Hello. You’re listening to the K-12 tech podcast, bringing you insights into the world of education, and technology. Stay tuned as we discuss the past, the present, and most importantly, the future of technology in our schools. Welcome back to the kids Will Tech Podcast. I’m Mike Cella with Sean Cardwell. Both of us are from K-12 tech. And then we have our very special guest, Jeffery Harrison, from East Baton Rouge Parish School System.
Jeffrey, I really appreciate your time coming on today.
Yeah, no problem. Glad to be here.
Yeah. So if you just want to maybe talk about some of your background and some of your experience, the audience kinda know who you are.
Yeah. Yeah. So I’ve been working for the Spanish parish school system for 24 years as a high school student, and they hired me on as a network technician and I was doing that for 12 years. And then I became a manager and then director, and now I’m kind of overseeing a lot of stuff between infrastructure, server deployments, desktop rollouts, Chromebooks, and of course e-sports now. So I’ve got a lot on my plate, but I love doing what I’m doing.
Yeah, for sure. None. We’re super excited to have you and 24 years is definitely a long time, especially since you were a student as well.
So it seems like yesterday.
Yeah. Oh, trust me, I, uh. Yeah, I’m not quite that far out of high school, but, um, kind of feels the same way for me because I actually still work with my old high school, um, through K-12 tech. So it’s actually really cool to see. I’m just interacting back with my former teachers and tech directors and things like that.
Oh yeah, definitely.
Yeah. So you mentioned E-sports, so that’s kind of today’s topic. Um, what we really wanted to delve into which just e-sports in schools such as, like starting up the program, um, and just some tips and tricks for other tech directors. So maybe you just want to get started maybe like what got you interested in e-sports and maybe just kind of go from there.
Yeah. I mean, so, I mean, it’s like playing video games. Of course, my generation, we’ve been playing games since Nintendo and, you know, just pretty much hooked on it. And, you know, watching our Disher grow as a year and having teachers out there like, you know, be awesome. We could play some video games in these schools and my previous bosses would always pretty much say, No, we’re not open up the port city. That just always kind of, no, no, no. And I was like, okay, so, um, you know, now we have a new CTO that’s we got in 2020. She’s been working here with me for a long time too, and I was like, Please, can we do this? And she was like, Yes, do what you need to like. All right.
Warning you. So, um, so now, you know, 2020 is pretty much when we did our pilot school over at Northeast High because the teacher there for years asked me, God, can we play video games? Can we do e-sports? And I just like I’m sorry, I mean, my bosses keep saying no, but, you know, hopefully, one day. So I definitely rewarded him with a pilot school because of all that ambition, he had to do something, you know. And of course, these sports are not the cheapest thing to do sometimes when you’re trying to get a lab put together and everything. But our IT department-sponsored it and put it together for him over there. And I said, okay, so you’re a pilot. You need to make this thing shine. You need to make it look so good, so, you know, other schools start just buying into it because, you know, we go to schools and we present to them they like as just playing video games.
They don’t get the whole concept of what we’re trying to achieve here. So we had a ribbon cutting, you know, in October of 21 at Northeastern Superintendent was there, had some outsiders there. And of course, I just set off an avalanche of interest coming through. And so now due out, you know, last year we just started, you know, school after school’s been coming and trying. Okay, we want to start e-sports now. We want to do this. So we’ve been guiding them and setting them up correctly to, you know, pretty much focus on a rocket league right now because Rocket League’s free and it’s pretty easy to get a team together for that. So right now we’re at we’re Cerner PBL, which is East Baton Rouge E-sports League because the problem that Northeast had was they played with some of the paid leagues, and those teams will never show up or, you know, trying to find the funding for it. And so he’s like, okay, we need to do something. We want these kids to play against each other. And like, kids do not care about playing against another team that’s out of state or somebody they never heard of. So they want to play against their rival teams, just like we do any other sport. So we’re starting our own league.
It’s going to kick off October 1st of this year at her SciTech Center. So we have nine schools that are going to be involved and we’re very inclusive. So, I mean, we have high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools joining this because we want to make sure everybody’s, you know, enjoying it and have that fun and having that pathway from going from elementary all the way to high, you know, doing this kind of stuff. And it’s not just about the games either. We’re actually implementing video production and audio production and things like that into these classrooms as we go, because we want to do full-out showcasing in uploaded to YouTube all the matches and the kids are the ones that’s doing all this. I mean, I’m on YouTube a lot, but I keep telling them, I want you to replace me on here. I don’t need to see my face on YouTube anymore. So, you know, they’re getting the challenge and we’re working with we video for them to actually do that too. So it won’t be long. You’re going to start seeing a lot of footage that our kids are producing.
Sounds amazing. I know when I was in high school, which was only four years ago, we didn’t have anything like that. We had we barely had Chromebooks. So yeah, just seeing you said it’s only been about two years since it really started. And what kind of so obviously you’ve seen growth. How small or how big was it with that pilot school? Obviously, there’s nine schools involved now. Yeah. And what’s the growth then?
