Hello and thank you for joining the K-12 tech podcast. My name is Sean. I am your host along with Mike Hot Seller. Today we have Mike Daugherty of Chagrin Falls exempted village schools joining us. He’s a tech director over there, has been there for a few years. So, Mike, if you want to go ahead, introduce yourself and we’ll just kind of get the ball rolling.
Sure. Thanks, Sean. Yeah. Mike Daugherty, this is my gosh, it’s my 13th year here in Chagrin Falls. Been doing the edtech role now for 21 years in a variety of roles, everything from network break, fixed technician, network administrator, and then ultimately tech director or CTO spent some time coding, spent some time doing PD. So I feel like I’ve kind of been kind of run the gambit in terms of positions in a tech space.
So you’re literally a man of many hats at sugaring.
Many hats everywhere. It feels like early in the career was more it just we needed to do that, you know what I mean? A K-12, K-12 school couldn’t afford a developer. Now we can afford one now. But there were times where we just had to write software or code ourselves because there was no other way to do it. Same thing with PD and things like that. There just wasn’t options out there. You know, landscape has changed quite a bit in 21 years. So yeah, a lot of it was out of necessity more than anything else.
I would say the landscape is definitely changed, especially. I mean, it’s been I’m over our hyper drive the last three years, really. So I’m sure you know your roles from day to day have changed drastically from 2018 to now.
Yeah, it’s funny because one of the things that we did this year in chagrin was we started a flexible learning program and we’d actually been looking at that pre-COVID. So the idea was just to be more flexible with time. So maybe as a teacher you didn’t meet with need to meet with your students five days a week, you know, maybe you only had to meet with them face to face two days a week and the other three days could be opposite hours or take them to work on their projects. And at the time when we started talking about this in 2018, it seemed like super innovative. And then COVID hits and now it’s like it’s old hat, Internet mean, kids meeting virtually, kids not coming to class every day.
It’s almost a norm now. So, yeah, it’s definitely been a different couple of years. And I’m kind of excited, knock on wood, that things are getting back to normal and I should have a normal whatever normal is now school year going forward.
Yeah, absolutely. Well, fingers crossed. Right. That’s always the plan. And then, you know, working in school, things change from minute to minute, not day to day.
But yeah, it’s true. True. Anybody who’s ever sat in this chair understands that you can plan out your day. Like, I know before I walked in what I was planning to do today, and it’s why it’s 9:00. And I’ve already done two things that were not on the list, because that’s just how it goes. It’s a combination of just, you know, being a firefighter and then just being, oh, I’m sorry. The one downside, you can’t even add a bad one. The one downside of working at a high school is that I get bells, but know what I’m saying?
It’s just across the board. Every day is different. It’s why I love this job. There’s always something new again. Who knows what we’re going to tackle when you walk in? Because there are so many things at this point that are integrated with technology. It’s ridiculous.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, yeah, it’s it’s gotten crazy. And it will never go away from it either. Right. So once we’re here, we’re here. And I think that’s where we’re going to end up staying.
Sure. I mean, I remember early on, it was just keep the computers up and running, you know, and then, you know, then you started getting servers and then from servers, you started getting, you know, wireless and then 1 to 1 computing and then security cameras and HPC and access controls and all of it is now integrated into tech. So again, when I first started, I just had to keep desktops up and going. And now there’s this huge list of just all these things that flow under, you know, in and out of technology. So.
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Now, I’m going to give you a second to kind of toot your own horn here. So you said you’ve you have been in that chair for 13 years, correct?
Correct.
So in that 13 years, you have become fairly decorated as far as awards go in the technology world. If you want to talk about some of those awards you’ve received and kind of, you know, the steps you took to get them or what they mean to you or who they’re from or.
This is hard. I know we talked about talking about one way. Talking about myself is not something that we would get an award for. I’m not very good at this. So yeah. February 2016 Ohio Tech Using Administrator of the Year. That one was really all about a program that we did here with Chagrin, where we focused on getting everybody Google certified. So we were the first District nationally that I’m aware of that was able to get all of our teachers level one certified, Google Level one certified, which was awesome.
We were making a big transition to Google here. It was really important for us to make sure that all of our teachers had a baseline set of skills as we moved into this new world. So we had a program that between myself and our technology coach at the time that helped them get all level one certified. Not an easy accomplishment. That test was pretty daunting back in the day. And so, you know, that was really good. During COVID, I got one from the technology director of the year. That one was more focused on my work with Ohio Tech directors.
One of the things that we did in Ohio a few years back was we started a chapter of Coson, which is a national organization for K-12 tech directors and coaching, had a certification called the CIO, which stands for the Certified Educational Technology Leader. When we first started that chapter, I think we had I want to say there were four CEOs in Ohio. Part of my work with that side is and I’m really big into certification. I think this particular certification is a great groundwork for tech leaders and it really hits on all aspects of this job, not just the technical side. So I began offering 12-week study courses, which I would do with groups of tech leaders throughout Ohio. At this point now, four years later, Ohio has 75 CEOs. And we were actually just recognized by coaching national at their conference a few months ago for most number of CEOs and like an 18-month period. So all good things. But it’s all I mean, all that work is, again, related to kind of building up other people. That’s kind of the goal of our chapter. Even the things we do here. It’s all really about kind of raising the bar for tech leadership.
