Full Transcript for Episode 284 - Be Friends with Your Facilities Dept

04:11.064 that we've had come in as kids have returned. They can help you with refurbished 04:11.564 --> 04:14.351 devices as well. If you get behind on repairs, they can help you out with 04:14.851 --> 04:18.919 that as well. You can email customersupport@chromebookparts.com with code 04:19.419 --> 04:22.526 WELCOME2CHROMEIMPROVEMENT for an additional 10% off of 04:23.026 --> 04:26.501 your next order. Also, they have a pretty cool YouTube channel. They put out 04:26.550 --> 04:29.643 some kind of fun videos. They have one called Chrome Improvement. 04:29.852 --> 04:33.314 So you can check that out as well. All right, Mark, you got some news 04:33.491 --> 04:33.795 for us. 04:34.308 --> 04:37.466 Yeah. Well, let's just start with a reminder. The eRate comment window 04:37.514 --> 04:41.297 is currently open. If you remember from some of the earlier episodes, 04:41.426 --> 04:44.712 E-Rate is, I don't wanna say at risk, but I think 04:45.212 --> 04:48.367 I can say there's a question, a very serious question out 04:48.415 --> 04:51.701 there as to whether or not E-Rate should exist or if there should be 04:52.201 --> 04:55.437 some major changes. I guess that's pretty big at risk then. 04:56.174 --> 05:00.021 I'll tell my little quick story and hopefully I don't have anyone 05:00.521 --> 05:03.965 in my school district that will give me some heat on this later. 05:04.045 --> 05:07.027 But my superintendent got ahold of me this week. 05:07.572 --> 05:10.781 And he was like, hey, I've heard E-Rate's at 05:11.281 --> 05:15.851 risk. And I was like, oh, really? I hadn't 05:15.916 --> 05:19.606 heard. And I really think I've like talked about it 05:20.106 --> 05:23.906 several times and also forwarded some emails. But the 05:23.922 --> 05:27.949 word on the street, Mark, is your news is correct. 05:28.687 --> 05:32.843 E-Rate is at risk. And that's why it's important that we 05:33.343 --> 05:35.121 give some comments during this window as well. 05:36.116 --> 05:36.677 And comments are 05:37.177 --> 05:40.863 due October 13th, so we're getting pretty close to deadline 05:41.168 --> 05:44.536 for the initial comment period, and then reply comments are due November 05:45.036 --> 05:48.449 12th. A number of organizations have put together some resources 05:48.481 --> 05:51.993 for you if you're interested in supplying a comment 05:52.493 --> 05:56.307 but not quite sure where to start. Head over to saveoure-rate.com 05:56.901 --> 06:00.044 and you can fill out some templates to send your comments on how 06:00.733 --> 06:04.212 a loss of or a change of E-Rate would impact your district. 06:04.918 --> 06:08.476 And it's easy to do. Like, I've done the process 06:08.589 --> 06:12.131 and there's, I think there's like the, there's a 06:12.631 --> 06:15.882 hardware, there's a hard way and an easy way to leave a comment. 06:16.764 --> 06:20.531 But both have impact. Both are leaving a comment. So yeah, 06:20.547 --> 06:23.833 go to saveoureerate.com and for sure do that. Yeah. 06:24.090 --> 06:27.761 All right, coming up next, a network provider 06:28.261 --> 06:31.816 called Cambium Networks. They're located out of the UK, but they have a number 06:31.913 --> 06:35.844 of installations here in the United States. for school districts. At least 06:35.925 --> 06:39.474 over 1,000 school districts have installed Cambium Networks in the 06:39.974 --> 06:43.538 last few years. They have just announced that they are shuttering their doors. 06:43.650 --> 06:46.766 They've had some financial issues that they've signaled in the 06:47.266 --> 06:50.685 last few years, and they just announced in the last week that they are shuttering. 