Reinventing Education: Mike Yates on AI and Innovation at Teach for America

Full Transcript

Dr. Cristi Ford:

If you’re an educator wondering how to approach AI, we’ve got the episode for you. Hi, I’m Dr. Cristi Ford, and today I talk with Mike Yates, Senior Designer at the Reinvention Lab at Teach for America. Mike leads AI initiatives for the organization, which includes running hackathons, designing unique workshops, and training TFA staff to use AI in novel ways to better their work. In this episode, Mike got candid about why he hated school as a kid, why traditional K-20 educational models are broken, and why it’s critical for educators to know how to use AI tools. We’ll talk about that and more so we hope you’ll join us.

Welcome to Teach and Learn, a podcast for curious educators, brought to you by D2L. Each week we’ll meet some of the sharpest minds in the K-20 space. Sharpen your pencils, class is about to begin.

Hello listeners, and welcome back to Teach and Learn. I’m Dr. Cristi Ford and I’m thrilled to welcome Mike Yates, Senior Designer at Teach for America, where he leads the organization’s AI and innovation efforts. Mike, I’m so excited to have you on the podcast.

Mike Yates:

Hey, thank you. I’m happy to be here.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

So for listeners who may not know, Mike, I’d love to just kind of share with them a little bit about how we met. We were together in Arizona at a 100-year EdTech project that really looks at bringing together some of the sharpest, most innovative minds to think about higher education, education in general in 50 years. What will that look like? How will that move forward? And while we were there, we were introduced, and you may help me with this, Mike. We went to a really wonderful museum, I think it was called Wonder Spaces, if that’s correct.

Mike Yates:

Yep, yep.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

And so, I remember being in front of this installation with all these little black dots that were at all different angles. And they said, “If you can just imagine walking through this museum and seeing all these black dots on strings. When you stand in front of it though, you get the full image and picture of a face, a woman’s face.” And at that particular moment, you and I walked up to this thing and kind of figured out together that this art installation was more than what meets the eye.

Mike Yates:

Yeah. Yeah. I still have that picture that we were taking of the face. Yeah, I remember that. That place was really cool. And there was a point there.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Yeah. It was really great to meet you. So before we jump in though, I’d love to be able to, for those who may not be as familiar with Teach for America, can you tell us a little bit about what the organization is? And I imagine maybe for those who may have known it from decades ago, maybe how the organization’s vision has shifted and changed before we jump into what you actually do.

Mike Yates:

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I would say today, Teach for America is much different than a lot of people, if you knew Teach for America in the 90s, it’s much different today. So Teach for America is the largest education nonprofit in the US.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Okay.

Mike Yates:

A lot of people think of us as a teacher training organization, but Teach For America would tell you that we’re a leadership organization, meaning that we see teaching as a path to developing a person’s leadership. And we just think it’s one of the most important parts. And it just so happens that the field has this massive need for teachers. So on our path to developing young people into leaders, we use teaching as a method to do that.

But Teach for America, it’s not all we do today. Today I am trying to get this phrase to catch on inside the organization. So if y’all meet anybody, especially if her name is Elisa or Barbara or Jamina, make sure you tell them, “Not your mama’s TFA.” That’s what I’m to you trying to… Now we have a Reinvention Lab. We’re running different products, different programs. We’ve got a high touch tutoring program called Ignite. Teach for America has spun organizations out like LEE. So I would definitely say today’s Teach for America is not the same as it was back in the 90s.

As a matter of fact, one of the big things that if you search Teach for America in Google, you will see a lot of people saying it’s a white supremacist organization. And I think historically, there have been things that you can point to and say, “Yeah, it’s probably true.” But this is also my push to the “Not your Mama’s TFA” thing. And I’ve even pushed as far as to say, “Let’s have a Netflix documentary.” I’ve gotten on Zoom with the documentarian who’s a Teach for America alum. I’ve done it all.