Yeah, that’s great. And I think that’s one of the big things, especially in education period, is always helping other people and building other people up, right? Whether you’re in an administrative role or a teaching role or working with other administrators or students, that’s the entire goal of education is to bring other people up and educate them on different things and make sure that they have the tools they need to do what they need to efficiently.
I think that’s what you see. And probably some of the most successful kids who are CTOs is they recognize their job is support. Like in the end, my job, even though it’s a leadership role, my job is to support the teachers and the mission and vision, and strategic plan of the school. So I think you see again, when I look at those people that are really successful at this, they figured that that out they figure it out that their job is really to help other people and build other people up.
It’s not about control. It’s not about, you know, I say this or you have to do that. No, it’s really about, hey, Sean has this great idea in his classroom. How can we make this work? Or this principal wants to do this amazing thing in the district. How can we make that work? Yes, there’s an aspect of it where, you know, we need to be safe and secure with our data and make sure that that threat actors are not making their way in. But in the grand scheme of things, we’re still trying to support those people and help them.
So I think what’s really cool about that too is, you know, talking about building up that network. We just spoke with someone a couple of weeks ago that mentioned your name. And I was like, oh, how like, how do you know? Like and it was all through I think it was, I believe was chosen. And I was like, well, it’s really cool. Like, you guys are states away and you still know each other just from having that network, of tech directors.
Yeah. Which is, which is great because I know specifically who you’re talking about and it’s awesome to be able to bank ideas on other people. So one of the problems that we’ve seen even in the state of Ohio is, you know, the issues that might be plaguing me in northeast Ohio. May be completely different than the issues that people are dealing with in Southwest or Central. So it’s nice to have that internal network of state leaders, but then also being able to reach out to other states like Indiana, Delaware, Texas has a big consortium being able to reach out to those people and say, Hey, how are you dealing with this? Or even, you know, all of our schools are made up slightly different. So, you know, what are the hot issues that you guys are dealing with right now? What can I expect to be coming down the pike? It’s phenomenal.
And I would say probably a big part of that network, especially in the last couple of years, was dealing with, hey, how are you guys getting devices? Or have you heard about, you know, the availability of devices or how are we going to integrate, you know, virtual learning into a program that’s been essentially brick and mortar for the past however many years? And I have to imagine that having that network was incredibly helpful.
Oh, it’s amazing. I mean, no plans to my other friends out there. But, you know, during all of this, when when you started to hear about supply chain issues and how a lot of schools who weren’t 1 to 1, we’re probably going one, two, one, red flags went off over here, like, okay, if we need devices next year, we need to get them now. We can’t wait. And so that that network of people help me figure out, you know, who had devices and be it was enough for me to get the treasure to do much earlier than we normally would.
So, you know, during that first year, COVID Schramm was one of the few schools in Ohio that was able to get their devices ahead of time, as opposed to being stuck waiting until, you know, September or October, etc. But again, it was all through that, that network of folks saying, hey, we’re seeing some issues. You know, I tried to order devices and I’m not going to get them or I talked to this manufacturer and they’re telling me we’re not going to have devices till November. I mean, that was really huge for us to be able to kind of get out in front of that as much as we could.
So as far as new devices go, and I know just from working with you guys, there have been some issues from the ordering side to these manufacturers rushing all of these parts out. I mean, so what kind of difficulties came along with even once you had those devices in your hand because of the chip problems in the shipping situations? And what did you guys experience with your new devices that you have at the school and even trying to get old ones to keep working or anything that you guys went through?
Sure. So a couple of things come to mind. One, you can imagine the chip problem. Yeah. Early on, we had gotten a shipment of devices somewhere along the way. I missed that. They swapped out the chip on those for one that I probably wouldn’t have gone with. But again, timing and the need of the device, we had to get something so early on with that particular device in September. You know, remote learning is in full effect and our high school kids all have brand new devices and they’re telling us just how bad the video and the audio is here.
Come out, come to find out that there was an issue with both me and Zoom with that particular chipset. So I’ve got a superintendent that’s calling me like, you know, we brought brand new devices for all of our high school students, specifically for remote learning. And you’re telling me it doesn’t work well? So luckily it was passed within about probably six weeks, but there were definitely some pain points through there. Another big thing that was rough for us is typically we relied on our manufacturer to do the white glove process for us. So, you know, enroll them into the main, give them a wire list, tag them, inventory them and provide all of that to us. And we had to kind of punt on that the last few years during COVID because we weren’t sure we’d get the device. And if we went down that road, there was definitely some concerns that, hey, by the time we ship them to a second site and have them do all that work and then ship them to you, we can’t guarantee that you’ll get them in time.
So that was an issue. So we had to kind of do that work in-house and it’s not okay. It’s not horrible work. It’s labor intensive. So we had some high school kids. I even got my own 13-year-old son to help out last year to do some of that. Anything. That was one of the thing that I wrote down just along those lines. Oh, it was just, you know what I in terms of the device, we had another model, the device that had a camera cord that would break. Regular basis. So when you’re you know, you’re sending these devices out with kids so they can connect remotely and their camera doesn’t work. And you’re replacing cameras on an I mean, at a ridiculous pace. You know, there’s a timing issue there.
