Hello and thank you for joining us with our K-12 podcast today. My name is Sean. I am in the Cleveland office for K-12 Tech. We’re also joined by Mike Hartzler, who is in the Michigan Office for K-12 Tech. And we’re also joined by Eileen Blackstock Steidl, who is the proprietor of Blackstock Consulting. And Eileen, I just wanted to introduce you.
Thank you so much for joining us today. If you would just give us a little bit of background about yourself, how you got to where you are now, where you started from, and kind of your journey in general. Excellent.
Excellent. Well, thank you for having me. Mike and Sean. Just a heads up. I have a wicked strong Boston accent, so that might come through. So if you have any problems with my accent, we could put closed captioning on the bottom after a while. So? So I am. I started my career as an accounting manager. I did accounting for 15 years. That was my original career path. And then when I stay at home, my kids, when they were little, I ended up volunteering in schools and seemed to have worked my way from high school math teacher to high school principal. And then I had some really strong tech directors who really supported me with technology initiatives in my schools as in the classroom and as an administrator.
And I moved into the city role CTO, role about six, seven years ago. And I recently what some people call failed at retiring. And I’m working as my own consulting. I do a lot of writing. I’ve been writing on edtech issues for probably about seven or eight years, really strong. So people kind of know me from my writing, but now I’m working more with PR companies as a strategic advisor because I’ve done all the roles and in education I really have. I seem to have a lot to offer to software companies as they’re trying to, you know, work their way through school districts. And I am most proud of is my CTO, which thank you for saying it correctly, is my Certified Educational Technology Leader. Leader certification through COSON is the only national certification for tech directors, and it’s a pretty rigorous program. And it really is. It’s an honor to be considered one of the probably about 650 of us in the entire world. So it’s a small, elite group.
So what is you said it’s a very rigorous process. So what kind do you have to go through to earn that? Or, you know, how long did it take you to complete that process for the certification?
Well, interestingly, because, you know, tech directors are only going one in each district. So when I made the move from being a building administrator into the CTO role, I was trying to find my people and I came across Coson and through my involvement with COSON, they had this certification program and the process is you have to have so many years of experience as a tech director. They really want someone who’s done budgeting and leadership and, you know, deal with data and community and communications. And so they require you have some experience as a edtech leader and then you this is change recently which has been great, but they actually had to take a test, an online test, and then when I was taking it, you had to do five essays, follow up with five essays.
Coson offers a course which I took, which prepared me for all this and then you get your certification, which you renew every three years, and you have to make sure you have enough of continuing ed but you really have to know your job in order to do it. But Kosta is really good at supporting. They have a early and early career academy that actually I’m a thought partner in and what they do is they take new CTOs like myself. I wish we had it when I was there and they work with their thought partners and they go through a whole process through the year, learning about data privacy and E-Rate and all those things that we need to get involved with and then end up with a capstone. And most of them go on to get their field certifications so coaches and a really good job of promoting and supporting CTOs where when I first started there wasn’t a ton of support for us.
So you do a lot of consulting. You mentioned even with the CoSN board, what role do you typically help with level-specific topics you come in on, or do you kind of just like help with anything they ask me?
So with coaching, I’m involved. I’m on their policy committee. I’m also on their a CTO council, I’m on their actually the Certification Governance Committee. So I’m also been working very closely with CoSN on their student home connectivity study. It was a grant by Chan Zuckerberg. It’s been a two-year process just do some analysis of 12 districts across the country rural, urban, large, and small. And just to see, you know, what are the connectivity issues that our students are dealing with, such as, you know, upload, download speed bandwidth, the type of device they’re using. So I’ve been working on their advisory team for the last two years, and I’m also been writing all their briefs on it, their case studies. So that’s been really cool.
