What’s Making Waves in the World of AI, Watch and Phone and Flip in Schools? | The Better Mindset Podcast | Episode Fourteen

Podcast Transcript Podcast Below:

Bex Rose: 0:00

This is what we really need to focus on, we need to focus on the fact that is going to enhance our efficiency, which in turn gives us more time to do what we need to do in the classroom or what we need to do in the senior leadership space. The better mindset podcast

Mark Herring: 0:17

Welcome to The Better Mindset Podcast. I’m

Bex Rose: 0:19

Mark. And I’m Bex.

Mark Herring: 0:22

And on today’s episode a little bit something different. For episode 14. We’ve got some making waves segments, and we’re going to break it up into lots of different topics. Because we’ve had a little bit of a break, haven’t we, Bex in the last three weeks?

Bex Rose: 0:34

Yeah, we have been busy little beavers. Behind the scenes we had we hosted our first Future Now Summit, we did talk about this in previous episodes, and it all came together. And gosh, it was just such an epic experience. I think the highlight for me was getting the feedback from one of the delegates said to us that it was the best conference they had been to in the 20 years that they’ve been in education. And we were just blown away, because it was our first attempt, we kind of just pulled together all ideas that we really felt were missing an education conferences. And it just felt like it landed really well. It was really neat meeting people across New Zealand, in education, who are just mover and shakers, and there and here for it. And we’re really excited about the whole event. That was awesome, wasn’t it?

Mark Herring: 1:22

Yeah, it was really good. It was it was a whole fame around disruption, and then how you respond to that. So I think that’s pretty timely for what we’re going to be talking about today. And making waves where we’re going to be discussing and unpacking what AI is, is doing at the moment in education and in society in general. So there’s going to be some good topics. And we’ve got some, some little things to do with well being and we’re going to talk about Apple and watch. And then we’re also going to be talking about, you know, the changes will flip as well. So stay tuned for that. And if you get all the way through to the end, and there are any links from today’s episode, we’re going to have lots of shownotes there for you to be able to go out. And so let’s get into it. Well picks on making waves today, what I thought we might do is probably what we often do is just mix things up and make things quite different. So what we have done is focused on one topic for making waves. But what I thought we might do today is go through actually three different topics, things that are front of mind, things that are trends, things that are happening, some of them are quite deep, like we’re going to be talking about AI in a second is one of the first ones, it’s going to be quite philosophical and, and get into some of the meaty issues that schools are grappling with. But then there’s a couple of things that are just nice little updates and tall things. But to base things to think about. So the first one that I wanted to talk about for making wise was AI. And I’ve just sort of termed it in terms of pros and cons. Because I think in the leadership space, or whether you’re a teacher in a classroom, you know you’re leading of students, there are so many things that are happening in the AI space that are really good. But there are some also some concerns. And we’ll talk about those as well, from a societal level, but then the concerns in the education space. So a good chance to start with that as the first topic, what I thought we might do to start off with is have a quick chat about some of the ways that we’re seeing AI making an impact and education for teachers on the ground, in the classrooms with students, what would be some of the things that you’re seeing maybe in your practice ways that it’s been benefiting the students that you hear about in the schools that you’re talking to

Bex Rose: 3:17

kill? So yeah, absolutely. This is front of mind for a lot of educators and senior leadership teams, because they’re wondering how this is going to impact the way curriculum can be delivered. But this, this one takes the cake for me. So last week, I was actually in Sydney in a school, facilitating some PD. And I mentioned using AI and the in their classroom, and some of them sort of shied away and sort of had their hands, you know, under his under the desk. But this one educator who is one of those like shining star teachers, you can see in a school that just came off holidays, and she had to take home a class set 35 written language assessments, they were all on Google Docs. So all online, but there were written language assessments. And if you remember back to that mark, that will just take you forever secret because you want to do due diligence to the kids, but you’ve got to mark where they’re at. And it’s quite easy to add a little bit of opinion to it as well. So there’s that whole opinion base to it. But then also there’s there’s the key next steps that you need to come up with and it’s quite time consuming. This teacher had decided to give Chet GPT was the way she did it. She She copied and pasted the work that the kids had done into the AI and also stipulated things like read the stock. Talk about how many compound sentences it’s got, doesn’t have alliteration, like really specific key outcomes that were related and then give feedback with relation to the Australian Curriculum and English so she had had done some really key prompts so that’s that that’s the key to this is that you’ve got to be real

Mark Herring: 4:58

if the teacher don’t you, you have to learn how To teacher, so she stipulated all

Bex Rose: 5:01

those things. and out pops a paragraph for each kid of where they’re at, in relation to the curriculum. What are their key next learning steps and she thought that she had given it had given the best feedback she’s given in her 20 year career, and a fraction of the time. And so she felt actually really excited for the kids, because they’ve really pulled out those key next learning steps that you really want to give that you give perhaps to the first five or six that you mark, because you go in with great intentions. And it becomes that real mundane repetitive task of reading and then giving feedback. And she was just buzzing because instead of it taking her whole entire holidays, it had taken still taken half a day, but had really given and generated some incredible feedback for her term to goal for the kids. So that is that’s really what’s taken the cake for me in terms of curriculum based AI enhancements.