It was trying to get cameras on it. Then we had to decipher, you know, how many of these were real issues and how many of these were kids just understanding that, hey, if I say my camera doesn’t work and I’m on this computer, they’ll just believe me when I turn my camera on. So it was all of those things, you know, gosh, it made me sad short of them thinking about all this stuff that we went through. And it was not a fun two years.
And like you said at the end of the year.
Yeah, it’s all good. It’s in the I may own you said I just I’m thinking about all this stuff that we dealt with. Gosh, at one point we were even driving devices to kids houses and dropping them off, like leaving them on the front porch in a bag. Yeah. Then again, once we got I will say once we had our process down, once we started the year and really had a process for repair and delivery and cleaning it, all that things actually went pretty well. It was just getting over that initial hump of, you know, how is this going to work? What’s it going to look like for teachers?
Yeah. So you brought up going to the student houses and dropping off devices. I actually did that for one of our clients. That was my job. I was driving five days a week on top of doing repairs on all those devices, going to students homes, you know, doing a contactless delivery. It was definitely a process. Took me about six months to fully design it, to get it to work. Well, sure. I completely understand having a bunch of issues, trying to resolve all that in a timely manner, especially.
Well, and especially to when you have parents that are, you know, super concerned for their safety, but also highly concerned about their kids getting a quality education. And so you give them a device and for whatever reason, it’s not working. And, you know, they’re concerned about coming to the school we ended up using eventually ended up using our transportation system. Our director was awesome and we kind of had an essentially it was just part of the routes where they would, you know, but early on, like we were, we were just, you know, okay, these 15 kids need devices. Let’s split up and go and put on the porch in one bag, grab the other one, head out. Yeah.
Well, that’s I mean, you do what you got to do, but that’s impressive. I mean, you guys aren’t like, you know, DoorDash or not to, like, plug any delivery service, but I mean, essentially, that’s what was happening, right? Versus having them having to come out to the school and potentially risking exposure to COVID. I think that’s great that you guys did that.
Yeah. I heard some really interesting stories from other folks about things that they did. The one that I really like that I might have gone with had I had I seen the product was like a locking cart. I don’t know if you’re familiar with these, but essentially you would go online, fill out a reservation and say that you needed a device. They would put one in this like locker system that sat outside one of the schools. You would come up, type in a code box, number nine would open up, you would take your device out, put your broken device back in, shut the door re locked. And I’m pretty sure if I heard the stories directly, a lot of that was self-managed. So other than the techs having to make sure that all of the slots had a device in it, like the reservation system and all that took place online. So it was completely contactless from that side that that sounded like it worked really, really well.
Yeah, that’s a pretty cool concept. I didn’t know. I didn’t know schools did that. That’s pretty neat.
Yeah. I want to know. The name that’s coming to mind is like lock and charge, but I’m not positive. That’s the that’s the company.
I wish I had known about that rather than having to drive the whole drive around. Yeah, definitely what I’m an effort there.
A couple of the folks I talked to that used it said it worked really well and then now they’ve integrated it back into the school for repairs and things like that. Again, similar model. Hey, fix your machine. We put it in lock and charge when it’s ready. Send you the codes. You can get in there and pick up your device.
Well, hopefully, we don’t have to do that again this summer. I don’t see I don’t see us going there, at least not right now. Right.
But again, you never know. I didn’t see I it last summer we were rolling into a pretty quiet summer and we were going to have a normal school year and you know, we had the big uptick. So you never know what’s going to happen.
So assuming everything is going to go smoothly and continue on the course and it’s on right now, what’s next for you in the next couple of weeks here? I know you guys are coming up at the end of the school year. I don’t know if your seniors are done yet or not, but. I know we’re getting close if they’re not. And then the school year, in general, is wrapping up.
Yeah. So seniors are done with their graduation on Sunday, so they’re done. Kids are here for another week and a half or so. Gosh, no. Oh, yeah. We can have. Really, for me, a lot of prep for summer projects, a lot of upgrades that we haven’t been able to do in the past couple of years just because we’ve spent our summers planning for COVID so that we’ve had a number of staff turnover this year, which, from what I’m understanding, is happening across the board K-12. So kind of preparation for some new staff members and then really planning for next year, unfortunately for us. And it’s a short summer I think when we get nine weeks just based on timing here and so a lot to do. One of the big things I’m excited for is a project that I’ve wanted to do literally for 20 years.
I finally did it this school year, so we’ll see if it pays off next year. Essentially what I did was, you know, we talked earlier about how every day is different and you’re constantly being asked to put out fires. So I really try to sit down and think, you know, how can I preemptively put out some of these fires before they happen? So I went back through and I started listing out all the things that caused me to panic or cause somebody else to panic. And I created a Google doc and I went through by month and just listed those things out. So, okay, you know, in October this happened because we needed to have a data load go over to this system that nobody remembers until two days before its due.
So I went through, I not only listed it out, but I also left myself instructions on what I had to do. Where I pulled the data from. I listed where it needed to go. So if it was a particular website, you know that website as well as the username and password. And what I’m hoping to do is do a lot of that in the summer or early fall. So, you know, these data loads don’t have to wait all the way till October. They can happen as soon as we roll over to the new school year. So try to get those things taken care, taking care of before they become fires. I work with all my vendors to get all of our software subscriptions that were kind of all over the board. Those all renew July one now, so no one’s hitting me up in November to say, Oh my gosh, so and so this software expires tomorrow. We need to renew. That’s a fire. I don’t want fires. Nope. We’re going to do everything in July. So I have this document, I have this plan. We’ll see how it goes. But I’m pretty excited for that.