Yeah, that pilot school, I mean, you just have one school up there and another school. Got a grant to do it from our donation to do it. And so it was really just two of them. But then they’re using like play versus to play against other schools. But again, as I was saying, we showcased what can be done at the schools through all those, you know, activities. And then, I mean, it’s just like today I got three emails saying, hey, we want to join your league now because it’s just getting out there. So, you know, so basically we had seven other schools join joining our fall league. But now I got I’m going to be up to 16 teams in the spring league because the teams that’s coming on right now, it’s like, Can’t wait for you. I’ll play, I’ll get you some exhibition matches, but you have to wait till spring for your official part of our expansion league because it’s just we had to focus on these nine right now and make sure everything runs perfect for the students. So it’s growing pretty big. My goal is to get, you know, up to 25 teams by the end of this school year, you know, just going out there and hustling and showing what the what you can do with this.
You said you have a lab. So is it all just gaming pieces that you guys built? And did you have them bought or built for you and brought in or how did that work?
Yeah, so those are Asus computers. We just bought it basically and put it in US labs. I did have a goal of letting us put together our own computers so these kids can learn, that it is a piece of the puzzle. But every time we started pricing things out, it costs more to do that than, you know, getting a made computer, unfortunately. But hopefully, you know, maybe things will stabilize out there. We can go that route in the future for sure. But yeah, everything’s just pretty much already built together and we just assembled it.
Okay. Yeah, trust me, I understand pricing on those. I’ve been looking for a new graphics card myself and they’re not affordable right now, so.
Oh, yeah, definitely.
But no, I definitely think in the future, if you can have the students build their own PCs for that, that’d be I think that’s such a good skill to have and it’s just fun. I know I had a blast when I built mine, so.
Yeah. And it gives them some ownership of their lab too, because, hey, I built that computer I’m playing on, you know?
Oh, yeah, definitely. And then if they went on that computer too, they’ll want to take it home with them.
Yeah. And hopefully, if they broke it, then they know how to fix it.
Yeah, well, we can hope. Hopefully, they don’t break it.
That’s true too. Sometimes they get carried away, you know, you hit the lights.
Yeah, you got to get the celebration. So. So, I know obviously that had to have cost a pretty penny. And you kept saying it was funded by you or you had a grant for it. Can you maybe go into some of that about what’s so cool coursework?
So, um, so that lab up there costs about $20,000 to do so. It’s a hefty penny for schools for that a lot of times. But, um, I see department pay for that and some of the other schools I actually seriously was at Chick-Fil-A one morning with one of our vendors and say, Look, man, this is what we’re accomplishing right now and this is where I like to get to. You’re going to help me and it’s like $30,000 just like that. And I was like, okay, so what we’re going to do for you is this is your lab. You know, your name is going to be on it, just like if a football team had a stadium and, you know, they got a sponsor for it. So this is your lab now.
But, also these kids are going to be making commercials for your company. So it’s kind of how I try to do deals with people when I can, like, what’s what can we do for you? That’s, you know, and how can we have a partnership here? Not just me asking for money all the time. I just don’t like doing that, you know, I like having some kind of partnership with them. So that’s, that’s ways that I try to work it out in, you know, get stuff. So we had to school the three schools that were purchased by vendors that helped us out that we do business with.
So I guess kind of piggybacking off that, I know you were saying you try to position it to our students going to do commercials and put the name on the lab and everything. What would see? What are some tips you would have for other tech directors that maybe want to get an e-sports program started? And obviously, I know they’re so much involved in recruiting students, the funding, everything.
What are some probably the biggest piece of advice you would have?
I would start off small, like do a pilot school, get all the kinks worked out first before you say, okay, I want to I want to do let’s do this at ten schools right now. And then you have a headache for a whole three months trying to figure it all out. But if you get that one site set up and you have your networking and everything because you know it, people like me, I’m thinking, you know, cyber security. So how do I route this traffic out and still be secure? You know, so I have one idea, but another tech director might have another, you know, VLAN or network. Well, I say okay, I’ll tell my firewall to allow this one IP on the router to let that information out. So I would say start out small and get those kinks worked out and then grow from there because if you start off small and really promote that project and show what these kids are accomplishing in there, then it’s just going to take off.
Are they live streaming or are they recording a stream? And then you’re recording the games and then you’re sending them out and that’s more secure than doing it live or I mean, how are they? So how is this actually getting out onto the Internet?
Yeah. So what one of the schools does, they do twitch, but there’s no shout casting being done right now with that. So it’s just the videos are going out so people can see the matches, the students can see the matches. We are going to work on trying to do live show casting soon. It says You got to get that trust made with this. These kids, if you find the kids that there might be a job for them at a later point. Being on a new scene or broadcast scene, they’re not going to just accidentally say cuss words all the time. You have to worry about that being live because they want to do this so they’re not going to mess up. But I did have my hesitations last year about just doing live broadcasts and all that because of those kinds of reasons.