But I think people are shocked to know that the organization is led, the highest levels of decision-making are Black and Brown women, who are amazing. They’re absolutely amazing. So they’re leading the organization, I think, in the right direction. Today we’re an organization that’s focused on, the way we like to say it in the Reinvention Lab is we’ve got two bridges that we’re building. We’re maintaining the one bridge, which is the old system, the original system. And then, we’re building a new bridge, which is the innovation. That looks like AI. That looks like interspace learning. That looks like figuring out why chronic absenteeism continues to be an issue and how we can address it. So I’d say Teach for America, we have evolved far beyond where we were in the 90s.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

I’m glad we started with this because I didn’t know these facts. And so, one may listen and think that Teach for America is just poured old wine in new bottles. But what I’m hearing you say is that the whole organization has just reconceptualized how they think about teaching as a vehicle for leadership development. And the work fit you’re doing, you’re doing so much, Mike, I feel like I could have taken this conversation in a hundred different directions.

Mike Yates:

Yeah.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

But what you’re talking about in terms of the organizational mission, I think is a little tongue in cheek. Because if I understand right, I think you grew up not really interested in school.

Mike Yates:

Oh, yeah.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

And ended up making a shift to becoming a teacher and working in the ed tech space. Talk to me a little bit about how the heck that happened.

Mike Yates:

The way I say it is I grew up with a visceral hatred for school. Sometimes I would get physically sick thinking about going to school. I hated school so much, because I had had enough bad experiences in the system at a young age where I was convinced that school was there to harm me, and teachers were not there to help me. And my mom was a teacher.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Wow.

Mike Yates:

So I would see my mother spend late nights in the classrooms, fall asleep lesson planning, all of that, giving it everything. And I felt like I didn’t have any teachers like that. I was like, “Where are those teachers for me?”

When I graduated from college, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. And I went to college because that’s what you were supposed to do, especially if your mom was an educator, especially if you’re Black in America, you can’t not go to college. I had a Speech and Debate scholarship. I skipped 90% of my classes. I had a blast in college. And I remember graduating thinking, “This was too easy.” I know I deserved the diploma because I was able to walk into class after not being there for weeks and make an A or B on the test.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Wow.

Mike Yates:

And as I thought about that, I was like, “That’s the problem.”

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Yeah.

Mike Yates:

The problem is that there is no connection between the real things that I was learning and doing. When I was 19, I started teaching in a juvenile detention center. I was teaching music and poetry to kids that were in what you call a last stop juvenile center. And in Texas that means, “You’ve done something that’s bad enough to be tried as an adult, but we’re going to let you make it because 16, or you’re 14 until you are of age. When you hit 17, you’re going to prison, prison.”

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Oh, wow.

Mike Yates:

“And you’re never getting out.” Right? So these kids with no hope, they taught me how to teach, because day one they were like, “We’re not going to listen to you lecture us about Shakespeare. We don’t want to hear that. What are we going to do together?”

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Co-construction is key.

Mike Yates:

Yeah. I didn’t even have the language and they were breaking it down every day. So I just remember I’m doing that at 19, I started my own graphic design business. I love Canva to this day, because they were my first design tool. I couldn’t figure out Adobe. So I used Canva until I could. So I’m doing all these things. There was a downtown square in this little town where I went to college called San Marcos. And I went to every little business in San Marcos and I offered them a free overhaul of their brand.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Oh, wow.

Mike Yates:

And one business called Retro Exchange took me up on it. And this woman was in my wedding, bought me a wedding gift, real community. But at one point I think I had designed the logos and brands of 70% of the student organizations that are on campus.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Wow.

Mike Yates:

But I wasn’t getting any formal credit for that.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Right.

Mike Yates:

So I was like, “Man, this whole system, top to bottom, elementary school to college, it was terrible.” I had a few good experiences in high school, had some incredible teachers there, but otherwise I was like, “The system is rotten to its core. I’m definitely not going to be a teacher.”