I think it’s going to go well. I think it’s going to make next year a little bit smoother. Just in general. Again, wanted to do it for years, but unfortunately, we just get so busy and you get it, you clear out the fire. But I never bother to write down all the stuff that we needed to do to, like, prevent it going forward. So we’ll see how that goes.
Well, you had mentioned earlier that, you know, even today you had a list of things to do and two things that weren’t on the list already popped up and it was 9 a.m. sure you know so I lists are great but I mean I feel like as the list gets bigger and the time for summer gets smaller, you know, a lot of little fires may be worse than a big one.
I’m sure that’s that. Again, I know we talked about this before, but that’s the one catch with this job that is both a blessing and a curse. I love the fact that the work is all over the place. And, you know, tomorrow I may be dealing with an HVAC system or an access control problem. On the flip side, in a smaller district like mine, where it’s just me having all of those things kind of fall into your umbrella can be challenging at times. So again, I enjoy the differentiation in the work, but man, there are days where it just seems like it’s nothing but little fires.
By being flexible is a great skill to have.
Oh my gosh, you have to in this role. And again, it’s like everything else, we have to walk this fine, like this balance between, you know, end user experience and security. You know, I feel like a lot of things down to the point where we’d be super secure. And I think I could prevent some of those fires that we talked about. But on the flip side, I’m going to create a whole nother set of fires from users that can’t do what they want, or I’m going to spend a bunch of time, you know, unblocking websites or adjusting and tweaking. So it’s this constant, like, tightrope of, you know, what do the teachers need? What’s the students need? But what do I need from the set of things to keep everybody safe and secure and not end up on the front page of any paper or any website.
I’ve already seen you on the front page, though. And you got for a bad technology teacher of the year.
Yeah. No, no, no. I don’t want to be on. I don’t, I don’t about any website for the bad stuff that could potentially happen. Just I just spoke with somebody this morning talking about ransomware and things like that. It’s just it’s a scary time right now.
100%. So outside of the school then coming up for you with the and I was the other one just talking about coson what kind of events are coming up? Are you hosting anything or what’s in the future for you?
So big one for us right now is the learning 21 conference, which happens in I think it’s in early November this year. It’s down in Columbus. It’s through our Ohio chapter of coaching, but it’s really more dedicated to technology leaders. Feels like most conferences are focused either purely on the technical side. So like a brainstorming is a pretty technical conference is the let’s see, I see those typically more focus on the educators. So the Learning 21 conference really focuses on K-12 tech leadership.
So we’re super excited about that working on it. We’re going to give the keynote on that. Then a lot of talk about it yet because we haven’t officially booked, but I’m really excited about the organization that we’re talking to. I’ve heard them speak already. So yeah, that’s the big one for us is just is prepping for that and other ones, you know, let’s see which is the Ohio Big Ohio conference. They’ll be back in-person after two years of virtual. So everyone’s pretty excited about that. And the other one that we the other thing we like about that one is typically because that’s central to everybody. It’s in Columbus. It’s a good time to catch up with everybody, see everybody that you haven’t seen in a while.
I feel like that one’s way more networking and just catching up with your friends then. Now for the conference doesn’t have good content, but I think that a lot of the tech directors go for that. We do some stuff down there as Ohio coast and to recognize tech leaders and things like that as well. So yeah, no AC for me this year, probably next year just didn’t really fall. Well, it’s, it’s here in what, less than a month away in New Orleans and it just didn’t fit the schedule this year. But and then one of these days, one of these days, I’ll get to Florida to see, you know, Florida in January coming from Ohio. Sounds amazing.
I was recently at the Indiana Coast and State Chapter Clinic they had. And that was such a good experience because I know you said Ohio having a state chapter. Do you have like a clinic?
Yeah, that’s that. So the Learn 21 conference is our clinic in and Indiana’s great Josh Intel. They’re doing a phenomenal job over there in Indiana. We actually when we originally started our chapter, one of our early members went over, attended the Indiana Szeto Clinic, talked to their folks about some of the things they were doing, which really kind of helped get us off the ground. So yeah, we’ve learned 21 conference kind of is our KTO clinic and we do partners. So we partner with Etsy, we partner with Brainstorm. So we do things at their events as well.
But that, that, that learning 21 conference is kind of our, it’s our big showcase, you know. So we bring tech leaders in. Myself and another gentleman, Dustin Russell, are going to do one on CTO of Self Care. So we constantly talk about, you know, how how do you support your staff and your students, how to support your internal stake holders? But we never talk about how to take care of yourself, you know, so we’re talking about things like how you can grow as a leader. You know, what podcasts, for example, do you listen to that help you grow? What are the steps you take when you just need to wind down for a bit? So that’s a new session that we haven’t done before, and I’m pretty excited to work on that with Dustin.
