 years ago. 

I've spent a good amount of time reflecting on what this all means for me as an educator, am I still one, and what to do with a site that has shared all the tips and tricks in the world of edtech as I have discovered them. Ultimately, I realized that that the main reason I started this over 15 years ago was all about connections. I wanted to connect with a world that felt distant. I wanted to connect because I felt like an island in my school when it came to exploring technology. I needed some place to share my ideas and see if it resonates with anyone out there. 

I'm still in the same spot, but the island looks so much different than it did in 2010. 

Over the past year and a half, I've been very lucky to have had amazing managers who have worked hard to help me level up my skills and mentor me in all of the things I did not fully understand as a classroom teacher or consultant. I have learned so much and have grown in my confidence to make decisions based on the data in front of me. I am able to connect with my friends who have been in edtech much longer and share stories and learn from them. The Growth Mindset is important in all aspects of life and I get to live it every day. With that in mind, here is the growth I hope to bring to The Nerdy Teacher. 

First and foremost, The Nerdy Teacher has been my place to share the things that are going on in my world with a particular nerdy pov. As the site grew in popularity, I had to focus on broader, larger ideas without being specific to what was going on in my school or classroom. I can still do that and explore what it is going on in the broader world of edtech from behind the scenes. If you are looking for hot tea on SchoolAI, you will not find it here. If you want to know about how teachers are interacting with edtech, edtech trends from the other side of the aisle, and all things edtech and nerdy, you've come to the right spot. 

I will share my love of PBL, MakerEd, my advocacy for Accessibility and Inclusion, and my next book (It's coming together!) because I will always share what I am passionate about. I still am open to side consulting and would love to chat with about that if you are interested. 

What's next? 

Follow along and find out. I promise it will be more regular because my therapist says I need a better way to process my thoughts than burying them deep to deal with later. LOL. 

Hugs and High Fives, 

Nick

SchoolAI x Breakout EDU For The Win

 I am super excited to share this really cool collaboration between SchoolAI and Breakout EDU. 

January 26 - 30 is Data Privacy Week. SchoolAI and Breakout EDU take data privacy very seriously and thought it would be fun to team-up and create something to help students understand the importance of keeping their data safer and secure. Dot and Witty have come together to create an amazing game and reflection Space for all teacher to use with their classroom. 

Witty and Dot: Digital Detectives is a free digital privacy game from Breakout EDU with an added reflection activity from SchoolAI. Students become digital detectives, solving puzzles about phishing scams, password safety, and protecting personal information.

How it works:

1. Play the free Breakout EDU game with your class

Play The Game

2. Debrief with Dot in a SchoolAI Space

Start The Space

P.S. Free accounts required at both Breakout EDU and SchoolAI.

You can find more information on the SchoolAI landing page. 

I think this is a fun way to explore data privacy and have students reflect using a SchoolAI Space so a teacher can see how the students understood the material covered in the game. Check it out and let us know what you think!

Hugs and High Fives, 

Nick

Let's Talk about Accessibility and AI #HourOfAI #withSchoolAI

If you are new to my site, I would like to introduce myself. My name is Nicholas Provenzano and I am a neurodivergent learner. I went undiagnosed until college. I am dyslexic, have ADHD, manage anxiety, and battle depression. I have slowly learned these things about me over the course of 20+ years and they have profoundly influenced who I am as an educator. I mean, who the heck chooses to me an English teacher when they are dyslexic? This guy!

Now you know a little about me, I hope you have a better understanding of why I am such an advocate for accessibility for all learners. I came to age as a teacher during the great technology movement in the early 2000s. Google made the teacher's edition of the textbook a non-factor and wikipedia became the bane of every teacher's existence when it came to citations. early adopters did their best to calm the nerves of tech directors and admins, but the need to ban the unknown was too strong. I sat in meetings begging to have YouTube unblocked, to have access to Google Docs, and other early tech because I know how powerful it could be in my classroom. Block now and hope nobody asks was the standard in many schools and districts across the country. I understand the urge, but these tactics ALWAYS impact the most vulnerable students in our classroom. 