I ended up just being so curious around school and learning because of that moment in that juvenile detention center, watching a kid who had literally no hope, smile and enjoy the poem that he wrote and share it with the prison guard. To me, that was like, “Ah.” So I started designing education programs at the United Way. My wife and I, our first child was in the NICU for seven months. And so, I basically had quit that job and was living full-time in the hospital. So when it was time to go back to work, I was like, “I have no idea. I don’t even care about anything.” But a friend of mine came and said, “Hey, I work at this school. They need somebody to coach speech and debate and maybe basketball and teach.”And I was like-

Dr. Cristi Ford:

And you thought about that scholarship?

Mike Yates:

Yeah, yeah. I was like, “Man, it’s almost like that was made for me.”

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Yeah, no, not almost, it was made for me.

Mike Yates:

It was, exactly. It was hand and glove fit. It was amazing. I started teaching at this classical school. I thought I hated classical education at that time. I didn’t understand why they did some of the things they did. Today, I’m a huge fan of the classical model with some tweaks, with some spice.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

With a couple tweaks on it.

Mike Yates:

Yeah. I still find it strange that there are classical schools in the country that don’t allow the use of technology. I understand why, but I don’t like it.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Yeah.

Mike Yates:

But that led me down this whole path of exploring education as my career.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Well, and so what’s so interesting in hearing about your journey, one is that your mother was a teacher and you were having such a different experience in your own classrooms versus what you saw your mother doing for her children in her classrooms, and thinking about this K-20 continuum. But then, you turn around and join the largest nonprofit organization called Teach for America, and join the Reinvention Lab in 2018, I think. And so much of what you do is really AI-focused. So can you just tell us a little bit about that?

Mike Yates:

Yeah. Joining TFA is even crazier, because in 2015, they rejected me as a core member.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Really?

Mike Yates:

I ended up teaching in a Title I school where I had a student who couldn’t read, and I told him, “Hey man, I don’t know how to teach you how to read.” So I went home and googled it, and I brought Newsela to him the next day, and I put him on Newsela. I was doing my projects and workshops with the class, and he’s on Newsela. His reading level jumped three grade levels in less than a year. And the end of the year he was like, “Man, thank you for teaching me how to read.” And I was like, “I don’t know if you remember the last six months, but I didn’t do anything.” But it built in me, I had this theory that you could replace direct instruction with the right software. Hearing that to Teach for America in 2015 must have sounded like…

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Crazy Town.

Mike Yates:

Yeah. So I said it in my interview.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Oh, and then they’re like…

Mike Yates:

“Out of here, dude.”

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Stage left to you.

Mike Yates:

Yeah. But then I went on to be on a founding team of a school that did that. It was called Alpha, helped build a school where we did replace direct instruction with adaptive learning software. And when I got to the point in that project where I felt like I had learned enough, I was ready to move on. The school was making some weird decisions I didn’t agree with. Right after Covid, I was building my own ed tech startup and I met some people at TFA through the Reinvention Lab, and they literally said, “Hey, what are you doing next year?” And I said, “Well, I’m a free agent, so if you want to talk about it.”

So I just thought it was the funniest thing. Over the years, I just have had this deep curiosity and commitment to use technology in meaningful ways inside of education to make the experience better. Because I’ve always wanted to be the teacher that I didn’t have. I have had some incredible teachers in high school, I don’t want to gloss over that.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Right.

Mike Yates:

I lead these AI hackathons and I am about to go to Fargo, North Dakota because the superintendent of that district was my assistant speech coach in high school.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

No way.

Mike Yates:

And he just sent me a text that was like, “If you would’ve told me 10 years ago that-”

Dr. Cristi Ford:

“This is what you would be doing.”

Mike Yates:

Exactly.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

“I would not have believed you.”

Mike Yates:

I wouldn’t believe it either.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Let me ask you this. I’d love to, before we jump into your particular work, I don’t really know much about the Reinvention Lab.

Mike Yates:

Right.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Can you share a little bit about the impetus behind it, what the focus and goal is there?