06:51.440 --> 06:55.407 This is a pretty significant issue because they have a cloud monitor— 06:55.536 --> 06:59.455 they have a cloud-controlled wireless called CN Maestro. 07:00.017 --> 07:03.883 And they have signaled that they cannot promise that service will continue 07:04.383 --> 07:08.007 to operate after October 1st. That's a week away. And if your 07:08.507 --> 07:11.890 networks are controlled by this cloud service provider, you have a very, 07:11.970 --> 07:15.163 very urgent, urgent need to install the on-premise version of 07:15.195 --> 07:19.046 CN Maestro. But at the end of the day, this company may not 07:19.546 --> 07:23.233 exist or may exist in a very, very different format. So if 07:23.281 --> 07:26.458 you are running Cambium networks, this is one that you obviously are 07:26.490 --> 07:29.653 probably paying attention to already. If you're running a 07:29.717 --> 07:33.525 different cloud provider, this is a good stark warning as to 07:33.573 --> 07:37.253 the dangers of what happens if the provider of that software 07:37.753 --> 07:41.478 that you rely so heavily on is in financial dire straits 07:41.607 --> 07:45.415 or in a financial situation, and suddenly you 07:45.447 --> 07:49.335 might wake up and your wireless network no longer works despite having 07:49.835 --> 07:50.339 the hardware on-premise. 07:52.292 --> 07:53.300 That doesn't 07:53.317 --> 07:53.972 make me feel good. 07:54.643 --> 07:57.130 No, no. Are you running wireless controllers 07:57.630 --> 08:00.628 right now? Or is that already cloud controllers? 08:01.285 --> 08:01.462 Yeah, 08:01.927 --> 08:04.912 yeah, like we just, we just went to the cloud, 08:05.457 --> 08:09.148 uh, with our, our wireless stuff. We ditched our physical controllers and 08:09.648 --> 08:12.854 went— now we don't have Cambium, but it raises those, those great 08:13.354 --> 08:16.705 questions about— I mean, when you do that, that's what, that's what 08:17.205 --> 08:20.621 you're doing, and you're relying on those things. It raises the questions about, man, 08:20.637 --> 08:23.603 it can be a great up-and-coming service, 08:23.766 --> 08:27.122 all kinds of bells and whistles, great impact for a school district at a 08:27.622 --> 08:28.702 great price, I would imagine, as well. 08:31.129 --> 08:32.707 But it

can go away really quick as well. 08:34.107 --> 08:34.284 Sure. 08:35.975 --> 08:36.506 I don't like it. 08:37.649 --> 08:39.887 No, no. Very nerve-wracking 08:39.920 --> 08:43.434 thing to think about. And for the districts that are running Cambium networks right now, 08:44.195 --> 08:46.237 we wish you the best in the next couple of weeks. 08:48.092 --> 08:51.589 All right, so we've got 3 research studies we're going to dive into that have 08:51.621 --> 08:55.278 come out in the last week or so involving technology use 08:55.374 --> 08:59.047 and screen time and AI in the classroom. So let's first start with the Walton 08:59.159 --> 09:02.881 Family Foundation. They partnered up with the Gallup Foundation 09:02.993 --> 09:06.891 or the Gallup organization— sorry, let's start with the Walton Family Foundation. They partnered 09:06.923 --> 09:11.013 with Gallup as well as the Sesame Workshop to take 09:11.513 --> 09:15.504 a look at how classroom devices are helping or hurting student 09:16.004 --> 09:20.869 learning from the perspective of teachers. They've surveyed 2,100 09:21.143 --> 09:23.142 US public school K-12 teachers, 09:25.007 --> 09:28.957 and the— sorry. 09:30.469 --> 09:33.032 They surveyed 2,100 US public school teachers. 09:33.546 --> 09:37.209 96% of teachers say that students are using devices in 09:37.241 --> 09:41.547 their classrooms. So we can see obviously that the first question of how much 09:41.659 --> 09:44.742 is technology being used, you're basically at 100% of students using 09:44.774 --> 09:46.797 technology in the United States. No surprises there. 