But we are going to start trying out for some of that kind of stuff. We also have a school that they’re a foreign language immersion program. So they speak English, French, Spanish, and Mandarin. So we’re actually teaming with them and going to let them do some of the play-by-play in four different languages just to bring another element into this program. That’s one thing that we always try to do is look for what a school already has established and try to see how we can tie into that program at the schools.
So I guess one of the big things I really want to touch on, and you mentioned posting in these videos, I see them all the time on your LinkedIn and some of the stuff that really got me was all the community involvement you’ve been doing with it. Like I’ve seen videos of your teams playing against like the police department and the fire department. Could you maybe talk about what goes into that, and how you were able to get them on board to do that with the kids?
Yeah. So, we do work with the police department because, you know, they come in and protect our kids and things like that. And you know, a lot of these departments they want to be in with the kids and doing different things and, you know, life skills and all that. So this is pretty much just reaching out to them. Hey, you know, you wanna come play some video games, you know, you got some firemen, you got some policemen, I know that want to play a video game with this. And it’s just simple as just asking if you don’t ever ask, I’ll never show up, you know, so just set out to their all communications representative and our community representative and say, hey, we set up something, you know, because what we did this year was actually do some road shows.
So since we didn’t have it everywhere and we’re trying to promote e-sports, we took it to the school. So we, we did 11 shows where we went out to each of the schools and play video games with the kids, mostly with fifth graders, because we’re trying to catch on to them because we know a lot of times when they get to sixth grade, sometimes they get lost or we have dropouts at that age, you know because we have our community is just you know, it’s a poor community. Sometimes we’re trying to make sure we’re reaching out to these kids to say, hey, you want to stay in school? Here’s something that that’s, you know, very exciting to do after hours now and pull you in. I know when I was in high school, it was artsy. I couldn’t wait for the data. And so I get on the rifle team in the day.
So it’s just trying to find these activities to pull them into. So yeah, the police department, they came into one of our schools, 20 oaks and it was really funny at that event because they were getting a little rowdy at the table when the kids are beating them. I had to go over to say, Hey, hey, the language gets there to get a little crazy, and then the fire department came to Cedar Crest and, you know, they weren’t as bad, but they didn’t bring the fire truck. So I was kind of disappointed in that because I wanted to go play on that while they were playing the video games. But, you know, we also, you know, teamed up the library system, too, and did a match a public match over there, had a little bit turnout for that. And then, you know, we’re our Breck, which is our Parker recreational system.
We’re trying to reach out because they have places all over and they do some kind of e-sports. But we’re like, Hey, let’s, let’s work together. We can enhance your program, you enhance our kind of thing. So we definitely reach out around the community as much as possible and bring people and even work with Eyecare and things like that to show these kids about suicide preventions and all those kind of things. So you just catch everything we can.
I say now that’s honestly really amazing. And so I know the program’s only about two years old now, but kind of what benefits have you seen in the students? Like, have they done better in classes? Are they more excited for school or are they potentially looking at careers in this kind of field? Have you seen anything like that from there?
Yeah, most definitely. I mean, just since they’re so young, it’s hard to get a lot of the stats right now. But from just doing the roadshows and getting some of the feedback that we got was, man, you know, like some of the kids that got the MVP. I mean, so the way the road showed worked was we are we had a name picture that popped up on the big smart board. So if your name got pulled, I mean, it’s like the price is, right? Come on down with play a video game. And we had a little tournament so you know kids who play and then at the end you would have whoever had the most points was the MVP of the game. So we let them hold the belt, take pictures with it, and all that kind of stuff.
But that wasn’t it. We had our bandits champion. Our bandits is actually our i.t e-sports team. So we are, we play games, you know, just, just like the kids do every night. We usually get on discord and play rocket league because we’re trying to practice. These kids won’t beat us when they get the middle school because they do. I don’t we won’t talk about the northeast, how much they hammered us. But, you know, it’s but anyway, our band is champion. You know, he was playing as an antagonist so he would come down with his music playing. I try to blend in WWE and e-sports a little bit. I’m sorry about the metrics because I find that these kids are members that more than what the end of that game was or what that score was, it’s a lasting memory.
But some of the kids that that got the MVP when you talk to the teachers, they’re like, that was the quietest kid in the class. They never had any emotions. They were always just sitting in the back. Some of them don’t even do that much work sometimes and I have never seen them like that before. So it shows me, man, we’re doing a positive difference in some of these kids lives and changing them where, you know, they’re they can do this now and there. You know, the kids are all like, hey, man, you’ve beaten the champ. You know, it’s they’re totally different, kid. Now, you brought that out. I mean, we have had kids with autism and everything else playing these games and just see them in a different aspect and what you really think that kids at but they’re totally different but it’s so we got all their names recorded too.
