Jennie Magiera | Google - Transcript
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Jeremy Singer: I'm Jeremy Singer, president of the College Board, and this is the Education Equation. I've spent my career grappling with what truly drives student success. On this podcast, I'll talk with people who are researching, building and scaling solutions that matter. Every episode will go beyond the hype and focus on data and evidence to see what's actually working.
Let's stop guessing and let's figure out what works. Today's conversation tackles one of the most consequential and controversial forces reshaping schools right now, artificial intelligence, and we could not have a better person for this discussion. My guest is Jenny Magiera, global Head of Education Impact at Google Workspace for Education serves more than 170 million students in educators worldwide.
So when Google introduces new AI tools, whether within Gemini to learn LM, this isn't a pilot, it's potentially a system level shift, but what does [00:01:00] responsible AI implementation actually look like in classrooms? Jenny brings a unique perspective. She started her career at Chicago Public Schools as a math teacher, and initially a self-described tech skeptic.
She went on to lead district level innovation. She worked in Carol Dweck's research lab and now oversees Google's global education impact strategy. In this conversation, we're gonna explore why a former tech skeptic now believes AI can meaningfully improve teaching and learning what AI should never replace in the classroom and what it should.
The emerging research on AI tutoring. What a six month Northern Ireland pilot reveals about time savings, burnout, and instructional impact, how Google is designing AI tools around learning science, not just engineering capability. What durable skills matter in an AI world, and what traditional skills may decline in importance, and how school and system leaders should think about guardrails, equity, and [00:02:00] responsible implementation as these tools scale.
We'll examine early evidence on how AI can improve outcomes without eroding rigor, relationships, or professional judgment.
Jenny, welcome to the Education Equation.
Jennie Magiera: Thank you for having me.
Jeremy Singer: So before we jump into AI, I wanna talk about humans. Nearly everyone has a story about a teacher who changed your life. Mine was Tom Cataldo. He was my first and second grade teacher, was a loop class, it was a very diverse racially socioeconomic classroom.
He was, this is the seventies, he was a hippie, had a long ponytail, and he brought a mix of high expectations. and an ability to sort of unlock our creativity. Like he taught everybody in first grade how to play chess for many years. I'd go back to the classroom each year to play him. but he also had us build a kiln, outside of this classroom, in the town, brick by brick, and then come at the break, a dawn to fire it up and put the clay pots in.
This was back in the seventies, so I'm not sure any of this would happen [00:03:00] today. but it sounds like your inspiration was Ms. Buckman. So can you. Give us a little bit about her and sort of how she shaped your future.
Jennie Magiera: Yeah. She was my spark teacher. Was the catalyst to my entire career. And I, I was a grade four student down in Orlando, Florida.
I had moved originally from Boston, where there were a lot of Korean American, Asian American, pretty diverse neighborhood. And then I moved down to Orlando and I'm the only kiddo who looks like me. And, you know, there are a lot of stereotype bias and I really felt like I lost myself in my voice. For many years from like grades one through four, and I got to Miss Buckman classroom and she saw me and she inspired me.
She made every day an adventure. The first day of school, she told us all, she had a pet dinosaur named Jeff and she drank from the Fountain of Youth and that she was a 90-year-old nun. I mean, she was, literally this frizzle from the Magic School bus, and she made us have a magic classroom.
I [00:04:00] remember going to school with mono 'cause I didn't wanna miss any school days. I was like the only kid who faked being well, when I had a cold. So I just felt awoken in her classroom and I felt like she really cared about me. She kept in touch with my mom for years after I left her classroom.
And when I graduated from university, I found out my mom had been pen paling with Ms. Buckman sending Christmas cards, and I graduated with my teacher's license in New York City ready to teach and. She was like, do you wanna meet up with Ms. Buckman? You know, I still stay in touch with her. So I met up for lunch with her and told her I was gonna be a fourth grade teacher, and she inspired me and I said, I wanna be just like you.
And she said, you could never be just like me. I thought, oh my gosh. The hubris. Of course, I could never be just like you, Ms. Buckman, you're the most magical teacher in the world. I mean, you have the Fountain of Youth and a dinosaur. She said, Jenny, you, you can't be just like me because your students deserve you to be just like you and you should just be the best version of who you can be.
And then [00:05:00] she gave me a glass bird that had been on her desk for her whole career. 'cause she was retiring. And I have it here. I keep it on my desk. I had it in my classroom when I taught, when I was an administrator, and now when I do my work just to remind. me, you know, Ms. Buckman still teaches me to just not try and be someone else and be the best I can be for my students and for the teachers now that I serve.
Jeremy Singer: That's a wonderful story. And, and I think, yeah, everybody has, someone like, Mr. Al there, Ms. Buckman. So I just wanna start there and so much resonated, including the motivation, you know, 'cause we'll talk later about the importance of how you engage a student and how you make it relevant, et cetera.
but I'm gonna fast forward. You're now a math teacher at CPS Chicago Public Schools. you've been inspired, as you say, by Ms. Buckman, and I've heard you. Say that at the time when you were in this role, you were a bit of a tech skeptic. Yeah. So, looking back, what drove the skepticism?
And we'll get to how that changed. But I'm just curious, like why the skepticism? And I think there's good reasons, but I wanna hear it from you.