Block AI because it is just used by students to cheat and not learn anything. That is the typical thought when I hear people discussing AI in the classroom. My main issue with this is that most people do not know that AI is used in many popular applications. For example, Grammarly is an amazing tool for students that support accessibility. It is a tool that I wish I had access to as a student. I probably would not have felt so dumb if I had something, anything, that would have guided and helped organize my thoughts. Grammarly also uses AI as part of the application. Does this mean that Grammarly should be banned in the classroom? Who is exactly being punished by doing this?

Have you done a Google search lately? The first thing that pops up is a Gemini answer to your search. Does this mean Google is now banned in all schools? Who is punished if this happens?

The reality of blindly banning things is that the students who benefit the most from edtech tools are the students who are hurt the most when they are banned. These tools are designed to help students share what they know. Is it possible that some students use technology to do the work for them and are not learning? Yup. How is this different than the students breaking out their home edition of Encyclopedia Britannica?

Working for an AI company now has not stopped by advocacy for accessibility for students. To be honest, it has only ramped it up. AI can be used to help so many of our students who feel that education is just out of their reach. By finding the right tools, helping students understand how to use them to support their learning, and making sure the maintain access is what accessibility is all about. Taking a UDL approach to you classroom even makes the use of these tools advantageous to all of your students. 

I hope you take a moment and think about any policy that takes something away from students and ask who is really going to benefit and who is going to be hurt by making this decision. There is plenty of room for nuanced conversations, but let's have them before we start banning and blocking. 

Hugs and High Fives, 

NP

One Small Idea Can Have A Big Impact #EdChat

I've been very lucky to have been part of many different EdTech Communities over the years. From my time spent with amazing educators at Adobe, Google, Raspberry Pi, Sphero, TED-Ed, and my first EdTech Community, Evernote, I've loved how you get what you put into a community. It can be what you need it to be when you want it to be. I've taken all of these experiences I use them to help me craft the community experience for educators in the SchoolAI Community. 

One of the things I have loved from the different communities was the effort to give the community members a platform to share their story. There is so much we can all learn from each other, but educators are not always given the chance to share or they do not have the ability to attend a conference and share their story. Sometimes the keynote circuit is the same few names and it can be tough to break into those conversations. That's why I have started the SchoolAI Lightning Talks. 

Open to any educator who has an idea worth sharing, I want to give as many educators as possible a chance to share something that matters to them. You can find all of the details here and the submission page here. Do not let "I'm sure everyone already knows this." or "It probably doesn't make that big of a difference." stop you from sharing. Do not let the imposter syndrome take over and prevent you from sharing your idea. If you have any questions, feel free to send me an email at nicholas@schoolai.com or find me on my socials. @TheNerdyTeacher

Hugs and High Fives to everyone!

NP

International Dot Day #withSchoolAI #EdChat

As a high school teacher, I had not idea what Dot Day was and that it was a big deal is schools all over the world. When I taught Middle School, I started to hear more about Dot Day from students and it sounded like a really fun story and activity. Once I finally sat down and read the book by Peter H. Reynolds, I was blown away. It was the type of story I needed to read when I was starting school and feeling like everyone was better than me at everything. As an undiagnosed neurodivergent learner throughout K12, it was hard not to feel "less than" when compared to my peers. I never thought I would be able to "make my mark" in any meaningful way. A simple story can really change the narrative for a young student if we make the time. 

Working at SchoolAI, I get the chance to spend time building amazing Spaces to support the awesome work educators are already doing in their classroom. With International Dot Day approaching next week, I was wondering if there was a way to create a Space to support this important day in school. After some fun exploring different prompts, I put together a Space that will allow the students to watch a reading of the story and be prompted by SchoolAI's Dot about ways they have made their mark even when things were tough. Then, they get to create their own Dot using the Doodleboard PowerUp. Here is a screenshot of my Doodleboard. 