Mike Yates:

Yeah, yeah. So the Reinvention Lab was founded by Michelle Culver. She had been at Teach for America her whole career, so she’d been there. She was a core member. Then she worked there, open region. She’s been there for 20 years.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Oh, wow.

Mike Yates:

And she’s recently moved on to start her own AI startup called Project Rhythm.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Okay.

Mike Yates:

But she saw a need for the organization to do differently. And I emphasize the do, because there’s a lot of talking in education about doing things differently.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Agreed.

Mike Yates:

And for better or for worse, she was like, “I’m going to go get weird and exciting people, put them together and make a team, and we’ll figure out what the function of the team will be.” So today we function like the R&D Lab, just the R&D Studio.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Okay.

Mike Yates:

I tell people we try to figure out where learning is going in the next 50 to 100 years, and we literally build new products and programs to push Teach for America in that direction.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

That’s great.

Mike Yates:

Yeah.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Really great.

Mike Yates:

So our AI work, it’s not exciting because we think that AI is the immediate solution.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Right.

Mike Yates:

It’s exciting because 20 years from now, you won’t be able to exist in the world without AI, maybe five years from now.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Well, let’s jump in there, because one of the things I think is so paramount about the work that you’re doing, long before LLMs became trendy, you were doing this AI work.

Mike Yates:

Yeah.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

So can you talk to me a little bit about how your passion, how did you lean in? What led you down this path to do all this work before it even hit the tipping point of the LLMs coming out?

Mike Yates:

Yeah. I think it’s all curiosity. I grew up in Houston, Texas. And Houston, Texas is an old oil and gas town.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Yes, it is.

Mike Yates:

Even today… When I was young, I was infatuated. I loved sci-fi, so I naturally loved technology. And the first time I went to San Francisco, you could have told me I was in space. I was like, “What? They’ve got rooms that change colors.” I was freaking out because in Houston you just don’t have that.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Well, because everything in Houston is flat. There aren’t any trees.

Mike Yates:

Right.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

I’m a fellow Houstonian, so I understand.

Mike Yates:

Yeah.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

I remember going to San Francisco and not understanding they had cut stairs into the pavement.

Mike Yates:

Yeah.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

I was like, “Who does this?”

Mike Yates:

Right. Yeah. I’m glad that you shared that because sometimes I feel crazy. This is a real nice moment on this podcast.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

It is.

Mike Yates:

Houston is big and flat.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Yes.

Mike Yates:

And we lived in Fifth Ward and then I moved to the Energy Corridor.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Yes.

Mike Yates:

So everything was about oil and gas.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Yes.

Mike Yates:

So for me, technology, it was a way out. It was a way out of the city. I watched every tech review that I could. I knew everything. A teacher that I really want to find her and apologize to her. I gave her so much trouble in the ninth grade. But it was 2007, and the iPhone just came out. And she gave that math teacher line that they always give. “You’ve got to show your work because you won’t have a calculator with you when you grow up.” And I was like, “Ms. Taylor, the iPhone just came out. We will always have a calculator.” And she hated me, and rightfully so. After I was a teacher, I was like, every time a student did something similar to me, I would tell them, “You going make me apologize to Ms. Taylor.”

Dr. Cristi Ford:

That’s right.

Mike Yates:

“Ms. Taylor, I’m sorry.” But I just fell in love with technology so much. So that part never left me as an adult. When I went into the classroom, I was convinced at all moments that there was a piece of technology that could help me be better than… When I started coaching, I don’t say this to brag, I didn’t make it to any level of significance. But I didn’t lose very many games as a youth coach. But it was not because I was great. It was because of relationships and technology. I just figured out the right tools. I had this early AR app where I would set up an iPad for each player and it would track their shots.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Oh, wow.

Mike Yates:

And it would give them early AI advice. There was no LLMs, right? So I’m using this and I’m like, “Hey.” I go to the school, I’m like, “I need six iPads.” They’re like, “Why?” I was like, “Because we’ve got six goals and we’re going to put them…” So I knew it. I’m 23 years old and I’m like, “I’ve got to coach this team. They all have to get better.” I didn’t know what I was doing. I’m just throwing things at the wall.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Yeah.