And I think those conferences are great and it was really unfortunate actually when it went virtual because we had planned up down there the first year for it. Obviously, it was in the thick of meeting, not being able to to be able to have that many people in the same place at the same time. But I’ve I went to Etsy as a teacher. I’m not even isn’t an innovator when I was still teaching and then being on the other side of the table in the K-12 tech role. But I did realize that a lot of people went down for the pens and the stress balls and things like that. But running into you and some other people in this area that I was able to network with. I mean, it was huge just being in the same place all. Same time was great. It was an awesome experience.
Yeah, I think, you know. I understand that, you know, a lot of conferences had to go virtual due to restrictions and things like that and. I won’t say that it was bad, but you just didn’t get the same experience. And again, I just went to brainstorm a few weeks ago and it was so nice to just be in person. I think it’s great to record those sessions, livestream, etc. For those people that can’t make it, they really want to attend. But I am so glad to be back in person for a lot of this. I think you just get so much more value out of it. Plus, you’ve got time to, you know, talk to the presenter afterwards, have some conversations, sit down, and really dove deep into something where you just don’t get that in the virtual realm.
And you also can’t go grab lunch or dinner in between the conference or after know if you’re virtual, which I think you know the old saying breaking bread like I really do think that is incredibly beneficial as far as oh yeah I’m going to people and throwing around ideas because it’s so much more casual and open that it’s just something you really can’t do in a meeting type setting.
Yep, we do that, you know, we do that at conferences. We do that as a group of tech directors around here that we grab lunch for that reason. You know what I mean? It’s a chance to get out, catch up on what’s going on in everybody’s lives, not just professionally, but personally as well. But we have a lot of good ideas that get shared in those meetings, you know, meetings in those lunches, like, you know, we just start talking, hey, what do you guys think about this? What’s going on over here?
Oh, well, we’re considering X, Y, and Z, yadda, yadda. And it’s things maybe you didn’t think about. Yeah, there’s just some value in just sitting down and having a conversation over a cup of coffee or over some lunch. 100%.
I know some of the things you’re not looking forward to coming up in the next few weeks or months. But what would it look like? What is your absolutely like? I can’t wait for this even if it’s just getting a break or if it’s have new kids coming in or, you know, what? What are you looking forward to even conference of whatever?
Sure, I’m not going to lie. I always look forward to summer. Unlike it, pros that are in, you know, the private sector schools shut down for two and a half months. There’s a lot of things that I’m able to get done, a lot of improvements. You know, unfortunately, a lot of times I have to wait all year to do them. But then I get the summer to really go through and, you know, clean things up, check them over, get things installed. And I hate to say it’s glorious because there’s nobody here to bother me, you know what I mean?
You know, we talk about putting out fires. The one nice thing about the summer is it’s like a fire free summer. You know, typically in the summer, if I have a plan for the day, that’s what I’m going to be able to do. I’m not saying everything in the plan is going to go perfect, but, you know, if I set out to, you know, redo our camera system are probably going to have all day to do it as opposed to 20 minutes before somebody interrupts. So I’m not going to lie. I was looking forward to summer. Looking forward. You know, I mentioned that we’ve had some staff turnover. It’s a little bit bittersweet. There’s people, folks that are leaving that I really like, but I’m also excited for that infusion of some new ideas. I mean, you get new folks and new positions. You know, they bring their experience around. So I’m excited about that. I know I mentioned they’re 21. I’m super excited about that again. I hope we booked that group that we’re talking about.
I think that’s going to be really good for a lot of people. We’ll talk offline about that. I love to share a little bit more about that with you. It knocks on wood, it’s just I’m hoping to get back to a normal school year for once. You know, again, 21 years of doing this. I think a lot of people in this boat are just ready for a normal K12 summer. You know, that’s. Let’s just move on past the pandemic for a minute. Do the things we want to do and kind of get prep for the following year. And you also just kind of it’s about chance to recharge. You know, one of the things that I think reasons that people burnout is tech directors, technicians, tech coaches. You’re constantly getting hit by email, phone calls, text, just conversations in the hall.
Hey, can you fix this? Hey, could you stop and see that, hey, this isn’t working. And it’s not just work stuff, it’s personal stuff, which is fine. It’s all part of the job. I love supporting people, but. That downtime in the summer where you’re not getting hit from all sides, it gives you a chance to recharge, kind of get prepped for the school year. The mid-August till late September is just like an onslaught of, you know, problems. And, you know, people have come back from the summer, so who knows what new stuff they come up with over the summer or what has happened on their computer over the summer? You know, there’s all these new things that we’ve installed over the summer, so we’re actually seeing how they work, not so much anymore, but it used to be that, you know, probably shorter back when you taught, you know, every classroom had a couple of computers.
Typically the custodians unhook those to clean over the summer and you couldn’t really start hooking them back up until early August. So there is this mad dash to hook everything back up. So that August, September timeframe is school starts is always just like it’s like a fire hose. So having the summer to just kind of regroup and prep for that is really, really helpful as well.
Yeah, we had Chromebook Carts, so technically we didn’t have to like hook up a bunch of monitors and stuff. But there was this one like hide and seek with the carts themselves or supposed to mark them. And they were supposed to be back in the rooms, but they’d get moved to some random floor in some storage closet, and we’d have to go find them like an Easter egg hunt, I mean. Yeah, it’s always been in our school. Didn’t have air conditioning. So you’re doing this when it’s 95 degrees in the building?
