← The ChatGPT Experiment - Simplifying Chat GPT For Curious Beginners
The ChatGPT Experiment - Simplifying Chat GPT For Curious Beginners
Ep. 48: Scaling Art Education: How Steven Bross Uses ChatGPT to Transform His Teaching
00:51:00
Episode Summary In this episode, Cary welcomes Steven Bross, an experienced art educator with a dynamic background in design and teaching. Steven teaches visual communication at Central Monaco Technical High School and is developing a platform called...
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Transcript83 lines
- [00:02]
Stephen Bross
After investing billions to light up our.
- [00:03]
Kerry Weston
Network, T Mobile is America's largest 5G network. Plus right now you can switch keep your phone and we'll pay it off up to $800. See how you can save on every plan vs Verizon and at&t@t mobile.com Keep.
- [00:17]
Stephen Bross
And switch up to four lines via virtual prepaid card. Allow 15 days qualifying unlocked device credit service ported 90 plus days with device and eligible carrier and timely redemption required. Card has no cash access and expires in six months. This holiday season, surprise everyone on your list with the best gifts Tickets to see their favorite artists live. Choose from thousands of concerts and comedy shows, including Mariah Carey, Mary J. Blige, Matt Matthews, Metallica, Thomas Rhett, Trans Siberian Orchestra, Sarah Silverman, and so many more. Share a memory together or give a gift they'll never forget. Find the most exciting gift for every fan@livenation.com gifts that's livenation.com gift I hope people actually sort of use it as the smartest person in the room and not like a way to not do anything.
- [01:15]
Kerry Weston
Hey there. Welcome to the ChatGPT experiment, a podcast where we take all that confusing ChatGPT stuff and break it down so even Grandma can understand. If you're a curious beginner, you're in the right place as we help you understand what ChatGPT is, how others are using it, and what are practical takeaways that you can use right away. It's going to be fun, informative, and maybe surprising when you find how helpful ChatGPT can be. All right, let's get this thing started. Here's your host, Kerry Weston.
- [01:49]
Hey there all you curious folks.
- [01:51]
Stephen Bross
How we doing? Hope you're doing well. Excited to share with you a conversation this week from a listener, Stephen Bross, who reached out and Stephen is a visual communications instructor at a technical high school just outside of Philadelphia. And I got an email from Stephen and he opened by saying, hey Kerry, I hope you're doing well. I've been following your podcast. I love how you dive deep into different uses of software for unique fields. As an educator, I've been using customize AI to develop exciting and interactive curriculum for my students and it's been a game changer. So yeah, we set it up. Just like I've asked you before, if you've got any interesting case studies or situations you want to share for others to learn from, please do that. So Stephen did. He reached out and had a great conversation. I'm going to share that with you this week. A couple of things I want you to listen for is how not only is Stephen shaping what he's doing with students and scaling his lesson plans and getting people to interact in a new way, but he's also reached out and started teaching other teachers, which I think is fascinating because you've heard me talk about this and share thoughts and interviews on the show before around education. And it's one of those spaces where ChatGPT has really been slow to kind of be adopted. Right. There's been that hesitation for a number of valid reasons and of using it and communicating it and even teaching it for fear of lack of control, lack of authenticity, plagiarism, whatever you might say.
- [03:26]
Kerry Weston
Right.
- [03:26]
Stephen Bross
And so to hear where Stephen's going, what he's doing not only in the classroom, but where he wants to go after the classroom, I think is very interesting. I want you to listen for that. It's really cool. And he's looking to change the perception inside his own school of how AI can be combined with some traditional thinking, traditional work to have some meaningful impact. Right. So a really great, a really great conversation and you are going to hear me talk about a workshop that he's going to do as we're recording it was going to be in the future. He's now done that workshop with other teachers and reports back to me as I asked him to keep me posted. Reports back to me. It went swimmingly well and he's very excited about moving that, moving that forward. And it was received really great. So awesome. I'm going to share that with you here in just a second. Speaking of classes and education, as I mentioned before, I did get some, some workshops put together. I put some personalized workshops up on the website chatgpt experiment.com now these are one on one interactive workshops for very specific purposes. So I've got five very specific purposes that we will work together. And so I've got a video there to kind of show you how we will work together and what it means. Right. To spend some time working on a customized plan for ChatGPT. But there's five specific topics and if you choose to do this, we will work one on one specifically around the issue. The goal that you have so you can leave with a customized bot that will allow you to do more moving forward. So check it out. ChatGPT experiment.com be happy to answer questions and reach out and maybe I get to work with you someday soon. So until we talk again, thank you for joining me. Thank you for supporting the community. Share with anyone you think might be Interested and as always, do stay curious.
- [05:18]
Kerry Weston
Talk soon. Hey, Stephen, welcome to the show.
- [05:24]
Stephen Bross
This is pretty cool. I've been following the show for a little bit and I kept hearing you say, hey, if you're ever interested or you think you're doing something pretty cool, then pop on and get in touch. So I did it and you responded back and that was pretty awesome.
- [05:37]
Kerry Weston
Hey, look at you. It's like real people doing real things, right?
- [05:40]
Stephen Bross
Yeah, I know. That's pretty cool.
- [05:42]
Kerry Weston
Hey, so let's do what we usually do here. Let's give people some background and perspective so they can listen through a certain lens. So why don't you share with folks who you are and what you're doing doing and who you're doing it for these days?