Mike Yates:

But when the students learn-

Dr. Cristi Ford:

That’s the beautiful thing about innovation, right?

Mike Yates:

Yep.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Is it’s the iteration, it’s the failing forward. It’s the opportunities to really be able to harness that moment.

Mike Yates:

A hundred percent.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

And really be able to have the best impact that you absolutely can.

Mike Yates:

Yeah.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

And it sounds like your work, you’re doing that. I want to shift over because one of the things I love that you’ve mentioned is that you were just curious. One of the things that I love about the Teach and Learn podcast is our tagline is we are really focusing in and leaning in to be available and open to curious educators everywhere. And so, I think you shared before this podcast with my producer that there’s a conversation we’re trying to have around AI dexterity, and in your view is more important than AI literacy.

Mike Yates:

Yeah.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

And so, for those listening, I think what I hear you saying, and I want you to unpack this for us a bit, is that it’s not enough for educators to learn about AI and how it works; that they have to learn to build and utilize AI to transform learning. So if you can unpack that and maybe share some tangible examples for our K-12 audience who listens, but also for our higher education faculty who are listening as well.

Mike Yates:

Yeah. The line is somewhat clickbaity, right? I want people to ask me about it. So I love that. I love that question. Yeah. I don’t think it’s enough just to know… We’re living at a time right now where, I’m not trying to throw shade at people, but a lot of other organizations are just throwing resources at teachers. And what I’m seeing is teachers are like, “Oh, thanks.” I really think in the moment, they’re like, “Oh, this is great” because nobody’s given them anything.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Right.

Mike Yates:

But then they get to the classroom and they’re like, “Well, now what do I do? You gave me a thousand prompts to put into ChatGPT, but that’s not actually helping me.” But it’s because what they’re basically doing is handing them a manual and they’re not engaging them in practice.

I could explain to you how a spontaneous combustion engine works. When your car says V6, we can talk about how there are six cylinders and a spark plug in each one. But you don’t need to know that. What you need to know is how to press the button or crank the key and drive the car. Right?

And there’s so much about AI that I believe people do not need to know. You do not need to know that Claude Shannon wrote this paper called The Mathematics of Communication in 1936, and that became ChatGPT. You don’t need to know that. But what you do need to know is that there’s a specific use case and a problem that you could solve. So what it does for us functionally in the lab is if you come to one of my workshops, focusing on dexterity over literacy means we’re going to spend more time pinpointing the specific problem that you want to solve.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

That’s good.

Mike Yates:

Because why would I spend 30 minutes explaining how ChatGPT was trained when that really don’t have anything to do with you?

Dr. Cristi Ford:

It has nothing to do with what you’re doing in the classroom.

Mike Yates:

Right. Right. A hundred percent.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

In your workshops, are you working with K-12 teachers, higher ed teachers? How does that all happen?

Mike Yates:

Basically, anybody. The way I’m saying it as of late is anyone over 18 at the moment.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Okay.

Mike Yates:

We have worked with students. I think we should be very careful about when and how students get access to AI. And I don’t have the answer yet, so we don’t do a whole lot. But yeah, we’ve worked with college students. We’ve worked with K-12 teachers, higher ed, worked with some Fortune 500s. We worked with a university football team, the coach.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Okay.

Mike Yates:

We worked with University of Texas, and their coach made the whole team come.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Wow.

Mike Yates:

I thought we were going to have 20 guys. He sent me a text like, “No, I told the whole team they have to be there.” So I was like, “Oh, cool.” So I didn’t go to UT, but I’m rooting for the Longhorns a little bit.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

You’ve got to put your horns on.