Uh-huh. We typically shut the AC off in the summer, so I know that. I know that pain. But again, it’s all that. It’s, you know, everything from, you know, people needing new key cards to get in the building to computers that just need updates too, you know, again, like I’m thinking about a photography lab we have here, you know, Adobe gets some updates, the teacher comes in and things don’t work the way that she’s used to. So, you know, there’s just this or, you know, two of those 25 computers that work just fine in June all of a sudden are not working in August.
So again, that August, September timeframe is always just crazy. And I think the last thing I would say that I’m looking forward to is we do I mentioned earlier that I run that training course for CTOs. That typically starts in October and I’ve already got a list going. There’s a number of people that are already started to sign up. That’s always fun for me because I get to meet new people from around the state. Even though I’m teaching the same material that I’ve taught before, it’s very conversational. You know, we talk a lot about how you would apply these skills to your role or to your district. And it’s always great because you hear you hear different ways that people are addressing problems or are dealing with something or innovative ways that they’ve tried. So I kind of always look forward to that to that new group. It’s typically 20 to 25 people in those groups. So again, there’s just there’s a ton of learning that goes on there that I just really enjoy.
Well, now you mentioned earlier, too, that you guys are one of the first districts I want to say that had all of your teachers and staff members Google certified. Yeah. When you get new administration or teachers in, do you have to then do you have an individual courses for those new ones coming in? Or is it kind of a continuing education situation with the entire staff group?
So it’s a little bit of both. So any time we hire somebody, the expectation is, is that they get another one certified within the first six months of being hired. I have a phenomenal technology coach, Molly Carter, who handles all of that for us. And so what she’ll do is she’ll meet with those folks and she’s got a self-paced course that she’s designed, but she also leads study groups as well. So she’ll go through and go through each one of the skills, skills that this folks need to know. The certification is only good for three years and then you need to renew. So we asked everybody to renew in 2019 and then again in 2022. We’re not at 100% anymore. I would say if I had to guess were probably like 85, 90% because we don’t really have that mandate there that you have to renew.
But most of our staff do it anyways. The test since that time, the test has gotten significantly easier. You know, back in the day it was 25 multiple choice questions and then 12 scenarios in which you actually had to do things inside the Google platform, everything from creating a playlist in YouTube to creating appointment slots in your calendar, things like that. Google has since pared it back. They’ve gotten rid of the multiple-choice questions and from 12 scenarios instead eight. So it’s a little bit easier now, but it’s still hitting on all those skills that staff need to just kind of survive in a Google centric world.
Say is so are most of the skills that they’re using or testing for, I guess those what most people would be using Google for from day to day? Or is it really is it more than what the normal person would use Google for? Because I would say everyone Google’s a huge platform now and I don’t think I know a single person that doesn’t use Google. So is it going beyond what a normal person would use it for because it’s a school-oriented side of things? Or is it kind of the same?
Yeah, it has. It had more has more of an education focus to it. So, you know, I mentioned, you know, playlists and YouTube and they wrap that around the idea of a teacher developing, say, a science lesson. And he or she wants to have five videos kind of curated already for the kids. So instead of just having five links somewhere, they make a playlist on YouTube. There’s things around a Google classroom, obviously an education specific program, some of the skills that they test you on inside of. Scribe and docs and sheets probably could apply to any industry. But again, they all have a they’re all taking from kind of that educational lens. So it’s things that most of our teachers are doing on a daily basis anyways or a weekly basis. So there’s a number of our staff members who can just take that exam without needing to study. It’s just stuff they do, you know what I mean?
Yeah, absolutely. And I remember I mean, even from like the Google meet standpoint or using a Zoom meeting when we first went virtual, I mean, I don’t know how many videos you see of people that, you know, we’re talking for 40 minutes and their mike was still muted or, you know, they didn’t realize their camera was on or whatever the scenario was. And it was some of those things were, can they be comical? Sure. But you should, you know, not do that or how to use the system before you log on. Absolutely. I think from a teacher standpoint if I was asked to do something in a classroom and I didn’t know how to do it, and I was on the spot trying to figure it out that it one doesn’t look good for the teacher and two, it’s not helpful for the students at all.
Yeah, that was one of the big reasons. Big, big, big reasons that we were super successful during the pandemic with remote learning was that training piece. So to that point, you know, we gave teachers the option of both zoom or meet. You know, we said, hey, look, you might be more comfortable with me because you prefer Google or Zoom at the time. Had a lot more features early on in the pandemic. So depending on what you’re doing, maybe Zoom’s better for you. You pick it, we’ll make sure you are good to go on it. So, Nancy Cameron, who I know you’ve met before, was my coach at the time. She’s since retired, but she did an amazing job at prepping our teachers, getting them ready, and really kind of working through that because you’re right to be on the spot.
You have 20 some kids, you know, joining in, especially high school kids who, you know, are all over the map in terms of what they’re doing. Or even on the flip side, you think of the, you know, the K-2 kids that were joining. You know, I have young kids at home. I watch them join and, you know, try to talk to their friends or teachers talking to them. They quick unmute. You talk like it’s a lot of a lot. So that training and that prep work was just so, so, so important in order for people to be successful.