Mark Herring: 5:57

Yeah, that’s great. And that’s real, authentic, a genuine curriculum aligned criteria based, you know, feedback that the teachers done, it’s like, I think a lot of people are hearing stories. And I’m using this for this sort of approach as well write me an email to this person about this topic. And then you adapt and change it, I wrote a bio for a conference that I’m speaking at. And so I needed to update that. And it dragged all the information off the internet, and constructed it, and I did a couple of prompts and got it to change a few things. But, you know, I actually did that in the car on my phone, while I know wasn’t the way somebody else was. But because I needed that, you know, the conference center needed at early, you know, in the moment, so that was about a five or six minute job that I did in the car on my phone. Another another example, that would would be a presentation abstract that I had to get in the submission date was in on Sunday. And so I had about an hour to get these done, you know, in the afternoon, and what probably would have taken me two or three hours took me about one or two, we’re actually about half an hour, if I actually wrote down, it took me about half an hour to get that episode done. But you had to put the right prompts in and you have to do the right things. That’s right.

Bex Rose: 7:04

And this is what we really need to focus on, we need to focus on the fact that is going to enhance our efficiency, which in turn gives us more time to do what we need to do in the classroom, or what we need to do in the senior leadership space. Another example I saw was over the holidays, because the holidays, the teachers are off Fissler fostering around trying to find you know what they’re teaching for Tim to and I kind of keep my eye across a lot of the Facebook pages just so I can help where I can or see, you know, where I can help out in terms of like my knowledge or expertise. And there was a teacher who was in charge of a bunch of teacher aides at their school, and they wanted to implement a PNP program. Now PNP program is a perceptual motor skills program. So it helps the kids that maybe need a little bit more help with hand eye coordination, or just tactile skills, things like that. And the PNP program itself is quite expensive. So they didn’t have the funds to be able to get the PNP program. So I thought I wonder if Chet GPT could help out with this. So I jumped on really quickly. And I said, hey, hey, mate, check GPT because he’s my mate now. Can you please put together? I always use my mentors as well, when I’m using it. I was talking about this to the ladies. Yeah. And so I said, Can you put together 10 sessions of 20 minutes that incorporate perceptual motor skills, fine motor skills, that have a focus on hand eye coordination, or manipulation of materials, and put it in and relate it to New Zealand curriculum. Literally in 30 seconds, it had split out team sessions that were really easy for a teacher aide to pick up and utilize in the school, and even down to the prompts, things that they needed the prep that would be like there to make playdough or things like that, that was all involved in it, too. And I was just wow. And so I put that in the chat. And I think that it probably had the most likes. After all the comments that I’ve had people were just like, what, like, How cool was that? So So just again, that time efficiency, it took me 30 seconds, just putting the right prompts in and out it had its back.