Mike Yates:

Yeah, yeah. My wife went there. But yeah, we’ve done them with all audiences. But our sweet spot I really do believe is with educators, K-12 and higher ed, because my focus is, again, seeing that future world, LinkedIn and Microsoft, they dropped this study with 30,000 business leaders where 66% of them said they would really hesitate to hire somebody if they don’t know how to use AI for the role. 71% said they’d be more likely to hire a less experienced person with AI skills. So I’m like, “Man, if I can equip teachers with this knowledge, and they can both take a load off of their plate.” Imagine a world where you can stay in the classroom for an extra three or five years because you have these AI tools working on your behalf.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Right.

Mike Yates:

So the efficiency stuff, again, it goes back to that two bridge analogy. We’re going to give you the efficiency stuff. Yeah, I’ll run a workshop and teach you how to build a lesson plan generator, even though I don’t think you should do that. What I really want you to do is build an AI conversation tool that turns your history class into a conversation with historical figures. Right?

Dr. Cristi Ford:

That’s good.

Mike Yates:

But I’m going to teach you how to build the lesson plan generator first so that by the time you’re like comfortable, AI’s demystified for you, you’re not afraid of it, we can push you to do the harder stuff.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Well, and what I hear you talking about, which is why I love the continuum that you talked about in terms of moving away from just the focus on literacy, dexterity is you’re creating fluency around this work, right?

Mike Yates:

Yeah.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

And so, you start with the problem at hand. I find that I’ve been doing workshops around AI myself. I did one recently with the College of Business around assessments, and even getting them to understand that ChatGPT works well in this instance, Claude may be a good option here. Jimena, getting them to think beyond just ChatGPT because we talk a lot and we use that nomenclature, and then people forget. There’s a whole ecosystem of AI tools and chatbots that are out here, that if you’re just drilling down in one area, you’re missing the opportunity to have that dexterity as you talk about.

Mike Yates:

Yeah. That’s exactly it. And I think to your point, fluency, it leads to the most useful application of the tools.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Of course.

Mike Yates:

The goal is not AI for AI’s sake.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Right.

Mike Yates:

The goal is innovative pedagogy, and AI is the engine that supercharges that pedagogy. So a great example, there’s a tool called Breakout Learning.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Okay.

Mike Yates:

I just demoed this tool. I’ve been talking to them for months. They mainly work with higher ed, but we’re trying to get them into K-12. It’s a discussion-based learning tool. So they have this platform where they make these beautiful videos. You have this group discussion. It doesn’t feel… It’s like a video call. But then after the discussion is over, what’s beautiful about it is it gives you all this data that AI puts together for you. To me, I love that order, that sequence of you don’t know that there’s AI happening.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Right.

Mike Yates:

It’s literally invisible to the user until the end where you say, and you can see like, “Oh, these two people were dominating the discussion” or “These two people were not stepping up.” It will make shockingly human suggestions for them. So yeah, I think it should supercharge the pedagogy.

I also think one thing that educators should consider is that all of our use cases right now, most of them are well within the reach of what AI can do. Not every problem can be solved by AI. Some problems are human problems.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Yes.

Mike Yates:

And so, I think the idea of fluency is going to help an educator understand, “What is a human problem to solve? What is a problem where I can activate AI?” And do the same for students.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

So as I’m listening to you, oh gosh, I have so many things I could ask you, but I wonder in terms of just the workshops that you offer. When you’re working, you talk about your sweet spot being K-12 teachers and higher ed teachers. For those who are over-innundated with the amount of opportunities. You know, right? Every time you open LinkedIn, there’s something new about AI. And I was just looking at ChatGPT Strawberry, the o1 preview, right?

Mike Yates:

Right.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

And all of that work.

Mike Yates:

That just dropped.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

How do you suggest educators upskill themselves? And where do they get started?

Mike Yates:

Yeah, that’s a great question. What we’re doing in the Reinvention Lab is we’re trying to build the most exciting learning journey towards AI. It’s not that we want to be the only servicer for professional training on this. We know we won’t be. But we know we have a lane to run in, and our lane is we want to help people think about the future of learning and use AI as a tool to do it. So we’ll do an AI poetry site. We’ll do AI for footwear design. We’ll do those things.

