graduate profile – Mike Paul

Google’s Stitch Update: “Vibe Design” and the Shrinking Distance Between Ideas and Tools

Google recently announced a major update to its experimental design tool, Stitch. If you haven’t heard of it before, Stitch is an AI-powered interface design tool—but this update signals something bigger than just new features.

Google is now describing Stitch as an “AI-native software design canvas”—a space where users can move from an idea to a high-fidelity interface using natural language, images, or even voice.

That shift in language matters.

What’s Actually New in This Update?

Stitch isn’t new, but this version pushes it in a different direction. A few highlights stand out.

First, Stitch is no longer framed as a traditional design tool. Instead of starting with wireframes or components, users are encouraged to begin with intent—what they want to build, how it should feel, and what it should accomplish. In practice, that means you can describe a goal and generate a working interface almost immediately.

Second, Google introduces the idea of “vibe design.” While the phrasing might feel a little buzzword-heavy, the concept is straightforward. Rather than trying to get a design right on the first attempt, users can explore multiple directions quickly and refine toward a stronger result.

Third, the updated Stitch includes a design agent that works alongside the user. This agent can reason across the entire project, suggest changes, and help explore different directions simultaneously. It shifts the process from step-by-step construction to something closer to collaboration.

Another notable addition is the introduction of DESIGN.md, an agent-friendly markdown file that captures design rules and structure. This makes it easier to move designs into other tools or continue development with AI systems without starting over.

Finally, Stitch now supports instant prototyping of user flows. Instead of static screens, users can connect interfaces and immediately experience how someone would move through the app. That ability to test ideas quickly changes the pace of iteration.

Why This Matters for Educators

At first glance, this might seem like a tool built for designers or developers. But the implications for classrooms are more immediate than they appear.

For years, we’ve asked students to design solutions to problems—create a product, propose an innovation, build something meaningful—but those ideas often remain abstract. They exist in slides, posters, or written descriptions.

Tools like Stitch begin to close that gap.

Students can take an idea—such as a tool to help track progress in Algebra 1—and generate a working interface in minutes. From there, they can evaluate it, revise it, and improve it. The work becomes more tangible, and the feedback loop becomes faster.

That shift from describing an idea to interacting with it has real potential to deepen thinking.

The Bigger Shift Underneath

What Stitch represents is part of a broader change in how creation works.

The more technical aspects of building—layout, structure, and basic interaction design—are increasingly handled by AI. That doesn’t eliminate the need for skill, but it does change where the most important thinking happens.

Instead of focusing primarily on execution, the emphasis shifts toward clearly defining problems, making intentional design decisions, and evaluating whether something is actually useful.

Those are the kinds of capacities we want students to develop, but they’re often overshadowed by the mechanics of building something from scratch.

A Quick Reality Check

This doesn’t automatically lead to better learning.

If we simply replace “make a slideshow” with “generate an app,” we haven’t meaningfully changed the task. The tool itself isn’t the innovation. The thinking behind how it’s used is what matters.

Used thoughtfully, however, tools like Stitch can support faster iteration, more visible thinking, and more authentic design work.

Try This in Your Classroom

If you’re curious about what this might look like in practice, you don’t need a full unit redesign to get started. A simple activity can open the door.

Start with a question tied to your content:

“What would a tool that helps students master this unit actually look like?”
“How could we design something that makes feedback more useful?”
“What would help someone learn this concept more effectively?”

Have students work individually or in small groups to:

Define the purpose of their tool
Describe the user (another student, themselves, a teacher)
Generate a design using Stitch or another AI interface tool
Review the result and critique it

Then push their thinking:

What works about this design?
What doesn’t?
What would you change to make it more useful?
How does it connect to what we know about learning?

The goal isn’t to build a perfect product. It’s to move students into a cycle of idea → prototype → critique → revision, which is where deeper learning tends to happen.

Final Thought

Google describes this update as helping users “close the gap from idea to reality in minutes rather than days.”

That may sound ambitious, but it reflects a real trend.

As that gap continues to shrink, the question for educators isn’t whether students can build things. It’s what we ask them to build—and whether those tasks are worthy of the tools now available to them.

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Sharpen Your Collective Spears: How to Write SMART Goals That Actually Move a PLC

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“In a world of infinite meetings, the scarcest resource is a goal people still remember after the coffee goes cold.”—my inner monologue every Tuesday at 7:45 a.m.