Jennie Magiera: Yeah, so I became a math [00:06:00] teacher because I was terrible at math as a kid, going back to like that stereotype bias, I think a lot of my teachers were like, oh, Asian kid, she probably plays the violin and she's excellent at math.
And I was neither it was something I really struggled with, and when I became an educator and I had the opportunity to get my master's, I decided to double down on the discipline. I felt weakest in as a general education teacher for middle grades. And so I got my master's in math and I learned about like different type, like base six math and like the science and the magic and the art of math.
And I just fell in love with it. They used to call me math Jenny as a teacher because I was. So obsessed with the pedagogy of teaching math the right way.
Jeremy Singer: I don't know how many people have actually been inspired by base six, but, but keep going. I love it.
Jennie Magiera: I was just like this. Well, it makes you think Base 10 is so magical when you try and add in base six or base eight, base 10 is just, you know.
Mind blowing. So then they're like, oh, bring this tech into your classroom. Use these apps. And I, was like, this is, this is a gimmick. Like I think we should, I was a [00:07:00] purist. This is how you teach math. Everything else is a distraction. Let's just, they didn't need this 10,000 years ago. They don't need it now.
and so that's kind of where I started off with was, I don't need this distraction in my classroom. I know how to teach math the pure, the right way.
Jeremy Singer: , you know, there's a lot of things where, being overly intentional or not being intentional enough about how you apply the technology often happens.
I think you, you know, technology, I know you know this, we often talk about being too early is another form of being wrong. Mm-hmm. And I think some of the tech. at least my experience was, was too early. But, so you have that, you're skeptic, but you move along and, you're successful teaching.
but then you move into this system level role as Chief Innovation Officer, for plain District 62 in Illinois. And this is leading a district-wide technology initiative. And so now you're working at scale, not just in the individual classroom, and you're frankly leading, thinking about technology in the schools.
Jennie Magiera: Okay, so I'm a tech skeptic [00:08:00] and I'm not really sure this is a thing. Then I'm basically voluntold to apply for this, one-to-one technology grant in my classroom in 2010. And I, I kind of begrudgingly do it. I do it with a colleague, and, I get the grant and I'm like, oh my gosh, now what do I do?
You know, with great power comes great responsibility and I spent a lot of time with the tablets, with, iPads trying to figure out how to force them into my math curriculum and. It wasn't intentional to that point I was trying to use. Protractor app. It took my students, you know, seconds to do, took them, you know, 10 minutes to find the app, run it on, line it up, everything.
And it, it wasn't, there was no, thought around it. It was just, how do I use iPad for everything? How do I replace it all? And then paused at one point at my height of frustration, realized what is it that iPads are good for, and what is it that I'm trying to do? And then when I stopped leading with the tech and I [00:09:00] started leading with my challenges, my opportunities, my needs that I was trying to solve for my students, all of a sudden it opened up an entire array of possibility, you know?
And then enter Google Docs and allowing my students to be able to collaborate real time. This is when the magic of multiple cursors on a screen was mind blowing, and the ability to use Google Forms for real time assessment to. Check where my students were and I was able to take an assessment cycle that took multiple days.
Sometimes I would do an exit ticket or a quiz, take it home that night. If I was feeling really energetic, I'd grade it same night the next day. That was the shortest amount of time for my students to get feedback on their work. Now I could have it in seconds, and in that moment of cognitive dissonance of confusion, my students were able to understand what they weren't getting right and get some reteaching moments.
So. That opened up an aha moment to me when I realized it wasn't about the technology. It was always about the same opportunities I was trying to create for my students challenges I [00:10:00] was trying to address year over year, but now the technology was creating new vehicles and pathways for me to address those needs and opportunities.
And that mindset shift was critical for me. So then I did that for a few years and then I started blogging about it, and then the district asked me to become digital learning coordinator for our network of schools in Chicago public. And then I was recruited to go be a CTO at a neighboring school district.
And throughout that journey, the thing that I kept consistent was lead with the need. What is it that we're trying to do on behalf of educators and students? How were we addressing their salient needs? And the technology is playing a supporting role, not the starring role in that equation.
Jeremy Singer: I think you left this role roughly, let's say 10 years ago, which, you know, in technology, feels like a lifetime ago.
so that's a principle that's held up. I'm curious if there are things that you were excited about 10, 15 years ago, either as an individual teacher or leading district initiatives that, [00:11:00] became, you know, sort of or less exciting now or didn't really pan out.
Jennie Magiera: One thing that I really jumped on early on were the fill in the blank subject apps where they were gamified fun. An app for this. An app just for multiplication, memorization, an app just for learning polygons and that. Did not work out. It didn't work out for a lot of reasons.
First of all, I was buying all the apps myself. It was before they had like a whole NDM process and I was able to like, you know, purchase app licenses in bulk at discount the right way. So I was just putting down my personal credit card and buying hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of apps. And I had an app for I think every math standard in Illinois State standards in grades four and five.
And it didn't make sense. It didn't make sense for a lot of reasons. User experience is different. The student had to relearn how to get in, how to use it. the logins and then the pedagogy wasn't super strong. I mean, a lot of these were like created quickly and were more about the cartoons and [00:12:00] the music than the actual learning.