I think how should they decide? I would say real simple, preference in-person over virtual right now. There’s nothing wrong with virtual workshops, nothing wrong with webinars. If that’s all you can get to, then get to that. But we made the choice to do in-person engagements with people, because this is this crazy moment in the history of the world where the five-year-old, the 15-year-old, the 25-year-old, the 55-year-old, we’re all on the same playing field.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Oh, we’re in the same booth.

Mike Yates:

Yeah. Nobody knows what they’re doing. So it’s helpful to be in the other room with other people, whether a person is moderately more knowledgeable, whether they’re super technical. We have seen literal magic happen by people being in the same space.

The other thing I would say, and I really just think it’s two things. Try to be in person. And if a person tells you right now, if they tell you that they’re an expert in AI, you probably shouldn’t go to that workshop. If they call themselves an expert, a pioneer, a guru, avoid them. And I really mean that, because in a good way to know who some of them, really, scroll back through their LinkedIn profile. Scroll back two years, a year, and see if they weren’t a Web3 expert or a Metaverse expert. People made that pivot so quick. Metaverse has nothing to do with generative AI, yet there are Metaverse startups that are getting funded as AI companies now. So I would really, especially for educators, just because a person says they’re an expert does not mean they’re an expert. Right now, the exceptionally curious and the people who are committed to learn are the people who you should go learn from and with.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

That’s good. That’s good. So all right, a couple of things I just want to make sure I echo back. One, listeners, if you can get into a workshop, a face-to-face workshop or a summit, something where you’re in the room and you are creating communities of practice. Because what we know about learning is it’s social. So if you’re in these spaces, in face-to-face, in person, you have the opportunities.

And two, do a little bit of verification check.

Mike Yates:

That’s right.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

How you authenticate who says they’re the expert in the room when we’re all learning and growing and evolving. I feel like every day that I open my inbox or every week, I’m trying to upskill myself, to stay ahead of what’s going on. So I think that that’s a really critical point.

I think what I will say to you, Mike, is I look at you, you’re everywhere and you’re doing all kinds of things. I’d love to maybe hear one or two projects that you’re working on that you’re really excited about that you’d be willing to share with our listeners that you’re currently working on, or something that you have already started that would really be good to get a little bit more exposure and light around.

Mike Yates:

Again, I’ve sort of made my career as being the sort of mad scientist. So some things I’m working on are… I’m working on a bunch of different applications of AI.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Okay.

Mike Yates:

One of them that’s very interesting is, one of them is in the spirits industry.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Okay.

Mike Yates:

There is a platform called Tequila Matchmaker that has a ranking system for tequila tasting. So when you go to the liquor store and you see, “This bottle won double gold.” Most people don’t even know what that means. They’re just like, “Yeah, I’ll grab it.” So we’re trying to make that transparent and trying to find these fun ways to represent the data, and just trying to do interesting things with data to say like, “Oh, people in this city,” so let’s say you’re in Oklahoma, and they’re like, “Well, 89% of people in Oklahoma bought this tequila, and they seem to really like it.” Just simple data.

At the Reinvention Lab, what we’re trying to work on is actually communities of practice around AI, so here’s the professional thing and the real pitch. If you see us at a conference, you should come to our session. And I say that both humbly and with some confidence at the same time. Because we have spent a lot of time, we spent two years making sure that the session that we run at any conference is going to pop. We’ll be a big presence at the airshow.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Okay.

Mike Yates:

The ASU GSV Air Show this year.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

The ASU GSV Air Show.

Mike Yates:

Yeah.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Okay.

Mike Yates:

Yeah. That’s free to educators. So if you can get to San Diego, come through, south by Southwest. But what we’re working on is the journey after a person comes to an in-person training. The question nobody’s figured out in the field right now is how many reps does it take for a person who’s never used AI to master the tool or to master the process? We can hand out frameworks and we do hackathons, but how many touch points? How many other people do you need to test with and work with? So our workshops are focused on building AI tools. So it’s like you come in there, and we’ll start with doing yoga or this dance thing, this weird dance opener that I have.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Movement is important.

