In this insightful interview, Dr. Michael Martin, a high school principal and AI enthusiast, shares his journey with AI, its impact on education, and practical strategies for integrating AI responsibly in schools. Discover how AI can be a powerful tool for teachers and students alike, and learn about the innovative approaches at Buckeye Central High School. Principal Martin is also the 2024 Principal of the Year from Ohio and published author on the subject. Connect with the guest: martin.mike74@gmail.com Books by Michael Martin: Blending Instruction with Technology AI Powered Leadership: 50 Prompts to Transform Your School Today ----------------------------------------------------- Contact Cool Coffee host, Principal Rick Sola: rfsola@olatheschools.org or KPACoolCoffee@gmail.com The mission of the Kansas Principals Association, an organization committed to educational excellence and the lifelong success of all students, is to develop and support all principals through optimized learning, collaborative leadership, networking, and service. Read more about the KPA HERE. Provide Cool Coffee feedback! Click HERE to share thoughts and suggestions--including guests to have on the show! Click for ALL Cool Coffee episodes! Connect with Cool Coffee on... Follow us on X: @KSPrincipals; @KPACoolCoffee Facebook: KSPrincipals Contact host Principal Rick Sola: rfsola@olatheschools.org or KPACoolCoffee@gmail.com SHOW TRANSCRIPT Rick Sola (00:02.824) Hello and welcome to Cool Coffee with Kansas Principals. My guest today is Dr. Michael Martin, a sitting high school principal at Buckeye Central High School in Ohio, also the 2024 OASSA principal of the year. He's an author and what he calls an operational realist. While tech futurists talk about what AI might do in 10 years, Dr. Martin helps overwhelmed leaders figure out how to use it safely by next Tuesday. As the creator of the ART leadership model, he shows organizations how to escape administrative drudgery and win back time for intentional human connection. He is the author of Blending Instruction with Technology, and he's here to help us turn AI anxiety into a competitive advantage. Michael, welcome to Cool Coffee. Mike (00:53.035) Hey, welcome Rick. Thanks for the invite. I appreciate it. Rick Sola (00:56.702) Yeah, I am super excited to have you on. And as we connected about this podcast and this topic, AI, I literally this morning was in a district meeting where AI was a topic. And there are so many different, I guess, thoughts about AI. And you, I think, it very well, kind of talking about the good, the bad, the ugly, or maybe the helpful as well. So I'm really excited to get into AI here with you. So I would love to just start with AI, you, where did this connection, I mean, this is a new technology, when did you get connected with AI? Mike (01:44.076) Yeah, that's a fair question. I've I've always been really interested in technology, the integration of technology, how to utilize it in schools, how to use it in classrooms to better what we do. When blended learning was a big deal back 10, 15 years ago, I did a lot of research on that. That's actually where I wrote my first book, Blended Instruction with Technology. And it's really when I started, know, to kind of do some speaking and touring and speaking and just kind of laying out how to utilize technology in the classroom. And ever since then, I've always been kind of trying to my best to, you know, to perfect, I shouldn't say perfect, but to use the science of teaching and the art of teaching and integrating that with the technology that we have at our disposal. And so obviously AI is a big deal now, but. I was on the AI bandwagon pre-COVID. I was reading about AI, I was thinking about AI. I'm like, this is coming down the road, right? I was reading about it then. I didn't know what I know now, obviously. But I was thinking about it, I was looking in the future regarding that. And when we came out of COVID, I took an MIT class and I built my own AI just to get a fundamental understanding of how it all works. So I've always had this appreciation for technology. I've always had this... Rick Sola (02:45.478) Okay. Mike (03:11.912) I don't know this need to be on the edge on the cutting edge of what we're doing. I just, it's just a lot of fun for me. So I've always been, you know, trying to look to the future to see how things are being used. And of course, you know, we're smack dab in the middle of AI right now. And I'm hoping that the Buckeye Center, what we're doing here is just a little bit, you know, ahead of the curve compared to other schools, just because of, you know, my interest in the and the topic of technology. And I'm gonna add this real quick, Rick. I don't think it's just me that has this interest in technology and how it's being utilized, not only in schools but in the workforce. I mean, we can go back to the 1930s, right? And I can show you articles, I can pull up speeches by presidents