Home connectivity has been a huge issue and it’s interest like it’s not going away even now that we’re all back in school. So so that was that’s what I’ve been involved with them. I present and write a lot about cybersecurity and data privacy, so I try to get as much evolved with CoSN as I can on those, those different areas. You know, I remember we gave out devices like This is great, the kids have a device. I had students bringing the devices back to me because I don’t have any connectivity. So it’s that last mile that we struggle with. And in my research, last job was on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. And you would think that they would have fiber everywhere and that we had the last mile on Cape Cod because it just was connectivity wouldn’t get out there.
So I think that’s still an issue. I really do think it’s a community issue now, school issue. And just because kids are back in school doesn’t mean they’re not going to be, you know, researching and collaborating. We don’t want that to stop. And, you know, we can’t take back hotspots and think everything’s okay going forward. So it’s an equity problem just across the board for a long time.
Oh, yeah. For sure. I mean, I live in a very well-developed area and I still have connectivity issues sometimes from here to there. I mean, the wind could blow when I lose Internet, but you also mentioned a big part of that is cyber security. So like what part of the security exactly are you really looking at? Is it kids doing things on their computers or people getting into the kids computers?
So there’s two things there. There’s Internet safety and then there’s cyber security. So Internet safety is a Web filtering. You know, it’s Google and, you know, go guardian securely on those. We actually make sure that students aren’t going to sites that are, you know, pornography or violence and those kind of things. So that’s one thing. And many districts now have the devices even at home VPN back into the school. So they’re actually still even when they open up their Chromebooks at home, they’re still connecting to our school network and still actually having to they’re still filtered. The other piece is cybersecurity. And honestly, that’s I hate to say it, but it’s a lot of times it’s user error.
You know, I write about this a lot, but a teacher will bring in their laptop from the summer and there there’s ransomware on there and they open it up, connect to the network, and there it is. You know, phishing emails are huge. You know, they open up a phishing email, and just by opening up the link, they’re actually letting the hackers into the system. So districts are doing a really good job at that. But it’s not the students are doing the the the dos the designated denial of service, which is I’ve seen that happen where they actually flood the system with emails so that the system shuts down at school and they don’t have to take their finals or their state testing or they can have a day off from school.
So those kind of things have become more of a student thing. But the outside hackers are coming in through just simple emails or personal devices getting on our network. So those are the two different things.
We’ve even had. But with K-12, we even had recently an email came through and it’s from the exact email address that we were talking to the person from the school, but it wasn’t that person. They don’t know who it was, but I have the exact same address like that. Everything checked out to the school and so we were communicating back and forth. And then when we reached out to the school a couple of weeks later, we hadn’t heard anything. They really never talk to us. So that was a very interesting experience. They probably ramped up their security a little bit.
And sometimes, you know, it’s no trust. Do just if something doesn’t look right, it probably isn’t. And the biggest thing is change passwords, you know, two-step authentication change your password every few months where teaches sometimes and I’m not saying just teachers because I’ve had administrators the same thing. How about a little book or there it’s sticky, you know, a sticky note underneath their desk or something like that. And I get it. It’s they have so many passwords, but it’s interesting because cybersecurity insurance companies, the company that offers up your insurance are getting really tight on the Two-Step authentication. And because passwords are such an easy thing to break and to access and, you know, we use the same passwords for everything. So even the insurance companies are pushing back at school districts saying you really need to put more things in place because this is how they’re getting in.
They’re getting in through passwords, they’re getting in through emails and on. And honestly, it’s you don’t want teachers having to worry about this. They put things in place so that they can’t it can’t happen.
As when I was teaching, I would bring my personal device in from home as well, not even thinking that that would ever be an issue, especially since I never noticed anything on my computer. I probably would have never known if I did let something to the network. So what is so from a staff or teacher perspective, or even from a school perspective, what can you do to limit the possibility of bringing something into a school’s network unknowingly or you know, an accident?
There’s a few things not letting nonschool issue devices onto your main network that’s the first thing a lot of in the beginning when 1 to 1 started we didn’t have enough devices but we wanted kids to be online. So we would have them kids would be wired. We’re moving away from that be wired because we can control what’s on what they what they’re bringing in on their computer. So we’re trying to not have nonschool devices on our network. We’re also creating a variety of levels of network access. You would have student access and you would have faculty access and guest access. The only problem with that is many times that teachers will share teacher access with their students because they want to get on this YouTube video that they need in order to do their social studies project and then adjust.