The bell hasn’t even rung when the dread kicks in. Our math PLC shuffles into a windowless room, walls plastered with mission statements no one can quite quote. The agenda glows on the projector—review data → craft SMART goal → adjourn—and someone opens last year’s spreadsheet. The cursor blinks like a taunting metronome:

Specific? “Raise Algebra II mastery five percent.”
Measurable? “Benchmarks track that.”
Achievable? “If the moon aligns with spring break.”
Relevant? “District said so.”
Time-bound? “May 15—graduation is May 16.”

Click Save. Google Drive adopts another orphan destined to be rediscovered—unfed and unloved—during next August’s in-service.

SMART ≠ Smart Enough

George T. Doran’s 1981 article introduced SMART as a managerial life-hack for middle managers drowning in vague memos. It worked because clarity beats wish-craft, so the acronym stuck. But teaching isn’t widget manufacturing, and a Professional Learning Community (PLC) is not middle management. Drop the vanilla acronym into a PLC and you often get tidy compliance—polite, forgettable, and incapable of nudging practice. (community.mis.temple.edu)

I’m not here to bury SMART; I’m here to jailbreak it. A goal that’s merely Specific and Measurable can still be pedagogically hollow. “Cover Unit 9 by Friday” is S-M-A-R-T and about as inspiring as a DMV form.

To make SMART sparkle inside a PLC, we have to graft it onto four live wires:

The Science of Learning & Development (SoLD)—brains toggle between threat and reward;
Connectivism—knowledge flows through networks, not warehouses;
Authentic learning anchored in your district’s Portrait of a Learner;
and the 4 Shifts Protocol, an instructional OSHA for deeper learning.

Flash these firmware updates onto the SMART scaffold, and the goal begins to breathe.

SoLD: Wiring the Goal to the Brain

Why does vanilla SMART sputter? Because it’s silent on how humans learn. SoLD research shows brains remain plastic when three conditions coexist: high challenge, high belonging, and obvious relevance. Stress without support drowns the prefrontal cortex in cortisol; stress with support sparks focus and growth. (soldalliance.org)

SoLD’s three non-negotiables translate into PLC design questions:

Do learners feel seen?
Is the work just beyond current mastery?
Can every brain tag the task as useful outside class?

Compare two drafts:

Vanilla — Increase correct factoring of polynomials by five percent.
SoLD-Tuned — By March 1, our Algebra II PLC will co-design three community-based modeling tasks—housing prices, local wage growth, skateboard trajectories—to lift correct use of multiple representations from 52 % to 75 %, measured by a shared rubric at a public expo.

The rewrite injects authenticity (local data), public exhibition (belonging + accountability), and the sort of demanding lift brains find exhilarating instead of paralyzing.

Connectivism: Goals as Network Packets

George Siemens argued that learning is less about what you know and more about how quickly knowledge flows through your network. In PLC terms, the nodes are you, your colleagues, that teacher on Instagram who posts slick Desmos hacks, and the treasure trove of lesson plans fermenting in Google Drive. A goal that stops at student data is a half-closed circuit—knowledge stagnates; momentum dies. (jotamac.typepad.com)

A network-savvy SMART goal spells out connection rituals:

a shared Drive folder where every lesson artifact lives;
a standing five-minute “What I tried this week” round-robin at each PLC;
a Friday Google Classroom prompt where teachers asynchronously swap feedback clips.

Bandwidth is a pedagogy. If the SMART statement doesn’t declare how the signal moves—from teacher to teacher and from student back to teacher—the circuit stays dark.

Authentic Learning & the Portrait of a Learner

Your district likely brandishes a glossy “Portrait of a Graduate”—creative problem-solver, compassionate collaborator, civic-minded innovator. Trouble is, many goals never leave the gated community of state standards; they measure skill fragments in lab conditions and call it progress. Authentic learning demands the opposite: skills unleashed in messy, consequential contexts, judged by audiences who care. Real-world stakes super-charge motivation and memory. (Edutopia)

That shows up in the Relevant clause. Instead of “aligns with KY Standard A2.Q.E,” try:

Students will design statistical dashboards for the city’s housing task force and defend their recommendations at a public forum.

Now the graduate-profile competencies are mission requirements, not hallway décor.

The 4 Shifts Protocol: Deeper-Learning Guardrails

Scott McLeod and Julie Graber’s 4 Shifts—deeper thinking, authentic work, student agency, technology infusion—work like a four-question crash test. Ask them of every draft goal: Does the task demand real cognitive wrestling? Will the product matter outside class? Do learners steer key decisions? Does tech amplify learning rather than merely digitize worksheets? If you answer “no” to any, keep writing. (dangerouslyirrelevant.org)

Most beige goals die on question 2: they yield products destined for the recycling bin, not the community or the Web.