Yeah, absolutely. I know even in our meetings now and we are a tech company, we still have issues on muting microphones or hitting the record button or whatever it is. And, you know, it is there’s a learning curve regardless of how old you are. I do think that younger kids, especially the middle school age, are probably more comfortable with it because they’ve been around technology for so much longer than we have. I know when I was in high school, you know, we didn’t we had computer labs, we took keyboarding classes. I don’t even know if schools still offer those anymore because everyone’s already typing on a computer when they’re six years old.
Yeah, I will tell you, my first grader, whose first year in school was during COVID, so kindergarten was just a COVID year for him. It blew my mind how easily he was able to connect to me and he knew how to mute and turn his camera on and off and all of those things. He came over one time and he’d said his background differently and I’m like, I didn’t teach you that. We didn’t go. I wasn’t in school. I taught you. But, you know, again, it’s that these kids are growing up on it like somebody told me the other day. And it kind of blew my mind. But the iPhone 13. Right. That’s probably the oldest piece of technology my first graders ever going to remember. So 30 years from now, when he’s walking in a vintage boutique is like, Sean, you or I might remember, like, you know, Atari or A.S. or something like that.
With this man.
Is going to be like, oh, gosh, you remember the iPhone 13, huh? You know, but what were we feel is like the pinnacle of technology right now, personal technology right now. He’s going to be like, you know what I mean? Like, it’s nothing.
Oh, yeah, no. I remember my parents phone just having, like, the little green screen on it with the black numbers.
I mean.
My first flip phone, which I thought was cool because it had a colored screen on it, but no camera to now. I mean, my entire office can fit in my pocket.
I remember I remember myself here, but like we had a TV when I was in gosh, second or third grade. It still had UHF VHF. Yeah. To switch between to get so that you could get channels like one through 13 on the one. But then if you wanted like, you know, channel 33 to switch it over and there was a second knob I can remember, gosh, all of those things from you know good old VCRs and were trying to record your favorite show too. Nintendo and Sega Dreamcast. A little death. Remember, Dreamcast was like, super cool because it had CDs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good times.
Yeah, it was. That was pretty cool.
Gameboy.
Oh, yeah. Which I think is awesome. And I can’t even imagine the type of technology that’s out there right now that isn’t available to civilians, which is scary but also really cool at the same time. But even just looking forward to where we’re heading, even in education, like what kids are going to be able to do in not even ten years, but let’s say two more years from now, I think it’s going to be really impressive. But at some point, that’s also going to make your job probably a little more difficult.
Yeah, I think I mean, for me, I think the next thing that we’re all going to have to focus on and support is going to be kind of an evolution of VR. Like when you look at like an Oculus, I’m already seeing some schools that are starting to integrate Oculus into different areas, and we’re still at that early adopter stage. So there’s not a ton of educational activities, but you’re seeing some things that are working like, you know, we’ve talked baseball in the past, Sean. I know schools that coaches are using because there’s a baseball simulator in there where you’re truly swinging the bat at a real pitch and they’re seeing improvements with their kids. So I think we’re going to see as that technology gets better, I think that’s going to be the next kind of evolution. I keep reading that Apple’s got something in the works that we’re going to hear about sooner or later.
I just read an article the other day that said they debuted something to their board of directors. So again, if if if we’re thinking, you know, 2 to 5 years down the road, I think that’s going to be kind of the direction that it heads. Yeah. I’m interested to to to see where Chromebooks go. You know, we’re at almost ten years now of Chromebooks and we’re getting pretty close. So I’m interested to see, you know, how those will evolve as well. Will they? I think they’re working very well. I’m using a Chromebook as we speak, but I’m interested in kind of see quite what’s next for them.
Yeah. I mean, we even have some school districts I know here in Indiana that they just bought their new Chromebooks for next year and they all come with like cell signal. You get a SIM card for them, which that’s just crazy to me that now you don’t even need wi fi for your Chromebook to work. You can connect anywhere you got cell service.
So yeah, I could see I could definitely see that becoming a bigger trend kind of across the board.
But how are you supposed to skip school? I mean, you can’t you can’t do it anymore.
Just leave your Chromebook at home. It’s fine. It just says you’re at the house.
No, I think I do think that’s amazing. And the 3D technology and the VR that we’re kind of getting to, you know, even at Etsy, this had to be. Five or six years ago, they had tablet screens that you could put on glasses for that would make it 3D, and then you use to pens and you could do virtual dissections. And even from a science standpoint, which is what my background was in. To be able to one, get away from that smell in a classroom for a week, to be able to actually zoom in on things and you know, on an Oculus headset would have been absolutely amazing and really cool or exploring space or doing whatever things that you can’t. To be able to be immersed in it versus, you know, just staring at it at a screen or right in front of you would be just an awesome teaching tool.
Yeah, I have watched my oldest son. We have binoculars at home and he’ll come downstairs from after playing is full on sweating like what were you doing? He’s like, I was playing tag and like in what? He’s like Oculus so you know, he’s again he’s basically confined in this somewhat like five by five area, but he’s fully into it. I don’t know if you ever if you’ve ever played, Sean, but I’ll tell you, the first time I played, I wish you would have been on video because I was playing some kind of like cartoon shooter game and this guy was running at me with his little popcorn and I went to stand up and fire my laser back at him. And in front of me in VR there was like a desk and I put my hit my physical hand on a virtual desk and fell flat on my face because you were just could you get into it?