- [05:53]
Stephen Bross
Yeah. So I currently work for Central Monco Technical High School right outside of Philadelphia, and I teach a visual communications program. So it's three different levels of first, second and third year kids and through that sort of process, trying to learn how to communicate with the students. I've been starting a little side project called Odd Fish Energy, which is building out coursework for my students in the classroom. But I'm hoping to take it further and monetizing it and building it into a retirement plan.
- [06:22]
Kerry Weston
Love that, love that. That's really cool. I want to come back to that too, Stephen, but you were sharing me before that. You actually started teaching as you were driving by a full school of yours and you sat in the classroom for, I think it was Illustrator, and then you decided, okay, I'll teach it. Yeah. Yeah, that's kind of a, that's kind of an odd way to start teaching it.
- [06:41]
Stephen Bross
It is, it is an odd way. But I guess I was young enough and I knew that community college had so many different variations of age group there that it wasn't like I looked like an 18 year old kid. I, you know, there were some people in the class older than me, so it just seemed like I could get away with a fun joke and the first time and I got away with it. But then eventually people knew who I was so I couldn't really do it too many more times after that. But it was, it was, it was a great way to sort of try it. And it was, it was ends up being a great story, that's for sure.
- [07:09]
Kerry Weston
So what happened when you were sitting there in that first class? You knew you were going to be teaching but no one else did. And you kind of sat there and I kind of a welcome back, Carter kind of moment. And then people started getting Annoyed or frustrated, like, what? What were you witnessing around you?
- [07:22]
Stephen Bross
Yeah. So I basically went. Went for almost about 15 minutes because I knew that was the timeframe when everyone's like, look, the professor's not here in 15 minutes, we're out. So there was just a couple comments. Most people were still sort of like, I guess at that point phones were sort of kind of new, so people were sort of, you know, texting or whatever with their flip phones. So like I just watched and then you could see people were like, where is this guy? And you know, and all this stuff and I don't know him, he's a new teacher. Then finally I was like, all right, fine. And when I did sort of stand up, they all looked at me like, nuh. Did he really do this? Is this for real or is this just some kid pulling a joke? And then I was like, introduced myself and went from there. So it was fun. I wish I could get. I would talk about a great icebreaker, I guess.
- [08:03]
Kerry Weston
Right, right. So what's interesting is I've got a few decades in the agency creative world where I've employed and worked with a number of creatives. And one of the things that there's never gospel here, but these are just general truths that I've witnessed is most of the time the people that are really passionate and really dedicated to design are not extroverts. They tend to be introverts. And. But I'm gathering here that you've got a little extrovert in you and both design in what you do and you love to teach. Is that true?
- [08:36]
Stephen Bross
Yeah, that's like 100% true. I mean, when you think about when I walked into Columbus College of Art and Design, man, like it was, you know, the typical gothy looking, you know, Pierce on the, you know, facial piercings and. And I came in like looking kind of like. I obviously played sports and soccer and you know, I'm six one, so like, I didn't really fit the class. I was like preppy looking, you know, and. And when I came in and I guess that sort of personality kind of showed because I definitely got into a few arguments with some of what I would refer to the artsy kids about like, oh, well, you know, we can't do this and you know, we're doing stuff with leather and I was like, you have Doc Martens on. Like, what are we really talking about here? You know, so like, I guess I was lucky that I did have a sort of a fun personality, I guess. Thanks. Mom and dad did a good Job with that.
- [09:23]
Kerry Weston
All right, so let's get into Oddfish, a side project that I know you've been using ChatGPT for. You've given me some outlines here as we've talked in the past, but give me a big picture of what this is and how it came to be and then we'll kind of get into what you're using the tool for so others can kind of get a picture for, you know, what you're doing and why.
- [09:41]
Stephen Bross
Yeah. So how did it start?
- [09:43]
Kerry Weston
How did it start?
- [09:44]
Stephen Bross
Okay, so I guess to sort of step back, way, way back a little bit. There was this program came out called Ning. Do you remember Ning? It was like a community software, kind of like a Facebook competitor. It still existence and we, we did sort of a community thing with some other teachers. And at that point I was like, let me try this with my students. So it was kind of like an early Facebook phase. And with that sort of happening, I saw that the students were interacting over the computer much more than I could get them in just a normal, you know, module, paper, sort of art class.
- [10:19]
Kerry Weston
By the way you're describing my 13 and 15 year old kids, I can't get them to talk to me face to face, but they'll text all day long.
- [10:25]
Stephen Bross
Oh yeah. I mean the statistics now they'll say that your kid, our students would rather watch a video of you than actually have you talk to them in person. Which is like sort of weird. But you know, I get, hey, in a way it makes it easier in some cases, right? And with that coming from the graphics industry, there were, there were some couple problems that I needed. So I started just building my class out on a website and using pretty much Adobe go live the start, if you remember that. Then we picked up another little fake website, get, I don't know, like widget sort of thing, you know, WYSIWYG or whatever. And we were playing around with that and then eventually I fell in love with wix, the WIX website builder. And that just gave me all the freedom to do everything I wanted without having to do any major coding and all of that. And with that eventually hit the magic Covid, right, that everyone loves to talk about and the change of life and you know, starting new careers and all that. Everyone always said like, why aren't you selling your curriculum? And I was like, you know what, maybe this is the time to switch the package over. And then once WIX came out with the opportunity to build an online course, it just was like, all right, let's let's do this. So, so I started about, about a year and a half ago, two years putting the courses together just for my students, knowing the long term plan was if I can build these out correctly, I could monetize them and then, you know, sort of hope that would give me something to do in my retirement because I'm 52 and I'll be retirement at 60, so I could go in eight years if I choose to. So I'm kind of giving it like a five year run to see if I can turn it in anything. If not, I've got all the curriculum for my students which they're using every day. So it's kind of a no brainer. Like I might as well do it right for them and see if I do it right in the long run and can see what else it goes.