Mark Herring: 9:13

And it literally does the hard lifting for you. But you need to know, you know the content, you need to know the criteria, the structure, the prompts and how to use it. So there’s a little bit of a learning curve to help teachers get across that that learning curve and to use it effectively. It’s kind of but but the key idea with the benefits of Chet GPT in particular, and obviously there’s Bart in the Google ecosystem, and then you’ve got copilot that’s, that’s been launched in the Microsoft environment. The key thing with it is that it does the heavy lifting for you, but you still need to have the skill set behind what you need. So it’s kind of like get your bell ready because he’s a metaphor. It’s like if I was going to plow a field so now I don’t have to sort of push my plow and do all the hard work but I can just now I’ve got a tractor but I still need to know the GPS coordinates. I still need to be there. Anything goes wrong, and make sure that everything goes right. So, yeah, good. I was waiting for that next time you can. Those are some of the benefits, and a lot of teachers are hearing about Chet GPT. But just a side note, I’m still talking to leaders who have no idea the potential of that tool, you know, so I was talking to one this week, and I said, you know, you know, like, I gave those examples of writing emails, and they were like, wow, I never even thought of using it for that, you know, like, if you are listening to this, and you are doing that, make sure that you share that with people, because people don’t, don’t just assume that people are listening to podcast and reading things online and going to conferences and involved in workshops, because a lot of your colleagues and your school probably don’t understand or know that that’s there. But but there are some other positives as well. So not just in the text generation space. So in there in the, in the visual, the audio visual, the video making, there are a couple of tools that I know that are being quite effective. And people are using this one that I know in Canva. So we’ll put a link to all of these things that we’ve referenced today in the show notes, but Canva, their docs two decks approach where you can upload a Google a Canva document with bullet pointed lists, or even numbering of the headings, and click with a couple of buttons that the help sheet on the Canva support page that will link to show you how to go through the steps with a couple of links, it’ll create a presentation for you. So for you to do that, or for your students that you know, and to get an example of what effective design looks like. And then you go back in and edit that’s a really good little use of AI that is available to you. So if you’ve got the premium version of Canva, that’s a great way to get in and use one that I found out literally about last night, which I’m going to use. For this podcast recording, I’m going to what I’m going to do is export the video file of this podcast segment, put it into an app location called Opus stock Pro. So it’s called Opus clip, it’s an online app that uses AI. And what it will do is it will go through your video your YouTube video, I think you need to YouTube, upload it to YouTube at the moment. And then it will find segments, cut it out in a real aspect ratio, if you’re going to put it on use YouTube or you know shorts or Instagram and all those different video tools. And then it will it will caption it as well. So it’ll find the best but caption it and it doesn’t within 30 seconds, so you can upload that. So that’s that’s quite a useful application for things that people are spending a little bit of time learning how to do manually, we’re moving into that world now where you can do that, medically and using the AI engines to be able to do that. One other little, I guess, pros and a resource that we’d quite like to share with you is a recent article that the UNESCO group have just released called Chat GPT, and artificial intelligence and higher ed. And that’s a PDF that will link for you. And there are a lot of really cool snapshots of examples of how church GPT works, what AI is, but then some examples of how you can implement it in your school and university. So if you want to get a link to that have a look at it, there are people coming out or groups that are coming out with policies and procedures and advice on how to deal with this ever increasing and changing landscape of AI in society, but not only in society, but also in education. Now, this is where we seek to segue into what I’ve titled The threats of AI. And there are some concerns out there because I don’t know, if people listening are aware, there are people involved at the very sort of nitty gritty end or the deep end of AI generation tools. So people who are running companies who are deep in the programming, who are starting to voice concerns about where the trajectory of AI is headed for humanity, and it’s almost got an existential threat. sort of wrap around to it so that there are there are concerns coming out, you know, at the school level about assessments, for example. So one of the common things that we hear is that people will be in an assessment process and they’ll be wondering, you know, is this really generated by the student or is this a, an AI generated response and there’s an article there from in the New Zealand Herald about some allegations that have been leveled at a couple of students. I don’t know if you saw that this morning, Beck’s but I heard on the news, yes, yes. Yeah. Cambridge and Kelly Hi. And Yellin here. There are a couple of students who have had whether I didn’t read right down into the depths of the article, but they’ve had an assessment that’s been submitted, and it’s been flagged for AI detection. So whether they ran it through an AI tool or not, I’m not too sure now that they’re protesting about that because they’re saying that they did that legally, you know, and it was their own work. But But I know that that there are issues with some of those AI tools, the detector ones because I’ve I’ve had something that I’ve created on chat GPT run it through one of the tools and it said You know, this is 90% ai generated and then I’ve just gone on wonder what would happen if I just do the same text and do it again? And it said, No, this is completely fine. You know, so that’s the same text 30 seconds apart. What the concern with that is, you know, can you trust that. But but then there’s this sort of whole arms race approach that’s happening. So AI is getting better at emulating what a human voice would sound like in a written form. And then the detector tools are trying to keep up with that. So they’re learning and the detection tools are learning, it’s sort of like an arms race battle that’s going on. So that that is a that is a concern, something to be thinking about something to be across. If you have a role in your school, that you’ve been tasked with keeping across the the development of AI, and what that looks like, just a quick Google search, jumping into Twitter, searching for AI and education. There’s a lot of things that are coming up, you can start your own lists and groups and just keeping across there. And we’ll we will be talking about this on this podcast and in giving some people in the coming weeks to who have got a lot more insight and expertise than us on that, right. But here’s the existential threat. And we’ve got a couple of links here to send you. But I wanted to start this little discussion on the potential downside to AI for humanity in general, with Steve Wozniak quote, no, I heard heard him on a recent interview, Steve Wozniak, if you haven’t heard of him before, he was one of the cofounders of Apple, he was involved with the apple one and the apple two that launched apple into the stratosphere, really in the computing space. And he’s, he’s not so much involved in developing tech anymore. But he’s much more a commentator on keeping across some of the things that are out there. So he’s got this, this quote that I found quite interesting, he talks about the digital world in general. And he said that the people who designed the digital world should be executed, which I thought was pretty hot. But then he kind of clarified that and said, or worse, maybe not executed, maybe they should just be forced to live in it, you know. So what he’s doing is he’s making a little bit of a side comment on the fact that the digital world has some pros and cons. But there are some real challenges and some, some real downsides to it. Because in his his view, and I think a lot of people feel like this. You know, if you look at the benefits to digital life and the digital world that we’re in, would you say that people are more happy? Well, probably not. On the whole, you know, would you say that people have more time? Well, actually, probably not. On the whole, you know, would you say that life is getting simpler and easier? We’ll probably not on the whole. So there are some questions that that people are making about or asking about the generation of these AI tools in society, society in general. So what does that mean for the AI space? In general? Where are we going with that? Well, what I would do is, rather than me trying to sound like an expert, all I want to do is point you to a couple of things. Number one, if you saw the social dilemma, the Netflix documentary that was put out by Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, they were involved in a group that looked at the impact of social media, on societal trends and mental health and well being. And so that is a fantastic thing to share with your students, if you’ve got higher ed students, college students, and they want to see the impact of social media on that. But what they’ve just recently released is a presentation that they’ve got on their website, and we’ll put it in the show notes for you so that you can click on it. And it’s called AI dilemma, you can YouTube it if you want. They have been looking at the impact of the AI generated tools and the impact on society, in much the same way that they’ve looked at the impact of social media apps on society. And that their big message, if you’re going to think about what the message is that they’re presenting, what they’re saying is that just like social media, there is lots of positive messages and promise, you know, to be able to connect people and to be able to bring people together in a global sense, and to be able to share information more easily, for people to be able to, you know, make those connections across geographical boundaries. But that just like social media, the AI has some positives about it. So we’ve talked about them, you know, being able to have your workload being able to be more productive, being able to generate lots of different things that are really promising in the creative space even. But what they’re saying is just like social media, AI has some downsides as well. And it’s the unintended consequences that they are concerned about. And a lot of people in the space are really concerned about as well. And I’ll give you one example of this, that you can go and investigate. So there are situations occurring around the around the world now where people are generating AI voices based off a very short clip of your voice. So people will be able to listen or capture a 32nd rendition of this podcast have my voice for example. And then through the AI engine that they’ve got, they’re able to generate my voice to sound exactly like mine with my inflections my tone, the way that I talk the words that I use and then they can use that to trick somebody on the other end of a phone call or a video to actually sound like they’re talking to the real me. And so there’s a CNN article, it’s actually across lots of different website platforms, where they’re, you know, talking about an example that has happened just recently in Phoenix in the US where a mum has been fooled into thinking that her daughter has been kidnapped, and has been held ransom. And it’s as real as making that mum think that this is really a person who’s captured my daughter, and I need to do something about it. And wow, so

