With: Josh Weiss Tags: [THOUGHT-PARTNER], [REFRAME], [ALIGN]

Context going in

• Reuben sent two docs ahead (R/R/R prep + Role Evolution JD draft) plus a Slack message admitting he felt “a little lost” with the doc, possibly over-scoped.
• Walked in expecting a title/comp adjacent conversation. Conversation pivoted to GPS narrative framing.

Key Points

• The pivot. Title and comp did not come up. Josh met Reuben in the lost place and reframed the work as GPS narrative scaffolding for the next year, with R/R/R as guiding grammar.
• Language alignment: Josh prefers Robustness (full word), not “Robust.” Adjust language going forward.
• Refining Resonance toward “agency” — Josh pushed Reuben to think about persistence at multiple levels:
  • persistence of knowledge and skill
  • persistence of agency in a fast-moving field
  • persistence of feeling connected with Stanford / research Working language: Resonance = transformational impact on identity, agency, and persistent skill. “More agency than knowledge. Persisting.”
• Robustness vs. Resonance distinction. Robustness feels more technical (not just technology, also conceptual resilience). Resonance feels more personal / idea-driven. “What you do, who you talk to, how you change.”
• Two documents to produce:
  1. Retrospective GPS narrative — paragraph-based, first-person, reflective journaling voice. Recount what was attempted, the thinking behind it, outcomes, what emerged. Tie examples explicitly to Reach / Robustness / Resonance.
  2. Forward-looking plan for the next 12 months. Will eventually be shared with Joanna and others.
• Quarterly cadence. Revisit the framework at least quarterly. “What is my home for the next quarter.” Time containers: every quarter, pick 3-4 slices.
• Four goal categories for the forward plan: Technical, Communication, Wellness, Time/Project Management. Ideally meshed, not siloed.
• Voice direction. First-person paragraphs, lots of “I.” Reflective journaling tone, not analytical bullets. “I thought this, therefore I did this.” STAR-style prompts to scaffold (Situation, Task, Action, Result).
• GPS prompt source. Christine’s slides on GPS goals. Josh said “look for the prompts.”
• Framing. Low-pressure development work between manager and supervisee. Not tied to bonuses. Tight iteration cadence.
• Josh’s offer: he will send a sacrificial first draft of the R-framework/GPS narrative by mid next week to accelerate iteration.

Insights

• Robust solutions increase reach and support reuse across creators.
• Resonance is transformational — shifting identity, agency, and persistent skill.
• Robustness is more technical; Resonance is more personal / agency-focused.
• Persistence applies at multiple levels (skills, agency, connection).
• Goal: move participants beyond tool knowledge to adaptable competencies.

Decisions

• Adopt Reach / Robustness / Resonance as guiding grammar for the next year. Use it to reflect on the past year and plan the next.
• Produce two documents: a reflective paragraph-based retrospective AND a forward-looking plan informed by the retrospective. Tight cadence.

Action Items

• [ ] Reuben: Draft GPS-style retrospective narrative (R/R/R lens, first-person paragraphs, reflective voice)

  Due: ~May 20-21, 2026

  From: May 14 Josh 1:1

• [ ] Josh: Send sacrificial first draft of the R-framework/GPS narrative to Reuben

  Due: mid next week

  From: May 14 Josh 1:1

• [ ] Reuben: Compile GPS/STAR-style prompts for Reach, Robustness, and Resonance sections

  From: May 14 Josh 1:1

• [ ] Reuben: Find Christine’s slides on GPS goals, pull the prompts

  From: May 14 Josh 1:1

Strategic note (Reuben’s reflection, post-meeting)

• Title and comp deferred — not raised by either side. The role-evolution doc became raw material for the framework conversation, not the centerpiece.
• TPM hire did not come up. Still an open thread to surface later.
• The “feel a little lost” Slack message landed correctly. Josh responded with scaffolding and reframing, not pushback. Vulnerability worked.
• The shift from “role evolution” to “GPS narrative” is arguably a more durable outcome — a shared framework Josh is invested in, vs. a transactional ask.

Spellar transcript: Google Drive

With: Josh Weiss Tags: [THOUGHT-PARTNER], [ALIGN]

Key Points

• Dev Day 26 debrief — talked through the SF conference takeaways.
• ISTE blurb framing — audience is people who are ESL and not in our world. Strip jargon (“problem statement”, “prototype”, “colleagues”); make it librarian-friendly. Reframe central question — not “should I use more or less AI?” — closer to “identifying something you can chip away at, balancing humans + AI bots.”
• Robustness deep dive (continuation of Apr 23) — qualities of robustness, how it connects to the uniqueness of a research org. Vocabulary: scoping, front-loading the boring things, ugly first version, getting initial buy-in, sequencing, maintaining momentum, when is “good enough”, how to get the word out, building in slack (not optimization), which decisions are reversible, small course corrections, identity that survives pivots. Question to sit with: how can we remove the variables that might contribute to failure, so the idea is tested on its own merit?
• Reach (year-out exercise) — “What does the output look like in a year? What has the project achieved?” Inventory exercise:
  • What’s in our control in the studio: scoping, support availability
  • What’s in my control: [to fill in]
  • What talents do I have that they don’t: [to fill in]
• GPS framing — pull from the logic model for inputs to answer the “reach” question. Make this more structured + articulated for GPS. Origin: Josh asking about Reuben’s positioning + finding more value. These notes will help.
• Document + share — put this in a doc and send to Josh. Compare documents next week.
• Quarterly theme play — in GPS there is goal 1, goal 2, and they are flexible. Could Robust, Reach, … what is the third one? — and a theme that we could take quarter by quarter next year.