- [12:13]
Kerry Weston
So there's so many lessons in what you just said. Scaling your experience right to get more value out of the time and allowing you to be more places than once and allowing folks to catch up to you at their convenience, meet them where they're at. I love this whole thing. And this started out in the classroom. I think you shared in your notes that you've been using, I guess, ChatGPT for some brainstorming curriculum, trying to customize it and get new ideas and that's morphed into classes. So let's go back to how are you using it in the classroom? Let's go back to the tool itself, ChatGPT, because that's the name, that's the name of the podcast, so we'll stick there. So how are you using it in your classroom to kind of get ideas and make your job easier.
- [12:49]
Stephen Bross
So going back to sort of to where I was saying in the industry world the writing skill was not the thing that I really liked. Right. All of the creative process and the ideas and the dreaming and like coming up with all the projects was the great part. Sitting down and writing out specific instructions and step by step guides and you know, overviews and you know, and I hate to say it, but when you can't tell the difference between there, there and there when you're writing it, you know, you got problems, right? So all of a sudden when I started playing around with chat and I basically, you know, about, I guess about a year year ago when I felt it kind of came out and I sort of played around with it and then I got these really well written descriptions of what I was thinking, I was, I was a lock, right? Because like I even use it for Parent emails now, like, because I can write whatever I want and then be like, hey, can you rewrite this in a professional manner that gives the education aspect to it? And then it writes it all perfect so I don't get in any trouble. Probably if I wrote what I really wanted to say, I would, I would have gotten in trouble. So the ability of basically just giving a few bullet points and descriptions and getting this to write it out for me was like life changing. Like, it was huge for my curriculum. And that was, that was basically the tiny bit like we're talking about barely breaking the ice on what Chad can do for education.
- [14:15]
Kerry Weston
And we've talked about education on the show before with some others. And there's differing views, different peer evaluation thoughts, opinions being shared. What is the general feeling of using a tool like this in the curriculum world with others that teach around you?
- [14:33]
Stephen Bross
So that's a really good, good question. Right? And actually in two Fridays from now, I'm doing a full hour professional development on ChatGPT with the teachers in the building. Because at a technical, career, technical high school, you have guys that are teaching small engine repair, they're landscape instructors, they're carpenters. Like, they, they're not coming from journalistic backgrounds to, to write curriculum. And, and not only that, career and tech teachers actually fall back into their career. They don't go to school for education. They, they went to school and now they're learning how to teach. So we're going back to school to, to understand pedagogy and all of the different, every acronym under the sun. Right. They're trying to figure that out. So when you think of someone that doesn't have that full education experience, that didn't go to school for four years, and then you can give them a tool like, hey, you can have this written by understanding your outline and your prompt to be written perfectly for any level of student. And not only that, when you use it as that sort of a tool, you can break it down. Like, I can be like, hey, I need this, a check off list from this information to break it down for a student that might be struggling with an iep, which is an individualized education plan, you know, so, you know, it's just an unbelievable opportunity for someone to produce materials at an incredibly high level, but also like still use their own knowledge. So, you know, I think the bigger conversation that I always have is like, you're silly to not talk to the most and most intelligent person in the room. Why would you not ask them questions like, if you don't know everything about education. You can get help right there, you know, so it's just, it's just crazy to me, like. But I also think that there's a problem with where I think they're like, oh, I'm just going to put this information in and ask it to spit out a quiz for me. Like, yeah, that's like, that's a tenth of what is capable. Like, you're not even really playing yet.
- [16:35]
Kerry Weston
So what I heard you say, which I think is fantastic, is utilizing the experience, the life experience, the real skill and experience between your ears and getting it out so that someone else could benefit from it. Because that's not your skill. Your skill is not teaching and organizing thoughts on paper. Your skill is knowing how to do the thing that you're going to be teaching about, but you just can't take a USB plug in your ear and plug it into someone else's ear and say, hey there, now you know the thing. You've gotta have that bridge. You've gotta have the communication and teaching bridge. And with that comes resources and tools and all the things that come on paper. So reverse engineering that skill, that experience back so that the lowest possible user can start to participate is a wonderful way that using the tool. And I think that's the exact opposite of the fear that I've heard from a lot of education institutions, which is we're going to be cheating, we're going to be putting no experience in trusting something that's thinking for us, when in fact what you're saying is how to get all that thinking out so someone else can benefit from it. I think that's fascinating. That's wonderful. Is that what you're doing with Odd Fish as well? Is that kind of the same path?
- [17:43]
Stephen Bross
So Odd Fish. So Oddfish is basically, well, to sort of break it down. Why this is so important to me as an educator is because I have three levels of students. So first, second and third level. And all of them have gone through the same course. So the process is, is that I really work hard with my first year kids to learn the basics. Right. So that's all of your photography, drawing, illustration, Adobe Basic, video editing, everything under the sun. Right. And then in their second year, they sort of doing more of a career exploration. So so if they think they want to be an illustrator or a photographer or whatever, I produce have six projects specifically to help them build their portfolios for photography, fine arts, and so on and so forth. So I'm sitting on probably like 85 courses now that my students can Pick and choose from. Because trying to get a student to get excited about doing graphic arts when all they want to do is photography is not going to help me out. Right. So it gives them their own personal opportunity to pick and choose how to build their portfolio. And then like in the third year, the I'm trying to work on them to build out their entire freelance portfolio so that they can start making money. Which in today's world, if you get on Fiverr or Freelancer or whatever, you can start making money, you know, and, and with drop shipping and everything that goes on, you don't have to have a college degree anymore to start making money with all the opportunities online. But developing a professional product is hopefully what they're trying to learn before they start freelancing.