But I was trying to fill a void. I was trying to. You know, digitize my classroom for the sake of digitizing it, right? So I think that was like my pre aha moment where I realized it's about my need versus about the tech. And so once I centered the need, then I began to select the software way more intentionally.
And I realized I needed a lot fewer programs, softwares, et cetera. And that's really, you know, I know this might sound biased because I'm at Google now, but the reason I'm at Google is because when I. Discovered the Google suite of tools. I realized they're really simple but elegant and I could do so many things with them.
So I just needed fewer, more powerful tools than thousands of standard by standard math apps.
Jeremy Singer: No, it makes a lot of sense. We've heard from a lot of teachers that there's all these narrow applications or tools and it's really hard, as you say, for students and teachers to manage 30 different apps or 30 different things.
And so if you can [00:13:00] create a, fewer or a single system, that's much better, which. Is a good lead in to getting to Google. so, I'm confident that all of my listeners are familiar with Google. Yeah. but some are gonna be less familiar with Google education. So can you start describing both your role, how you think about Google education broadly and Google's responsibility in supporting, teaching and learning across both K 12 and higher ed?
Jennie Magiera: My pleasure. So Google for Education is part of the company where we focus on transforming teaching and learning at scale, and we build tools that hopefully you all know and love, like Google Classroom, and really think about how we're integrating everything from Google Docs to Gemini into learning.
Learning spaces in really thoughtful, intentional, meaningful ways. My role specifically as the global head of education impact, I feel like I have the best job at Google because what I get to look after are supporting educators of all [00:14:00] levels from, you know, preschool teachers through a higher ed faculty, education leaders, superintendents, ministry officials, provost deans, everyone in between.
And we do that through two main program types. Training and certification programs, so professional learning, PD partners, et cetera, and communities of practice. How do we help educators connect worldwide? Celebrate them, recognize them, and support them. And so I love my job. It's all about helping my educator community, listening to them, and then making sure their voices are heard and centered as we build new products and iterate on existing products.
I get to work really closely with our product team, our user research team, to bring the voices of these educators in our communities and these education leaders that we're supporting right in front of these engineers and product designers so that you know, the Google value of respect, the user is always centered in everything we're [00:15:00] doing.
Jeremy Singer: So there's been lot of attention specifically of late on, on Gemini and, I'd say generative AI more broadly, when you're talking, to teachers, school leaders, et cetera, about Gemini. What are the use cases again, like you say, it's best when you're using technology to make it more efficient or help solve existing problems, not just a hammer looking for a nail.
So what kind of teaching or learning challenges do you see it designed to address? And then we'll get into a lot of details beyond that.
Jennie Magiera: So it's amazing to hear about all the different ways that Gemini and all of our Google AI tools are being used in classrooms all over the world.
There's really powerful stories about. It's intended use, which is, you know, just like, how is it helping people grapple with knowledge, synthesize it, create. Then there's stories that I don't know if it was intended when it was designed. There's one that came out of one of our AI fellows in Korea, I [00:16:00] believe, who is a long-term music teacher.
And they had their students composing music, composing music, composing music. But you know, in the span of the 10 week semester, however long they had, they could only get so far and they would kind of run out of time. But then they started bringing in Gemini to help. Support the students, understand the mechanics, the more traditional skills of like what are the notes?
How do these different notes work together, et cetera. And it accelerated their learning progress where they got to the part where they got to be deeply creative with those skills within that 10 week semester. And the teacher was telling the story and playing the music and it was so emotive and so human.
And we were asking like, oh, did. Did Gemini create the music? And they said no. What we used Gemini to do was help the students understand those traditional skills of music composition, but then that was all them, and it allowed them to bring even more humanity and even more emotion into their compositions because it gave them some time to really dive more deeply into the [00:17:00] composition in that 10 week semester.
So I think that we. Built Gemini to do certain things, but the magic is how the humans in the lead, the teachers, in the lead, the students in the lead, how they apply that to create that opportunity for learning.
Jeremy Singer: , what you have is a worldwide laboratory and you've given tools.
I'm just curious, like how do you find, like there's so many people experimenting with Gemini in the classroom, there's millions of teachers across the globe. I'm sure there's so many doing interesting things like how do you find those cases? How do they get to you? How do you then put a spotlight?
Is there a process? Or if I'm a teacher in Dubuque, Iowa and I have this great thing, what do I do? I email you. What do I do?
Jennie Magiera: I mean, please email me. But I think that, well, that's going back to our communities of practice. That's why we have them. So we have. Two types of communities of practice. We have one for everyone where it's, you know, I just wanna explore, I'm still dipping my toe into the water.
I wanna get to know other people who are, you know, tinkering and exploring and aren't [00:18:00] ready to really like rock and roll yet. And those are our Google educator groups and our primary, secondary, the K 12 space. And then Google faculty groups in our higher ed space. And there's zero barrier to entry.
Join, explore, and you get connected again to a global community. We have an online platform that uses AI to live, translate into over 40 languages. So if I'm speaking in Korean, in Seoul, and you're in Iowa and you're, we're talking back and forth to each other, I can be speaking my native language, and you can speak in yours and we can share pedagogical ideas in real time.
Now, if you are the person who is so into this and you wanna geek out on Gemini and you're creating videos with VO three and Nano Banana and, and you just did something that, and. You think is like 10 outta 10, and you wanna lead the way and innovate. Then we have our champions program, and that's for people who are the top innovators, top trainers, top coaches in their school systems, [00:19:00] and then we have AI fellowships for higher ed.