Because if there was a school. So again, that needs to be changed constantly. But so that’s also kind of the best practices for that. I’ve even heard of schools not prior. You could actually remote desktop in and print things off the print into the printer at school. Now that is a cyber security issue incident waiting to happen. So many schools said, no, you can’t remote print, so that means you have to wait till you’re in the building on our network and then print to the network printer which teachers like to have all their material before they came into school. But that was just definitely a gap that we in some of our districts wanted to shut right down.
So I guess a question with that. So guest networks at schools, a lot of times those are like open. Just anyone can connect to it. Sometimes they will have a password we have to get like from the front desk. But how do you know, how does that go off the same internet, or how do they protect that?
So it actually has its own network and it goes right out to the Internet so it doesn’t connect to any of our systems so it’s just a one-way path out. So it doesn’t it doesn’t actually connect to our, you know, any part of any other part of our infrastructure. So and, you know, honestly, you really kind of have to have a guest network if you are doing any kind of the schools, you’re doing school committee meetings, you’re doing presentations, you’re doing it that you want really what you really want, I guess, network. But it’s a very secure, isolated network that only goes out. So so the big thing about cyber security is you want to be able to stop gap where things go. So say you have a virus that attacks one part of your system, you need to be able to shut that piece of that system down so it doesn’t get into your other systems like your payroll system or, you know, your student information system.
And that all ties back to data governance, which is really, really important, is who actually needs to have access to the data. Does your administrative assistants need to have access to anything more than just, you know, the basic information for students? Do they need to have access to their personal identifiable information? Who has access to health records? Who has access to the payroll system? You know, where is your payroll system? Is it on is it in a cloud-based storage system? Or do you have it in the server, in the back room at central office? So there’s a lot of ways that we can stopgap things. As long as you do a good analysis of your system and really figure out who actually has access to that data and why they have access to that data.
And I’ve had principals not happy with me because their system admins in our student information system, there’s no absolutely reason why they need it. But there’s something about being a system admin that everybody wants that title, so they like the power, but everybody is really not a good thing.
I understand wanting to be the administrator any anything. You’re like, Oh, I got, I have the power. I can add people, I can take people out, I can see whatever I want. Like I understand that feeling, especially if you are an administrator or a higher level administrator, you want to have the access to any information you want when you want it, and you don’t want someone telling you you can’t and probably make sense.
No one. And I get that. And I think much like, you know, when we’re talking about data privacy and you know, we only want to buy district districts software because we can control the amount of the roster we control in our data that’s going to the software companies. You know, once we explain to people why we’re doing it and we give them the access they really need, we’re not denying them access they don’t need. But I think people want once they’re educated, really get it and understand it. I think it’s that initial feeling of you don’t I’m not worthy of having access to it. And it’s not that it really isn’t that. It’s just about making sure that we keep our students and our staff safe. And that, for me has always been the bottom line. That’s, you know if it doesn’t pass that smell test, it’s not happening.
And I think that that makes 100% sense. And I did have one more question about the security aspect of the education world, which is as a teacher, we were issued a school device. I would take that device home every night to input grades, work on lesson plans, make PowerPoints the next day. So I was always taking the school device home and hooking up to my network and then bringing it up the next day and going back on to the school network.
How do you so not even a personal device, just a school-issued device. Are there things that the school can do to stop that network from my house transferring over any bad information to the network at the school, or is it kind of like it’s got to be at the school, on the network, and not necessarily on the computer itself to stop that crossover?
Well, that’s a couple of things. So, you know, we have firewalls on our devices. So once you connect to once you bring that device back in, you should it should all it should hit our firewall. And there shouldn’t be any problems depending on the situation you have. Even when we have kids bringing their own devices, we would have to register we want to register their ISP because we want to make sure that they’re there only with it, only allowing them onto our network. So if you have you know, you have a really good firewalls, you’re able to control it. It’s when they have their own device and there’s no firewall on it. There’s no prevention because we install all that on everybody’s device when they get it. So we have all those safeguards. So no matter where you are, you are safe.