Crafting Goals for PLCs, Not in PLCs

Here’s how our team writes without turning the meeting into a TED-style slog:

We walk in with evidence, not impressions—photos, student reflections, screenshots. We verb-hack mushy words like improve into verbs that signal complexity: design, simulate, defend. Every first-person singular becomes we—collective efficacy is grammatically plural. Before anyone clicks Save, we schedule two mid-cycle check-ins and agree on which artifacts (videos, drafts, rubric snapshots) will anchor them. Finally, we script a diffusion ritual—maybe a 60-second TikTok recap or a slide deck for the next faculty meeting. When sharing is baked into the goal, it doesn’t depend on hero-level willpower later.

A Full-Stack Example

Here’s a possible Algebra II goal :

By April 30, our Grade 10 math PLC will co-create, peer-review, and teach two interdisciplinary projects where students build interactive dashboards using local housing and wage data. At least 80 % of students will accurately interpret variability and propose actionable recommendations, judged by a shared rubric and showcased during a public “Data Night.” The team will meet every other Wednesday to iterate, store artifacts in a shared Drive folder, and survey students’ sense of belonging before and after the unit.

Break-down:

SoLD — belonging survey + public showcase.
Connectivism — Drive folder, peer-review rhythm, community data partnership.
Authentic Learning — city-council-relevant dashboards.
4 Shifts — deeper thinking (stats modeling), authentic work (public policy), agency (students choose variables), tech infusion (interactive dashboards).

The acronym didn’t change, but the genome inside is worlds away from “raise scores five percent by May.”

Dumpster Fires I’ve Authored (So You Don’t Have To)

I’ve written SMART goals that cratered spectacularly. Patterns emerge:

Input worship—“cover all twelve units” tracks what teachers do, not what kids learn.
Equity blindness—averages hide who’s drowning.
Ankle-high ambition—easy feels achievable, but starves growth.
Write-once, read-never—static goals in dynamic systems rot.

The fix is unglamorous: reopen the document, ask where belonging, relevance, or cognitive demand evaporated, and then rewrite.

Why This Matters More Than Benchmarks

A well-coded SMART goal has just two outcomes: teacher practice shifts and student cognition blooms. Everything else—acronyms, rubrics, meeting norms—is scaffolding. When a goal hits all four live wires, classrooms feel weird in the best sense. Students argue over data visualizations. Parents cheer on their children in Instagram stories from public showcases. Teachers trade spreadsheet formulas like favorite playlists. One morning, you realize no one’s counting ceiling tiles; everyone’s too busy debugging and learning in real time.

If that sounds utopian, remember: it’s biology plus bandwidth plus sentences you’ll actually reread. The brain loves hard problems in safe rooms. Networks love traffic. A SMART goal that guarantees both is no longer paperwork—it’s propulsion.

Your Turn

Open last year’s PLC folder, find the stalest goal, and run it through SoLD, Connectivism, authentic relevance, and the 4 Shifts. Rewrite until it hums like good sci-fi—plausible, provocative, people-centric. Then ship it. Invite your students, your admin, and your Instagram teacher circle to poke holes. Iterate. Repeat.

If this dive hit home, subscribe to The Eclectic Educator—my Friday dispatch where pedagogy meets punk rock—and forward this post to your PLC before the next calendar-driven time heist. Let’s make SMART stand for something again.

Oh, and you might want to pick up a copy of Read This Before Our Next Meeting, because most PLCs are 45-minute time vampires and this 90-minute read shows you how to turn them into fast, decision-driven sprints.

The Importance of a Graduate Profile

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Graduate Profile. Portrait of a Graduate. Portrait of a Learner. Three different names for the same thing.

A Graduate Profile is a set of competencies that define the “enduring skills” schools want their students to have when they graduate.

Why is it important to have a graduate profile?

Battelle for Kids, a thought leader in the Portrait of a Graduate space, released a report this year called “The Future of the Portrait of a Graduate” and shared this reminder:

I’ve often heard the Portrait of a Graduate or Graduate Profile referred to as the “north star” for our work, which is appropriate. Everything we do should align with our Graduate Profile as we prepare students for a future we can’t predict, but we can give them the skills for success.

Focusing on those enduring skills prepares our students for those changes we can’t see. Remember when no one knew about generative AI tools like ChatGPT? And now people are using those tools with great success!

“I say this often in regard to generative AI, but it’s worth repeating: Prior to the arrival of ChatGPT in November 2022, very few people had any hands-on experience in interacting with and using large language models. The people who are using them productively today are not trained in the specifics of generative AI but in ways of thinking that allow one to make use of the tool as an aid to the human work, rather than outsourcing our thinking to something that does not actually think or reason.” – John Warner, Inside HigherED

Always look to the future. As Wizard’s Seventh Rule tells us, “Life is the future, not the past.”