Bex Rose: 20:35

I can say, that is terrifying. I’m also sitting here because, you know, I’m, I’m forever the optimist, right? So I’m sitting here thinking, I’ve got so many meetings coming up. And if I could have someone that had my voice and could go on a meeting for me, that would be amazing. Like, just just just clone me right now and just use me as another person. That’d be great. But that is that is terrifying. And, yeah, the thing is, is how are we going to combat this, and this is, you know, all these negatives or whatever that come out of these articles. It’s all very well and good going through and pulling out all the negatives. But at the end of the day, it’s still going to be there. So what are we going to do to combat this? Or what are we going to do to support strategies around enabling kids to do something better with the AI in this school, rather than just copying and pasting an essay? So I think, yeah, I’m forever the person that goes, Okay, yep, that’s those are negatives, but what are we going to do about it? Like, what’s the next steps? So I’ll be interested to read through those as well and try and sort of ideate some ways that we could support people out there to combat those.

Mark Herring: 21:43

Yeah, I think the big idea with this whole discussion is, number one, we just want people to be aware that it’s not all roses, you know, it’s not all wells, and, you know, incredible tools. There are some concerns about this. And I think from, you know, from a development and a leader in the tech, space, tech space area, that a lot of those people are looking at this and thinking that we do need to slow down, you know, so there’s been a whole group of people who are signing a petition to world governments to say that we need to slow this down, and we need to regulate this, you know, so. So,

Bex Rose: 22:14

there’s a guy from Google as well.

Mark Herring: 22:16

Yeah, yeah. Everybody’s saying, you know, Elon Musk, a lot of people are saying that we need to actually slow down and, and take a good look at this, because we don’t know where it’s going, especially if you want to look in into the combination of the AI software that we’ve got with quantum computing. And I saw an article or an interview with that, on that, this morning, where someone, you know, was one of the experts was saying that when you’ve got quantum computing, which is this is the top level hardware or, you know, a computer program that can the processor, then combined the hardware with the software, then he said, you’ve got like, almost unlimited potential to be able to roll through. So what does that look like? Where is it going, as educators in schools, as you know, school leaders who are in the digital space for us to be aware of that, and then maybe pointing people particularly to the AI dilemma, I think that that presentation on YouTube will link for you that that is a really well balanced approach. There’s a couple of interesting funny parts in it to Beck’s where they say, right, you know, that sounds very scary for everybody. Let’s all stand here and take a breath. And I’m not joking. They’re on stage. And they go to kind of ease their anxiety because it’s sort of like that trigger warning in the middle of my presentation. So I might do that for some. Well, yeah, that’s

Unknown: 23:31

a great idea. Yeah. Yeah, bring them back.