Action Items

• Draft the Reach/Robust doc and send to Josh before next week’s 1:1
• Brainstorm a “third leg” alongside Robust + Reach to round out a quarter-by-quarter theme rotation

With: Josh Weiss Tags: [THOUGHT-PARTNER], [ALIGN]

Key Points

• Personal/family update — Reuben deep in part-time tech support for Crystal (image editing for choir-shirt prints, classical-guitar restringing, debugging the school sound system that wasn’t set up properly). Six more weeks until end of school year. Took the family up to the lake last night to decompress.
• AI+CT grant proposal — Reuben built an “Unanswer” prototype over the weekend. Extends his LDT work (Bloom’s-taxonomy question classifier) using 2026 tech to push users to sharpen intent and use higher-order thinking. The tool deliberately doesn’t answer the question — it helps the asker improve the question. “Removing the oracle from the LLM.” Wanted to apply for the AI Teaching & Learning small grant.
• ISTE planning — both Josh and Reuben going. Need session title + 150-word description. Plan: riff off the Lake Forest 90-minute structure, but design for a non-contained-room environment. More persistent artifacts (cards, handouts) and a tighter shepherding flow between stages so artifacts don’t get lost in transitions.
• August 2027 vision exercise — Josh’s framing: “We’re going for ice cream after the academic year, what does the conversation sound like? What did we achieve that we feel good about?” Working language landed on Reach and Robust. Method: name the year-end story, then trace it back to the inputs we can act on now.
• Robust deep dive — Reuben’s working definition of his role: a trusted, fresh set of eyes. Accurately assess what’s happening, provide the right tools at the right time, leave the team with the skills to continue. Both capacity-building (long-haul skill investment) and just-in-time support have a place. Studio role = creating space + conditions for cross-pollination, novel connections, relationship building. Accelerator role per leadership = a platform — institutional, not ephemeral.
• Josh reflected back: “When Reuben steps into the room, you get unsucked. We make interesting and novel connections we didn’t know were there. We don’t feel quite so alone.” Both technical robustness AND attitudinal/emotional robustness. Hardening the product and solidifying the team’s understanding of itself. “You’re not just an IT guy — you’re a relationship writer.”
• “Reach” to be tackled at next week’s 1:1.

Decisions

• Do NOT submit the AI+CT grant proposal yet. Dan said the studio is supporting Kenji’s projects — there’s a conflict-of-interest concern. Josh’s reputational lens: “I don’t want you to take any damage to your reputation because people think you’re getting some extra thing here.” Reuben to confirm with the org running the grant before putting more time into the proposal.
• Josh covering ISTE registration ($385 presenter price). To be processed through Moraima’s card on the Accelerator Studio operations code. “I’m not gonna nickel and dime this dude right now.”
• ISTE session core concept and title stay the same — only the delivery format gets retuned for the non-contained-room environment.
• Continue the robust/reach framework next week, focused on Reach.

Action Items

• [ ] Reach out to Kenji (and/or Jessica / Stang) to clarify conflict-of-interest before putting more time into the AI+CT grant proposal

  Owner: Reuben

  Due: before info session Fri Apr 24, 1pm

• [ ] Draft ISTE session description (150 words), riffing off the Lake Forest 90-minute structure

  Owner: Reuben

• [ ] Register for ISTE through Moraima’s card under the Accelerator Studio operations code

  Owner: Reuben

• [ ] Free-write homework — 5 min walking around looking at birds, then 20 min pen-and-paper free-writing on the “robust” exchange (no computer)

  Owner: Reuben

  Due: before next 1:1

• [ ] Bring “Reach” framing to next week’s 1:1 — what role does the accelerator/studio play in reach, what control do we have, what control does Reuben have

  Owner: Josh + Reuben

  Due: next 1:1

Next 1:1 Agenda

• Career planning — prepare talking points for May 1:1 (aligned with GPS goal setting changes in April/May)
• Revisit job descriptions — what’s the next step?
• CRM survey questions draft (async review)
• Tag analysis plan — progress update

Carry-over from Apr 16 1:1 (surfaced Apr 23)

Action item Reuben missed in original Apr 16 reflection: Make a list of organizations that match the criteria from “what do I want and who brings it?” — i.e. partners/orgs that bring you toward the year-from-now role, not just extensions of the current portfolio.

Working draft brought into Apr 23 1:1:

Tier 0 — Stanford internal / Stanford-adjacent

• PLEX (Christine Bywater)
• CRAFT (Victor Lee)
• AAA Lab (Dan Schwartz)
• Challenge Success (Drew Schrader)
• YouCubed — uncertain, may drop

Tier 1 — External partnerships

• ISTE/ASCD · NewSchools Venture Fund · LAUSD · PhET/CU Boulder · PBLWorks/Buck Institute · Carnegie Learning

Tier 2 — Frontier / funder-partner

• CZI · LEGO Foundation · OpenAI Academy · Anthropic education · Google for Education · Microsoft Education

Conferences / Stages (reach vehicle, separate bucket)

• ISTE Live (locked) · SXSWedu (Mar 2027) · ASU+GSV (Apr 2027) · Learning & the Brain · CUE

Criteria filter (Josh’s framing): Reach · Revenue/Model Validation · Identity Shift

Josh 1:1 (Apr 16, 2026) — Post-Meeting Reflection Notes

Raw reflection captured 10:45am right after the 1:1. Career trajectory was the main topic.