So a lot of them are in sixth grade. So I tell our techs, whenever we have a minute, I want you to go find those kids in those classrooms and just do a shout-out. You know, they’ll go, Hey, I remember you. You beat our champ. Just embarrassing, you know? But everybody going to start like, well, okay, but, you know, a lot of schools will have their sports programs, hopefully, established in a couple of years. And then, you know, now you get this kid, this walk around, you know, that that beat the band is champ somewhere. But, um, so it’s, we’re definitely bringing out some aspects these kids. I was at our SciTech Center yesterday and, you know, we’re trying to figure out cause we’re fixing to make the movies are TV studio there and you know I went around to some of the classrooms because here’s another thing.
We have carpentry, we have electronics class at Sea-Tac, and like, all right, let’s make some arcade machines. We have the skills. We have these kids. This is some Yahtzee classes can do together and make a project. And we can raffle them off and raise money for a sports program here. And a kid’s like, wow, yeah. You know, just the excitement out of them because now they have this really fun project to do and generate funds for their school. But then I was asking myself, you know, all right, how many all in 11th or 12th grade has a vehicle? I want to be on a podcast or video show on YouTube talking about e-sports and, you know, a whole bunch of like definitely sounds like they’re ready to do a lot of these things and opportunities that they would never have they have now because of this program.
So I know you were talking about the program expanding to nine I think just nine schools at this point know.
Right. Not right now.
And so I guess my question is, how many students actually participate at each school? Like do you have a room of 30 computers with 30 kids all playing? Do they play the same game or are they on different games? I don’t understand how this work.
So like the northeast, for instance, they probably have about 15 kids and you have one team doing rocket league and you have another team doing like Smash Brothers on the Nintendo Switch. So they do have different, you know, teams. But like even if you had to me for Rocket League, somebody could be sick one day and you need that back go because it’s a three versus three. So you kind of have like your first string and second string, just like football or any other sport. So I know they had about 15 and we kind of say a minimum of nine for each school just to make sure you have enough players. But I mean, my thing is more to the area, you know, we can fit kids in wherever we can.
And it’s not and some of us kids like when we’re signing him up, we’re like, okay, if you don’t have enough room to play broccoli, you want to do the video camera, you want to do the editing, and they get in that they only care about the video game after that. I know since I’ve been doing video editing again, I haven’t done that through high school. Now I can’t get off except just having too much fun doing it. So you just got to you’d be surprised you put a suit or something different and they like, okay, I’m good, you know, just find that thing that they didn’t know they had and now they have it.
So how much then? So is this a club or a class?
For most parts? Afterschool club, just like any other sport. But we do have like north these actually made their video production class a classroom environment now so it’s actually a course credit over a C tech that would be all pretty much classes where we’re working on doing a 9 to 12 video production you know class so I mean four years of it and get all their Adobe certifications and credits. I mean they all have so much portfolio work. I mean a lot of kids at SciTech are not really bound for college, they’re bound for the industry. So we can get them out the door having a really good paid job. There are a lot of jobs available for that right now. We have C Tech Studios that’s in Baton Rouge and yeah, I mean, Disney is right there doing national treasure.
And it’s like, where are you pulling all these actors from in a lot of houses out of state? And I’m like, okay, well, time to make you a pipeline for some actors and some kids and, you know, all these other jobs out here. So that’s one of the main focus is because, you know, even with these sports, there’s scholarships out there, but there’s not like, you know, where a football team might have 25 scholarships or something, the only might have one or two they might give them. But with all this other stuff that’s actual industry-based jobs, I mean, just tons of scholarships for that. So we’re really focusing heavily on that framework around the players, you know.
So when I went to high school, we had an audio video production class as well where they actually also recorded and broadcasted a radio broadcast on an AM channel. But regardless, they still had broadcasting involved. Yeah, but they did our morning announcements on the TVs and stuff with the green screen and everything, and it was really cool. So I could see how you could definitely tie that into an EA Sports, you know, version of that as well.
Oh yeah, definitely. I mean, it’s doing a new show, a play-by-play, and reviews of the games. I mean, it’s unlimited possibilities and it expands other things like the I know the video production class that’s at again, northeast. They’re going to start looking at the girls basketball team and stuff like that to boost produce their shows. So it definitely grows really fast for this.
Yeah, I know with video production, kind of like Sean was saying at my school, all I really was was morning announcements and things like that. We did have some after-school classes that you could do where you could actually make it was we video and you’d make content to put on the I don’t think it was actually put onto YouTube, but it was there as if it was. Yeah, that was kind of the whole concept of the class. And um, I do really like the idea of using EA Sports as another way to funnel kids into the industry. And I mean, it’s even it, it’s a good starting point for that. Yeah. Broadcasting side everything actually funny enough, when I was in high school I got offered a scholarship for U Sports from a university in Ohio.