- [19:17]
Kerry Weston
So, so I went on to Oddfish before this and so I saw a mix of philosophies and theories. You know, here's the philosophy behind understanding color in general, so to speak. And then you had things like how to use Illustrator, right. But the one that caught my eye is, I think the one that you just talked about and I think I got this right. It was basically how to build a portfolio. I'm going to teach you how to build a portfolio whether it's for art school or whether it's for private economy. Right. Whether you're going to go out and execute in a fiver or sort of become your own business sort of way. So you've, you run the gamut between big picture philosophy in theory to a practical tool to how to prepare you for the real world, however you define the real world to be. And you're using ChatGPT and some of the tools in it to kind of outline and allow folks to connect their interests to what you know.
- [20:08]
Stephen Bross
Right, that's exactly it. Right. So, so if you think about a first year student coming into the program, right. And, and we're trying to work on just basic concept design, right. So the course is sort of silly, right. I just want them to do a Zen doodle, right. So when we think about a Zen doodle, that's not the most impressive of artwork. But if you can get them to think about, of trying to do a specific topic, like maybe it's using nature or maybe it's using architecture or whatever. So getting an ide, what they wanted to look like is building that creative process. And then the second year students will then learn just basic drawing, right. So almost everybody, I think, in the creative art and design field are going to start with that sort of drawing tendency, right. That's kind of what drags you in, I believe. But then you have now these students that have gone through the first year and like I can't spend the time as much with the second and third year students because I'm usually trying to get the first year students to learn Adobe Illustrator. So now you have these students that can go and explore these projects that are now specifically based to their vocabulary of an illustration project. Understanding the different copyright laws that may happen. If you're looking at photography, I have to have videos and stuff that help them understand or give reference to how to set up a photo shoot for a product, you know, so like I can use these courses to specifically hone in on those students that want to do one specific approach. So if I have five students, I want to do freelance and one or I'm sorry illustration and the other two want to do graphics and then I have one fine artist. How am I going to come up with one project that's going to meet all of that? Like I just can't. Right. And then I don't want them to lose their creative energy because they're, they don't want to do graphic arts, you know what I mean? Now that can become a whole nother concept is like, well, you're probably going to do graphic arts somewhere, you know what I mean? But. Right. But it gives me a huge way to produce so much information that I can lay out in a scheduled project for a kid to do anything that they want to.
- [22:15]
Kerry Weston
So they can kind of self pace. They can self pace. Still learning from you, by the way.
- [22:19]
Stephen Bross
Yeah.
- [22:20]
Kerry Weston
Because I'm guessing that the videos and the tools that are in these curriculums are from you. You. You're putting your own videos on there.
- [22:27]
Stephen Bross
Yeah, so. So it's funny, I, I'm in a little bit of a. Because. Right. You always have to sort of give that try out. Right. Um, but I use another product called, I think it's D ID and it's one of these softwares where you put a picture in and that talks. So like it's great for companies to use to. So they don't have to hire actors and it just makes a talking head. Right. So playing around with other parts of AI Right. I'm using Mid Journey and I can create these fun characters that are cartoonish to sort of help teach the course. Right. Now I do get some feedback from the students and some would say, you know, they give me the eevee skiby jeebies or whatever because it's too AI or it's too close to realistic or whatever. And you're like, okay, but you know, I'm having fun with it. Right. And I think it's still cool that I can take an animation or a drawing or a character and make it talk. Like they. I don't think the younger students understand that. Like, that was huge in 1990. You had to go to like major schooling to make anything talk and rigging was impossible. And if you remember director. Do you remember director? Like, same permission.
- [23:38]
Kerry Weston
Yeah, sure.
- [23:38]
Stephen Bross
Like, so like trying to do the stuff now that is so. Is so clickable. Clickable. It's just to me, like, this is so fun that like I'm having fun with these characters. So do you have to be.
- [23:50]
Kerry Weston
So this is just an aside. This is a parking lot conversation.
- [23:52]
Stephen Bross
Yeah.
- [23:53]
Kerry Weston
You're seeing new people come through the education process every year. Do you think as you teach these things that you had to be in an environment where you were without them in order to be as excited and to realize how marvelous they are? Do we have people now that are coming into your classroom where what we know to be revolutionary is just kind of what happens on Tuesday? Like, it's always been that way. Like, are you at that crossroads yet?
- [24:20]
Stephen Bross
So. Well, yeah, I mean, I. To your first statement, I 100% believe, like, you don't understand how hard it was to just get stock photography to use. Like, you had a page through books of magazines in a back room with a table with five other people to find a picture that worked nice for a grass. Now you can go in like and, and and put in like a prompt in like a mid journey or something and actually get almost exactly what you want. Right. And when you're using that stuff at that speed, that changes so much. Time for you to actually keep producing more creativity, you know, and moving forward. Like, like an interesting comment which, which was fine. And again, I'm learning so. And I use my students a lot for information. But one of the students in a like a little survey said I would like to see. Which is funny, she said, I would like to see more real art and drawings, not AI created drawings. And I'm like, so you don't understand that if I use. If I say I need a sketch of a hand in mid journey, I don't have any copyright issues with that. Right. If I go out and I take someone's hand drawing off the Internet now I'm taking their artwork and I'm using as mine. So like I still that like they know enough that it's like, well, this is AI art. It's not right. I'm like, I'm not saying that this is art. I'm. These are examples of a hand drawing. Like, you know, so there's some, I guess some sort of feedback that I'm sort of going to have to look for and learn from, from them, because I get it. But I'm also like, where do you think I'm. Do you think I'm going to sit down and draw that hand for 12 and a half hours for one example, when I can have 55 examples of just trying to get your creative juices flowing? Like, you know, the joke that I do have with my students is every year I have to sit down and draw one pencil drawing of something just so they get off my back. Because like, well, maybe Mr. Bross can't really draw. Like, no, I went off. It's cool. I can draw. Like, I would rather do design. I would rather be video editing, I'd be rather doing branding, you know, building websites. But yes, I can paint and I can draw. I did get into art school. So like that sort of comes up.