I hope you have a chance to use the Space with your students who are looking for a way to explore Dot Day and make their mark. These types of Spaces are perfect for launching and sharing with families at home so they can explore with their children. 

If you want to find more Spaces that are created in the SchoolAI Community, join the Champions Program and you will get weekly updates on all of the amazing things educators are doing to make school awesome. 

Descriptive Writing Support #withSchoolAi #EdChat #ELA

One of the things that was always tough for me was to get students to expand their descriptive writing skills. High school writers were content to call think big or pretty and leave it at that. Getting them to see the beauty of word choice and what it can mean to a story can be a tough task. I have employed lots of different tactics over the years, but one of the last lessons on descriptive writing utilized SchoolAI to help students practice the idea of using imagery to get the reader to "see" what they were writing. With the launch of SchoolAI 2.0, I have updated the Imagery Workshop Space to create something I think is pretty awesome. 

There is a story from an episode of "Tales from the Darkside" that tells the story of a scary monster called The Grither that hates to have its name repeated and will come for anyone that dares to speak it. I took this episode and created a prose version of the story and shared it with students. There were descriptions in the story, but ones that could be elevated by another writer. The goal was to have students read the story, identify descriptive language, rewrite a portion providing more detail, and revising that piece of writing to make it stronger. The way to see if the writing was helping the reader to "see" their scene was to use the Image Generator PowerUp to create what they wrote! 

The Image Generator PowerUp allows the student to see what they wrote and make changes based on what they wished was in the image that they were not clear about on the first draft. Getting students to see their descriptive writing is a great way to help them connect their writing and imagery. Here is what was created based on my first draft,  

The Grither first attempt

After seeing this image, I was prompted to make an edits to my description to get it closer to what I want readers to see. 

Revised Grither description 

You can notice the difference in the images. It is not drastic, but enough that it was closer aligned to what I envisioned when writing the description. 

This Space can be launched in class and the teacher can use the teacher dashboard to observe all of the student inputs and how they are enhancing their descriptive writing skills. The students can save the images and connect them with their description and add that to their portfolio to show their growth. 

I think this is an awesome way to support students who are working on descriptive writing. Students can share their images with others, see how they are similar and different and take full ownership of their writing process. 

If you want to check out this Space, you can find it here and launch it with your students. If you want to learn more about SchoolAI supporting you and your students, consider joining the SchoolAI Community by becoming a SchoolAI Champion! 

Win a Trip ISTE/ASCD 2026 & Magic Kingdom! #withSchoolAI

🌟 Join Season 1 of the SchoolAI Champions Program! 🌟

Season 1 runs from August 5 – October 31, 2025

Get ready to earn points, unlock exclusive rewards, and compete for the Ultra-Mythic Prize:
🎉 A trip to the ISTE/ASCD 2026 Conference in June AND a magical day at Disney’s Magic Kingdom!

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✨ How to Get Started✨

1. Join the Champions Program

👉 Fill out the form to officially join the Champions community.

2. Access Community Resources

💬 Join the SchoolAI Community and open the shared Champions Folder with:

• 🎥 Launch video

• 🏋️ Champions badge

• 📁 Seasonal challenge guides and other resources

3. Complete Seasonal Challenges

💡 Take part in fun, impactful classroom and community challenges to earn Champion Points.

4. Unlock Epic Tiers & Prizes

🏆 Points help you reach Rare, Legendary, or Mythic Tiers, unlocking:

• Exclusive SchoolAI swag

• Entries for the Ultra-Mythic Prize — the trip to ISTE/ASCD & Magic Kingdom!

5. Stay Engaged

📣 Share your SchoolAI journey, inspire your network, and keep collecting points!

🌟 Announcing SchoolAI Champions: Empowering Educators Around the World! #EdTech #withSchoolAI

We’re thrilled to introduce SchoolAI Champions, our exciting new program designed to celebrate, support, and reward educators who are making a difference in their classrooms and communities through the power of AI!

