Ector County ISD got more national notice recently when Superintendent Scott Muri was invited to the White House and U.S. Department of Education Summit on Digital Equity, Inclusion and Emerging Technology.
It included members of the philanthropic, education, policy making and business communities. The event also was a chance for ECISD to be recognized at a national level.
They discussed what’s happening from a technology perspective in the U.S., but more about where they are going as they think about educational technology.
“I spoke about parental access, really using technology to help more effectively engage our parents, guardians, aunts, uncles, whoever the adults are that are in the lives of our children. I used our own system as an example. In ECISD, parents can access academic information, health information, discipline information, academic growth information, information about your child’s school curriculum, assignment information.
“There’s a lot of information, and we make it easy for parents. You can access all of this on your cell phone. You don’t have to sit down at a desktop computer. We kind of lifted up all of the different ways that our families have to access information about their own children, and how once a parent has access to that information, how that empowers their own parental ability.
“With all of that knowledge, how much more effectively could a parent support the education of their child? They know what the teacher is doing in the classroom. They see the lesson plans. They know the learning that happens, they have access to their digital textbooks and digital resources so they can follow along with the learning of their children,” Muri said.
They also discussed how much more effective they could be and how they will leverage artificial intelligence to improve options for parents.
“So a child has an assignment, the parent electronically sees the assignment that their child has. But what types of questions could you ask your child about that? The artificial intelligence could be that component about how a parent will use that information. That’s the destination for us as an organization,” he said. “We’re going to need help with getting to that destination.”
Other people talked about different uses for technology, from the professional learning side, how they are developing teachers and families to effectively use the technological tools.
“The morning was spent (with) us sharing information with the group, and then the afternoon was the group using the information to come up with solutions,” Muri said.
“It was a fascinating day. (I) loved it,” he added.
Getting all of the attendees together was challenging, even for a day.
“But it was good, because at the end of the day, everyone went away with a new network. Now we have some new people that we’ve all met and some good connections. We went away with seeds, ideas, and now it is our opportunity.
“For me, specifically, I engaged with some folks, and so it’s now up to me to reach back out to those folks, to begin to explore — whether that’s the policy maker, the entrepreneur, the CEO, or the funder; how can I be a part of that continuation?”
Muri, who is retiring from ECISD, said it was “good learning.”
“I think the biggest takeaway of the day was ECISD and how much work has happened here. I think about the people in the organization, coordinators, directors, teachers that may not always see our district on the national level, and how some of this work is truly groundbreaking,” Muri said.
He added that he wished some of the district staff could be in the room.
“Sometimes they may not have any idea how innovative and forward thinking they are in the work that’s happening. It was fun. It was a good day,” Muri said.
Muri said the district has a multi-divisional team that is forming focused on artificial intelligence and how they will use it effectively in ECISD at every level.
“I will debrief them on this visit, because there are some things that we talked about in that room that they’re going to need to pay attention to. … Sometimes when you think about artificial intelligence, you might only think about technology … In this case, AI has the potential to impact every division and department within the organization. So we want a diverse group of thinkers in the room as we tackle this opportunity,” Muri said.
The best example is a project in conjunction with Stanford University and one of ECISD’s tutoring partners where the tutors received artificial intelligence support as they tutored.
The tutor would ask the child a question and the child would respond to the question. AI would analyze the question and the response and then provide a prompt for the tutor.
“Hey, tutor, here’s something that you could say in response to what the child did. … Stanford is actually releasing the results of the study in September. … We’ve already seen the early data. The students that were a part of the tutoring sessions that involved AI outperformed all of their peers. The only change that was made was that the artificial intelligence supported the tutor.
“If artificial intelligence can help us be better, more effective … that’s a healthy usage of that,” Muri said.