And so the idea there is that those folks can be the people who are showcasing the best cases, the best practices, and supporting the entire community by lighting the way and inspiring them to see what is possible. Both of those are open on our website. If you just go to edu.google.com. you can see all of our communities of practice, we're actually opening up innovator applications as part of the champions community and the fellowship applications.
I believe the innovator applications are open now, and by the time this airs, the fellowship will be open as well.
Jeremy Singer: That is awesome. I don't know if you have this, but there's moments when you were describing this in the translation that's embedded it's mind blowing where we are today.
Some of these things are. Wow. From where we were 15 years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago. It really is crazy. but I wanna shift. So let's talk about learn Learn LM, which is Google's family of AI models that are specifically designed for education. So you can use Gemini obviously, but Learn LM is more purposeful. Can [00:20:00] you help the listeners understand what makes Learn LM different, more focused than a general purpose AI model?
Jennie Magiera: Absolutely. So. Learn Now. Lamb, as you named, is our family models. It's fine tuned for learning it's grounded into educational research. So our top minds at Google DeepMind, Google Research, our product teams, they all join forces and their powers combined created Learn l and it's built on five learning science principles that I think all the educators tuning into your podcast are gonna.
Like kind of nodding, you know, inspiring active learning. Yes. Managing cognitive load. So, you know, we want it to be helpful for you, but we don't want you to be so frustrated you throw your Chromebook out the window, adapting to the learners. So kind of learning the way you wanna learn dynamically adjusting the goals and, and grounding it in the.
Materials relevant to you, stimulating curiosity. We never want you to dead end in your learning journey. you know how people like YouTube spiral, where like it just comes the next thing. We want that for [00:21:00] learning. Like, hmm, I wonder, you know, why the sky is blue and then. 10 minutes later, you're exploring what clouds are made of and then deepening that metacognition, the thinking about thinking, how is it that I learn monitoring my process?
And so all of those concepts are infused into all of our Gemini models now. So when you are using your Google search or, you're chatting with Gemini when you are on YouTube and there's AI and the way that you're looking at the next video. Learn LM is part of all of that. Just to think about how humans learn and how we're being a partner to your learning journey, whether you're four or 400.
Jeremy Singer: That's awesome. And having looked at, at those five principles, , they're pretty hard, you know, you didn't put mother and apple pie in it, but, but everything else that is pretty hard to argue against I'm curious when you think of those five, Is there any that stand out? I mean, AI I, we could say, helps better enable all of those, but is there anyone that you think like AI really? Moves the [00:22:00] needle on the ability to do this one principle versus a non-AI world.
Jennie Magiera: Hmm. That's so good. That's a great question.
I think that adapting to the learners is really interesting. You know the way that these LLMs work and these generative AI models is the more you interact with them, the better it. It suits you.
Right. So because I use Gemini so often, it knows that I have a 7-year-old daughter and it knows her name and it knows that she's super into science right now and learning about like what things are made out of. And so, you know, as I was exploring, a vacation that I wanna take this summer. I was asking it like, okay, I'm trying to fit all these things into these three days.
There's 11 people going with us. There's five kids. Like how are we gonna survive? It said, oh, I noticed that you're staying in this neighborhood and your daughter loves science. Like, might you wanna take a break at the science museum? I. Do you wanna explore inside? And it like gave me like an in-depth tour of the inside of the museum, it knew that my [00:23:00] 4-year-old hates walking.
And so it like knew that there were places for rest within it. And so it adapted to me and it knew that as I was, you know, querying and I'm prompting it to help me build a family vacation. It's learning about me and helping me understand based on my needs. And so that, that felt game changing. I thought, yeah.
Wow. It knew, it knew what I wanted. And then my colleague, shout out to Zach. He used Gemini to build a, what should I wear, app. And I feel like, I don't know if anyone who's listening watched, clueless back in the day
Jeremy Singer: who didn't come on.
Jennie Magiera: so at the beginning, Cher has like a little computer that tells her what to wear every day.
He built. That app and it knows like what his job is, where he goes, where he lives, what the weather is. And so I've noticed, I was like, Zach, you look really snazzy on all our calls. And he is like, it's my Gemini app. It knows what I want. So I think just like the way that it's able to personalize the learning experience, is really magical.
Jeremy Singer: That really resonates with me I've [00:24:00] been in this space for longer than, I wanna admit, but, it makes so much sense that if you can personalize it and, and relate it it's better, for the student, they're more likely to engage.
You're more likely to advance. but it's really hard to do and it feels like this is, I agree. I think this is the biggest of all the breakthroughs. So I wanna get to a little data, obviously in this podcast we wanna see What data we have is still early in the journey, but, I'm really happy that Google's focused on, reporting out data as early as they can.
So there was a report published, in partnership with, Ed
or Eddie
Jennie Magiera: Ededie. Yeah.
Jeremy Singer: in which you found that, students who received short tutoring sessions from Learn saw a five and a half percent performance boost. It was defined as novel topics, so, a subject matter that was new, original, unexpected, for the student, then students who worked.
the control group was students who were working, which was just a human tutor alone. So. Why is that? Like what is the AI, what is Learn LM in this instance doing that was different from what the humans were [00:25:00] doing?