So that’s what I see. I think those are going to be I think that’s kind of the technology know from the educational side. Like you said, you know, you really start talking about dissecting or from a scientific standpoint, just being able to get in there further. I’m imagining being able to manipulate objects inside of there and really do a lot of, you know, experiments and things that maybe you can’t do in a classroom right now because logistically it just doesn’t work. And I’m even imagining some of those things like, did you change gears, do the egg drop thing? You know, that experiment where you like build a basket for the egg and then you drop it like I’m imagining, you know, kind of a merge between the VR worlds and even some of the, you know, the 3D printing and the laser etching technologies where maybe you design this, you know, instead of a virtual platform, then print out the physical thing and try it in real life. You know what I mean? I’m saying that’s what I think we’ll see over the course. Just need a bit more time for the technology to be refined.
Well, and I think on top of that, too, from your standpoint, you know, what do you do when one of those things breaks or isn’t working properly or needs to be preprogrammed or you’re talking talk about fires. If you have a whole classroom of Oculus, does it just go out for some reason what happens?
Yeah, but imagine that. I mean, think about it. Really think about it 20 years down the road and I’m saying 20 for one reason. So I know we didn’t get into this part of my career, but early on in my days at Kent State, I was a technical director for a video conferencing grant, and the idea for measuring it was that we would put cameras at places like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and SeaWorld and the zoo and classes could take virtual field trips. This is 20 years ago, right? Didn’t go all that well because the technology just wasn’t there yet and it just needed too much bandwidth and too much power to make work. Fast forward now we’re doing a video call. I do 15 video calls a week and this is just old hat. So when you think about these Oculus and the kind of the direction they’re going, I’m not kidding.
Imagine 20 years from now when it could be that getting you giving you some kind of headset. And it’s just part of what the school provides, just like the Chromebooks. Like that is the, you know, the next iteration of one. One could easily be 1 to 1 with whatever that, you know, whatever that gear is called. And you’re right, you’re going to need technicians who can fix them and can reprogram a that’s a crazy thought, but I don’t think it’s that far out of the realm of possibility.
Which I think is amazing. It almost makes me want to go back to school for the little things that the kids can do now. I just never would have imagined or not having to carry ten books in your book bag and getting home and meeting the chiropractor when you get off the bus. Like, it’s just amazing where we’ve. Where we’ve come and. You know, it is very exciting to look forward to the future, but it’s also one of those. It’s also still an unknown. Even though we kind of know the direction we’re going, it’s still like who knows what’s going to come out tomorrow?
Yeah, I’m not going to lie. I was a super nerd growing up, so the idea that as a kid, I could have had a computer in my hands, essentially 24 seven makes me super jealous. I would totally go back looking into Oculus and things like that. I’m like, Oh my gosh. And like, it must be incredibly fun to be a kid right now from that standpoint. On the flip side, I just think of all the ways we got myself in trouble because you’re kids and you don’t make the best choices when you’re a kid. So I’m kind of grateful that some of it wasn’t around when I was growing up. But yeah, it’s an I can totally see the idea of going back and being able to. I’m just hoping it gets better before I’m too old to like like, you know it is.
I don’t want to be, you know, 65 being like where you got all of those DVD players. I just want to watch anything. Get Superbad on DVD. I just want to watch that movie. You know what I mean? I don’t want to get I never want to be to the point where, you know, I just don’t understand the tech and it’s just beyond me.
Well, Mike, I’m sure you won’t. And I know you’re very involved in the technology world, so even if you’re 65, I’m sure you’ll be fine. But, you know, that’s all we have for you today. I really do appreciate your time. If you have any closing statements you want to make or any shameless plugs, please feel free to go ahead and do so.
No shameless plugs. I would just say, you know, thank you both for having me on. Always a pleasure talking. Yeah. You know what? I am going to plug one thing if you’re listening to this and you’ve never checked out Caussin and Caussin, I will tell you, was that I was not aware of coaching for the first 15 years of my career. So if it’s if you’re a real leader and you’re not aware of Caussin, definitely check it out. See what they have in your state. If you don’t have a state chapter, reach out and we can point in the right direction.
But I think there’s a lot of resources. It just really helps grow the tech leaders in your state. I mean, I can’t I can’t put a number on it. I can’t tell you. You know, Ohio has grown X amount, but I have seen the value of having a state chapter. Again, I love what Indiana has done. I’ve just seen the value of what it’s done for us in Ohio. So that would be my shameless plug. Let’s go out and explore coaching more and see what your state has. Schmidt That’s out of the house.
Yeah, absolutely. And the more conferences you can get to, the better.
That’s right.
Well, Mike, again, thank you very much, everyone, that joined. Thank you very much for listening. And we will talk to you next time.
In Episode 33, Hope Davis, MA, CHC takes us on a journey from personal challenges to leading educational innovation at Teach Tech U. Discover how her experiences fueled a passion for transformative technology in education, shaping the future with Project LEAR. An inspiring conversation for anyone intrigued by the power of tech to change lives. […]
Listen now
With guest speaker Marsha Maxwell, PhD, CETL, join us for a reflective journey on the advancements of AI through the years, focusing on how we can further develop these technologies to bridge educational divides.
Listen now