Framing questions Reuben is sitting with:

• What do I want, and who brings it?
• Need to be more selective — show I’m not just doing the stuff I was doing before. Proactively creating the space for the new position I want.
• I have this golden egg. In a year’s time, what does my day-to-day look like, and how is this something I can use to get there?
• Think bigger than just this one offering.
• Earnestly and deeply think: what would it look like to be helping the organization grow into the next role?
• Start with “what if.”
• What does “me in a year” look like?
• Look at my portfolio and what I’ve been building up. What are the next steps that would get me into the next phase?
• Leverage the stuff I’ve already got.

Follow-up: Carry these questions into the May career-planning 1:1 (aligned with GPS goal setting).

Josh 1:1 (Apr 10, 2026, 3:00 PM)

Flash Lab Quality Assessment:

• How will we know if Flash Lab went well when Reuben/Josh aren’t there?
• d.school approach: take a photo
• What could we collect? Problem statement, an artifact of the prototype
• Two dimensions: quality of the workshop content AND quality of the facilitation
• Both needed — what is the rigor of measure that they’re a good steward of the content/workshop?
• Can somebody else put this on without Reuben/Josh, and is the quality the same?
• Feedback form for Gregory: problem statement, prototype, response to the enduring question
• Maybe an online form
• Josh most interested in how participants answer the enduring question
• “Leading with the hard-earned insight”
• Part of the gallery: hits and the misses

Topics covered: Quarterly goals review, career planning (planted seed), email list management, Josh health update, upcoming events

Quarterly Goals

• Reviewed quarterly goals — discussed rolling up into future sessions or planning for the studio group in June/July.

Career Planning

• GPS goal setting changes coming in April/May.
• Josh suggested discussing career planning at a 1:1 in May, aligned with retreat and planning sessions in June/July.
• Framework to think about: personal growth, career growth, salary growth, title growth, and network (“steam”) growth.
• Action: Revisit job description library, decide what Reuben is willing to take on next month.

Email List Management

• Working on seed grant winners mailing list (sal-seed-grantees@lists.stanford.edu) + a second list for broader prospects/workshop attendees (seed-grant-affiliates).
• Investigate how to manage duplicates across lists so people only get one copy.

LAUSD

• LAUSD moving their expo to this fall. Will connect early next school year.
• “Using technology with intention” — their policy framing.

Josh’s Michigan Trip Debrief

• VPGE at Stanford is a similar model — take a professor’s content into a high-production-value plan. Lots of media people.

Gregory / York Scholars Flash Lab (Mar 30)

• Reuben and Gregory to take first pass at planning. Josh happy to attend.
• Find out more from Gregory about the April 13th Flash Lab — could Gregory be trained to run it solo?
• Josh has some hesitation about quality. Need to assess: does Reuben have confidence Gregory can do it well?

Upcoming Events

• Joe has several events planned over the next month and a half (cross-pollination push).

Topics covered: Goals refinement (Goal 2 & 3 SMART goals finalized), Flash Lab naming/special sauce, tag analysis plan, ISTE Live attendance

Goals — Finalized

Goal 2 SMART goal: By end of Q2, formalize documentation of examples where stakeholders sought strategic problem exploration into two publishable case studies. Pull from Airtable + notes, get feedback from Josh and Joe, refine into publishable artifacts.

Goal 3 SMART goal: By end of Q2, demonstrate scalable capacity through minimum 1.5x engagement growth across Flash Lab channels — activating two more partners to deliver the workshop. Three scaling methods: self-service, Reuben/Josh-led facilitation, and trained facilitators. ISTE Live (end of June) as target milestone.

Agreed: Makes sense for Reuben to go to ISTE Live (https://conference.iste.org/2026/).

Flash Lab Naming / Special Sauce

• Josh talked to YouCubed yesterday, got some intel. Isabelle is also talking to people about renaming.
• Josh sent an article — “what is our special sauce?” People are doing vibecoding. Might help us figure out our special sauce, and that could inform the rename.
• Action: Reuben to read the article, reflect on what our special sauce is.

Tag Analysis Plan

• Tag exercise idea: look at top 3 and bottom 3 used tags — are we all thinking about these tags the same way?
• Tags are shorthand for vision and mission alignment. Are any adjustments needed?
• Some tags overrepresented based on what we’ve done so far. Inconsistency across time in tagging depth.
• Proposal: Reuben to use AI to analyze the Airtable for possible tags, then review manually.
• Reuben to write a plan for how this rolls out over the next 3 months.
• Josh’s ideal: slow and steady, by July we are dead confident in the reliability of the data.
• This is a big tag review, but also testing a new methodology with AI. Reflecting on how it’s working for us.
• Reuben leads this effort.

Topics covered: OTL/ISTE next steps, ISTE due diligence, CRM survey concept, goals refinement (Goal 2 & 3), priority ordering, Isabelle’s SSIR article

OTL / Invention Docket

• Reuben to email Isabelle offering to take a crack at the invention docket filing
• Monday call with David Mallin to discuss ISTE licensing

ISTE Due Diligence

• Ask Jessica Garner for access to an ISTE course (lighter than the $350 EdTech Teacher Cert)
• Find out if anyone we know has been through an ISTE course
• Isabelle is excited about ISTE and also excited about other partners

CRM Survey / Focus Group Concept

• Reach out to Build-a-Bot CRM contacts with 5-6 survey questions
• Key questions to explore:
  • What organizations do you tend to trust for PD?
  • What are the trusted providers in your world?
  • What price point do people usually pay?
  • What tiers do people usually engage with (free vs. paid)?
  • What representation matters to you?
• Goal: “If we were asked ‘what do people in the classroom think about this?’ — we’d have data.”
• Process: Reuben drafts questions → async review with Josh → send to CRM contacts
• “Where do I want to be in a year? What intel do I want from end users that will help get there?”