09:48.115 --> 09:51.393 80% say that students have an assigned device. So, rather than 09:51.425 --> 09:55.153 using a shared device, 80% of students actually have a device assigned to them 09:55.250 --> 09:59.324 for most, or if not all, the day. 54% of the 09:59.824 --> 10:03.204 teachers responded saying that their required curriculum cannot be 10:03.704 --> 10:10.162 taught properly without the use of devices. So, that's a pretty stark— that's 10:10.662 --> 10:13.873 a pretty astonishing thing to think about, that over half of our classrooms, or at 10:14.373 --> 10:16.748 least half of the teachers surveyed, would not be able to teach in the same 10:17.248 --> 10:18.847 capacity should the devices go away tomorrow. 10:19.792 --> 10:20.129 Yeah, 10:20.513 --> 10:24.231 and I would've guessed 60%, 70% for 10:24.731 --> 10:27.275 some reason. I think I was shooting high on that one, but I mean, 10:27.355 --> 10:29.358 even 54% is still a crazy number. 10:29.743 --> 10:30.480 Yeah, yeah. 10:30.944 --> 10:34.774 But this is where it gets interesting. Enthusiasm is very thin for the usage 10:35.274 --> 10:38.556 of devices in classrooms. 59% overall agree 10:39.056 --> 10:42.209 that digital tools help students learn more effectively, 10:42.898 --> 10:45.511 About 10% actually strongly agree with that statement though. 10:45.831 --> 10:46.007 Okay. 10:46.264 --> 10:49.982

52% say devices do equal good and harm. 10:50.110 --> 10:53.268 So you got half the teachers saying that devices are both good 10:53.444 --> 10:57.114 and bad at the same time. 30% are saying 10:57.146 --> 10:59.454 the opposite, that there is more harm than good. 11:00.128 --> 11:04.086 So this is an interesting thing. You're starting to see the response from teachers 11:04.679 --> 11:07.933 pointing towards devices as potentially not being as helpful as 11:07.965 --> 11:11.555 we may have think, or at least there's discussion within the teacher force. 11:13.271 --> 11:16.991 60% of teachers want students on devices less often. 11:17.343 --> 11:20.903 Now, that's a pretty big number, but what's really interesting about this 11:20.967 --> 11:23.580 is that it's very, very split on grade level. 11:24.783 --> 11:28.599 Devices are a major or moderate distraction for about 18% 11:28.647 --> 11:32.656 of elementary school teachers. That's very, very low that are saying that devices 11:33.156 --> 11:33.425 are a major issue. 11:33.473 --> 11:33.537 Yeah. 11:33.842 --> 11:36.985 That number skyrockets to 42% 11:37.129 --> 11:41.026 when you get to middle school and 50% at high school. So this 11:41.154 --> 11:44.668 is showing there's a very, very strong increase in the 11:45.168 --> 11:49.081 amount of distractibility that devices are bringing to classrooms from the perspective 11:49.161 --> 11:52.546 of middle school and high school teachers in comparison to elementary. 11:52.643 --> 11:55.274 It's definitely the experience that I see for sure. 11:56.157 --> 11:59.719 Elementary school teachers, younger grade level teachers are more 11:59.767 --> 12:03.842 in control of those devices, whereas middle and high school teachers begin 12:04.342 --> 12:07.998 to see the impacts of students self-selecting devices and personal devices 12:08.030 --> 12:11.453 as well. So their 12:11.678 --> 12:14.860 major conclusions here is that oversight predicts everything. 12:15.069 --> 12:18.507 So when teachers have a lot of oversight over the 12:19.007 --> 12:22.985 devices, now think of the software that helps teachers to control those devices securely, 12:23.098 --> 12:24.838 GoGuardian, those types of platforms, 12:26.452 --> 12:30.173 those numbers plummet. 