🎉 What Is SchoolAI Champions?

SchoolAI Champions is an evolution of our beloved Insiders program—reimagined to offer more opportunities, more recognition, and yes, more fun! This new initiative is all about uplifting the amazing work educators are doing globally and giving back through epic prizes, a supportive community, and meaningful challenges.

We’ve listened to your feedback and crafted something that truly stands apart in the EdTech world. This isn’t just another ambassador program—it’s a celebration of your brilliance, creativity, and impact.

🗓 Season 1 Launches August 5 – Be There!

Mark your calendars: Season 1 officially kicks off on August 5. Don’t miss your chance to be part of this groundbreaking journey from the very start.

Each season will bring fresh opportunities to earn swag, share how you're using SchoolAI, complete creative challenges, and rack up points that unlock incredible rewards.

✅ Ready to get started? Fill out the Champions form below and secure your spot in the program.

🌐 Join the Champions Community Space

Community is at the heart of SchoolAI Champions. When you join, you’ll gain access to our Champions Community Space—a vibrant hub where educators connect, collaborate, and celebrate each other’s success.

👉 Join the Champions Community Space now

This is where you'll find exclusive announcements, seasonal updates, behind-the-scenes fun, and the camaraderie of like-minded innovators.

🧭 Seasonal Challenges, Real Rewards

Every season brings new ways to participate and shine. Whether it’s creating resources, sharing your classroom wins, attending events, or inviting new educators to explore SchoolAI—every action earns you points that can lead to real prizes and exclusive swag.

You’ll get to:

• Complete fun, themed challenges

• Earn swag and limited-edition merch

• Be featured as a Champion spotlight

• Win big in seasonal giveaways

🤔 Want to Learn More?

If you’re curious about all the amazing updates coming to the Champions Community, we’ve got you covered. Click the link below to watch a short video explaining everything you need to know:

🎥 Watch the update video

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🚀 Let’s Have Some Fun, Together

The SchoolAI Champions program is unlike anything else in EdTech. It’s about recognizing the real heroes in education—you. Together, we’re going to build something incredible. So come along, bring your energy, your passion, and your creativity.

We can’t wait to celebrate with you. 🎊

👉 Sign up for SchoolAI Champions today!

Building Learning Communities #withSchoolAI #AIinEdu

 

Finding a Community that allowed me to explore and grow is one of the most important things I did as an educator. I was able to connect with other educators that has the same ideas and questions about education. We might now always agree on the correct answers to those questions, but it was awesome to be able to hear about the different approaches amazing teachers were taking to address these issues. This Professional Learning Community was something that I have held near and dear to my heart.

I have connected with educators all over the world and these connections have led me to wonderful adventures in learning and growth. Over time, these digital friends became my friends. Community is key for teachers because the job can sometimes feel very lonely. Especially if you are an early adopter or an advocate for less popular pedagogical approaches. I get it. I've been there. Many of us have been there and have come out the other end a little worse for wear, but stronger and better in other ways. It was the Community that always lifted us up and made me excited about the next thing.

Social media has changed drastically since these early Communities formed. Free flowing exchange of ideas is not the same as it once was and Communities are tougher to find and people are hesitant to share because of the fear of backlash. It is tough for educators who are trying desperately to connect and grow. I've been very lucky to be able to connect through other Communities over the years. Google, Adobe, and Raspberry Pi are just a few that have made a lasting impact with me. They did this by making sure that the teachers are at the center of the Community. It is something that is really key to a successful Community. 

As I have worked for SchoolAI for a little over 6 months now, I have taken on the task of building and growing the Community. Part of that has been taking over the digital events each month and engaging with the online Community on our Circle Platform. I have been working on some really fun Community updates that will be rolling out in the coming weeks and I want to invite all of your to join me in the Community. You do not have to be expert user of AI or have even used AI at all. I want this Community to be filled with educators excited to share and try new things and push back on ideas to help all of us grow and learn. It is a free platform that I manage and want to make THE place to be when it comes to talking and sharing about education. 