Priority Ordering (refined)

1. Reach (primary)
2. Revenue (secondary)
3. Model Validation (tertiary)

Three avenues: ISTE partnership, reactivating CRM contacts, internal Stanford channels.

Goal 2 Refinement — Strategic Influence

• Document strategic help in Airtable (take all notes and consolidate)
• Make it more public-facing — “one more step downstream, what’s the publicly publishable version?”
• Ideas: case studies, evidence repository, cool projects, “feels more publicly consumable”
• SMART goal for Goal 2: Bundle strategic work into some kind of case study deliverable
• Ask Joe about evidence deliverable format
• “It’s not about getting credit, it’s showing what we can do”

Goal 3 Refinement — Scalable Capacity → Test the Partnership Model

• Reframed around: Reach, Revenue, Model Validation
• Stake out outcomes for all three
• Engagement growth: presentation, email campaign, strategic partner networks → grow 1.5x
• Numbers that come out of our engagement efforts

Next Step

• Write up this goals discussion and send to Josh

Topics covered: Seed grant lifecycle audience/packaging, capacity building model framing, ISTE as test bed, playbook/reach/revenue metrics, SMART goals

Seed Grant Lifecycle — Audience & Packaging

Josh’s framing: think in two directions simultaneously:

1. Who is the audience? — existing and future (next 12-24 months)
   • Clear group: Seed grantees (SAL cohorts)
   • Also: LDC, Create+AI participants
2. How do we package it? — two modes coexist:
   • Bundled track: Sequenced, tailored to a cohort, paced to keep them engaged
   • A la carte: “Catch as catch can” — individual workshops available to anyone

Key tension: Going forward, won’t have “super cohorts.” Need to match tailored offerings without expending a crazy amount of time.

Audience Spectrum

• Totally green (first-time grantees) → Multiple grant winners with 6+ figure funding multiple times
• “Covering both groups is a real feat. Helping folks to belong wherever they are.”
• Competency-based model analogy: “You’re not obligated to come to class if you can pass the test”
• Going across the four lifecycle phases, different groups will find different ones helpful

What Makes SAL Different?

• “Why pick a seed grant at SAL vs. Impact Labs, etc.?”
• Might be a learning science focus — need a workshop on this
• What do we predict the audience would find as the value-add to using our accelerator vs. others?

The Model: Playbook, Reach, Revenue

Josh wants to be ready for any conversation with: “What’s your model?”

Three metrics framework:

1. Playbook — the abstract version of what we do, how it works
2. Reach — “targeted reach,” “intentional reach” — not scale for scale’s sake. Don’t lose soul and research-backed rigor. “How many people did we reach with this?” — be ready for that question.
3. Revenue — “Is there a revenue stream here?” Test the revenue model — this should be a goal.

ISTE as Testing Ground

• “If we want to test the model, ISTE is a way to do this”
• ISTE = “a trusted partner that understands we’re in the late stages that might scale some day”
• Multiple partners / multiple models — active experimentation
• Direct line between the capacity building model and Goal 3

Scaling Context

• Dan is talking about campus-wide reach for initiatives
• If we have a structure plus an a la carte menu → increasing reach, empowering educators
• Post-Dan transition: What does this look like in 12 months?
• Getting more research-backed innovation into the world

Exercise: 5 Questions

“What are the 5 most likely questions people would have about our model in 6 months, 12 months, 18 months?”

If one of the top 5 is “is this making us money?” — run an experiment.

Whatever artifact we build will be in service of that conversation.

Action Items

• Make a first pass on the model and send to Josh — capacity building model document
• SMART goals through May — draft by early next week
• Answer the “5 questions” exercise at each time horizon

What Success Looks Like

• In 6 months: Can answer “what’s your model?” in any conversation
• In 12 months: Have tested revenue model, have reportable metrics (playbook, reach, revenue)
• A good outcome: “ready in any conversation — ‘what’s your model?’”

Topics covered: ISTE strategy, Flash Lab positioning, internal GSE dynamics, dean metrics, seed grantee email lists

Seed Grantee Email Lists

• sal-seed-grantees@lists.stanford.edu — can we own this and keep it up to date with ALL SAL grantees?
• Need to add tEquity and Create+AI Challenge contacts
• Action: Email Christina Hewko and Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca for email lists (done same day)

ISTE Strategy — Flash Lab Positioning

Stanford’s GSE PLEX context:

• PLEX offers sync and async PD courses
• Christine Bywater is paid by SAL, but CSET money coming in doesn’t come back to SAL — trying to reconcile this
• PLEX feels strongly about being the face of PL at Stanford — making it murky would be a red flag for them

What Reuben wants Flash Lab to be in a year:

• Legitimized offering
• Getting a signal from who finds this helpful
• People are offering research — market fit, researchers find this compelling
• Unsure of the internal GSE/SAL landscape — potentially conflicting interests
• Can’t wait 8-12 months for a pilot extension program to be vetted, staffed and funded
• Keep momentum going in the meantime
• Likes working with Christine and CRAFT because they are teacher-focused, education-focused

Isabelle’s position: Make this non-exclusive with ISTE. At the same time, respect what others are doing institutionally.