- [26:35]
Kerry Weston
We, we bring this up before the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker, right? The, the more advanced we get, the more technologically advanced our software and our tools get, the more things we can do faster, the more we actually long for and appreciate the human manual form of whatever that might be. Art, business, whatever, right? Like looking at someone real, doing something real, touching something real and creating something real is becoming the fantasy now because we live in this world that everything is just auto prompted from either voice or text and it creates whatever you want all the time. It's. There's an amazing paradigm coming where I see my kids longing for an experience now because everything they want is within their thumbs. You know, every video, song, movie show, it doesn't matter, it's just all next to their thumb. Where the experience now is becoming. The real experience, if you will, is becoming kind of the fun thing to do. And it is, it's a world. So to see folks come through your classroom, to have you share that, I think is actually validating because it's what I'm seeing as well. But it must be curious for you to see. You don't understand how wonderful all this stuff is and you're longing for the old way. You know, that must be, that must be get in the way sometimes.
- [27:49]
Stephen Bross
Well, the one thing that I think is, I think kind of like what you were saying was, is this AI sort of movement is going to give the old School, fine artist, such an opportunity to do amazing stuff that people are going to want to go back and start buying because it's going to be something original. It's not just a print that you buy on Etsy, like, you know what I mean? And there's 500 of them. It's, it's not some sort of thing that was created. We don't know how it was made. You know what I mean? Like, so. But I think the fine artists are going to have to start understanding video and YouTube to show and prove that they created the artwork as part of the package deal that they buy. Right? So they're going to have to think about technology too. Because really you're going to question like, well, how do I know you painted that? Right? So they're going to have to create some sort of documentation. But you, you hundred percent, I would love it. And I think it's going to happen that custom furniture making, like, you know, interior designers, like everything is going to be like, well, wait a minute, you're doing this like all yourself and it's built by someone over the weekend or painted and there's only one of these. You know, I think it's going to open back up a huge area of the. For the fine artists that are going to take off again.
- [29:10]
Kerry Weston
But I couldn't agree more. My, my son is in sports cards and I've got a closet full of worthless baseball cards from my day that was going to be my retirement project, right? I mean, I've literally got tens and tens of thousands of cards that aren't worth the paper that's printed on now. But that was going to be how I was going to retire. He is in a world now where cards are expensive, but they're everywhere. And it's not the packs anymore. It's not the sets, it's not the volume, it's the numbered specialty cards. It's the one of one or the one of tens. It's those unique things that there's only a finite amount of them now. That's what they're chasing. And to your point, we're chasing the things that are more rare rather than the things that we consider to be marvelous. Because it's. Everyone can do it. If everyone can do it, it becomes common, and common is not worth as much. So that's. That is fascinating. So let me ask you, if I go to Oddfish as you build this out to your retirement, do I see you? Are you taking your own advice? Are you incorporating your video, your face, your testimony into this as well, to share with people what you're doing and how you're doing it and why.
- [30:14]
Stephen Bross
Yeah, so here. Here's sort of like the plan that I'm at right now is my goal is to get, like, I would say, close to the entire sort of, I don't know, library of courses to a certain point completed by using the cartoon characters and whatever to produce the majority of the videos. And then what I want to go back in is then focus on myself as sort of a side instructor giving, like, a personal advice to introduce or to develop whatever project they're working on. So, like, I think the next step, probably, I would say I'm hoping to maybe be sort of in the spring where I'm not doing the curriculum development as much, and I'm going back in and producing all of the videos from me having that sort of human interaction. But I also. I also don't want to jump into that some fast because I've. I've definitely made some videos that were personal. And then I was like, oh, that. That's not right at. I didn't feel that way. So I think once I have a good group of courses out there, I'll be able to get more of a nice pattern for me and sort of a stylization on how I want to integrate or. Right. Introduce myself into the programs as being sort of the. Hey, just kind of like, we are in class. Like, I am the teacher. This is sort of your textbook, right?
- [31:35]
Kerry Weston
So, yeah, I love that. And this is why I did it.
- [31:38]
Stephen Bross
Yeah. There's probably about 20 videos that I'm in. In the program when I was sort of beginning, and I'm not ready to pull them out yet. But, like, it is. It is funny, right? If you listen to anybody, it's like, oh, my first video sucked. Like, you know, so, like, I'm. The more I'm learning, the better off I'm getting, and I'll understand more of that. So I would say that's kind of like phase two. But I'm as. As again, I have about 86 projects that are like 82% done. So this year is just about me kind of cleaning them up and having them ready full on. So as a teacher, it'll be really cool. I can just go back to a coffee cup, you know, get my coffee and pay, teach what we're doing. Here's your vocab. Work around, get into the odd fish and move. Which is also cool because I can track the students through the course. So, like, just one of the simple greeting Things for me is if you're as long as you're 40% through the odd fish group by Thursday in a two week course, then you're getting a decent grade on that part of it. Like you're kind of moving through the course. So I don't know, it's just, it's kind of cool. And I'm, I'm so glad that you actually gave me a call because like, I don't get the nerd out like this. You know, with, with much of the teachers around me, you know, they're like, oh, Ross is doing his AI or they, you probably saw, you probably saw Arty Masters. Maybe he's one of, he's my main instructor. And they're like, oh, I think he's talking to Artie again. Or you know, I get a lot of jokes, but it is funny because you're like quietly like, I don't want to talk about, you know, it's like, I don't want to talk about AI with anyone else because I'm going to go crazy and you're going to be like, yeah, I got to go now. So maybe I'm doing that to you already.