If you feel like you are looking for a place to have these conversations and ask questions, please take a moment and join the Community and share with the thousands of teachers already there looking to make a difference. 

It would be awesome if you shared this in educational spaces for others to see. 

If you ever have any questions, do not hesitate to reach out to me at nicholas@schoolai.com. I'm the Community Nerd! 

Hugs and High Fives, 

Nick

Don't Cancel Reflection Time #EdChat #PBLChat

One of the things that is so easy to cut when crunched for minutes is the time and space for reflection. We do this for ourselves as educators and we do this for students as well. Sometimes we ask students to reflect at home, knowing that many of them will not do this. Reflection is an important part of the learning process and it should be the last thing that is cut when completing work. As teachers, we need to build in reflection time for ourselves and for our students. 

The other part that can make reflection kind of tough is remembering what you thought about a lesson the next school year. You try to leave notes for yourself, but sometimes cannot make heads or tails of what you meant when you wrote, "Think bigger and smaller at the same time!" (Note: I actually found a note like that once to myself a year later and have no idea what I was trying to tell myself.) Reflection is not always about preparing for the next year. Sometimes it is about processing in the moment to better understand how a lesson went and using that information the next class to debrief with students. 

I built a couple of SchoolAI Spaces that teachers can use for themselves and with their students to help the reflection process. What is nice about using these Spaces is that they will remember the thread you have been using to reflect and can help you make connections over the course of the entire year. Imagine having all of your reflections available to you when you need them to compare how lessons went from the start of the year to the end of the year. 

Teacher Reflection Space

Student Reflection Space

Now imagine students having access to that powerful AI Space so they can reflect and see their growth over the year and the teacher gets the insights to explore on the backend. That would be a game changer for the teacher and for the student. Being able to connect and see the reflections taking place in real time or having a digital space where students can reflect where and when they have time. 

I just had this idea, but Admin could use a Space to share with teachers after evaluations that could help them walk through the lesson that was observed and reflect in a way that allows the admin to see their thinking in a clearer way. 

No matter the reason, reflection is a key part of the learning process and there is Science to back it up. Take the time to reflect on your work and let students do the same. I guarantee you will see benefits for everyone involved.  

Hugs and High Fives, 

NP

New Webinar Series! Connecting the Dots #EdChat

Hello everyone! I am excited to announce that I will be starting a new webinar series with SchoolAI called Connecting the Dots. The focus of this webinar is on the current state of education from a wide variety of viewpoints. My goal is to always have an educator join us in a conversation where they can share their story. I feel it is so important to give teachers a platform to be heard.

These webinars are all free to anyone that wants to listen to the conversation and ask some questions along the way. The conversations w
ill be recorded and shared at a later date.  

The first Connecting the Dots webinar will be Monday April 28th at 8PM EST. I'd love to have you there to be part of the first of many great conversations connecting the dots in education. If you want to share on social, here is one post that I am using you can copy and paste for your community. 

🔥 Two incredible educators. One powerful conversation.

Jennifer Roberts and Marnie Diem Diem on Apr 28 8PM EST for Connecting the Dots webinar!

Brought to you by SchoolAI and hosted by me!

Register for Free! 🔗 bit.ly/43X7N9w

hashtag#withSchoolAI hashtag#AIinEdu

I hope to see all of you there!

Hugs and Hugh Fives, 

NP

2 Awesome Ways #SchoolAI Supports Accessibility #Accessibility #EdChat

As a person with ADHD and Dyslexia, among other things, accessibility is very important to me. Decding to leave the classroom is not an easy decision because I know that my neurodivergence might not thrive outside of the classroom. Having been with SchoolAI for 5 months now, I have seen how much they, not only value neurodivergence, but how much we stress accessibility. I am excited to showcase two things that can help make learning more accessible for students right now. 