I think I didn’t take it but is that something that you’re maybe looking to do in the future if you ever get enough funding as maybe offer like a small scholarship to like a student or something, but like, hey, here’s $1,000 to go to college, just obviously to be small. Certainly starting out I was looking to do or.
I would it’s a good idea. And I think what we probably do is just try to find a vendor or one of our partnerships, try to do that kind of stuff with us. Um, I don’t know, like using public funds. I don’t know if that’s, you know, how that works on those kinds of fronts on handing out money to kids like that. But it could be a possibility. I just don’t know that much information about that part, but I know it. You know, the people we work with, they can definitely do things like that, though, because, I mean, they sponsor, you know, food for events and things like that. So I’m sure that’s open to doing small scholarships and things like that.
So on that and that subject, then of, of, of money or, you know, scholarships or whatever, I, from what I understand, streamers on like twitch, right? Twitch. Yeah. Will make money based on how many viewers they have or followers or whatever it is. Do that. Do the students in these clubs, do they have the potential of making money off of what they’re doing in the E-sports club? Or is that kind of something where it goes back into the club? If there’s enough viewers that way you guys can fund more things in the future?
Yeah. So to monetize Twitch or YouTube or anything like that, it’s, it’s pretty much a high threshold to get into where you making something. So what I’ve been telling the schools is to send me all this, all the videos and we put them on ours, our one channel for e-sports. And once that starts building up in funds and we can distribute back out to the schools that way, I mean, I don’t know how much it’s going to generate until we, you know, get to those. But that’s what we’re working on right now. We’re like at 380 subscribers on YouTube. I mean, it went up from 30 something two weeks ago. So it’s definitely climbing pretty quickly. But until we get to that threshold, YouTube says, and I can click on Monetize and we can start seeing it might be pennies for all I know, but, you know, I’m hopeful that it will generate a good bit of fun so we can bring it back.
I mean, heck, if I can buy a switch for every school that way, then that’s something that they don’t have to buy, you know, makes it easy.
Yeah. And I know I can speak on the twitch side a little bit. So I’m an affiliate on Twitch and I have been for a few months now and I have made a grand total of $27. So look, I mean, definitely takes some getting takes some getting, getting going. I know you’ll probably have a little bit more success, but just want its students and I feel like a lot of people are really going to be interested in the mat, and then you’ve already got a little bit of a following on LinkedIn, on YouTube. So I think you’ll probably start off a little bit quicker. But yeah, I know it takes a little while to get going for sure. And then I know a twitch they have like payout minimum. I don’t know if YouTube has anything like that. I know we like Twitch. You have to make a certain amount of money before you can draw it, right?
It’s pretty low. I think it’s it’s becoming 50 now, which isn’t that bad. But so like for me, that money should have been sitting in there. But hopefully, for you guys it will come out and actually be able to hopefully, you know, like you said, buy a switch for every school or buy. If you do decide to go into pay games, you can buy.
Yeah, you got to play.
That game for every account or however I don’t know how you’re handling like if you have an account for a school or if multiple accounts, however, you handle that.
Yeah, we’ve been like for the ten days we just were buying the actual game at the store to buy and put it in there. So we don’t have to. So we can’t. We don’t have credit cards in our system, so it’s hard to do anything without a credit card. So we just purchased the games from a vendor and buy it. But yeah you have to keep up with that too because like if you start playing, you know, Madden football or anything like that every year to get a new version. So, you know, you’re looking at 50 bucks a pop every time. How do you sustain that? So, you know, if we do make enough money on that route, then yeah, we can sustain it.
Usually, we kind of say this to the end, but I kind of since we’re already kind of on the subject, you want to shout out your YouTube and your Twitter and stuff for people to subscribe and check you guys out.
Their YouTube channel is every season shorts and I think our twitch’s exactly the same thing. He says e-sports and Twitter. He says E-sports. We kept it the same. It’s simple to find and is definitely like in subscribe. That’s how they usually say it and all those videos.
Right? Yeah. It’s like a button. Yeah.
It’s really funny because like, we have a TV interview lawyer over here in our I.T. department, so I started streaming all the YouTube videos on that, and now people are always hanging around that TV. But it’s like even people, as the central office said, like, okay, I heard about e-sports for real. I don’t really know what they’re doing, but now they’re watching those videos and going, Oh, okay, this is really awesome. Watch all you’re doing, this kid. So you know, the YouTube and you know, we’re going to try to put that more at the school as to where they can put him in four years. And when parents are showing up or something, they can get a glance at what we’re doing and it gets way more interest that way too.
Yeah, I guess that’s the question kind of for the funding side. You charge it all for kids to join the program like a small fee or anything or is it all just they can just.