that advocate for the use of technology and how it's gonna change the American life, right? How it's gonna change our work week. mean, the next... There were presidents who promised that with the advent of technology by the 1960s, we will cut our work week in half. Well, that hasn't happened. Actually, I think it's doubled. I think it's doubled, right? But so I think there's always been this fascination. There's always this urge, this want to utilize technology to help us live better lives, to help us do what we do better, right? And so it's just been a lot of fun for me. Rick Sola (04:15.252) No, that's not. Rick Sola (04:32.915) Yeah. Well, it's interesting. I'm familiar with AI. I use it every now and again. I am very much surface level as far as I use it to research vehicles or things like that. know, very surface level. But you mentioned pre-COVID AI and that you were involved in. this is my ignorance. didn't even... really, as I think of AI, I think of a technology, at least that's been widely available to the public over the last two to three years really coming onto the scene. What did AI look like pre-COVID and then this many years, six, seven years later, that's almost, I mean, that's almost a lifetime for technology ramp up. So. Mike (05:19.15) It is a lifetime, yeah. The terminology back then was machine learning. Remember the machine learning, which is in essence the birth of AI. Rick Sola (05:23.994) Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Rick Sola (05:30.546) Yeah, okay. Well, you know, and I remember it all started with, you know, predictive, your Netflix queue and what, you know, some of that sort of thing or Amazon. So, Mike (05:36.802) Yes, it was, yes. Amazon also knows what you want to purchase, right? Netflix knows what you want to watch. Predictive analysis. Rick Sola (05:44.648) Well, you said you took a course at MIT about how it all works. And for those who might be listening who are maybe very primitive with their knowledge of AI, or they've maybe purposefully stayed away from it, how would you, in a nutshell, just describe, OK, how does it all work for those who are new to the game? Mike (06:05.664) It is an imperfect but getting a lot more accurate predictive machine, as you mentioned. That's what it is. It runs numbers and it predicts based on the algorithms. What's really fascinating is everything is a number. For example, when I was building the first AI that I built through this course with MIT, I was using Google, of course, and Google's tools. Well, one of the ones that we built was, I should say, I built was we, I took pictures, I don't know, using the software through Google, a thousand pictures of a basketball. I took a thousand or so pictures of a football and took a thousand or so pictures of a soccer ball, right? And then I would categorize those pictures by what ball they were, what sport they were. And what would happen then is the machine would take every little single pixel, right? Every single pixel of that picture is a number, right? And it formed patterns out of all those numbers of all those pictures. And it knew that this pattern of numbers represented a basketball. This pattern of numbers represented a soccer ball. This pattern of numbers, right? represented a football. I knew that, right? Because it was just a pattern of numbers. And then based on the new pattern numbers I would give it, it would try to predict what that was. So for example, like I, again, I threw a thousand pictures of a basketball on there. After I set it all up, I would take a picture of a basketball. I had an AI take a picture of the basketball and it would tell me what it was. It would accurately say this is the basketball, this is a football, this is a soccer ball. And I know that's very simplistic, but that really is the basis of what AI is, right? It's just using numbers and patterns, right? To recognize, it's just using numbers to recognize patterns, right? It's using numbers to recognize patterns and it's using patterns to predict other patterns. Rick Sola (08:25.524) Okay, so it's predictive because it recognizes a pattern of numbers and you throw out another picture of a basketball, it figures out, this is a close match to what we've, you what's been programmed. So that's kind of what's been programmed. Of course, we can go down a total rabbit hole because I'm totally intrigued at the learning machine and how it starts to, I don't know if making decisions is the right word, but you know, Mike (08:36.127) Yeah. Yeah. Rick Sola (08:51.922) The good, the bad, the ugly, I would maybe even add the scary. There's some things in there that start to get brought up. OK, no, so that's a really good kind of baseline for how it works. And you've done a lot of talk talks on how it works and how it looks in your school. And we haven't talked really about this before, but it sounds like you have you have embraced it. And so at your school, it's it's very intention