1. Voice to Text

It can be tough for younger students to type all of their thoughts accurately and efficiently, so it is important to support them and create tools that make it easier to share their thoughts and ideas. Voice to Text is a feature that now allows them to press and hold the space bar to record their thoughts. They can pause and resume by simply lifting up and back down again. I also loves this for users that process their thoughts at different speeds. By creating an easier way to engage with Text to Speech, users can now share their thoughts without the worry of spelling and how long it might take them to type due to dexterity issues. This can help lower anxiety issues which will allow the user to think more clearly and engage more completely. 

2. EasyRead Mode

Being dyslexic and an internet user means that I often spend too much time rereading things because the fonts are not designed to support more processing. There are a multitude of fonts, but most of them do not support readers with dyslexia. To help with this issue for users, SchoolAI built EasyReader Mode. A students can simply turn it on at the top and the text will adjust and become a dyslexic friendly font. I have to say, this makes my brain so happy. Not just because I was on the Hackathon team that worked on this idea during HQ Week, but because it is easier for me to read. It is estimated that anywhere between 6% and 17% students have some for of dyslexia. Many of those students go undiagnosed. That means there are thousands of students out there that simply feel dumb because school is so tough for them. Little things like this can help make a difference for diagnosed and undiagnosed students. 

These are just two ways that SchoolAI is more accessible to students. Teachers can also use our Tools to level and translate texts to make them more accessible to their students. 20 years ago, the act of trying to make learning more accessible to students in the classroom was a very long and difficult process. Today, there is really no excuse not to make an effort to use a wide variety of edtech tools to support students who are looking for just a little help so they can engage in class. 

Stay tuned for more updates on features and things that can make learning more accessible to all students. 

Hugs and High Fives, 

Nick

Support Young Writers for Be an Author Month #EdChat

 

Figma and Book Creator have collaborated on an amazing project that is worth checking out if you want to dive deep into supporting your students as writers. You can click the image to be taken to the book they created that provided all of the details on the event and contest.

As someone who has written a few books, getting started with anything can be very tough. As a student, I would stare at blank pages and know I have a story in me, but I had not idea how to get over the hump in my brain and let the words spill out. A teacher always told us to read when we were stuck with writing and the ideas would pour out of us onto the paper when we are filled with ideas. Sometimes that worked, but others times, I still had a blank sheet of paper in front of me late at night. Have taught ELA for over 15 years, I know that this is still true for students. Sometimes, students just need a little nudge in the right direction and the idea will flow. I was thinking about this when I saw the Be an Author Month posts and thought about how much I would have wanted to do this as a kid, but I would have been terrified on how to get started. I just needed something to get the ball rolling and I think I might have built something using SchoolAI Spaces that would have helped me tell the stories I wanted to tell. 

Here is a Space I prompted that can help guide students through the creative process to build their story without writing it for them. You can take my Space, remix it, connect your standards, and edit however you want to fit the needs for your students. This is a wonderful way to make creative writing more accessible to students who struggle take the ideas out of their head and getting them on paper. 

Utilizing AI to make various projects, assignments, classwork, etc. more accessible for our students is such a quick win. I highly encourage you to take the time and use the Space to help those students who have a story to tell and just need a little help to tell it. 

Hugs and High Fives, 

NP

Start Small: 3 Easy Ways to Introduce AI Without Overhauling Your Lessons #AIinEDU #EdChat

"AI in the classroom? That sounds like too much extra work right now."

I get it. You have been hit over the head with all of the AI talk right now. You do not have the time to sort through the chatter to find the things that will simply help your students learn or help you teach. These feelings are not new. When other internet based tools were released, there were many teachers that had no idea where to start, so they didn't. It's not like everyone jumped on board Google Docs, YouTube, Web Quests, etc. when they were readily available. The thing is, you are using AI all of the time and you might not even realize it. Whether it is search results in Google or Netflix suggestions after you binge a show, you are using AI and getting awesome results from it. It takes time to ease into using a new tool and I want to give you 3 easy ways to bring AI into your life without having to overhaul all of your lessons that move beyond having AI rewrite your email or create another worksheet.