Mark Herring: 23:35

Yeah, they definitely talk about the positives. But they’re also making people aware of some of the concerns down the track, and even some of the concerns right now. So something to be aware of something to think about, keep across and definitely dive into some of the links that we’ve got, this is an ever evolving story. So it’s just gonna keep evolving and keep rolling out. And I’m sure that by the time this podcast is in a couple of days, there’ll be some new additions to the narrative from that point. So something to keep a track on. And we’ll we’ll keep everybody posted with some of the updates and people that we can get on the podcast. So here’s the next time I was, but actually, both of us were on a call recently with Apple. So we’re Apple professional learning providers. We’re one of the group groups in Australasia now who are, you know, partnering with apple on some of the training that we’re doing and running Apple Learning Institutes and we’re having a talk about some of the trends and some of the things that that the good guys at Apple would like us to be able to focus on. And one of the phrases came up that made me think about well being because I know that that’s a big trend. But one of the phrases that came up was watching phone. Now last year we were talking in the Apple educator space about Mac and iPad and how they work really well together. You know that the phrase there is better together Mac and iPad, how they have different different ways of working. But I wanted to just talk about well watch and phone and what it looks like in the wellbeing space because I know that you’ve got both of us got iPhones, like a lot of teachers. Or if you’ve got a smartphone, you know that it will go with a smartwatch. And I know that you’ve got your watch on at the moment. I’ve got a Garmin watch on at the moment, which I’ll put up on the screen, but I’m just in the process of selling that. And then going back to Apple.

Bex Rose: 25:18

Coming back to the good side,

Mark Herring: 25:21

I have a long conversation about, you know, the reasons why I decided to partly sometimes I just get bored, because to be quite honest,

Bex Rose: 25:28

I know yes, you like as you are.

Mark Herring: 25:31

But one of the things that I I really enjoy about the watch the Apple Watch experience is the fact that it’s a smartwatch first, you know, and I guess to wrap this whole shift that I’m making, Garmin has some watches that are really good for hiking and for running and for health metrics, you know, if you’re in the training side of things, but they can also do some smart functions, whereas Apple’s kind of the other way around. It’s the smart function. So there’s a lot of the mapping tools, a lot of the notifications a lot of the interaction with your apps on your phone that I miss not having on my Garmin, so that’s okay. But what I wanted to talk about some of the well being advantages of having a smartwatch in general. So you don’t have to have an Apple watch, you can have a Garmin you can have you know, Samsung have got a great ecosystem that you can get a smartwatch? And can I start by asking you what would be some of the things that you use in the wellbeing space that you activate through your phone? How does your How does your phone and your watch particularly help you look after your well being as an as a leader as an educator?

Bex Rose: 26:33

Well, I guess the the one that’s first and foremost that I that I use every day without fail would be the fitness and the health and the health app. So I am a bit of a gym bunny a bit of a runner a bit of a fitness is that is my well being if I if I exercise, I feel like my brain functions better. I feel like I’m a better mom, I’m better person a better leader. So every morning, I do track, what exercise I do and what comes out of it. And then I track, you know, as my heart rate going up too high as it coming back down fast enough. Have that functionality of just checking in on making sure that I’m getting enough steps in a day, not sitting at my desk and behind meetings every day, that kind of thing. It tells me the stand up, move around if I’m sitting down too much. And that’s first and foremost, probably the biggest thing I use, I also track a lot of my health things through there. So female stuff, making sure that I’m getting that done every that it’s coming and that I know that it’s that that it’s regular. And yeah, so that’s well being I also use every now and then. And generally, it’s been quite stressful situations and pops up on my watch saying you need to breathe. Oh,

Mark Herring: 27:51

yes, that measuring your heart rate and your breath. Yeah, just a timed that time. No,

Bex Rose: 27:57

my it’s not timed. I thought it was initially but then I realized that comes at really random times. And then when I think about it, I’m in a really like kind of high pressure or high stress type situation,

Mark Herring: 28:07

I must be measuring your heart rate and it’s measured your heart rate, yeah, there’s an algorithm.

Bex Rose: 28:11

So it’s really cool though, because it does give you that because you can, you can just sit there and go, or whatever. But actually, this the breathe app scaffolds you through, like a minute breathing session or a three minutes reading session. And so it gives you a little tingles on your wrists to know when to breathe in and breathe out. And, and it does, it works 100% Worth I know you’re talking about it before about the taking your breath. But essentially what it’s doing is taking you out of that fight or flight mode taking you out of that, you know, and then into back into using your cognitive brain and to be able to respond rather than react. So I have to be honest, I ignore it sometimes. But when I do use it makes me really get back in the rice space of mindset frame of mind. Because I’m back in that cognitive mindset.