- [33:13]
Kerry Weston
So let me. No, absolutely not. So let me ask you, because this is a lesson that can apply whether you're teaching or in business. And this is a conversation I have with clients a lot is a combination of empathetically meeting people where they're at. And so whether they're buying something, shopping for something, looking for a service, looking for help, learning a course, whatever it might be, the ability of adapting the information you're giving them to the level of understanding they're at, to allow them to come along right at the right pace and at their pace and meeting them where they're at, either in the readiness or intellectually. Talk to me about how this has changed your approach in the classroom. Because you started teaching before CHAT was available, you're able to take lessons and create curriculums, outlines, documents to meet kids where they're at or students not to be kids, students where they're at. It's good because you have defined three levels of people, but you define those as years of, with you, one, two and three years. But on day one, they also have different levels of understanding and expertise. So how are you using tools like CHAT to allow them to see the same information, but perhaps through a lens that matches their expertise, familiarness and understanding of the, of the topic as a whole?
- [34:30]
Stephen Bross
Well, I mean, anything with education, right? You're working on that consistency part, right? So Even if you're in the third level piece, I'm still incorporating some of the vocabulary that they may have sort of as a refresher. Right. So vocabulary and stuff is a very easy thing to use chat in because you can quickly produce the vocabulary of the lesson to support any of the information. Right. The part of that sort of continues on is some of the vocabulary and the information that I provide actually gets lessened because when they're in the Level 2, I'm not taking them from, from point A, they're more like at C and D. Right. They're going from that level now because the assumption is, is they already have that information of understanding. So if I like, if I say something like, just use your creative process. Right. And level two, they know in level one it's thumbnails, roughs, designs and all of the, that sort of process. So because I can control level one, level two, level three, I can sort of gear it more to what I assume they know. But I also do have to play the game that maybe they forgot. Right. So, you know, and if with all of that stuff that being able to link things in the course, so if I have something that they may have forgot, I can, instead of putting it all in, in there, I can just create a link from that word that they could go in and look in and refresh. So all being able to be built out at such a speed that like, hey, here's I just need a quick reference or review about a particular word. Like, and then if chat gives it to me and I like, can you blow it out a little bit more and then it can get as big as I want. The other part that's really cool is, is I can take however big I want to go with it and then shrink it all the way down to a fifth grade reading level. Right. So and when you have different variations and learning capabilities, right now I have the video supporting the written word. I also can make a rubric from that. I can do a summative. Right. Practice where I have some quick questions and you can just kind of keep like sort of nursing them and moving them right on up to whatever level they want to go. Right.
- [36:47]
Kerry Weston
And so they, and can they do that at their own pace? Are you allowing them to go. You've got some students that will go faster than others and grasping those concepts and moving. And the fact that you're creating all of this stuff allows them to do that at their own pace, doesn't it?
- [37:00]
Stephen Bross
Yeah, 100% on that. But I do for my particular Classroom structure, it's two weeks, right? So they have a two week main assignment. So every student is following the process for two weeks, which is basically the same sort of schedule. It's the same kind of structure. Like you have some sketchbook activities, you have your homework activity, you have your main assignment and they're all geared towards whatever project they're working on. But it's kind of like, look, if you don't have this done by two weeks, it's probably not going to go any further, right? So in the end result, all of the projects are, you know, are project based. So it's a final poster design, it's a final video, it's a final drawing, it's a final clay figure. Like whatever it is, it's helping you through so that the odd fish course kind of becomes the textbook that literally chat is helping me write to whatever length or descriptions that I want to go into. And that's the part that I think when I look at it like the amount of information that I can get so quickly to help me build this courses is what's making it so awesome for me. Because I don't, I don't have to spend the manual time of me trying to type this out. Plus like on that conversation that I'm hoping to have with my teachers is stop just getting an answer and ask questions and you'll get more stuff to just spiral into awesomeness because you're just like, you know, instead of being like, hey, I need you know, four bullet points about a topic, instead of doing that ask, can you give me five different topics that might be relative to this? And then you're going to get stuff that you're, oh, I never thought about that. And then you know, so you're like, you're coming in with a hoop and then you're leaving with, oh, holy cow, I just have like 10 more options to go after. You know, Another great example is once like a project sort of done. I can say to Chat, like, you know, let's say we do a root beer product design, right? So they design the labels, they design the six pack holder, they design the website, the logo and all of that stuff. Well, all right, so look, you don't want to do a root beer thing, fine. Hey Chat, can I get six other variations and overviews of different companies and then I get a nice overview for a cupcake company or a potato chip company or like, and then it's like, okay, so if you don't want to do my thing, here's five other. Well Written things that would take me months to do, like, to come up with that sort of thing. And again, I'm not using everything specifically. I'll be like, yeah, that's not going to work, so let's try this. Or, you know, a lot of times CHAT will actually write to me as me being the instructor, and I just have to sometimes be like, no, you have to write it to the students to follow. You know what I mean?