Mike Yates:

That’s right. Yeah.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Yeah.

Mike Yates:

And we also linked them to teaching people how to prompt. But we’ll start with the movement and you’ll walk out of there with a functioning AI tool that you’ve built that solves a problem for you.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

That’s fantastic.

Mike Yates:

The question is, do you use it? Right?

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Right.

Mike Yates:

So we’re going to launch a Discord community. I think it’s going to be on Discord. It’s hard to get educators to be active on Discord.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Yeah.

Mike Yates:

We’re going to try to find some platform virtually so that anybody who’s ever been to one of our experiences will have access to it. And we’ll bring people in there. We’ll bring some of the real AI experts in there who typically, just rule of thumb, most real AI experts are not actually leading workshops because they’re busy building.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Right, the next iteration.

Mike Yates:

Yeah. But a great example is this guy I know named Bodo Hoenen. He built a tool called Knowledge LX. Any learning target, it will chart a pathway between, let’s say you say, “I want to be a rocket scientist.” Well, the AI says, “Okay, Crisit. Well, here’s the learning path between you and rocket scientists. And here are all the human beings that you need to meet.”

Dr. Cristi Ford:

That’s good.

Mike Yates:

“Based on where you live, where you went to school, what your interests are, that can help you become a rocket scientist.”

Dr. Cristi Ford:

That’s good.

Mike Yates:

Yeah. So he used the tool on himself to build an exoskeleton to rehabilitate his daughter who had this rare illness. So when I say expert in AI, I mean that.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

That level.

Mike Yates:

Yeah.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

But there was an urgency, right?

Mike Yates:

Yep.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

I think that’s the other thing you have to realize. There was an urgency and a need to be able to shorten that timeframe.

Mike Yates:

That’s right.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

And the passion to be able to do that work, for sure.

Mike Yates:

Yeah. Yeah. So I only bring him because we’ll invite people like him to the community and they’ll share and give feedback and do little mini sessions and stuff like that. So be looking out for that community.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

That’s fantastic. So I will end this episode. It’s always great to chat with you.

Mike Yates:

Yeah.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

You and I will stay in connection-

Mike Yates:

Absolutely.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

… and continue to have conversations about this work. But for those who are listening today, is there a call to action or a lesson learned or advice that you provide the listeners? What would it be?

Mike Yates:

Yeah. I think the biggest call to action is just to do stuff.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Do stuff.

Mike Yates:

Yeah, do stuff. A lot of times during these moments, in ’95, a lot of people waited on people to train them on how to use the internet. But there’s so much out there. Get to an in-person conference or something like that. But start playing with AI tools. If you need, we’re going to release just this long list that I have of AI tools that I think are cool.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Okay.

Mike Yates:

And they don’t do scholarly things all the time. Sometimes they can put James Brown’s head on your body and you can make it dance. It’s weird. But I would say that. I would say be exceptionally curious, tinker around. Focus on the doing, not just the reading and the consumption of. So if you’re watching a video, ask yourself, “Oh, what’s the one action I can do in five minutes to practice this thing or to master this thing?” And I think as long as people are committed to literally playing and tinkering their way forward, you’ll see this really interesting thing happen, and their dexterity and fluency will grow.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

This is fantastic. So colleagues that are listening, really great conversation with Mike Yates today. Before we jump though, Mike, I want to know what’s the best way for listeners to reach out to you or follow the great work you’re doing?

Mike Yates:

I’m going to say you can reach out to me on LinkedIn, but I’m not on there as much anymore. I spend a lot of time on TikTok and my other hobby. So you can actually email me, you can email me, [email protected]. Just hit me up via email.

Dr. Cristi Ford:

Okay. Fantastic. Well, thanks again for being here, really great to have this conversation. You heard it from mike, don’t look for him on LinkedIn, but you can reach out to him at his email address that he dropped to you all.

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