Redefining College & Career Readiness for Students

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Ask ten teachers what their job is, and you’ll receive ten different answers. However, most of them share the common goal of preparing the next generation of citizens. Yet, educators acknowledge that the world in which students will live and work will radically differ from the current version. Therefore, it is nearly impossible for the education system to prepare students for that future fully.

To address this challenge, educators often discuss the concept of “college and career readiness.” Being “college and career ready” means that students possess the skills to strategically and effectively apply their learning in various situations, enabling their success in both academic and work environments. This readiness extends beyond academic knowledge and encompasses essential skills such as resilience, mental health, and performance, which are crucial for adapting to an ever-changing future.

However, the focus on specific pathways for college and career readiness often stems from traditional educational structures and measures of success. There is a growing awareness that a one-size-fits-all approach may not suit all students, and personalized learning experiences are increasingly valued. It is important to recognize that success in the future will require adaptability and a broad skill set beyond academic knowledge.

To prepare students for an unpredictable future, we must move beyond traditional 20th-century learning practices and cultivate an updated skill set. This includes fostering strong learning and critical thinking skills and developing “human” skills that equip students to navigate an uncertain world. Moreover, it is crucial to view students as change-makers and provide them with opportunities to develop traits such as optimism and resilience. This preparation should involve nurturing creativity, encouraging exploration, and fostering a willingness to take risks. It is essential to equip students with the necessary skills and knowledge to progress steadily towards their goals.

However, it is important to acknowledge that a portion of the student population does not fit into the accepted mold of “college and career readiness” imposed by the system. These are the students who consider themselves artists, creators, inventors, and so on. They do not neatly fit into career pathways or college preparatory tracks, which are currently popular trends in high school education.

Regardless of our efforts, we cannot force these square pegs into round holes, or any other shape for that matter. Instead, we should explore ways for these students to create their own paths.

This is where personalized learning comes into play. Personalized learning is becoming increasingly important as it caters to the unique needs of each student, promoting progress at an individual pace. It empowers students to take greater ownership of their learning journey, leading to deeper learning, increased motivation, and improved relationships and communication skills. The implementation of personalized learning requires a shift from traditional classrooms to learning hubs, from a rigid curriculum to personalized pathways, and from a fixed pace to personalized progressions through cycles of inquiry. Creating personalized learning pathways for teachers and recognizing their competency in specific areas through micro-credentials is also beneficial. Additionally, online platforms can offer a range of activities that align with each student’s unique interests and strengths.

Personalized learning and the concept of graduate profiles contribute to a new perspective on career readiness by focusing on individual student strengths and interests. Personalized learning enables student-driven models in which students engage in meaningful, authentic, and rigorous challenges to showcase desired outcomes. This approach fosters skills like goal setting, time management, and the ability to navigate unpredictable obstacles, all of which are crucial for career readiness.

Graduate profiles outline the skills and competencies that a district or institution aims for its students to possess upon graduation. These profiles serve as a guiding principle for improvement efforts and reflect the collective commitment to equipping students with the skills necessary for personal success and meaningful civic engagement. By embracing personalized learning, graduate profiles, and similar concepts, we can better prepare students for their future careers in a rapidly changing world.

Backward Design and the Portrait of a Learner

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Education’s landscape is shifting, shifting from focusing on rote learning to fostering 21st-century skills like collaboration and self-awareness. This evolution is captured in the emerging concept of “Portraits of a Graduate” (POG), which underscores the skills vital for success in today’s world.

To navigate this shift, the “Portrait of a Learner” (POL) model, steeped in research from diverse fields, provides a roadmap. It highlights the importance of nurturing curiosity, critical thinking, and collaboration while emphasizing identity and belonging in the learning process. This approach is about understanding learners as they are and designing education that supports their holistic growth, ensuring they are equipped to thrive in a rapidly changing global economy.

More and more school districts are crafting Portraits of Graduate (POG) to highlight the core skills and characteristics they believe students need to be successful in a 21st century global economy. What many of these portraits capture is a distinctive shift away from content knowledge and towards the 21st century skills and dispositions that drive lifelong learning—things like collaboration and self-awareness. This mirrors research on the science of learning that demonstrates how learning includes social emotional processes and is driven by interactions between the learner and their environment. In education there is often a disconnect between what exactly we are trying to teach students, and why, especially as the goals of education are shifting.
Alison R. Shell and Jessica Jackson