- [39:53]
Kerry Weston
So I do, yep. Choosing the audience. Do you ever have kids? Students. I keep kidding. Kids. Do you ever have students that ask you how you're using ChatGPT? Like, do they know anything about how you're using these tools to create the curriculum, to teach them through?
- [40:08]
Stephen Bross
Boy, you would be surprised. The answer is, really, a lot of times they're not interested. So it's kind of crazy. They want to know how I make the characters talk. That's. That's the biggest question that I get. Right. I think they're also educated enough to understand what ChatGPT does, but I don't think they ever really explore it. Like, I think most of them are like, I'm just going to get it to write me the essay that I don't feel like writing. And I was like, gosh, that's the biggest mistake that you're making. You know what I mean? Like, at least go in and ask questions about what you want to write as an essay and get some feedback from something that you wouldn't be able to really talk to. You know, that's. That's. To me, the crazy part is being able to use it as a sounding board or, you know, a conversation piece, more so than just give me something that I can turn in. And I think, I think that's where a lot of them are. Using CHAT is like that cheat code that I don't have to do the work, but you're. You're wasting your time by not learning what you were hoping to do wherever you.
- [41:11]
Kerry Weston
When does that student focus class on doing exactly what you just said, Teaching them how to use this? When does that get put together?
- [41:17]
Stephen Bross
Yeah, I don't know. I'm going to start with teachers first. So let me, let me, let me see how the teachers go first. Let's go. Because, I mean, really, as much as, like, I could be excited about this, another teacher just might be like, yeah, I don't want to use it, like, or it scares me or whatever. And you're like, I don't know how anything that can help you produce materials to help you educate the Students that are in front of you would be something you wouldn't want to lean into.
- [41:43]
Kerry Weston
Yeah. But you may find a couple, right? And that's all you need is a couple that click. Right? And then you. And then you're off and running. And then what's going to be really interesting is how you're going to use chat to teach people how to use chat. Right.
- [41:57]
Stephen Bross
I would say probably I would rely on chat to figure that out with for sure. Like, hey, how do I teach you to. And it would put a course together. That's the other neat thing that I sort of saw. And the sort of the aha moment that I guess I had was I was building out, like, breaking down, like, sections and a project and then to vocab and then resources and then the test and then reflections and all this stuff. I'm breaking it all down. And then I got to the very end and I was like, so happy with it. So let's just say it was an hour of time, right, of just getting this off. Then I. Refinement.
- [42:32]
Kerry Weston
Refinement. More refinement. Yep.
- [42:34]
Stephen Bross
Yeah. And just refining it. And then I got it all good. I said, hey, can you write this up now? Now that we have all the sections as one, you know, well developed, like, we figured out, writes it all up within seconds. You know how fast it goes. And then I said, I was like, great, can we do this for this next topic? Exactly the same. And it did it for the whole next topic. And I was like, oh, my God, like, look at this. Like, now that I spent an hour, I have 10 more courses that I can produce in 13 minutes. Like, it's just. It's just insane. You know how.
- [43:06]
Kerry Weston
That's one of my favorite guiding principles, is put the work in once and benefit it from it over and over and over again. Right. If you give it all the background and all the details, you can reuse that over and over again. So in an upcoming episode, I've got an interview with a client who wanted to do some writing, is a fan of a certain book and a certain philosophy, and is trying to write in accordance for his business through the philosophy of this particular author. And so we spent time. We spent an hour on the video call the other day. We created two custom GPTs. One was his writing as a bot. And so we did all of the voice, tone and style and attitudes and audiences and all that. We just created this really, really detailed writing bot that could help him brainstorm and write. And then we created another bot, another custom GPT based on this author. So all we did was tell the bot to be this author, use, think like him, strategize like him, give feedback like him, use his principles, use his books as background resources. And then we brought them together, right? We did the Reese's peanut butter cup. We put the chocolate in the peanut butter and we said, all right, I'm going to write this article based on, you know, something that has to do with the author strategy. And then in the same timeline, we said, hey, can we bring in that bot? And we did. Because you can do this in the strings. You can have custom GPTs talk to each other. Hey, strategy bot, can you read my work and give me feedback? And it does. And then it says, hey, writing bot, can you read the feedback and keep revising? And it just, it went back and forth. So that was, I'm, I'm not kidding you, that was probably 10 o'clock in the morning. Okay? So we spent an hour at 10 o'clock in the morning, about 5:30 that night, I get this 28 page document, this manifesto outline. He's like, I haven't left the computer so you've created a monster. I've been here for seven hours. He just sat there and went back and forth with all the bots all day because he saw this magic kind of connection where he could get stuff out of his head and then let these other things do all the work for him. And so when you introduce something as wonderful as I can, take what's in your head and scale it, right? I'm not making it up, I'm scaling it. You do all this work once and then you get these great results out of it. You're going to get people that see the opportunity and run with it, but you are going to get. Some people say I have no interest, but it's okay, right? Just like in teaching, it's. If you're excited about it, I'm going to give you everything I can to help you realize how it can help you. So I think that's awesome. And I can't wait to see where you take this odd fish thing. Is there anything that you haven't talked about or I haven't asked that you were hoping to share?