Jennie Magiera: I think, I think it was a couple things, right? I think that what it found was that it was able to really.
Push their Socratic questioning. I think that one of the things that it excelled at was getting the students, again, that inspiring active learning. It's not just saying, wrong answer, try again. No. Like, here's a new practice. Set it pushed the students to. Investigate more deeply into the body of work, into the content.
, , you know, it's a math tutoring, so there's a lot there to get into, like where was the misconception, how did it not work, et cetera. And I think the other piece was like the accuracy of the concept. So, you know, there is, with tutors sometimes it's like, can I quickly diagnose what's not going right?
with this particular algorithm or this application of knowledge. But with learn LM embedded into the tutor, it allowed quicker understanding of like, ah, they're misunderstanding the function or the variable is not being consistent here, et cetera. and it was done in. [00:26:00] In concert with the human as well.
So there was a human being tutor who was the supervising tutor as well. It wasn't like we stuck a bunch of kids, or they stuck a bunch of kids in a room with Chromebooks, locked the door and said, good luck, learn math. But you know, the human tutors were circulating and were checking all of the responses, either rejecting them, editing them, but the majority of them were spot on.
They were able to more quickly move students to the loop, and I think about. The time savings bit. I think sometimes when we talk about time savings, it's a little too level. It's like, we've saved time. It's like, great for what? Like what are you doing with that time? But in these instances, they were saving time.
So the students were able to get through more material, get more reinforcement, understand, and grapple with misconceptions in real time. And again I can't emphasize this enough, the point of meeting a learner in their moment of cognitive dissonance in that moment where you're like, oh, this is hard.
And capturing that moment and [00:27:00] unpacking it in real time rather than forcing them to just sit there and stew and eventually check out is really critical. You want them to have productive struggle . Absolutely no question, but how do, how do you kind of support and coach them through that productive struggle so they don't disengage?
And I think that's where it really brought some magic into the space.
Jeremy Singer: And so, If you were designing a tutoring program today, , this is not the official, this is Jenny's view, like how would you think about it learn LM and then with humans? Like what would be a kind of approach you could take?
Jennie Magiera: So the thing I think is incredibly important is understanding, again, what you're doing with the time savings and the efficacy savings and understanding the constraints of tutoring programs.
It's usually like the cost of trying to reach each student. Ideally, you would have way more tutors out there, but that's just not possible. So then with the limited number of tutors that we have available to us, how do we scale their [00:28:00] impact? And when you think about what. The human tutors can do that.
AI could not and should not replace is that human relationship and the social emotional nuance that the study really touches upon. So if we can put out Learn LM or the AI, powered tutor in the space of, you know. Diagnosing the misconception, giving them some coaching and feedback to better understand the concepts.
The human tutor can help build that relationship, talk the student through it, build that resilience, help them unpack what they learned and like. Create that deeper buy-in and internalization for wanting to continue with their learning journey. That's what we saw in the ED study.
That's what we're seeing in classrooms around the world. I work with an organization called Saga Tutoring and they're doing the same thing. So I think that it's really thinking about how we're elevating the role of the human tutor to really get at those durable skills and that support that the students really need.[00:29:00]
Jeremy Singer: Yeah. Fully supportive and heard all that. It makes sense. I'm just trying to think if I'm a chief academic officer at a district and I have a tutoring program and I have, you know, 30 minutes of tutoring individual per student after school, You know, I'm trying to think of like, okay, what if I'm staffing for this this world?
Like,, I believe you still need a human for all the reasons you mentioned, but what scale? So, I think we'll learn more as we go.
So let me shift - another really interesting research that you published was a six month pilot, that was done in Northern Ireland, where educators, and as you say, very intentionally integrated Gemini and Google Workspace tools into their classrooms.
And, the results were great. teachers reported that on average, they saved about 10 hours a week, using these tools. what were the tasks or things , where were those 10 hours? What were the things they were doing , that Google helped them do, more efficiently or, or did in, in lieu of them.
Jennie Magiera: Well, first of all, I think people think about admin, [00:30:00] right? Like, oh, it's, it's grading papers. It's, you know, creating lesson plans. And, and that's definitely, part of what they were doing, creating curriculum material. But I think it was like upleveling a lot of the work as well, you know, thinking about how we're communicating with families.
That's something that often gets left by the wayside when you're trying to do everything there is to do, to support the learners. But, some of the teachers were using Gemini to draft letters to parents and keep them in the loop. create risk assessments for class outings. That one's huge, right? I remember my first year of teaching, I took like 40 2nd graders to Times Square for a matinee, and I was.
Pretty sure I was gonna lose one. I didn't, spoiler alert, I kept my job. But I think that like I would've loved to have Gemini to be like you know, 42nd Street is a really difficult subway stop to take 40 tiny humans like. Alert, alert, new teacher. and so naming, like this might be a better time to go, or, this is a, risk especially like ingesting [00:31:00] information about your students.
Like, so and so needs an EpiPen. This person has a peanut allergy. So they were creating safer experiences for their students, and then helping them support their learning journey. So using Notebook, LM. To turn curriculum material into podcasts for exam prep. Full disclosure in preparation for this podcast, you know, I know all the research we've done.