20% of teachers 12:30.673 --> 12:34.024 say that— excuse me, teachers with a lot of oversight call 12:34.072 --> 12:36.556 devices distracting only 20% of the time. 12:37.667 --> 12:41.175 That's less than half of the overall, and only 12:41.448 --> 12:44.059 42% say they have a lot of oversight. 12:45.052 --> 12:48.256 I really screwed this one up. The major 12:48.756 --> 12:52.422 points of this article, or the real major conclusions of this article, is that oversight 12:52.486 --> 12:55.914 predicts everything. Teachers that have strong 12:56.026 --> 12:59.839 oversight over devices, those numbers plummet to about 20% 12:59.951 --> 13:03.652 saying that these devices are a distraction. So you can see that when 13:03.700 --> 13:07.609 you have teacher controls in there with something like Securly and GoGuardian and 13:08.042 --> 13:12.179 these different device management platforms, the distractibility from the teacher's perspective 13:12.933 --> 13:16.621 plummets significantly. And a lot of teachers are also 13:17.121 --> 13:21.031 pointing towards procurement, with 30% of teachers saying that 13:21.531 --> 13:24.367 tools are adequately reviewed before adoption. 13:24.559 --> 13:27.686 So there's a lot of numbers in this thing, but if you look at the 13:28.186 --> 13:31.551 broad brushstrokes of this study, you're really seeing that teachers 13:32.051 --> 13:34.389 are not pointing towards time limits as being the solution. 13:35.682 --> 13:39.144 You're seeing less than 30 or 40% of 13:39.644 --> 13:43.378 teachers saying that they support a time limit restriction, but more teachers 13:43.475 --> 13:45.961 who are having control over those devices, 13:46.872 --> 13:50.028 those are the ones that are finding more success and seeing less distractibility. 13:52.808 --> 13:56.969 2 things. One, my opinion on this is sponsored by 13:57.469 --> 14:01.050 Lumu. Check out Lumu's threat detection and response. It can be the core of 14:01.550 --> 14:03.979 your security ecosystem. I'm going to put a link in the podcast description. They have 14:04.479 --> 14:07.493 a cybersecurity for your school to school plan kind of thing. 14:08.022 --> 14:10.141 So check out Lumo. So here's my opinion about this. 14:10.574 --> 14:11.986 Did you— did you— 14:12.002 --> 14:14.281 you sold your opinions? Is that what you've done right now? 14:14.410 --> 14:15.341 Yeah, sold out. 14:16.191 --> 14:19.770 Um, and maybe this is just me looking 14:19.802 --> 14:23.301 back, maybe it's not in my opinion or whatever, but early days of one-to-one, 14:24.360 --> 14:28.052 man, I was against, uh, like screen 14:28.068 --> 14:31.807 monitoring. I was against giving 14:31.903 --> 14:35.001 teachers that tool, um, because I 14:35.130 --> 14:39.030 thought they should be able to walk around the room and look at the screen 14:39.544 --> 14:42.883 and see what the kid is doing. And I would get backed 14:42.915 --> 14:46.077 by that, you know, with administration, with principals, that yeah, our, 14:46.270 --> 14:49.432 our teachers should not be sitting, you know, at teacher desk, 14:49.962 --> 14:53.943 uh, staring at the monitoring tool. Uh, but that was always like the biggest 14:54.136 --> 14:57.619 ask, uh, when we would meet with teachers and talk about, you know, 14:57.683 --> 15:00.797 what, what, what don't you have that you need? They would always ask for screen 15:00.878 --> 15:02.531 monitoring. They would always ask for those tools. 15:02.579 --> 15:03.157 Oh, interesting. 15:03.559 --> 15:04.506 Several years ago, 15:04.972 --> 15:08.359 uh, we went and purchased a tool, uh, 15:08.745 --> 15:12.566 that we use so that we can see, see what's on the screen, snapshots.