And they can just join. They have to have like a particular grade point average and things like that. And there’s a contract they have to sign and they actually have to do a physical in concussion physicals to try and make sure it’s treated just like any other sport. You know, that’s in our district to take it seriously. So and it’s really funny because like concussion for e-sports, like, hey, you never know, you might fall at your chair, it’s got to be protected. But you know, it’s like this. Do we ever get into VR kind of sports at some point? I mean, those can get kind of crazy at times. I know I do VR boxing and then I’m like worn out after about two matches and hey, you know, it can get there. I mean, we’re even thinking about doing a beat saber competition one day, you know, just to change it up and have some fun.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Play beat saber. If you have a concussion. I mean, I’ve played it one time and I ended up falling over a coffee table because I didn’t know, like, you lose where you’re at, you know?
Right. Yeah, I.
Can see having VR. You’re like, you definitely need to have a physical done before you’re away from every object in the room as far as possible.
Yeah, but you can’t say, hey, you’re getting physical activity. Do any sports now? Even if you’re playing a regular game and you had a VR session in the back, like what? You’re in between games, just do a quick five-minute VR head, you know, game or something. So you can always include that physical activity in this.
Do you think that’s something that you would ever actually include as like, obviously this is probably true down the road, but with your like physical education classes and stuff like a VR kind of like workout regimen or anything like that, do you think that’s something that you would look into?
I mean, I don’t I wouldn’t really have, you know, controller or our activities coordinators and directors would be more on that kind of stuff. But I know the one school or a long time ago were doing sports and so they were doing stuff like that. But I think they stopped after about a year. I don’t know if just in the tenders software or I don’t know what happened to that program, but that was like something that even saw in the news trying to take off a little bit. But I know it’s always a possibility. All it takes is just one teacher to get that idea, that list. Let’s do this in school and then it just takes off too. So you never know. It could happen, especially down here where it’s a 103-degree heat index all the time. You kind of want to stay inside.
Yeah, I probably wouldn’t want to go outside all the time for that. So no, I mean, I definitely and again, with technology and everything, there’s so much you can do with it. And I mean, it’s one of those things that’s always going to be around. So I think this EA Sports program, most kids sorry if I’m wrong, but most kids are into video games. I used. And so it’s a really good way to like we were saying get kids involved and just there’s always going to be a future in tech and whether they want to do it as a career or not, it’s still a good way to get them in, get that background because it’s always going to be useful. So.
Oh yeah, definitely that’s what I that’s why we keep promoting the ecosystem around the C sports program as much. I mean, even in May, we’re going to have like Academy Award show for whoever did the best showcase in the best video clips, best replays, best sports team. So, you know, we’re definitely going to, you know, shout out to all those types of people, too, that’s playing even our Hall of Fame. It’s not just for the best players. It’s kids. It’s getting all these Adobe certs and everything while they’re in this program because they definitely want to promote the academic side as much as possible.
So it’s someone who again has never played EA Sports before it. You keep talking about a lab and all this video production, everything that goes into it. So, so if you were to describe what an e-sports lab looks like? I mean, what is it five? Is it, you know, 50 computers and a bunch of TV cameras around? Like what? What is an e-sports lab?
Yeah. So what are or standards is trying to depend on the classroom size too because some schools have they just don’t have a big room for us to put this in. But we have converted some old computer labs into e-sport rooms. But the size it appears is usually about seven of them. So. So you could do three versus three with one teacher workstation. That is can be the host machine to record all the matches or stream all the matches and all that good stuff. And then on the other side of the room, you usually would have a shell casting desk or a green screen and the camera set up. So you basically have a whole production studio with these sports built into. It is the way I kind of envision things when I look at a lab. But, you know, you might have some room, some schools where we only have room for three computers in them too. And you just make the best of it. I mean, there’s one room that’s kind of like almost the size of a closet time to squeeze everything we can, but on camera, it looks bigger.
You know, it’s but some schools are packed and they want to do this, but this is all they have to do. And then one school, they don’t have a room at all. And they’re like, okay, well, I’ll just get a mobile cart, we’ll do a mobile app, bring it out to the library. And this is your you know, you do sports in the afternoon and roll it back in. You know, just again depends on school environments are all different.
Are these like these desktops or are they laptops that are kids playing on it? Like how difficult is it to move the lab around?
Yeah. So for the, um, for the e-sport labs are desktops. It’s just, it’s this stationery. I mean, the desk all have LEDs on them. I mean, it’s, it’s another award. Rogan, who has a cool AC sports lab, you know, so we, we let the schools go crazy with their labs and make it unique to them. With our roadshow, everything was mobile. So, you know, folding tables and all laptops. And we basically had to carry cases for we got it down to a science at the end. So for the laptops and cases in the routers in the case and both of the schools have smart boards. So thank God we didn’t have to deal with that. But we do. We did buy a 120-inch projection screen that’s a foldable one, and we bring a projector out.
