Back in 2023, ISTE introduced the ed-tech world to Stretch, a chatbot just for K-12 educators.
Instead of absorbing information from the entire internet to train its artificially intelligent brain, Stretch would only learn on materials that had been developed or vetted by ISTE.
The group spent the past three years testing and refining Stretch with the help of a relatively small group of educators. Now the chatbot is ready for a wider audience.
Stretch—which can tailor its responses based on whether a user identifies as a teacher, coach, or administrator—will steer educators toward research-backed instructional practice, said Joseph South, ISTE’s chief innovation officer, at ISTELive 26 + ASCD Annual Conference, being held here June 28 to July 1.
“We’ve been concerned that a lot of the [AI] tools on offer to teachers are focused exclusively on increasing the efficiency of their work,” South said. “It’s great, but it’s not enough.”
If teachers are just “making true/false questions, the fact that they can make 100 of them in two seconds instead of 100 of them in two hours doesn’t get the pedagogy any better,” South added.
Stretch’s goal: To help educators create engaging lessons informed by strong instructional practice, South said.
The tool offers “great AI-generated, AI-powered answers based exclusively on our vetted resources,” South said. Without the tool, educators “would never be able to get through [ISTE materials] in a year of searching and clicking. Now those are all being served up to you with that AI intelligence to give you a specific answer for your specific” questions.
When ISTE leaders unveiled Stretch to reporters back in 2023, the bot, in responses to queries, sometimes provided answers that almost certainly weren’t covered in ISTE or ASCD’s materials. For instance, in response to a prompt intended to test the tool, Stretch offered up a chocolate chip cookie recipe. (ISTE’s trainers never fed Stretch cookie recipes—or cookies for that matter.)
Those disconnects shouldn’t be a problem with this latest version of Stretch, South said.
Stretch is also getting a Zen twist, South added. The tool will have a built-in wellness coach that can hook educators up with evidence-based strategies for tackling job stress, including breathing exercises and meditations. (Stretch is not a therapist, South stresses.)
“We have heard so much feedback that teachers are overwhelmed, that they’re burning out, that they’re struggling with their jobs,” South said. “They carry incredible burdens, and they do it with a lot of grace.”
The Cypress-Fairbanks school district in Texas will launch a pilot next school year to use Stretch with its educators, South added.
Stretch aside, AI tools have had a mixed track record in K-12 education. Sal Khan launched Khanmigo, an AI tutor for students, with great fanfare a few years ago, but later called its release “a non-event for most students.”
And Los Angeles public schools unveiled a custom-designed chatbot in March of 2024, only to have to have to turn it off five months later when AllHere, the company behind the tool, folded.
Why did it take three years to take Stretch from testing mode to ready for primetime?
“Building AI apps is not easy,” South said. “The technology platforms for these apps are changing incredibly rapidly. We had to re-engineer it several times to keep up.”