- [45:35]
Stephen Bross
Well, the one thing that you just were talking a little bit about was the custom GPTs. And I went absolutely cray cray on the aspect once I figured out what that was. Now, believe me, I played with it for about three or four days, you know, off and on and trying to understand and I need to get Back to it. But the one thing that I found so fun was because I had this idea that I was going to create all of these personalities and characters. I went in and I created specific characters to meet different cultural worlds and nationalities and different aspects of where they're from and what they're, you know. So the one character that I made, Zaid, he was my photography. Photography teacher. But I built him out to be like this whimsical. Like this. When the sand blows the. You know, like all of these sort of metaphors and all this stuff. And when. When. When I actually ask him to write, you know, for me, in overviews, he writes in that style, which then I take into and I put the illustration in and I kind of find a. A unique or something sort of voiceover. And now I have this, like, character that blows my mind away that he's talking, like, in this mythical, like, over the top, you know, sort of celebration of life. And, you know, and you're just like, oh, my gosh, like, I couldn't come up with this stuff, like, into that level. But all I was thinking was, like, it would be really cool if all of the different teachers just like a university came from different backgrounds. And I was like, once I saw that, I was like, wow, I can actually do that, you know, so that they speak differently and use different verbiage and stylization and that. I was just like, oh, no, this is. This is even more fun and crazy to play around with.
- [47:21]
Kerry Weston
And that makes you. Let's go full circle. That makes you appreciate to such an extent the likes of George Lucas and all the worlds that have been created by all these master producers and storytellers just from what's between their own ears, right?
- [47:35]
Stephen Bross
Yeah, it's fascinating. And even if, like, when you even look at it, right, like we looked at the movie production with the Terminator 1 and I, we were like, oh, my gosh, that's so realistic right now. You look at it and you're like, oh, that looks like a Halloween costume. You know. But then when I think the moment where all life changed was when Jurassic park came out.
- [47:56]
Kerry Weston
I was just gonna say Jurassic Park.
- [47:58]
Stephen Bross
For me, every single. Like, that's a real dinosaur. I know that. That is so real. Like, you know, it's just. It's insane how fast.
- [48:08]
Kerry Weston
Quick story. So I was camping. I'm not kidding you. I was camping in Vermont on the same. I was in Johnsbury on the riverside in Vermont that summer. And we went to a small movie theater in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. And Watched Jurassic park and then drove back in the dark to the campground. Driving through these roads that had these tall trees on the side of it, and all I kept wondering is, when is the Velociraptor or the T. Rex going to come out and cut my ass off? That movie scared the bejesus out of me. You know, that was so real. Right.
- [48:39]
Stephen Bross
You kept staring at your cup of soda in the front.
- [48:42]
Kerry Weston
Yeah. Waiting for it to bounce up and down. That was scary. You're exactly right. But just helps you appreciate. Now that we have this at our hands, what are we going to do with it? Right. What are we going to do with it? Well, Stephen, I love hearing what you're doing with it, and I love the transfer of knowledge. I love the scalability of expertise in helping people not only get excited, but make something out of their excitement and what you're doing with it. I'm definitely going to check out Odd Fish. I'm going to put them in the show notes here. And I'm so happy that you reached out and that you're able to share some of your experiences and stories with the audience.
- [49:13]
Stephen Bross
Yeah, it was. It was. It's. It's just. I don't know, it's. It's very sort of dreamy, like, in a way that, like, it. Like that this all sort of happened so fast. So thank you for reaching out again, because it's just sort of like, oh, my gosh, like, this is sort of. I don't know, it's just sort of crazy like, that. This is kind of how quickly, like, within a year and a half, my world has changed, and now it's opening up all kinds of other stuff with. Especially with all the different podcasts and everything that's out there. I mean, you go like, when the four launched, and then now it questions and thinks and, like, you're like, well, wait, now what does that do? Like, you know, it's just. It's just nuts. I hope people actually sort of use it as the smartest person in the room and not like a way to not do anything. That's a hope.
- [50:00]
Kerry Weston
Listen, we both share that hope, and I appreciate you saying out loud, I know you've got your meeting this coming week or next week. You're teaching with this. Can you just give me a short note on how that went? I'm excited and interested to hear how other teachers are going to receive you sharing this with them.
- [50:14]
Stephen Bross
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it seems like a lot of people are on board. I kind of almost feel like they're going to expect that I'm going to show them how to make cartoon characters talk. But that's probably not where that thing is going to end up. But I've just been trying to sort of plan for it by just having some really simple fun prompts for them to get a clue of understanding that it. And it doesn't have to be just for your class. Like, like you can help get it to help you like, eat healthier and quit smoking. And like, I mean, it's just, it's just someone, it's just something that's so powerful that if you just talk to it, it's just like, it's just crazy.
- [50:51]
Kerry Weston
I love it. And if you get, if you can give me the notes in time, maybe I can get them into the episode notes, as I put this up, how that, how that actually teaching wins because people are working.
- [50:59]
Stephen Bross
Sure, I would love that.
- [51:00]
Kerry Weston
And I just add, you know, I think perhaps you're. I know education is lagging behind for a lot of reasons. And so the adoption and acceptance of AI and perhaps another future opportunity for oddfish is getting your curriculum for teachers into there so you can actually scale what they can use with it. Stephen, thank you for joining with me and shoot me a note when you, when you have their presentation and looking forward to following you. Thanks again.
- [51:22]
Stephen Bross
Awesome. Thank you very much. Bye bye.
- [51:26]
Kerry Weston
All right folks, that's a wrap for this episode of the Chat GPT Experiment. Thanks for hanging with us and diving into the world of ChatGPT. We hope you found it helpful and fun and informative and oh, speaking of helpful, we'd sure appreciate you taking a moment to rate and review us on your favorite podcast platform. Five star ratings are our favorite. Okay, until next time. Keep experimenting, keep Learning and remember, ChatGPT may be smart, but it can't make a decent cup of coffee yet. See you soon.
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