So when we do have to go places nonschool related, we have everything ready from when we did our back-to-school bash three weeks ago. That’s what we use. I mean, I think probably we were at a babysitting club that day. Kids, like all the kids, are in our area playing video games and we just had a big line and I was like, This is awesome, you know? And it was really cool because a lot of the kids are playing the games. We had our area for the parents to come to look at and we talked about all the scholastic parts of the e-sports and they were like, oh, well this is amazing. I want my kid in this, you know. So it’s yeah, I think he’s force is going to be a big game changer when we just even see the parents look and see what this is about.
Kind of like you were saying or there’s when there’s a will, there’s a way. I mean, if kids want to play, no matter the size of the room, no matter what you have to do, you’re going to get it done.
Yeah. And even for schools that don’t have these sports at them, we are we actually have a student esports student ambassador program. We have to because we want feedback from kids as much as possible. So I say I want three kids from each school. It’s kind of like having their own little Congress and they’re going to have a president and all that kind of stuff. But it gives them that that leadership that I’m looking forward to helping lead this program, you know, and give us cause I mean, I’m 43, 42 years old and it’s like my ideas might not be what these kids think about all the time, you know? And so it’s good hearing what they have to say and getting that feedback like, okay, these kids want this, how can we make that happen?
You know, so and they’re going to help us, you know, do policies and everything else, you know, for the league. I mean, the whole EPL league is going to be run by students at some point while the US E-sports program is just monitoring it while they run it. So we’ll have the student being the president and the GM and all that kind of stuff. We’re treating all the schools like franchises. We want them to have that ownership and that leadership entrepreneurship skills. We’re on the website.
Everything those skills. And again, I mean, e-sports really can help foster those skills and things like that. And it’s good to see that’s coming to light nowadays because kind of like Sean was saying, Twitch streaming and YouTube content creation kind of did have a negative connotation to it in the past. I think that’s pretty well recognized. I wouldn’t say that’s too far off. Yeah. So being able to use it in a positive light with students and showing them, hey, you can use these skills beyond just EA Sports entrepreneurship, just management material or management skills, in general, will always be sought after in the workforce.
So yeah, because I mean if I was in high school we would have had this out or ran for president for my sports club in a second cause I would’ve been like, Oh, we’re going to make this a bad the sports club in this city, you know, because that’s just the way my, my brain works, you know? So there’s tons of other me’s out there and I can’t wait to meet those kids and, you know, feed off of them and, you know, make this one of the hottest sports programs in the United States. You know, that’s our goal.
I mean, you’re really the only sports program that I see in a school like that all the time. But maybe that’s because I follow you on LinkedIn. But I mean, it’s usually I mean, I see your stuff more than I see anybody else’s. And so, I mean, that’s a testament to you and your program that you’re definitely doing the right stuff. You’re, you know, you’re getting out there and you’re hitting the algorithm and people are noticing.
So, yeah, I’m just I’m enjoying what I’m doing. I think that’s a big thing for some people. They’re doing stuff, but I won’t say they’re not enjoying it, but they’re doing it because they’re doing it, you know, while me I just I want to see these kids develop into something awesome. Our, district gets so much negativity all the time with, you know, between low test scores and just the kids that we have here. And if I can be just some little part of turning that around and showing that, yeah, these kids can do some amazing things, we just got to give them you give the tools and the skills to do it and just watch what happens, you know? So I’m just really feeding off of what I’ve seen so far. And, you know, I think where we can go with it.
So I really can’t see what I cannot wait to see where we’re going to be at a year from now. Because I mean, a year before, you know, we were at the back-to-school bash and I didn’t even really have an e-sports booth. There was just a little table the IT department. I had two computers. I was like, next year I’m going to have this half of this down thing, half this floor, and showing off what we got everything. If it didn’t happen, you know, you just got to set those goals and get that energy and get people behind you. I have it staff that’s amazing. That’s underneath me. And, you know, it’s our banded team and they want to see the same thing. So they’re, you know, helping as much as possible make this happen. So it’s really awesome to have that support.
It’s really nice seeing the staff like the tech department who tip most of the time, I wouldn’t say are considered directly involved with students, or at least the parents don’t see that. So it really is cool seeing that the tech department is getting directly involved with students and, you know, fostering their skills, their education, their interest, everything just like a teacher.
So yeah, we’re just trying to make a difference. That’s pretty much it. And it’s good. I got some good-hearted techs underneath me that wants to do that with me, but they’re not going to take my belt from me. That’s all I’m to say.
At the other bell with you.
I can get. It’s on off.
Oh yeah. There it is.
Yeah. It hangs in my office all the time. So this is my personal belt with got my name on it. So of course I had the meerkats in the background. So it’s hard to see, but yeah, this is what happened I was in Las Vegas for the magnet conference and I had the regular bandits belt and it was all scratched up because it’s just wear and tear from the kids and stuff. And I was and I was walking down the strip, you know, how they have all these actors that you have to pay money to take pictures with. So I was like, fair trade. Hey, you taking a picture of me. I’ll take a picture of you. We both have a picture. And so I was like, wow, we’re back to our I was like, Yeah, I’m getting me a new belt with alligator skin and the color scheme and everything.