Josh’s framing — top-of-funnel positioning:

• Position Flash Lab as feeding the rest of the ecosystem
• “Is there a way our momentum can feed your momentum?”
• “Every time we do our offering, [X program] benefits” — refer people to other orgs
• This is also a signaling mechanism for the Accelerator
• Numbers that matter for new dean conversation:
  • Users, reach, revenue, studies
  • Inbound marketing to GSE
  • If we can help drive numbers to: Challenge Success, youcubed, CSET/PLEX, PACE

Action item for Reuben: Concretize this. Think about: if Joseph South says “can we run this next month” — what is the plan?

Central Question (48-hour deadline)

If ISTE looks at us next week and says “should we do this?” — what is the answer?

Need an answer before Thursday Feb 19 1:1.

Tags: [ALIGN] [THOUGHT-PARTNER]

Topics covered: Q4 review, Q1 goals, Personal Logic Model, strategic direction

Summit Debrief

• Teacher from LA with her two students — felt out of the loop, overwhelmed by speed of things
• By end of sessions, students looked forlorn: “that was cool, I don’t belong in that conversation”
• Key question: is there a bridge from practice back to research? How do educators engage with research conversations?

Flash Lab Evolution Ideas

• What if we added a divergent thinking task / alternative uses task as an element of Flash Lab?
• Design challenge that feeds into create+AI
• Strengthen the research → practice pipeline AND the practice → research pipeline

Organizational Alignment — The Three C’s

• Josh framed the Accelerator’s value around three C’s: critical boosts, capacity building, cross-pollination
• Where does Reuben’s work connect to the rest of the Accelerator? How does it feed back in?
• Flash Lab: “I am going to own it. This suite of things.”
• Think about the throughline from inputs → impact on an organizational level
• “If we’re not proactive, the decision will be made for us” — need strategy, not just activity
• What would be evidence of alignment?

Personal Logic Model

• Josh praised the strategic thinking and ability to facilitate important conversations
• Encouraged further development — recognize broader organizational impact
• Make it concrete and bite-sized — fold into Q1.5 goals with project-based applications

Sustainability / Revenue Models

• Faculty lead + pricing model with PD — but this might be one of 5 versions
• Think about a few scenarios for how to structure and potentially fund this work
• Can partners fund the scaling rather than per-use charging?

Seed Grantee Curriculum

• tEquity grant launch is next week — last year 3 cohorts launched
• What would it look like to use them as a model for “lonelier” cohorts?
• Map offerings: inter-cohort (no matter where you are in the arc) vs time-specific (tied to project stage)
• The time-specific ones — is that a subset where we build curriculum?

Market Research — Comparable Orgs

• Who else is doing this? Disparate cohorts + capacity building at scale

Josh’s list (as of Dec 2024):

• LEVI (Learning Engineering Virtual Institute) *
• The Learning Agency
• AERDF (Advanced Education Research and Development Fund) *
• Tec de Monterrey Labs
• WGU Labs
• Helsinki Education Hub (U of Helsinki) *
• CARADITE (Duke) *
• ASU Action Lab (EdPlus at Arizona State University) *
• Wildflower Labs *
• The EdTech Foundry (Open University, UK) *
• OneValley (formerly GSVlabs)
• Humanist Venture Studio
• TFA Reinvention Lab Product Studio
• MIT Media Lab
• ISTE *
• RTI Center for Educational Services
• Education Design Lab (George Mason University)
• Núcleo de Excelência em Tecnologias Sociais (Brazil) *

New list (2025):

• https://www.diffusionventurestudio.com/
• https://otl.stanford.edu/researchers/high-impact-technology-hit-fund
• Stanford Impact Labs
• HAI Impact Grants
• Wikit
• UMich EdTech Accelerator
• Design Lab at DP
• Teaching Lab Studio

Siegel Success Story

• Educator who won $50K prize for AI-powered attendance system
• Josh: imagine 20-100 such individuals at the AI Summit — that transforms the event
• Think about: how to replicate this, who might fund it

AI Summary

Josh and Reuben discussed the rapid pace of AI development and its implications for education. They explored how to better connect educators with AI research and tools, emphasizing the need for more modeling and strategic engagement. Reuben presented a personal logic model to clarify his role and contributions, which Josh encouraged him to further develop. They discussed potential strategies for expanding educational offerings, including formalizing workshops and creating a structured curriculum for seed grantees. Josh suggested exploring partnerships with other institutions to enhance capacity building efforts and align offerings with the three C’s of the organization.

Tags: [ALIGN] [THOUGHT-PARTNER] [REFRAME]

Agenda (from inbox):

• Law School Meeting
• Oman prep - advocate scaffolding, tick tock schedule
• GPS goals finalization

• ISTE
• Oman
• Goals:

Agenda:

• AI Flash Lab Updates
• ISTE Conversation
• AI Summit in Feb

ISTE:

1. 60 min session at ISTE Live
2. Internal folks at ISTE we would train up <- this might be the most aligned with our goals
3. Grant funded opportunities (three people Jessica mentioned)

Questions for ISTE: What does grant funded mean, who are the people in the org, what is their direct/indirect role of facilitating

Helpful to have a lot of momentum during transition on some core projects.
(look at the OKRs – this aligns)

Who is the sponsoring voice of this: Right now it’s Isabelle.
If there are others that we could bring on to this, it would be better.

Embracing skunk works with Victor.

Create an exit interview questions we would like to know about for facilitators of Flash
Anything other people would like to know?
Question: What artifacts emerge, and how do they speak to your context?
What was the focus of the flash?