So I have my MacBook from work, I bring the MacBook home. It’s still covered under the same firewall that it is when it’s in school. So it’s when these devices don’t have your memory. I’m sure you had that. You know, your computer shuts down because it’s been attacked by a virus and you can’t get out of it and you can’t get out of it. And you like panic because it will not work. You’re not and Norton malware so we make sure that all our devices are all already set up already on them.
So one thing I wanted to kind of say so again on topic cybersecurity, I know that’s been a huge talking point the past also I’ve seen it blow up the past six months but I know it’s been going on for a little while. What would be probably the number one piece of advice you would give to like a tech director or like a network engineer at a school, maybe like bolster the security relatively quickly or easy. Obviously, there’s so many things you could do, but probably would be like the number one thing they should implement right away.
So I think school does a do a really good job of with their firewalls and the infrastructures to keep the bad people out. Right. They do a really good job and you’ve probably heard a million times, but it’s not if it’s when. So I think it’s really important is you have a really good redundancy plan, you have a really good crisis response plan, you know, as to what’s going to happen when this happens, who’s going to be contacted, who’s going to you know, who’s going to talk to the superintendent and the superintendent going to be the communications person to talk to the community, to talk to the school boards? Or do you have a communication person? You know, when do you call the insurance company? When do you get the lawyers involved? You know, how do you deal with the media? How much manpower are you going to need and how long? If you’re down for a week, what’s that going to look like to instruction in classrooms? What’s that like for your payroll system?
If that’s what got hit, how are you going to do off site payroll so that that can because payroll is big payroll. If you can pay people that that’s huge. But it’s more having that redundancy plan for your data and having a really good crisis response team. And I think that’s where this the school who recover the fastest are doing a really have a really good plan because sometimes until it happens you don’t really know who else needs you don’t have a list of who needs to be called and someone forgot to call the superintendent or, you know, so-and-so’s on vacation so nobody knows that’s happened for a week, things like that. So so I think it’s on the, on the other once it happens. What is your plan?
Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, you practice every other drill in school. I mean.
It’s a side note of this. I’ve been talking to some districts and they’re not they’re looking about not doing cybersecurity insurance because we’re not supposed to pay the ransom anyways. And cybersecurity insurance isn’t covering really anything more than just the ransom. So it’s incredibly interesting the next year or two to see where cybersecurity insurance goes, how that how districts are going to deal with not paying a ransom. In most cases they don’t. But with a cost, I think and this is me personally comes from is the manpower it takes to get your system back up and running. That’s and be able to recover your data. So I think less and less that there I think most districts are broke and I don’t know if the state by state but of not paying ransom.
So I really am wondering where cybersecurity insurance is going to play into it going down the road. So, you know what, if you’re if your data is secure and it’s not you know, it’s not sitting on a flash drive on, you know, administrative assistance desk or the superintendents desk or whatever, I think, you know, most districts are doing a pretty good job. I think it’s when you get into third party, you know, when we’re we’re rostering our students and, you know, they want age, they want ethnics, ethnic tricity. They want to know, you know, parent’s maiden name. They want to know so much. And so the less, the more we can keep our data in house, in secure locations, and not not in one place.
That’s really good. But this is getting really good at this. But you know, I think a big software company got hit a couple of weeks ago and it is affecting districts all over the country. So it’s in many cases just that third party. It may it’s not the software company we’re working with. It’s the company that that software company is working with is where the problems are.
So I know like with us definitely we’ve even had to have training for like different OEM manufacturers that we work with. Why if you have this sensitive data, it is only supposed to go to these type of people. You can’t give it out to this like this level. People kind of all we were mentioning is like a hierarchy. So obviously it’s like, does this person really need to know this information? We really have to be very mindful for that, even just for us. And again, we’re working with schools. We have some student information. We don’t have a whole lot. We just get device information mainly, but even still, you know, if they get that, they can tie that back to a student and then it goes from there, it spirals out of control. So, you know, even as we have policies in place to try to help prevent that.