So next time I come to Vegas, I’ll have something really good to represent. So it’s really cool because like you can go walk into a restaurant with this and of course it at the people ask, What’s this about? Then let me just start telling you about what it’s about. And that’s another way to get your program, you know, out there in the community and that people are and you just have to have that one little piece like this to talk about.
Well, that’s awesome. And I so that kind of brings me to my next thing was so Mike had mentioned earlier he’s you’re one of the only schools or one of the only people in schools that’s really bringing these four programs to schools. I don’t know any school up in the Ohio area that has an Esports program either, but I believe they do have like national EA Sports like football tournaments and all different game tournaments. Is this something where the students can, if they’re good enough, get into those tournaments and actually play with essentially professional video game players?
Yeah. So there’s a whole bunch of different leagues out there like high school sports league you have play versus that does things. So I don’t ever tell the schools, Hey, don’t ever do this. You know, if y’all are that good and you want to pay, you know, pay to play, I guess then, you know, go play and show off your talent, you know, the only reason we’re all we’re definitely starting off our own league down here is just because of, you know, funding, you know, high schools like man, I’ll have to 100 bucks to pay to get these kids in here. Of course, they could do fundraisers if they really are that great to put them in there. But, you know, we’re just going to have our own district champion and all that good stuff too. And for LCU, I’m we’re trying to talk on sets. We can’t really have a state championship, you know if I can have a live championship.
So at that technical conference, you know, we can showcase our kids doing all these cool things with doing the video and the shout, casting a whole production. That’s what we did for the live. Q Here in Baton Rouge. It wasn’t the kids, it was my team. But yeah, it was really funny about that was I didn’t even have that plan. We were just going to go down and let people play. And then Sunday night I was like, all right, guys, we’re going to finish our tournament at Lakeview. We’re going to have a safe and we’re going live and crazy. So, I mean, if you watch our YouTube video, that is just winging it. You know? But we’re so used to in productions, it just came so natural to look at the camera, say, Hey, we’re here at LCU, we’re fixing to do this turn of it.
And I mean, we even had our drone, we used to go drone the building. So when I did the intro, you can see the city of Baton Rouge on the drone and the Marriott being drone coming in. So I mean, it enhances our video a lot though and it’s just another thing you can add to your program this drone footage, for Pete’s sake. So there’s just so many things that you can put into an e-sports program.
Do you have any plans to do anything similar at SD or just AQ for now?
So we went to it’s is the and this past that and the June and we actually had our students come down there and do a student panel and then they had me go up there and play against college kids and yeah, that didn’t work too well. And, but then I got to be on a panel to talk about pretty much the same stuff and talk to you guys about what’s going on in our program and things. And, you know, we’re here to help. You know, if there’s somebody else trying to establish stuff, man, just call us. No problem. We’re glad to talk about and share knowledge because we want to see this grow everywhere. All these kids out here, too, just given the opportunities to do this, it’s amazing. But yeah, we are definitely planning on going down to LA.
I just got to talk to their director and say, hey, so we had so much fun, at the one in the summer sound. It has some fun in New Orleans, right? So, and like I say, I got some big plans for that. I mean, just I’m going to want to have posters made and everything for our band. It’s because we have a hero and antagonist group now just to have that kind of like a WrestleMania looking poster, you know, just it brings in attention, you know, and people like, Man, what is this? You know, even if we have that with some kids and stuff, I mean, it’s, it’s to be amazing.
I guess, for all the other tech directors, if you are looking to start a new sports program, I would highly recommend following Jeffrey on LinkedIn reaching out on there. I mean, I’m sure he’s always willing to give advice on some of the tips and tricks he used to get there and call the school, check out their YouTube. Just see what it is doing for these students because I know he can’t push it enough. And I mean, I’ve seen it just from his videos and about how much the students are actually involved and just how excited they are for the program. So, Jeffrey, I appreciate you coming on today. And yeah, I mean, if you want to take a quick second, I know we shouted out your Twitter and everything, but yeah, any last kind of comment you wanted to make? Feel free to go ahead.
Yeah, I just, you know, shout out to our district Spanish parish school system. Our superintendent is he’s fully behind this for sure. So definitely I want to mention Dr. Setor Narcisse and my CTO, Amy Jones. If it wasn’t for a lot of them, you know, I don’t know where we would be right now. So it and like I said, watch this on YouTube if you want to watch that full match video there bandits team that is called the battle for the belts that took me like two days video produced that but I had a lot of fun so it’s cool if y’all ever if y’all do watch that and see what we came up with.
Yeah, make sure to follow Jeffrey on YouTube, LinkedIn, everything and we appreciate you listening in and we appreciate your time today.
Yeah, I appreciate being here.
Thank you. That was much more information than I ever knew about sports before my life. Thank you for coming out. Yeah, no problem.
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. […]
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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.
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