Question: what does this mean in the year of AI agents?
Hunch: non technical people are going to be giving AI agents a lot of run time and it’ll be hands off, which is a bad thing.

Is this a speed run of the skills you’ll need once AI agents become very easy for everyone

What is the negative case?

—
Phone call in the afternoon:

• Isabelle is interested and on board for ISTE
• Any additional meetings with Jessica.

• Assuming going to do the writing probably not
• How could we engage
• Make it very optional they choose to write
• What it looks like right now, if you don’t fill this out you can’t advance to the next step
• [option
• Idea Log
• Instructions: talk with your group about A\&B, if you have time, write your idea in the log to the side.
• Mention it from from the front - these are your options for human boosts, these are your options for AI boosts, pick one to start.

Resources:
For pre-reading
Whitepaper
Framing of who we’re building for.

Modifications to the concept paper

Folding icebreaker into designer
More vivid connection at the participant level
![][image1]
Could we add, Attention-deficit issues (ADHD), neurodiversity (ASD spectrum)
Getting a list of these and putting them in front of people. How to bring alive the lived experience
Pre-materials,: a video or an account of students living with this, trying to deal with this.

Learning variability

Here’s a place to start:

What challenges are students facing?
What does their lived experience look like as the deal with this challenge?
What does the research say about how we can help these students?

For example:
…

Who will you be building for and how might you build it?

Who: video

• Oman
  • We have help think about what
  • Revise concept note, and send to Josh
  • Simple english translator.
    • If we had to go through an intermediary
    • Explain human boost, and AI boost
    • Make not a deck of cards, much more simple version.
      • Worksheets and templates are going to keep people on the rails
      • Table of 10 people - say “I’m stuck” what do we do?
        • Step 1 - type this prompt
        • Step 2 - make at least 2 suggestions based on what you see
        • “Here’s your script, read this”
        • For the build part especially, a structured journey on how to use the AI boost
        • “Slider bar” on loose vs. structured
          • How much do you want to do, how much do you want the AI to do?
          • Where on the structure
          • Structures the boosts, not a wall of text. Do this and then step back.
• Monday Meeting
  • Josh will be point of contact
  • Build-a-Bot planning. Button it up today. Getting solid today. We have 35 minutes
  • Plan for half that time.
    • Deconstruct - take away the third one. - do the first two, so they get a framing for the system prompt.
    • Then get right into it
    • First half josh, second half me.
• Look at team handbook protocol for our quarterly meetings, and where might this complement or be injected as a new thing.

Agenda

• DesignKit
  • Oman
  • Australia
  • UK
  • Reach out to Workshop Attendee who posted on LinkedIn
• Build-a-Bot
  • Dec 8

Play this out: summer of 2027
What do I think is important to happen
What do people above our pay grade

Able to get better practiced at human and AI boosts

Organizational KPI - contributes to that?
Is it contributing to
Are we being good stewards of things we’re being asked to be good stewards of it.

Not - let’s be a driving force for this to be bigger/better

How can we balance our time such that we’re not spending a ton of time of this, we’re just being stewards of this resource.

RMT note: How do we connect the other people to each other??

How can we build this into a pipeline for seed grantees?

How can we make this more visible-evident to others?
Could we have a database?

Did I meet Vanessa Motrose? New School

How do we continue to build a coalition around this so people (researchers) see value?

Collected numbers on the year - how many bots, used, times it’s been run by us, by other people
“Checking in” have you used it, people used it, grade it 1-10

Send Josh a first draft of the questionnaire: questions
How could we feed this into success metrics as time

Reach out to each of our teams

Agenda

• Workshop Next Week
  • Currently 25 RSVPs
  • Josh need any support during?
  • Raise your hand in zoom to ask questions during.
  • Slides: introducing panel, breakout instructions, feedback form
  • Reach out to:
  • RMT Claire Moffett - GSB/CSI folks
  • RMT Design challenge people, past and future. - run it by Jodi and Keith - do they have a list
  • “Helping them to drum up interest in the upcoming design challenge next quarter”
  • Is there is a list of potential people that you want to start activating now.
  • RMT Former seed grantees - Kristen and Morami - list of past seed grantees.
  • LDT students, - josh will ping program heads.
  • RMT Isabel Sacks - good strategy partner on this.
    What kind of types of people - what groups could you amplify this with
• Community Design Session
  • Meeting with Anna-Lena tomorrow at 8am
  • Need to find space for November Session - Nov 4 AM and talk to Leslie (events team) mention how it’s complementary and boosting the event (20 people)
• Ack! Jess leaving 😭
• What does that mean for us?
• Karin - what does she think
• Josh’s workshop (partnerships)
• Next: Communication

We’re bringing in people who
Talking to our group

How do we shape this offering so it’s AI+X

Agenda
Coming up next week
Look at projected trips for the upcoming academic year.
2 big SAL events, nov and feb.

• Multiple rooms?

student mental health and well-being

• Look at research that’s come out of Stanford as signals of potential
• (Roy and HAI has produced stuff, maybe someone from those papers could come and talk for a minute)
• Look out for AI + mental health and scoffing.
  • Move towards mitigating
  • “Are we happy with the decisions other people are making around AI?”
  • “Can we design it for ourselves”
  • Use what’s happening with OpenAI as a call to action
  • It’s going to be made for you or with you.
  • “Nothing about us, without us”

Me getting a finer sense of how I do the workshop, and how others do the workshop.
First hand facilitation
How others do it without my action (still is key)

Anyone internal to stanford - ask Jess if anyone on campus has asked to do more design session. Sounds like a lot of staff - is there any overflow that we could hand off this to their staff

Reach out to Jody (works with Keith Bowen) and ask if any design challenge graduate that has gone through this scaling conundrum
Cc: jody

Not just serving stanford, but a “public good”
The more we can make that visible

Stories and out in a way that non-technical people can get it

• Essential question in the strategic huddle
• 2 essential questions - “what do we need to do to support the seed grantee teams on the back side of the project that we didn’t ask about in the first half (because of where they were in the project)”
• “How do we help the teams meet their goals and finish well”
• Reuben will figure out how to lead this in the strategic huddle at the end of the month

CDS - needs to be weekly updates and part of 1:1s.