Mark Herring: 29:03

Yeah, yeah, some of the ways that I, I use out my, my Garmin at the moment, and I have used the Apple Watch and I will be using the Apple Watch again, differently for steps. Like I’m a big one for trying to go out for walks. So I’ll either do a run every second day, you know, and that gets to quite a few steps, but just trying to get you know, at least seven and a half 1000 If I’m running you know not not running but you know trying to get 10 or 12 and a half 1000 was talking to a friend of mine who’s really looking to get a little bit more active, you know, was a really top level football player but now he’s in his 30s and he sort of you know, let his fitness go a little bit so that was my my suggestion to him just get a really cheap little smartwatch that’s gonna you can get them for like 60 bucks from the warehouse or Kmart or whatever, just something that’s going to track your steps. So it’s just something to kind of like gamify the whole approach for you. You know, if you’re if you’re at school, why not instead of sitting in the staff room, having a coffee, walk around the school, have a chat, you know, steps up or something to prompt you to get out and there’s like a little dopamine reward because you’re like, Wow, awesome. You know, Mike kind of flashes and does these little spiral things when you hit 10,000, which is silly, but But it’s funny. Makes you want to do. Yeah, yes, I definitely will do the move thing. So I turned on the move function. So if I don’t move, if it doesn’t notice me moving on a GPS location much, then it’ll, it’ll prompt me and it tells me to move. So that’s just, if I’m in a meeting, obviously, I can’t, but I’ll just get up and go away. But so even just as a prompt to stand up in meetings, when I’m on a call like this, you know, like, I’m doing this podcast standing up at the moment, because I’ve got a stand up table, desk, but I can actually sit down as well if I want. So it’s a reminder to do that. But you can also set up drink alerts too. So I have had water apps that you can download them that’s not an apple specific one. It’s an external one. But you can, it’ll remind you, you know, it’s time to have a drink. So it obviously doesn’t know when you have because it’s not attached to my stomach. But yeah, it’s just a reminder to be able to go and get some water and have that drink. So those are some of the things, one of the things that I do like about the body battery. And when I get the Apple Watch, on the Garmin, there was one of the apps that I like about the Garmin that I don’t think is on the Apple Watch at the moment, but it might be coming or I might look for a third party is this thing called a body battery? Reading. So what it does is it measures your sleep measures your heart rate, what kind of exercise you’ve had, and probably another couple of metrics as well, maybe body temperature. But what it’s doing is it’s giving you a reading, just like your phone has a battery reading, it’s giving you a body battery. So at the moment mine saying I’m down to about 40%. And at the time of recording, it is one o’clock in the afternoon when I started today, I was at 55%

Bex Rose: 31:45

Oh, wow. Yeah. So they weren’t even recharge

Mark Herring: 31:48

now, whether I had a terrible sleep, which I had the normal amount of time, but I think the sleep wasn’t that great. But also, what it does is it prompts you to start thinking about your week and what you’re doing during the day. And it makes you think about taking regular breaks and all those types of things. What I’ve reflected on is that this week, so Monday and Tuesday of this week, I’ve had a lot of projects that I’ve been doing in the team. And I’ve had to do a lot of galvanizing and a lot of enabling and tenacity stuff. So if you’ve heard us talk about the working genius, my geniuses aren’t wondering invention, I love coming up with new ideas, but asking me to actually implement them and get them on the table and happening that drains me. And so I’m looking at that going, Ah, I know why I’ve started the day so tired, because I’ve been doing a lot of that hard work. And that’s okay, like, I just have to do that. I don’t have anybody to do that admin work for me as much as I would like. So it’s just something to remind you and prompts you,

Bex Rose: 32:44

I think that sleep thing, we can definitely do that on your iWatch we’ll watch we’ve just recently sort of gone through a six week well being internal sort of reflection, I guess, with a few of us have kind of opted into it. And I’m not sure if you’re on a you’re on a Mac when you hear and spread. Because you’re pretty, you’re pretty good. But it was really it was it was actually quite interesting because one of our one of our team members, she ended up buying a watch throughout, because she realized that she was sleep was just really irregular. And so she tracks his sleep on it and, and things like that now and it’s really an even to screen time. That’s another good one another good well being one, it made us realize how much screen time you know, we became accountable to the screen time, that as well being as well, you know, like making sure that you’re not sitting there. Without any purpose scrolling, we’ve already had a podcast about that we can link it into it about that whole using your phone without even realizing it. I really stole his word from it. And so yeah, so keep it as such as their accountability. And it’s actually making you realize how much your sleep a year in deep sleep or you fluffing around and just sleep or you know, and it’s actually quite eye opening. And one of my friends, he ended up working out through his watch the he had sleep apnea, so he was like dying and asleep and he didn’t even realize. So he’d been like this massive. He always struggled with sleep and didn’t really do anything about it. And his wife always said that he was a big snorer and all this kind of stuff. And then when he got his app, it realized that he was like literally dying to sleep for the wake up again. It was crazy. So that’s now he’s on some, some machinery keeps getting woken up in the night. But anyway, that the watch is incredible. I love