And that wouldn’t work at some of these companies. I actually work with a Canadian company. They’re a math program. And to develop a data governance panel that the administrators could turn off. And on what data can be, data can be shared within that, within the software. But I’ve talked to companies and they’re like, well, why? Why? Why wouldn’t we want to have this information? Why can’t we have this information? Why don’t you just send us all your data points? And sometimes until much like we were talking about the teachers, sometimes the software companies don’t even realize like we are. We don’t really need that information. But it just how it’s always been or, you know, and if they can’t justify that, you know, districts want to know the software companies are working closely to protect the data that we’re projecting and the conversations they have with software companies are very interesting, even salespeople.
I’m like, So what’s your read on your data privacy agreement that you are collecting this, this and this piece of information is like, Yeah, okay. And I said, Well, you can’t collect that piece of information and they have to go back to someone else and they’re like, Yeah, we are collecting that information. Like, Well, then we’re not dealing with you. So it’s interesting. Even their salespeople aren’t always educated as to what really should be they should be have in their system.
So and that’s an interesting point because I’ve never probably part of the 99% of people that click I acknowledge or I agree to the terms and conditions above without reading the thousand page disclaimer, I would assume someone in your position is knowledgeable as you are about cybersecurity and data sharing. That’s probably something you look over pretty, pretty decently, right?
No, absolutely. All the time. And I work, you know, most law school does have the doing with the Student Data Privacy Alliance and it’s Exhibit E and it’s a customizable agreement between the vendor and the school district as to how much data is going to be shared. There is a template for it, but in a lot of times we customize it or will say, okay, this school district is using this Exhibit E and we like their exhibit E, so we’re going to use it in our agreement. There are the Student Data Privacy Alliance and A for a for our also they have a list of districts who have not signed the data privacy agreement, and those are the companies we’re not working with. So to your point, it’s like I say to teachers, your job is not to read through all this legal jargon. Your job is to teach our kids.
Yeah, that’s your job. My job is to make sure that I understand. I understand these agreements. We run it by our counsel, our district council, and I work with organizations like the Data Privacy Alliance to make sure that we’re protecting our students. So it’s a group effort. So what we don’t want teachers to do is be fearful. We don’t want them to click do those click wrap agreements. So it’s more about education and let us do our job so you can do your job. So I always say to them, when I do training, I say, just think of one Facebook. Just put out all that information about you. Think about what that does to our kids when you’re signing these things, you’re basically saying the same thing like all, all my students data.
You can have it. You can do whatever you want with it. And once you make it personal for them, they get it. They really get it. And they’re like, they want to be hands off. They don’t want to be in charge of all of that. But it’s definitely a collective group. Coson does a great job with it as well.
So in the classroom itself, on your phone, you can download apps that have your attendance stuff on it. So you can just walk around the classroom like attendance. You can do your grade book on your phone, you can do a lot of different apps that schools use where you can use it on the computer. But if you’re, you can also use a mobile version.
If you don’t click, I acknowledge or I accept the terms, you’re not allowed to use the app. So there’s actually a way to or you guys can go to that company and amend those terms and conditions, or is that just kind of a peer in there type of thing? And it doesn’t work for every app or, you know, company or.
Right. So, so this is what went on during the pandemic, especially with the free teacher versions of things. So during the pandemic, every teacher got an email saying, you know, you can use this during the pandemic, it’s more of a culture change any teachers can use a lot of apps that are free, especially, but there’s no data administrative panel. There’s no way to roster it. There’s no way. So it’s more about education and saying, we’d love you to be able to use this app, but we’re not going to allow you to add your students to it. But let us look into buying at a district level. Our school level or classroom level. You know, there are a lot of programs out there that actually can scan for us.
