Technology Essentials in Education Episode 17:
Rethinking Professional Development in the Age of AI

Hello there, my name is Monica Burns and welcome to Technology Essentials in Education.

Today I'm chatting with Allison Rodman all about rethinking professional development in the age of AI.

Allison is an educator, the founder of The Learning Loop, an ASCD author, and she brings a fantastic perspective as a former classroom teacher, a school board member, and director of professional learning.

She has so much to tap into from her prior roles and her current roles that inform today's conversation.

She shares how we can leverage AI to move beyond the traditional sit and get sessions and create more personalized, high impact learning that really respects teachers' time and fuels their growth.

Let's get into the conversation.

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Welcome to the podcast.

I am so excited to chat with you today about rethinking professional development in the age of AI, a big topic for folks inside of education.

But before we get into all of that, can you share with listeners a bit about your role in education? What is your day-to-day look like?

Absolutely, Monica.

So my work in education really focuses on the adult learning side of things. We spend a lot of time thinking about how we're designing curriculum and facilitating lessons for students, but one of the most critical pieces is how educators across our system learn and continue to refine their practice.

I partner with system leaders, school leaders, and teacher leaders to think about the professional learning experiences we're designing and facilitating for adults across our educational system, which has a huge impact on curriculum, formative assessment, and all those pieces influenced by how adult learners take in new information and apply it to their practice.

You've worked in a variety of roles in education that have made an impact on the decisions you make when leading professional development and learning opportunities for adult learners.

You've worked as a classroom teacher, assistant principal, director of professional development. How did those roles shape how you think about professional learning today?

One thing that emerges as I've stepped into each of those roles, including being a board member, is thinking about how we personalize the experience.

Too often, despite what we know about adult learning and education, and as much as we ask teachers and leaders to differentiate and personalize for students, we're still not quite there in professional learning.

We have the one size fits all sit and get PD, whether it's the beginning of the year or that one day in the auditorium.

While we've started leveraging grade level team meetings and department or curriculum team meetings in a more personalized way, it hasn't quite crept over into school-wide or district-wide professional learning systems in many districts I partner with.

It's interesting because literally last Friday I sent out a survey to a group I'm working with, the organizers, to send to people joining us for the day because they come from many different places and we only have one day together.

I wanted to go into that day with a sense of their experiences and what they thought the description meant as connected to their practice.

They chose to spend that Monday with me later this year.

When you visit schools and districts across the country and internationally, what patterns do you notice in how professional development is currently designed?

I love that you brought up the survey idea, Monica. We're good at evaluating professional learning at the end of sessions, but there's power in administering a survey ahead of time to prime learners, set expectations, and get a sense of what they expect so facilitators can craft examples and strategies targeted to the people in the room.

In conferences or bigger groups, it's more difficult to do pre-assessment, but when schools and districts have multi-session ongoing professional learning experiences, it's incredibly valuable to maximize the precious minutes with teachers in collaborative spaces because we never have enough time.

Making the most of the time we have together and being proactive rather than reactive is massive.

In your work, where do you see AI having the most practical value in professional development?

It's playing a role in two critical spaces for me. One is in designing and prepping for facilitation, using pre-assessment or survey data in chatbots with additional context to determine the best approach, examples, and strategies for a particular group.

The other place is in the sessions themselves. Educators need support to be precise and thoughtful about their prompts because AI is often seen as Google on steroids without understanding the power of intentional prompting.

Much of my work lately is helping educators understand and actualize how to use chatbots and AI tools to support content and make their work easier.

I've been helping professional learning facilitators think about how to craft precise prompts and give educators frames to leverage and accelerate their work to the next level, which is not happening in many spaces right now.

There's a parallel to professional development conversations around assessment where precision and intentionality in questioning connected to success criteria are critical to gather the right information.

For veteran educators with a big knowledge base, understanding precision and intentionality translates well to using AI chatbots effectively.

From a personalization standpoint, we focus a lot on students as learners, but what does personalization look like for adult learners? How can AI support personalization in professional learning without isolating educators in their own chatbot world?

AI is often used for surface level tasks like writing permission slips, emails, or newsletters, which are powerful tools, but on the professional learning side, the examples bots pull from are not as strong yet.

We need to think thoughtfully about the content we put into AI projects and not just do open-ended searches.