Agenda

• Prep for meeting tomorrow?
  • Hear what they’re working on
  • LPI - (Learning Planet Institute) centered in elite university in paris
  • D.school-esque kind of thing
  • MO: place for people to figure out what they want to do, that didn’t decide when they’re 16.
  • What would a design challenge look like for them?
• Next thursday: quarterly goals.
• Processes: open source parts of the hack-a-thon
• Explain BaB

• Interest from folks around the world doing hack-a-thon lite kind of thing
• Professor out of - Western Australia (Karen)
• Group in Paris - learning planet institute
  • Embedded within the elite universities in Paris (“d.school that grants degrees”)
  • Activating curiously, exploration, capacity building for localized experimentation
  • How the packaging could work.

“Building the Future that You Want”
“Test it out for your community’s context”
“Sit with the problem for longer, AI might not be the solution”
In the conversations that this jumpstarts, it’s activating a new legion of change makers
Tinkertime is on purpose very unstructured

TASK: use connections as alpha testers
Let them have a pretty wide berth - fit it into their own context.
Meet with Karen - what are you going ot keep, what are you going to change.

After the hackathon follow-up with people who want to use this.

“Chain of Density”

NOTE: 2x Build-a-Bot alumni presenting at conferences

A 1-page guide for each of the hats
QR code to the prompts
A process that you could s
“Key questions to ask before you start”
“Circle the roles you want AI to do during this segment”
“If I get stuck in this way, here is a technique to use”

Template:

1. Objective: Make a {Pitch, Prototype, Design Brief}
2. Key questions to ask before you start
3. Ideas to get “un-stuck”
4. Deciding AI / Human roles
5. Pacing Hints
6. QR code to the prompts
7. Example output for that hat. (maybe a couple examples)

Maybe just three hats

1. Designer
2. Builder
3. Advocate

“Spend the first 10 minutes”

• What role do you think humans / AI play in the design
• When designing for your own community, what special considerations should be taken into account
• Describe the person you’re designing for..

“It sounds like we have som e ideas, should we try them out with pen/paper or AI”

“Reciepes”
AI recipes and human recipes and they have to choose which to use.
“At this point, you should be putting it in the oven” -

“Use at least two recipes over the next 20 minutes”
Recipes = AI as The Ideation Engine
Prompt the bot using these words “…”
Ask your group mates this question

“These are the two ways to start those conversations”

Section 1: “Questions to talk with your group”
Section 2: Work time: “I want to …
If working with an AI try this prompt
Working

Journey MappingL:
If I want to better understand the journey through my solution, I can ask the AI this, or I can ask the human this:

Prompt for the AI and also a prompt for the teammate

At the end of the sheet checklist?

“In the next 20 minutes try out ….

Catch-up

• 2x Crystal Springs Uplands School PDs
• Migrating bot101.xyz off of Heroku
• STEPS transition
• Met with Ryan, connected her to Howard
• Goal-setting
• R\&D - new thoughts after Glenn’s article
• Build-a-Bot

• https://osf.io/m3rz5
• De-siloing and capacity building
• Could we surface some skills that people could do with
• We do this organically through our cohort of seed grantees
• See how this works and doesn’t work
• We put together something like a mini-playbook but much more digestible form
• What are

• At the end of each of our seed grantee meetings, Joe puts it into Airtable
• Rituals question as much as anything else
• I get caught in the “weeds” micro view, and need to get better at switching between micro and macro views.

• SXSWedu
• What other conferences could get us additional visibility and stakeholder feedback
• Not just the same type of person

Capacity building for localized experimentation
Abstracting the processes on a lot of the stuff we’re doing.

Codebook:
Seed grantees perceive that having us in the room is a value add
Objective measure - that we are actually making a difference
(subjective perception)
“What is this measuring for us?”
Internal and external audience

Is this measuring the project impact or studio’s impact on the project

Deliberate about Which measures go internally, externally or both

What is the range of rooms where we would be asked this question or have to an
Room - isabelle level
Room - seed grantee team (incoming team, not believers)
Room - group of people who want to do an accelerator studio in their organization

Thinking about the end user on this
Thought experiment: think about stakeholder groups that this data could be important to

Where do we want the data to land at the end of this journey

Isabelle not a matter of why studio should exist, it’s a matter of

When we do the huddle at the end of the august
Can I facilitate this codebook thinking
How we talk about the data
Tie it to our experiment
“Is this worth our time”
Does more time on this now save us thrashing about and stress later on the line

Budget numbers from me:
Must-haves nice to have
Sept-to-sept.
Josh going on vac August 11-23
GPS goals next thursday finalize. (review narrative/commentary) use it as a bridge.