Chrome and tell us which apps our students are going to watch our apps, our teachers are going to. And then we can have these conversations with the teachers and say, okay, so you’ve been wanting to use this particular program. Let’s look into buying it, because right now you’re not getting any of the premium information. You can’t roster it with your classes. You’re really putting yourself and your children in danger and let’s work together in a collaborative way. So it’s really a culture change and unfortunately, which I struggle with, there are still software programs out there that will only sell individual licenses to teachers. They will not because they do not have district licenses. And those are the ones I struggle with because I’m not going to name them.
But it’s like I don’t really want to use your product because I have no control over it. The teacher has to buy her own license using a credit card. It’s just not good practice. But for me, I think it’s just been an education for everybody and it has some pain points. But once it once it’s in place, the teachers like it so much better because now they’re a student who comes into the classroom, the students are automatically rostered to that app, you know, so to your question, yes, they can, but we highly discourage it for a lot of reasons.
So you did mention that you have been spending a lot of time writing. I don’t want to assume incorrectly and assume that you have been writing about cybersecurity and everything we’ve been talking about. But what kind of topics do you generally find yourself writing about and researching and getting that information out there for everyone else to read?
Anything in the edtech where I talk about social emotional learning, I talk about the signs that signs of reading. I talk a lot about connectivity issues, digital equity issues, you know, reaching marginalized students. So I really focus on showing the successes that are happening in school districts. I don’t write about products per se, but I write about solution problems and solutions, and I really focus on what the districts are doing. So I do a lot of research, I do a lot of interviews, and I really want to highlight what’s going on in the tech world and what educators and administrators are dealing with and then highlighting districts that are doing it well. I wrote a good article, a longer article for Education Next, which is a Harvard publication, and they were to talk about cybersecurity, but they also wanted to focus on what are districts doing.
Right. You know, we talk and I’m going back to cybersecurity just because this is an example of we assume teachers and administrators and districts, you know, are not addressing digital equity. They’re not addressing our marginalized students. They’re not addressing data privacy, which they are. So I try and highlight those case studies where they are doing the work because that’s because we don’t see a lot that we see what’s in the news. We don’t see the good work that’s going on in districts.
So your publications or writings and research isn’t just centered towards administration and, and the technology directors at schools. You’re also looking at what teachers can do in the classroom to help bridge the gap with technology.
Yeah, and I know right now high dose of tutoring is huge. You know, online tutoring has become this became big before the pandemic and then it became really big during and now it’s pandemic. And so I talk a lot about curriculum instruction and, you know, how to reach the struggling students who are struggling. And also so it’s more about, I think because I have an education background, I talk about education and I don’t like to talk about the tech as much as the application of the tech to improve student growth and learning and all that. So it’s more about education than it is about the tech itself. But we need tech to do a lot of the things we try to do right now.
So I come from the same kind of education mindset background. So when I talk to tech directors, it’s the same kind of thing where here’s how I can help your students. If this is all working and this just kind of it’s one of those things you can’t get out of your head when you’re talking to someone about something because it’s engraved in you. Right. So what is something then that you’re seeing in your in the case studies or just talking with administration and educators that teachers are doing really well with technology in the classroom and what’s something that maybe they could be utilizing the technology for better or they’re kind of moving that way and new things that are coming out like because it’s always changing, right?
So with something that’s going really well and what’s something that could use improvement or is just now coming into the scene.
Okay, I think what’s going really well is teachers are utilizing it is a good example. Oh, it was a young, younger grade and we were talking about Chromebook iPads in the classroom and I says, well, you’re probably not going to need many iPads, you know, on a daily basis because you’re back in person. And I know what I was thinking, but the teacher is like, Oh no, we need them more than ever. You know, I’ll have this group of students working on, on this project together. I’ll have a paraprofessional working with this student who’s struggling over here. You know, I’ll be doing something on the interactive whiteboard. And, you know, these students are working independently and we need the technology in the classroom. I’m thinking, all right, you don’t need your soundbars.