Mark Herring: 34:30

it. Yeah, so so just that I think the one other thing that I just mentioned about the watch, particularly in the Apple space, a lot of people don’t like this segue. So the first making wave. A lot of people don’t realize what Apple are doing in the AI space. And there are a lot of things happening behind the scenes. Now I haven’t had any behind the scenes conversations with Apple. This is just what I’ve read. And because I’ve explored I’ve been like, Well, Google and Microsoft are doing all this amazing software stuff. What’s Apple doing? One of the takes is that they are working on the microchips are the process At the moment, you know that m one m two, and then there’s going to be the M three. That’s what they’re working on to be able to drive AI engines offline. So you won’t need to have the internet to be able to run that software, you’ll be able to do it all on this super powerful chip. So they’re kind of working on the hardware to be able to run the neuro engine, which is an interesting take on things. But what Apple are also indicating, and that’s sort of like a predicted trend down the track that’s coming is that they are going to plug AI, the software of AI, that they’re developing in with the health metrics on your watch and your phone. So that the data that you’re getting at the moment is very much up for interpretation. So they’ll create graphs and stats for you to be able to interpret but what the AI will do is they’ll pull all that data, and then you’ll have like a health coach on your wrist, that will be saying, you know, to do certain things, or you need to up your exercise in there. So I’m noticing a trend how you know, like, Siri will actually be so cool it quite, you know, like your sort of personal health coach. So that’s, that’s something to look forward to. So no matter what platform you’re on, watch, this can really help. Now what I what I do want to do is finish up this part of making waves by saying I know what some of you are thinking and some of your friends and colleagues and my wife feels like this about smartwatches, she wants to get as far away from digital tools as possible. And she feels like the last thing she wants us to have a phone on her wrist. But here’s the tape that I have on this, my take is that you can actually use your phone, or your watch on your wrist as a barrier from your phone. So there are things that you can do if you use your watch in a smart way to give you a connection with the things on your phone that you need. But it can actually help create a filter at certain times and in certain ways that you don’t need to be carrying your phone and have it glued in front of your face all the time. So that’s that’s my strategy with was partly one of my strategies with with going to the Garmin is because I don’t have that connection with the apps as much. But now that I’m going back to the apple, watch some of the things that I’m doing and some of you may want to think about this, I use the Do Not Disturb function a lot. I was just talking to our director Mike on the phone this morning. And I rang him and he said, Why did that not go through to my phone, it seems to have gone through answering machine and I said well, maybe you’ve got Do Not Disturb on and it won’t get through. And that’s and I said to him, that’s what I do my phone is pretty much on Do Not Disturb just about all the time, it definitely is between the hours of nine o’clock at night and seven in the morning. So I don’t get any calls or anything except in the Apple ecosystem in the settings you can go in and you can choose your favorites on your contact list as being people that can bypass that do not disturb. So we can get a call from our daughter who doesn’t live with us anymore during the night. Because it can go go past that do not disturb. So you can activate that on your watch as well. So you can actually turn your watch so that you don’t get notifications at certain times. So you’re not actually tethered to your phone or you’re tied to your phone with all those notifications coming through. That makes sense, right?

Bex Rose: 37:58

Oh, absolutely. I think yeah, being really mindful of what notifications are coming through, though, because there’s been so many meetings where I’ve said, like I’m thinking about where I used to work, and I’d be having a meeting with someone and then they’d just be like this all the time. Because they just get notifications. And I found it like, this is not you know, is that more important than me, I’m in a meeting with you, you know, that kind of thing. So socially,

Mark Herring: 38:19

when I remember the first time I got an Apple Watch, I was with a friend of mine who was a principal. And he and I was going like that because I was getting text messages and all that stuff. And he said, I do realize that whenever you do that, it makes me feel like you’re just trying to get out of here and you’re looking at the time

Bex Rose: 38:31

that does, that’s what I’m always really wary of is that if I do look at it, they like, oh, it’s time for time for you to leave type things.