1. AI as a thought partner

One of my favorite things about using AI is that it can help me think through issues I'm having. It is not about having AI solve my problems, it is having AI walk me through the problems and suggesting solutions. Some of the suggestions are terrible. They are not practical and they really would not work in the classroom. However, those bad ideas often lead to the solution. As I work through the logistics of the suggestions, I will find the answer along the way. It is really something amazing. 

This is truly no different than the times I spent with teachers in the hallways between classes thinking through lessons or classroom management issues. I wonder if you have found, like I did, that those hallway conversations are not happening like they used to. Those free moments have been taken by other tasks and those interactions are not happening at the same frequency. Using an AI Assistant in SchoolAI or using ChatGPT to quickly work through ideas is an easy way to bring AI into your educational career without the worry of having to change everything that you do. 

Example Prompts you can use:

Sometimes you are at the end of your rope with how to deal with a student and need other suggestions to help solve the problem. This is a simple prompt to get the ideas going on supporting classroom management issues. 

1. I’m having trouble with __________ (specific challenge, e.g., students staying focused during group work) in my __________ (grade level/subject) class. Some students __________ (specific behavior, e.g., finish too quickly and get off-task), while others __________ (another challenge, e.g., struggle to get started). Can you suggest strategies to __________ (goal, e.g., balance pacing and keep everyone engaged)?

Find new ways to support a wide range of learners in the classroom can be very tough. It is important to make sure that 504 and IEP students are getting what they need to be successful. A simple prompt can help so many students in the classroom. 

2. I’m designing a lesson on __________ (topic, e.g., ecosystems) for my __________ (grade level/subject) class. I want to incorporate activities that support __________ (specific needs, e.g., visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners) and also accommodate students who __________ (unique challenges, e.g., need reading support or are English Language Learners). Can you suggest ideas that keep the core objective intact while addressing these diverse needs?

Variety is a spice of life they say, but it is not something that always gets into our lessons. After a while, teachers fall into a rut of the type of assignments or projects they give to students. It can be tough to get out of the rut, so asking AI for lesson ideas can help move to a new space with new ideas. 

3. My __________ (grade level/subject) students are struggling with __________ (specific issue, e.g., staying engaged during history lectures). I want to make the material more __________ (teaching goal, e.g., interactive, relevant, or student-driven) and help them see how it connects to __________ (real-world application or student interests). Can you suggest strategies or tools to help achieve this?

2. Formative assessments made easy

We all love the idea of formative assessments, but they can be time consuming to create and collect the data. As there is an even greater push towards data driven instruction, we need a way to get these formative assessments into our every day class structure. I think this can be done with bellringers and exit tickets. The traditional way of having students write on notecards or scraps of paper can work, but the teacher is often stuck trying to read handwriting and group similar ideas/concepts to help inform the next steps. It does not have to be that way AI. 

Utilizing AI to help create bellringer and exit ticket questions is the easy part. Having AI take a look at the answers and come up with common threads is how you can take these formative assessments to the next level and it can be done in a matter of seconds. Here are two scenarios that can help you get the formative assessment data to make data driven decisions for your classroom. 

1. You can create a formative assessment using Google Forms and share that with students. The students spend the next five minutes doing a short response to the topic for the bellringer and all of those responses go to Google Sheets. Trying to parse data in Sheets in a pain in the butt. However, it can be downloaded as a CSV file and that can be used to get answers. Take the file and upload it to ChatGPT or SchoolAI Coteacher and ask it to find common themes in student answers. You can drill down as much as you want depending on how much info the formative assessment collected. That information can be used to inform the direction you take for the rest of class. Once you get comfortable with the workflow, it will become faster and faster to accomplish in class. 

