BOUNTIFUL—What’s the purpose of a TED talk? TED is a non profit that is devoted to the spreading of ideas – because ideas can change the world. That’s what brought community members together at TEDxBountiful held March 22, featuring a variety of short talks by five local speakers, Dr. Logan Toone, Julie Laub, Kate Olsen, Dr. Ray Ward and Kara Toone.

TEDx = independently organized event that “brings people together to share a TED-like experience.”

“Tonights event has been organized by community volunteers and speakers are all local Davis County residents,” said Emcee, Keaton Gerrard. “So they’re all people who live, work and lead in this community.”

“Part of the purpose of tonight’s event is to record these TED talks to send to TEDx to review and upload to their platform,” he said. “As you listen to these speakers, keep in mind that over 70 people applied to speak. So they’re the best of the best. They were chosen because they have amazing ideas, both of local importance and global importance.”

Dr. Logan Toone, Assistant Superintendent at the Davis School District kicked off the evening with “Parenting 2.0: Raising the First Generation of AI-Integrated Youth.”

“For decades we’ve been entertained by science fiction books and movies portraying sentient, intelligent computers taking over our lives and sometimes taking over the world,” said Toone. “We are obsessed with artificial intelligence and everything changed in November of 2022 when a company called Open AI released ChatCPT. Since that day a world of constantly shifting AI technology has been within our finger tips for all of us, including our kids.”

Toone said as an administrator in a school district he can say without a doubt that artificial intelligence is reshaping the classroom, perhaps as a microcosm for how it is reshaping the world. “Although I see the impact of AI every day in my professional life today, I’d like to speak not so much from my perspective as an educator, but rather from perspective as an aspiring, which is a nice way of saying, amateur parent.”

Every generation of adults has worried about their own next generation, he said. “Our great grandparents worried about our grandparents. Our grandparents worried about our parents, our parents worried about us and we in turn, worry about our kids.”

Parenting 2.0 requires talking often with your kids about the risks of engaging with others online, said Toone. “We need to set clear expectations and actively monitor our kid’s online interactions.”

Supporting children in the way they consume and share online information is critical, he said. “I am happy to say that the impact of AI technology is not all doom and gloom. Parenting 2.0 includes an upgraded optimism for the exciting and relatively unknown world that awaits our kids.”

Another speaker, Kara Toone, with the Davis Education Foundation, the nonprofit fundraising arm of the Davis School District, talked on the topic “Breaking the Cycle of Homelessness.”

“I have to observe that if we don’t do more to block the entry points to homelessness, we can expect to engage in mitigation efforts indefinitely,” she said. “If we were to actually reduce homelessness, we need to apply many more of our available resources to prevention.”

Davis Education Foundation has asked that question and is engaging in a groundbreaking experiment to answer it, Kara said. “It all centers on the idea that public schools and their surrounding communities are ideally positioned to stop homelessness before it ever really starts.”

First it’s important to understand that there are students in Davis School District already experiencing homelessness, she said. “If students are already homeless when they're attending public school, aren’t they already in the pipeline toward adult homelessness? The answer is ‘yes, they are.’”

But here’s where school can disrupt that cycle, said Kara. “Davis Education Foundation fund raised to build its first teen center in the Davis School District. Teen centers are spaces in high schools where at-risk and homeless students can access private showers and monitoring facilities, a place to study, food resources, transportation vouchers, clothing, academics, sports, etc.”

Homelessness is complicated, she said. “I don’t believe that there are any easy fixes. I do believe, however, that public schools and particularly the targeted programs that they are uniquely positioned to deliver, hold the key to stopping homelessness before it really starts. It’s within our power to do this now.”