For example, designing a professional learning community session and asking AI for facilitation ideas might yield some resources and simple activities, but those aren't the most powerful ways to facilitate adult learning.

We need to add protocols and thinking routines to chatbots so they can help us design sessions that move beyond surface level to powerful professional learning that helps teachers collaborate and move ideas from conversation to practice.

Quick note from the presenter, Jotform lets you build forms in minutes, including student surveys, homework submissions, and quizzes, with free templates designed for education.

Learn more about Jotform and get a 30% discount for educational institutions at jotform.com/enterprise/education.

That's a great example of moving from beginner to intermediate interaction with AI tools without needing advanced coding or prompting skills.

You can give instructions about your protocols and framing to projects in tools like Gemini, Claude, or ChatGPT to make them more effective rather than opening a chatbot without context.

This leads to an important point about guardrails districts should consider when integrating AI into professional learning systems.

We shouldn't just bring teachers into a room, put them in front of laptops, and have them plan independently because that's not good learning practice for students or adults.

There is great value in social construction, troubleshooting, sharing resources, and gaining different perspectives.

Solely using chatbots as thought partners risks losing authentic collaboration and relationship building.

I was facilitating a multi-session workshop and a teacher shared a great strategy that other teachers implemented and shared about organically, which wouldn't have happened without space for authentic collaboration.

We shouldn't do everything asynchronously or virtually; we must make space for conversation and relationship building, which is crucial to learning regardless of educators' positions.

We know these pieces work and should lean into them.

Being able to share resources prevents duplicating work.

Another guardrail is ensuring educators understand AI's limitations; it's helpful for curation, organization, and processing but depends on quality input and commitment to review outputs.

We shouldn't take AI-generated products at face value but bring them back to teams for conversations about their appropriateness for adult and student learning.

Having an expert eye and human in the loop is critical in AI spaces.

Instructional coaches and school leaders are navigating AI's impact on their roles, which changes how they model and introduce technology integration.

AI changes instructional coaches' and school leaders' roles in supporting teacher growth by helping generate or refine observation notes and coaching guidance.

While helpful, if not used appropriately, AI can feel inauthentic and stall growth rather than accelerate it.

Authenticity is key; AI tools should understand your tone, voice, and relationships to augment your work, not replace your voice.

Education isn't like producing a business product; we're developing humans at all levels, which involves both science and art of learning.

AI can help with the science, like matching lesson transcripts to frameworks, but lacks the nuance of the art, so careful monitoring is needed to avoid damaging progress for efficiency's sake.

It's a good reminder that as AI shifts professional learning, the human component must remain central because this work is inherently human.

As we wrap up, you've written books on professional learning; is there a concept from your work especially relevant for schools navigating AI today?

My first book, Personalized Professional Learning, is a guide for district and system leaders to create more personalized structures.

My second book, Still Learning, focuses on strengthening professional and organizational capacity by taking it back to adult learners and teams and understanding relationships and interconnectedness in deliberately developmental organizations.

Both are critical foundations for leaders to think about their systems and relationships within them.

Currently, I'm focused on designing and facilitating professional learning that blends old school methods with newer AI tools to dig in more personally.

I'm excited to present on this at ISTE and ASCD conferences this summer and release new resources to support leaders planning long-term professional learning.

As you design spring, summer, and fall experiences, make sure to work smarter, not harder, while preserving the human element essential to learning.

That's amazing and timely for educators planning now and ahead.

Where can people connect with you and learn more about your work?

Feel free to visit my website www.thelearningloop.com. I've been active on LinkedIn engaging with folks inside and outside education as we think about the next level of learning across sectors.

I will link resources for listeners to follow along. Thank you so much for your time and insight today.

Thank you, Monica. I appreciate the invitation and look forward to continuing the conversation.

It was so much fun chatting with Allison today.

Let's make EdTech easy with a few key points from the episode: PD is still one size fits all and needs more personalization for adults.

Pre-session surveys help facilitators tailor PD to participant needs.

AI can support professional development design by analyzing data and suggesting targeted trends.

Educators need guidance on crafting more intentional, precise AI prompts to support instructional planning.

Show notes, links, and ways to connect with Allison and Jotform are below this episode.

Make sure to follow along so you don't miss the next one in this technology and education series.

A big thank you to Jotform, the presenter of today's episode.

To learn more about Jotform and how educational institutions can get a 30% discount on Jotform Enterprise, head to jotform.com/enterprise/education.