2. You can take out the middle man and use a Bellringer or Exit Ticket Space from SchoolAI instead of using Forms. Create the Space, launch it with your students using Google Classroom, Canvas, or posting the link in another LMS. The students engage with the Space, the teacher can see their interactions in real-time and then use the insights provided on the dashboard to inform next steps in class. Again, the teacher can go even deeper by downloading the Space as CSV file and uploading to Coteacher to get more in-depth data. The nice part of this approach instead of using ChatGPT is that the data shared with SchoolAI is secured and fully COPA and FERPA compliant. That cannot be said of all AI tools. Be mindful of that when using AI and sharing student or teacher data. 

These two approaches help teachers create and use formative assessments to make data informed decisions. This is a huge step in the right direction of AI use in the classroom. AI is great at parsing data and it does it quickly as part of a workflow you can establish. The amount of time that is saved using AI for data driven decision support can be used for other tasks or for taking it easy on a Wednesday night so you can watch some TV and enjoy a nice beverage. Either way, you now have the time to make that choice and you did not have that chance before. 

3. Differentiate like a boss

One of the things that I found to be most difficult and time consuming, but extremely important, was differentiating assignments, tests, projects, etc. Besides being legally required to do so based on IEPs and 504s, it is important to give students the best chance to be successful and meet them where they are. However, if you do not have a support person in the class that can differentiate assignments for you, you are on the line to make sure that every students that needs an assignment, test, project, reading piece, etc is differentiated. That can be long and arduous process. AI can now make that process simple and fast. Here are just a few prompt examples that you can use to help differentiate different class assignments in an instant. 

You can alter reading levels for students and even have translations as needed. This prompt will help you adjust reading levels as needed for students. If you want create them in a batch, just add a sentence that requests the content in multiple reading levels.  

1. I have a __________ (grade level/subject) class reading __________ (text title or topic), but I need the text adjusted for students who read at a __________ (different reading level, e.g., 4th-grade level or ELL beginner). Can you simplify the text while keeping the core ideas intact and include __________ (optional: vocabulary definitions, guiding questions, or key takeaways)?

For students with ADHD, chunking is a wonderful approach to helping them stay on task and do each part at a time so they do not feel overwhelmed. Instead of having to go over each assignment with these students and chunk it for them, AI can chunk it quickly and then it can be shared to them via email or printed and handed to them. You can do this with almost any AI model. 

2. I’m assigning __________ (type of assignment, e.g., a research paper or science project) to my __________ (grade level/subject) class, but some students struggle with completing large tasks. Can you break this assignment into __________ (number of steps, e.g., 4-5 manageable sections) with clear instructions and include __________ (optional: deadlines, checklists, or guiding questions) to help students stay on track?

Sometimes using AI is about giving students more options that you can think of at the moment. As I moved to more of a project based learning approach, I wanted to make sure that all of my students had a chance to showcase their work in ways that were meaningful to them. I can't think of all of the projects all of the time, so having AI create options that I can easily share is a huge time saver. If you want to take it to the next level, you could use SchoolAI to create a Space that would ask students a variety of questions and then suggest a personal presentation approach. Here is an example you can use in your class. 

3. I want my __________ (grade level/subject) students to complete a project on __________ (topic, e.g., Ancient Egypt), but I want to offer them choices in how they present their work. Can you suggest __________ (number, e.g., 3-5) different project formats (e.g., slideshows, posters, videos, or podcasts) that align with the same learning objectives, so students can pick the format that best fits their strengths and interests? 

There is a time and place to have AI write your emails or create another multiple choice test. That is not where a teacher should stop when it comes to AI use. That just scratches the surface of what is possible when it comes to using AI to support teaching and learning. These three approaches can help you become more comfortable in your use of AI and give you time back to use as you see fit. AI can and should be used to support sound pedagogy if you truly want to help students. Keep that in mind when you see and use AI tools. 

If you have any questions about using AI, please feel free to reach out, leave a comment, or connect on socials @TheNerdyTeacher. 

Hugs and High Fives, 

NP