Bab is a place to help people practice experimentation
Talk about what failed and the nuances of that

Think on: I think testing the upper limits of AI is interesting to our researchers?
Hard to figure out,
What is working, and what is reaching an upper limit with educators
If someone were to say “keep it or dump it” ask why
There is an expectation of what they need and a limit to what the ai can provide
Upper limit could be domain knowledge
Upper limit on how much they trust handing it off to a student
Upper limit on learning sciences. Teaching is too brittle
Are they true upper limits, the tech or the interaction pattern is hitting a threshold or an engineering problem that eventually will fix
The “jagged frontier” question
Contours of the jagged edge

Researchers developing benchmarks
It’d be interesting to say we have a database of what people have tried
“What does a benchmark for AI look like in education”
“What is good enough”
“What is an upper limit we’d reasonably expect it won’t get past in the near future?”

“What does good mean to a teacher?”
And people ask “is this good or not good”

There is probably a heuristic in teacher’s head

Gates Fdn is working on some benchmarking funding.

Our advantage: Capacity building for localized experimentation
Google released 30 AI tools that were default-on in Google Education.

“Arrival technology”

How to try and say “for me” or “not for me”

Agenda

• Build-a-Bot
  • Email from Isabelle
    • Set up meeting with Victor/Isabelle
  • New Tech next week - still recruiting?
  • Alpha testing in August
• Getting caught up on seed grantees

Meeting Notes

Isabelle recommended we start to think with Victor about what the next series of presentations might look like when we get asked to do this again.

Next generation of build-a-bot - always thinking about how to evolve this thing
How these things connect
Make a playbook for what this might look like for him
Getting requests to iterate the BaB, play through what this looks like
Victor likes being part of presentations and brought in.

Important for Victor/Isabelle to know: others are going to be presenting BaB without us.
Proactive rather than reactive to people using this tool. Example is Cat’s request.
People are reaching about using BaB and present about BaB - before doing so we’d love to get your input so that it matches we as group want to do. Want to be intentional about the inbounds.
We can be strategic and use this momentum

Next Steps:

• reply to Isabelle and suggest setting up a meeting with Victor.

• Ask myself, what does growth look like for me?
• Level-up
  • Management and responsibility
  • Complex projects + bigger budget
  • Strategic - upstream
• Have a pipeline of projects that we don’t have to go out and source
• It’s normally a huge stress to find the projects.
• I can be the tech specialist, but also using generalist skills
• Thinking about the entire lifecycle of the product
• We need to get better at generalist. - what are the complementary but lesser developed parts of my generalist toolkit, and what would it look like to level up in those
• And how would it
• SAL wants to be an institute
• What would it look like to fill in those gaps?
• What are the things we rely on GSE for, and where might there be growth?

Agenda

• Joyful learning Kickoff?
  • Growing pains on how to do a seed grant.
  • Laura’s first time doing this.
  • Coming out of it, people will see what the accelerator studio will do.
• Build-a-Bot Facilitators Project
  • More of an organizational question
  • Showing the work that we’ve done so it shows the expertise that we have
    • Technical knowledge
    • Building stuff that has the potential to scale
    • Send numbers to Josh (total on the list, people in the facilitator training)
• NTAC
  • Company name as you would like it listed (Stanford Accelerator for Learning)
  • Company logo
  • A short bio about your company (
  • Anything else about you or your company you would like us to know
• Booth - Tinkery, CRAFT, and Build-a-Bot

GPS - have until the end of June.
Self-narrative first draft by the end of day tomorrow. (30 min exercise, bullet points are fine)
Two things

1. Look at year-long goals
2. Cross-ref with quarterly SMART goals,
3. Two levels of commentary, what short-burst efforts look like along the way.
4. DONT - start to formulate next year goals.

Agenda Items

• Catch up
• Build-a-Bot Facilitators Project
• Build-a-Bot In general
  • New Tech Conference
  • Email to Victor
• Meeting this afternoon

• Self-narrative

• Build-a-Bot
  • Short-term vs. long-term partnerships
  • Top of funnel, promotional vs. long-term, multi-year deep dive relationship research partnership.
  • Teacher certification
  • SAL isn’t going to have any trouble finding partnerships
  • Promotional: “what good AI learning looks like”
    • What differentiates constructivist framework trainings
    • People come out of the workshop, two ways - in love with the tool, or loving the way the workshop was
    • Brand reputation “Stanford’s doing something different”

High touch vs. low touch
CSET might not know how to do low touch.
Low-touch
Here is a way to do it at your own site. (TtT kind of stuff)
No-touch model - don’t’ go there today. “Putting something in a module is an anthema to most people”

If a no-touch happens, it wouldn’t be us leading us, it’d be someone packaging and scale.

Rather than “buy CSETs time”

Update from Josh:
Victor soft pitched Josh:
He acknowledges that Build-a-Bot is a distinctive AI literacy experience
“Super widget quality” you play with something and

“Teachable machines” is Dan Schwartz style
You teach the machine “the french revolution”
Everyone is stuck on teachable machines

Can we make more of those?
Bring on a post-doc to do some of the building
Rather an architect and design role

Use his framework
“Build-a-bot is a spark” on how you can do AI literacy different

He has to come to us on this one.
How to balance this as a team.

Fixed term: ping the person and cc josh.
Vacation time coming up, anything I need to sign?

• Build-a-Bot
  • Imelda
  • What do people want from Build-a-Bot
  • Internal
• Boosted the ecosystem
• Isn’t called out to
• Perception that Build-a-bot is separate from CRAFT / Tinkery
• Leadership has a meeting on june 20, make a strategy, tell us what you want,
• Draw a solid line to CSET, Tinkery, CRAFT
• How to move
• People who don’t think bab has value behind dog and pony show
• Strategic effort
• Kiosk in Tinkery