# Campfire Session — Running a PD

Discover how to lead effective educator training in this campfire session on running a PD, covering Flint demos, hands-on strategies, and rollout tips.

Jacob Edington, Head of Customer Success at Flint

In this **Running PD with Flint** Campfire Session, we focused on how to design and lead effective [professional development](/content/professional-development/index.html) that helps teachers use Flint confidently, responsibly, and meaningfully in their classrooms. Framed as a **train-the-trainer** workshop, the session was tailored for instructional coaches, tech directors, PD leads, and school leaders rolling out Flint across their schools or districts.

Content covered in this session includes:

- **Context-setting on AI in education,** drawing on recent articles from Education Week and Brookings to frame current AI trends, the “AI hype” cycle, and the growing demand for practical, high-quality PD around AI tools.

- **A “Flint for Beginners” PD outline**, including how to introduce Flint, explain core concepts (chats vs. activities), and structure a first training session that balances demonstration, Q&A, and hands-on time.

- **A “Flint Leveling Up” PD outline** for more experienced users, with a focus on better prompting practices, improving existing activities, and helping teachers move from experimentation to more intentional, high-impact use.

- **Live demonstrations of building and refining activities**, including brainstorming in chat, converting chats into activities, previewing sessions as a student, and using rubrics with teacher-controlled grading.

- **Strategies for hands-on PD activities,** such as having teachers duplicate and adapt [public library](https://app.flintk12.com/public/library) activities, experience them as students, and then revise them to fit their own subjects and classrooms.

- A deep dive into **Groups and Gradebook** as the backbone of classroom use, highlighting how teachers can organize classes, track submissions, review grades, and use group-level settings to support differentiation.

- **Use of analytics for instructional insight**, showing how teachers and leaders can surface class strengths and weaknesses, review flagged content, and prompt Sparky for summaries that inform instruction and follow-up PD.

- Examples of how Flint can support roles beyond classroom teaching, including librarians, counselors, and school leaders who use activities and analytics for guidance, feedback, and broader school initiatives.

- **Practical rollout tips for successful Flint PD,** such as preparing teacher accounts in advance, leveraging [Flint 101](/content/flint-101/index.html), mixing departments during PD, and building in time for collaboration and real-world planning.

- **Guidance on addressing skepticism and hesitation about AI,** including talking points around academic integrity, cognitive development, responsible use, and how Flint supports rather than replaces teacher expertise.

Slides from the presentation can be found [here](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1hcnz5nLkHL2uqgGS3ZSIl1YZDdRjdcquVAj_PdvKofU/edit?usp=sharing).

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#### **Introduction • 00:00**

- Jacob introduces the session and agenda.

#### **Ice-breaking news • 01:24**

- Discussions reference article from Education Week and the AI glow weariness, highlighting need for both student and staff preparation.

#### **Training the trainer overview • 07:29**

- Jacob reviews what will be covered in the campfire session, including PD structure, key talking points, interactive strategies.

#### **Flint PD for beginners • 08:57**

- Sparky enables quick activity creation by starting from a chat brainstorm and auto-generating a prebuilt Flint activity.

#### **Flint PD for leveling up • 15:12**

- The trigger for converting a chat into an activity is explained as a conversational or in-chat process, with proactive conversion capabilities clarified.

#### **Seeing Flint in action • 32:36**

- A live demonstration of using the public library; teachers select and duplicate activities, then customize them for their class.

#### **Best practices for Flint professional development • 43:42**

- Jacob discusses collaboration structures within sessions, recommending cross-department seats and subgroups.

#### **Conclusion • 1:03:22**

- Praveen Rana raises concerns about controlling AI usage in classrooms and how Flint can regulate external resources, seeking guidance on implementation.