I've talked about it. I was, you know, helping to, set some of it up, but I'm like, okay, let me just remind myself, what did we do with Ed? What did we do with Northern Island? So I put it all into Notebook, LM and I listened to it and it saved me. A ton of time. So I think that, it wasn't just about the time savings as we talked about, but it was about the step change improvements in what they were doing as well.
Jeremy Singer: Yep, and so beyond the savings and efficiencies and doing certain things better, While anecdotal, there was also, teacher feedback, from the pilot that the teachers self-reported reduced stress, a [00:32:00] sense of breathing room, a greater job satisfaction. And so I think everyone realizes, you know, it's a big challenge both to track and retain teachers in the classroom.
So, if this can help, if this gives them more, that's a huge win on its own. and I'll stipulate, let's take it for a fact, that 10 hours on average were freed up. So some of that 10 hours led a teacher who used to work 55 hours a week to work 50 hours, we gave them five, which made better job satisfaction, which has value to it.
I'm not at all mentioning that. but, and you, you started to hint at this earlier on our discussion. That other five hours, let's say, was redirected. Mm-hmm. do you have a sense of like, where their time, and you may not know the results from the study, but also just you have great experience here.
Like what should they be using this freed up time? If it's still involved, instructionally, what are the tasks or things they could be doing
Jennie Magiera: Two things. First of all, one is that teachers work too many hours. I, I can say, right?
Jeremy Singer: And I,
Jennie Magiera: I agree.
Jeremy Singer: [00:33:00] Yeah.
Jennie Magiera: So I think part of it is self-care, honestly. I mean, I remember getting home from, you know, I, I would get to school at 6:00 AM to put my classroom, and I, I think I'm, you know, preaching to the choir here, but then leaving when it's long dark outside and bringing home a stack of papers and, you know, grading them, you know, while watching a show, eating dinner and drinking a tall glass of.
Of water. And so the challenge there is I think that. Sometimes when we're talking about this, like every minute needs to be reinvested back into the profession. And I want to give space and grace to educators. All of you who are listening there, like self-care is caring for your students.
Like you being more healthy, balanced well will prevent burnout and, and help you show up better for your colleagues and your students. So just first of all, naming that now with the other bit of time after you've had a good night of sleep and a paper grading free evening. Then we're seeing a lot of teachers self electing to reinvest the time into upleveling lessons [00:34:00] and professional development.
So the first bit is taking lessons that they have been teaching for year over year. Like I remember my 10th year of teaching the same middle grades math. I was like, all right, here we go. It's middle. I'm gonna pull out my tried and true surface area lesson. Here we go. You're 10. This is gonna be one. And I mean, I, I remember like teaching it and being like hearing myself and being bored, like of my own voice and being like, God, how do I change this up?
And so, you know, finding new and novel ways, not just to reignite your own interest, but like, how do I change this up to better reach my students? So that's one piece. So. diversifying your approach to better needs of your students interest and readiness. And then secondly, like professional learning. So like what is out there that I can do to hone my craft and dig more deeply?
I know a lot of educators are, you know, rediscovering like Japanese lessons study and exploring, what it's like [00:35:00] to bring Socratic seminars into math classrooms, understanding multidisciplinary ways of teaching things. And so. I'm really excited that we're, hopefully bringing more joy and excitement back to the teaching craft by giving educators time for self-care, but then also to investigate new ways to grow in their careers.
Jeremy Singer: Yeah, agree that if you can make the job more manageable and livable, so it's more attractive. But what I, I expected you to say more, like they're gonna spend more one-on-one time with students or whatever. And it's actually interesting 'cause I, you really, your points really landed with me because, you know, having built programs for teachers in classrooms, one of the challenges we always face, and you know, this having taught is
your class time is already. Really tight and it is very hard, even a very experienced teacher to integrate something new. 'cause you have to decide, what am I shifting? What am I changing? And that takes time. And you're [00:36:00] already working very hard over time to just deliver your existing thing. So I hadn't really thought of this idea of.
It allows you to innovate, to try something new, even a new program that you really could do with a higher fidelity. So I love that. Thank you for sharing. I'm gonna shift to durable skills. So there's a lot of discussion , I can't, you know, get through the paper each day or any podcast without hearing about, the skills that are changing and, and what's needed.
some of it can be overstated, but durable skills just for, I think most people , are familiar or. problem solving, critical thinking, ethical decision making, communication, teamwork. I mean, everybody has a different, slightly different definition, but it's that.
Group of skills. And the, the argument is some of the more technical skills or specific academic skills, traditionally students learned, AI can supplement , or replace. And so these skills, like no one would argue that communication or [00:37:00] teamwork or problem solving, were an important pre AI, but
their proportional importance will grow. I was really struck., I was talking to someone at Lumina, who does research , and they said, my parents' generation many people had one or two jobs in their lifetime.
They often worked for an employer, they had a pension, et cetera. My generation we generally work in an industry, but we may have four or five, six jobs. And, and that's been my experience, but my kids' generation or even the next generation, which is gen Alpha, which is I think born between 2010 and 2025, that they're actually not gonna have four or five jobs.
They're gonna work in four or five different industries. And so the argument here is these skills are more important. really need what skills are transferable. So something specific about one industry may be less relevant. But I'm curious, how Google thinks about these durable skills and how you're approaching them.
