In this episode of Trending in Education, host Mike Palmer welcomes Alden Do Rosario, founder of Custom GPT AI, and Dr. Phil Hendrix to discuss the emerging landscape of custom chatbots and AI in higher education. We explore the origins of Custom GPT AI and delve into a white paper co-authored by Dr. Hendrix on the adoption of AI in universities.
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In the episode, Mike Palmer hosts Erika Blumenthal, the Chief Operating Officer at Benefits Data Trust (BDT), and Daniel O’Donnell, the Associate Director of Higher Education at BDT. We discuss the organization’s mission to help individuals access social safety net benefits in the U.S., with a focus on supporting college students and how they use a Chatbot named Wyatt to communicate benefits to higher ed students.
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In this eye-opening episode, host Mike Palmer dives into the alarming rise in chronic absenteeism among U.S. students, as highlighted by a recent New York Times article. The conversation pivots to explore how AI-powered chatbots and personal virtual assistants like “Ed” from AllHere are being leveraged to combat this issue, getting notice for their work in the LA Unified School Disctrict. Mike revisits his insightful 2021 interview with AllHere’s founder Joanna Smith, who discusses the company’s innovative use of conversational AI to foster engagement and support student achievement beyond the classroom.
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Joanna Smith is the CEO and founder of AllHere, an edtech company improving attendance and student success with mobile messaging powered by AI. Before founding AllHere, she taught middle school mathematics and served as Director of Family Engagement at a charter school in Boston.
Joanna joins Mike Palmer to talk about the problem of low student attendance in K12 and how she and team are building AllHere to create a scalable way to begin to address it. What’s the best way to design an ecosystem that is available 24/7 and allows its teachers to focus on the highest-yield human activities? How has the pandemic impacted this problem? How did the team at AllHere listen to the community to respond quickly to needs around food insecurity? In what other ways might chatbots help improve educational experiences for students and families?
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