Mark Herring: 38:37

So it’s not, it’s not the digital text fault. It’s how its user. It’s the user. That’s that’s, you know, not not using it correctly. So it’s user error. But I think I think there are things that you can do to be able to stop that from happening. But the other thing that I’m doing what I do in this migration back to Apple, what I’m going to try and do is get the cellular version. Now there is a small addition additional fee that you have to pay. But what I’m looking forward to and I know my wife’s looking forward to is for me to be able to leave my my phone at home when we go out for walks or on runs or anything. And I’ll just be able to get any emergency contacts are anything through my phone if I need it, so I won’t need to take my my watch my phone with me everywhere. So that’s another way that you can do that. But um, but something, something else that I think is quite good for people to just realize is that you can turn that do not disturb on and off real fast. So just top right hand corner of your watch, scroll down, do not disturb and then you’re good to go. So something to think about how can how can my watch cat in combination with my phone helped me be more well rested? How can I keep an eye on my energy levels? And how can I actually use it as a filter between me on the phone so they don’t need to be so connected all the time. So just something to think about with that watch and phone have a look at it. We’ve got a link here of all of the different wellbeing apps that you have in the Apple ecosystem as well. You can jump in there and Have a look at that there’s a lot of mindfulness apps, there’s the comm app that I know is wins a lot of awards, and a lot of people talk about as well. So what’s the phone? Here’s, here’s the last one something to finish on something a little bit light hearted. Just, I know that a lot of the tools that we’re using with students in schools are always adapting and always changing and adding more features. And one of the one of our favorite tools to use in schools, particularly for feedback and giving students a chance to have a voice is what would you say? What’s the number one tool of putting on the spot Beck’s he goes, I’ve got no idea. What it’s the flip app platform in the Microsoft Microsoft ecosystem. So whether you’re a Google school or a Microsoft school flip is a great way for you to be able to share content with your students in a video format, and then your students to be able to share that you knew that you just you know

Bex Rose: 40:53

I did. I’m sorry, I just didn’t know which way you’ll go with this is authentic podcasting is that I don’t read through his notes, we actually have a conversation.

Mark Herring: 41:04

So if you haven’t used flip before, definitely have a look at it. Reach out to us. If you’d like to find out more. We’ve got expert trainers, some of our mie trainers and fellows can help you with that. But anybody in any ecosystem can use it, which is one of the great things. But I just wanted to mention to people that one of the latest updates that flipper put out is the ability to make comments on your videos that you upload. Now that is doesn’t need to be activated in the settings, obviously. But now you’ve also got this really neat threaded comment function. So if you make a comment on one of the students work, or a student makes a comment on another student’s work, you can hit the three dots in the top right hand corner, and you can hit Reply to Thread or reply to comment. And so now you get this nice little discussion happening and going off in different ways. Now a lot of people might be thinking, Well, why don’t you just talk to them about it? Why would I want to write on a comment if I’m in the same class? Well, for a lot of you in high school, you’re not in the same class all day, every day. And for a lot of people who are you know, doing remote learning, but also to capture those conversations in a written form is a really good way to be able to get that homeschool partnership going if it’s parents commenting, you know, the wider wider family and farno and that type of thing as well. So really jump, I would just really encourage people to jump in, we’ll put a link in the, in the show notes to that. There’s a link there and a nice little video from flip that they made that shows you how that works in on one of their Twitter posts recently. Cool. Sounds good. Nice, right? All right, well, that’s making waves for this week. So three different things there heaps of resources that you can jump into, we’ll put those in the show notes for you. If you want to go into that you know any of those links there, share them with people share this podcast with people if you know that you’re working with someone, if you’re a middle leader, and you’ve got a leader at your school, who you know is probably not across the AI, grab that AI dilemma. Link, grab the link to this podcast, share it with them, spread things around as much as possible with people and raise that awareness. Well, that was a great conversation. I ran lots of different topics today. So like we said, if you’re interested in any of the links from some of the things that we talked about lots of resources, lots of website leaders to be able to go there and share with lots of other people go into our show notes, you’ll be able to see everything there and share them away. If you haven’t subscribed definitely do that. We’d love to be able to reach as many people as possible. And that’s one way that you can get notifications of when we publish and Bix, I think you were going to share one little thing to think about before we go.

Bex Rose: 43:33

Yeah, I think this this AI stuff in particular I know is on the hot topic for all of you out there. I was at a board meeting last night and it came up at the board meeting. It’s just It’s on the tip of everyone’s tongues. Now we’ve got trainers who are absolutely across everything that’s coming out, they’re getting updates, they’re getting across it straight away. If you feel like you needed a supporting hand through this, even if it is around working out how you’re going to deploy this kind of stuff in your school, hit us up bix@utb.bz And we can come and have a chat about how we can support you in this. You don’t have to do this on your own. And we’re seeing what’s happening across schools in New Zealand, Australia and across the world. So don’t reinvent the wheel. We’ve got this common hex come and ask us for some help.

Mark Herring: 44:18

Fantastic. Well, I think anybody who’s got got that website, their email address books at UTB dot B said differently, give you a call and then we can have conversation around that. Great to have you on the podcast. See on the next one.