Jennie Magiera: Absolutely. I think that it's really important to understand, you know, what makes us unique as, as humans, and [00:38:00] I really like this, OECD report around the AI capability Index, where they've done research around like what AI is really great at and where humans , are better at AI then, and it.
Validates a lot about this concept of like the durable skills and what makes us human and, and what we should really be indexing on, as the humans in the lead. And I, I really do, see this in the way that we're designing all of our education products, for example. And it's about giving students all learners, all educators, more,
enablement to really build on those durable skills by creating a lot of air cover and support using Gemini so that they can take some of these more routine tasks, administrative tasks, off their plate, or supercharging them so they can start. They can get through more, more quickly, like in the music lesson example, so that they can dig more [00:39:00] into those concepts of like, creativity, communication, et cetera.
And then I think it's like the nuance of it as well. Like as we're communicating what are the different types of communication. So for example, I was writing a note. To a family member and I realized that maybe I was a little more emotional than I needed to be as I was writing this note to my family member who I love very much, and a family member.
You're reading this and you're wondering, was it the note I sent to you? You'll never know, but as I read it, I'm like. Maybe this isn't the tone I want to give. So I use Gemini to be like, this is the intent I'm trying to give with my words. Can you help me get there? And so it kind of gave me some coaching around maybe some of my use of language and I, as the human being rewrote it.
There was some intentionality there that I was able to use Gemini to be even more human in my communication. To say like, I don't wanna come off with this emotion in this written piece of work. I wanna convey this emotion. Can you help me think through how this would be received? So it was a [00:40:00] thought partner that was allowing me to have a lot more nuance and.
The emotion of my written word to someone I cared very deeply about. And it worked. I was able to communicate with the right level of emotion that I meant to, and, and the interaction went really great. so I think that there's something there that made me, again, going back to metacognition more intentional about that email than I would have before I was using Gemini.
Jeremy Singer: Yeah, just as a hack that I use is similar, like I actually find. When I wanna give performance feedback on some specific feedback, for whatever reason, I've been working on this for my whole career, you wanna be direct, you wanna think how it's gonna land you know, but I'm still not great at the wording and I found like I throw it in.
To an AI engine. and it helps. actually very effective at taking some of the motion out and thinking how to do it. And, and as you say, the recipient, so this is gonna be a hard question and you can pass, but, agree that, AI, you know, frees teacher time, so they have more time to do durable skills.
It [00:41:00] actually enables teaching durable skills, and we could go on a whole I totally agree with that. but are there skills that pre AI that. Learners needed to be successful that are less important. So in other words, in the instructional pie, when you're thinking of the learning outcomes, are there certain things, topics, et cetera, that had become less important?
And, and the analogy I can, you know, a lot of people use a calculator, pre calculator. There were certain ability to solve certain types of complex math. equations that was important to learn or thought to be important, and that has gone by the wayside. There's still key math things you need to learn, even if you could put in a calculator.
But some stuff did change in math education. Is there an AI equivalent?
Jennie Magiera: I think so. I think that, you know, when we're thinking about. The traditional skills, I think it gets at like, why were we learning those traditional skills? Like to what end? So like even going to the calculator piece, you know, the math teacher and me, I don't believe we [00:42:00] should like necessarily have to do like the rote recall, but I, I think it's really important, again, going back to my beloved base 10, for students to understand the foundational.
Thinking around mathematics. So there's then that builds some base knowledge that they can then use in so many other ways that apply to other parts of their lives. So, you know, my daughter is learning multiplication right now, and I'm very, very dogged about her understanding, like learning multiplication in a way that is not memorization, but building the foundation.
So again, a calculator, if she can't remember what seven times six is. Okay, fine. But I want her to understand like what the concept of seven times six is. I still think it's good for her to have it memorized, but that's a whole nother TED talk for another day. I
Jeremy Singer: would argue it's crucial, by the way.
Yeah. Like all the cognitive science says. Yeah, you should. There's certain things that you don't want to use your short term memory Yeah. To figure out. It needs to be exactly.
Jennie Magiera: In there
Jeremy Singer: automatic in your long term, that just comes out. So multiplication table, I don't think there's controversy.
Jennie Magiera: Okay,
Jeremy Singer: good, good, [00:43:00] good.
Every kid, and it drives me nuts. I see young kids, oh, you can, you don't need to learn it. No, no. You desperately need to learn that good. Because that's a foundation. So no. Yeah, yeah.
Jennie Magiera: We're not arguing on that. Let's just like rename this podcast. You need to know your multiplication back. All right. So it
Jeremy Singer: would, it would be a big service, for sure.
Jennie Magiera: Yeah. okay, great. So on the same page there. So I, I don't ever wanna say like. All memorization, all like understanding. It's about the foundation. It's about supporting, but then there's some things that we might have been learning that may not be as needed anymore. So I feel like maybe the entire librarian community might come after me for this, but I like one of the things that I was talking to a colleague about with the Dewey Decimal system, and I think it's an important thing that we have in which you continue using it.
But I remember I would go to class as a kid and I would go, I had library class. In Florida as a child, and we'd go and we would like get quizzed on the Dewey Decimal system and it would be like, okay, you know, what number is this and what number is that? And I still can remember like five [00:44:00] hundreds were science and I think like one hundreds were philosophy and I literature like the fiction all eight hundreds.