You don’t need all this stuff. And they want more and more because they’ve gotten so used to having that part of how they teach. And I think it’s been really good for teachers. So they’re not standing in front of the classroom anymore. They’re actually allowing students to, you know, to self-select what they how they want to learn, and where they want to learn. So I think that’s been really good. I think the assistive technologies that have come out, teachers are embracing them. So you may have all the students reading the same book, but they’re reading it at a different level. Maybe they’re using like, you know, saw or where you have the dyslexic functions or the large print functions or they’re read aloud while you have other kids actually reading, reading the book, you know, and same with your ESL students as well.
I think teachers right now are burnt out. I think in Autumn’s also seeing as they want to get back to the way it was, just because they’re done, I think technology is kind of taking a let’s take a minute. Let’s evaluate what we’ve been using. Let’s see what’s going to work going forward and just stop with the initiatives going right now. And I’m hearing that from a lot of superintendents they like we just need to take a breath. So I don’t know if there’s I would recommend adding new technology. I think we should continue working with what we have and honing in on it and, you know, giving that student ownership of their learning. And I think this is what the pandemic and I hate to say it is like a pandemic, but we really needed to we needed to make this jump.
And but I think it’s also time to say, all right, we got 25 apps to do the same thing. Let’s back up and take a look at what’s really working for students. And it’s all about interoperability. We want everything to be seamless. We wanted to work with our student information system, our learning management system. We want a product that does multiple things. That is not just a stand-up product. We want products that we can, as administrators have an administrative panel. We can get data, we can get reports, we can control how data is, is passed through, and the programs. And so yeah, I think we were all taking a step back and saying, okay, so now we have Chromebooks in everybody’s hands again, iPads and everybody’s hands. This is great moving forward. But let’s just take a break and focus on what’s really working. And so much of it is it’s amazing.
As far as where teachers and administrators can go to learn all of this information either from you or just in this, you know, side of the industry in general. I mean, what are some recommendations of their readings or their websites should be? They go to conferences all the above.
Yeah, I think the conference is a backup and I honestly, it’s been the best thing for me because that’s where I connect with people. I just came back from Esty and it’s just so cool to see people actually collaborating in the hallways and going to sessions and hearing from their peers and they also, you know, so it’s been great to see the in-person. I think the fact that a lot of them are doing hybrid, you know, the virtual pieces are really good. It’s being able to see it’s got a great community where it’s broken down by different categories. And so if you have librarians as a librarian, one this, you know, administrative one, and it’s a great community where they can actually talk to each other and solve problems and share things.
Caussin has a great one for their tech directors, which has been really good. I become I think Twitter has been a game changer. I think in the educational space, it’s where people are communicating and they’re sharing and they are doing webinar communication or webinars. And so I think social media, especially Twitter right now, is been huge. I think for me, I think LinkedIn is even changed. It’s become more of a community than a place to put your resume, which has been really cool, but definitely, any of the big organizations like, you know. Shontell Indiana has a great CTO and CTO group there. Every state has an affiliate and getting involved with that and try to get out to the conferences, even the small ones, just to be around people. That’s where the energy is and that’s where I think we need it right now. So but that’s my suggestions. But follow me on Twitter would be great too.
Kind with the shameless plug. And so that’s actually where I was going to go. So we’re kind of getting close to the end of our time here. So if there’s anything you want to shout out in any of your writings, anything like that, where they can maybe read more about you or just what you write about, if you want to shout that out, you’re more than welcome.
Sure. Yeah, definitely. I always post my articles on Twitter and Facebook and I usually shout out to all the school districts that I write about. I have a website that’s actually changing a little bit, but it’s Eilene Tor.com and all my writings are there as well. You know, my emails, Ebell is talking Gmail. Anybody can reach out to me, but I’m very accessible with Twitter is probably the easiest way to Twitter, and LinkedIn is the easiest way to find me. But yeah, I appreciate the time. This has been great. I love talking about tech and about our students and it was really, really nice to meet both of you.
And I didn’t realize I might have put my school in jeopardy, bringing my own computer in so you learn something new every day.
And change your password. Please change it.
Yeah.
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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