Of being in the eight hundreds and like, how do I do it? And like going to the card and like going through the little cards and picking my card and then finding it. And I, it was fun. I loved it. It felt like you were treasure hunting every time you found a book. But do we need, like, you know, I take my daughter to the Chicago Public Library every week.
And we look it up on a computer and it tells us right where to go, and we can read the signs. So I realize that's not the direct analog to AI, but that's the format that I think about. Like, why was the Dewey Decimal system invented as a way to organize books? But then for us, on the receptive end, can the computer do the heavy lifting of finding the book right where it is in the correct aisle, on the right floor in the library, versus me going through the card stock.
So as we're going through traditional skills that may not need the airtime in schools as much as they did historically. That's kind [00:45:00] of the analog that I hear a lot of my colleagues in these educator communities talking about. Like, what was the point of teaching it? If it's about building foundational knowledge, creating productive struggle, giving students something that's gonna build a foundation for critical thinking and cognition later in life.
Keep it in. But if it was a stop gap to solve something, that computers, that AI can do better, and it's not gonna create a longer system of neuropathways that are gonna help the students, and serve them well in the future, maybe that's not something that we index on anymore.
Jeremy Singer: Yeah. well said, and I've talked to a lot of people about this. I don't think anyone has the answer yet. I think it's much larger than anyone's acknowledging yet. Yes, you may have pissed off the Librarian Association, but like, there's a broader group that should, you know, we, we really need to revisit.
And I would argue even pre AI, there was stuff that is in the canon of what is taught that probably, Isn't as necessary in today. It's just, lived on. So before I get to the final question, I, do have a set of very quick rapid [00:46:00] fire questions. These are just, sort of your quick, not a lot of thought.
I have four of 'em. The first is, what's one education buzzword that you wish we could retire?
Jennie Magiera: so many, like. Transformation. There's so many and we use them like everyone is like innovative, transformative, transformation. Like what does that even mean? I think that these like highfalutin words, and I'm sure you know, there's probably gonna be a Google blog post to today that'll say transformation, innovative.
'cause we all use them, but I think we have to be more specific with our language. Yeah.
Jeremy Singer: and then , what's your favorite book about education or something that deeply shaped your thinking? And you can name your own book. No, you can't.
Jennie Magiera: I'm, I won't. I, I act, I have one I love Switch by Dan and Chip Heath.
It's one of my favorite books. I cite it all the time. For those of you who haven't read it. Like 10 outta 10, highly recommend. And then as a cheat, 'cause I love to cheat. The second one I love is weekend language, which isn't about, neither of those are about education. The first one is like,
Jeremy Singer: yeah,
Jennie Magiera: about change management and changing things when no one wants [00:47:00] to change. And the other is about public speaking. But I think it's really helpful as a human being to know how to like get your point across meaningfully. And so those are my two favorites right now.
Jeremy Singer: And I'd argue that, that's gonna become even more central, in an AI world.
name one thing that makes you bullish on future, for learners.
Jennie Magiera: Say more. Unpack that a bit.
Jeremy Singer: Like, what makes you excited about, you know for your kids, like, Hey, this world is gonna be better, exciting for them.
Jennie Magiera: I mean. love what my daughter's doing with Gemini. My second grader is endlessly curious and in the morning when she'd ask me 5,000 questions before breakfast, and I would think that I'm a patient educator mother, I would be less patient and less.
Education than I would like and, and now we sit together as she's brushing her teeth and putting on her socks, and she asks Gemini 1000 questions while I'm sitting with her listening, sometimes jumping in and asking questions. It answers in developmentally appropriate ways. Then our walk to school, we get to like [00:48:00] unpack that and have really texture conversations.
So she's exploring concepts that are so much more nuanced than I ever did when I was seven years old, and I love that for her.
Jeremy Singer: That's great. Yeah. Yeah. and that was a softball in retrospect. and then one class you wish all students had to take, like a specific class that maybe not all students take
Jennie Magiera: empathy how to care about other human beings.
Jeremy Singer: Okay, last question. You know, we're all focused on improving educational outcomes. Let's imagine we see each other three years from now and we're looking back of what happened in these three years. What would you be most proud of? Encouraged, you hope to see in those three years, around, what's happened in education and learning?
Jennie Magiera: I really love moments of. Step change innovation. I use the buzzword. I don't like, you know, step change improvements where teachers are really at the helm, where they're the ones who are driving the improvements, who are informing how it's [00:49:00] being used, and it's really clear that they're the agents of change.
And so I think in three years, seeing how educators have really taken the driver's seat of how AI is used in the classroom and how it's being done. Carefully, intentionally to the end of supporting teachers and student outcomes. I think that would be amazing. And just digging into that and seeing how they are the voice both publicly, like creating content, sharing best practices, but also working with organizations like Google to help shape the tools themselves.
Jeremy Singer: Well, thank you for that answer, Jenny. Thank you for being on the podcast. it is heartening to me, I'll just say, to know that, someone with such an important role at Google driving, thoughts about education is being led by someone with your experience and your empathy, and your care.
So we're lucky that you're in that role. And thank you so much.
Jennie Magiera: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Jeremy Singer: Thanks for tuning in today. Join the conversation by following the education equation wherever you listen to [00:50:00] podcasts.