15:12.614 --> 15:15.184 We can see what tabs are open so we can see what the, you know, 15:15.200 --> 15:18.074 what the fifth, what the active tab is. Uh, 15:18.796 --> 15:22.313 we can see what's, uh, the activity in their Google Drive, you know, what, 15:22.329 --> 15:22.939 what are they doing? 15:22.987 --> 15:23.212 Mm-hmm. 15:23.597 --> 15:25.315 Uh, so like a teacher can do a quick look 15:25.363 --> 15:28.093 if they was— they've done an assignment, they can look and see if that assignment's 15:28.593 --> 15:31.369 been opened. you know, that kind of stuff. And we got a lot of praise 15:31.465 --> 15:35.367 for that, that we finally, uh, did that. I, I think back now, 15:35.512 --> 15:38.081 like today, I completely think that that's needed. 15:38.771 --> 15:42.192 Uh, and again, now, I mean, you read 15:42.692 --> 15:46.238 through these stats and teachers absolutely would say that that's needed. Uh, and I 15:46.738 --> 15:47.780 think the climate has changed a lot. 15:48.551 --> 15:48.599 Yeah. 15:48.647 --> 15:49.659 Uh, back then there wasn't a whole 15:49.707 --> 15:53.223 lot of— there were still bad things to do, uh, 15:53.239 --> 15:57.093 but the way in which kids can get distracted now on a device I 15:57.158 --> 16:00.240 would say has really scaled up over the years. So, 16:00.770 --> 16:04.560 I would— I mean, I guess these stats are saying what I would think 16:05.060 --> 16:08.702 or what I would agree with. It's not the screen time that's the problem. 16:08.815 --> 16:12.251 It's, again, what we've been preaching on. It's the quality. It's what they're doing on 16:12.751 --> 16:15.045 it. Well, how can a person ensure good quality? 16:16.104 --> 16:19.460 Well, they need oversight. They need to make sure that the kid's being directed towards 16:19.492 --> 16:19.942 quality. 16:20.697 --> 16:20.921 Yeah. 16:22.142 --> 16:23.079 What do you think? I mean, 16:23.176 --> 16:26.648 I think the struggle with this is oversight's 16:27.148 --> 16:30.037 going to cost money. So a school's going to have to buy oversight tools. 16:30.961 --> 16:34.887 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's good to see that there are some 16:35.179 --> 16:38.293 low-cost or some free options coming out 16:38.793 --> 16:42.271 there. I know if you are— I think it's the premium 16:42.771 --> 16:46.199 version of Google where you can have the classroom tools, but then the teachers 16:46.215 --> 16:48.991 have to be on a Chromebook as well at the same time as the students. 16:49.056 --> 16:51.928 But at least there is a low to no-cost option available. 16:52.943 --> 16:55.993 But I think that we're getting to this stage where if you're 16:56.493 --> 16:59.733 going to bring devices in the classroom, or I guess that barn's 16:59.829 --> 17:04.018 already open here, but teachers need to have controls over 17:04.518 --> 17:08.191 these devices. Teachers need to be able to remotely control these devices because 17:08.255 --> 17:11.561 walking around the classroom, it's very quick for a student 17:12.061 --> 17:14.033 to get lost and get into trouble the second that teacher turns around. 17:14.691 --> 17:14.852 Yeah. 17:15.317 --> 17:18.527 I don't remember if you said or not because you just kept spitting stats at 17:19.027 --> 17:20.999 us, but this is year 2 of this study. 17:22.863 --> 17:25.827 Yeah. And I like that because this thing's going to continue on, 17:27.780 --> 17:31.967 and I don't know that I would have always have said this, but I 17:32.080 --> 17:35.717 believe in what the teachers— I respect 17:36.217 --> 17:39.774 the teacher's opinion. I don't know that younger Chris Warden would 17:40.274 --> 17:43.735 have necessarily have said that, but I think this is a 17:43.783 --> 17:46.887 survey that we can turn to, and over the years as this gets looked at, 17:47.302 --> 17:50.960 What the teachers are saying, we should pay attention to. And, if the teachers 17:50.992 --> 17:54.008 are saying that it's oversight is the need and not so much the screen time 17:54.104 --> 17:57.553 vibe, we should pay attention to that. We're going to have these survey results to 17:58.053 --> 18:01.772 look at. So, yeah, I like this study and I appreciate that it's not 18:01.900 --> 18:02.750 a one-and-done study. 18:03.264 --> 18:03.921 Yeah, for sure. 18:05.269 --> 18:09.440 We have another study coming out of the American Psychological 18:09.940 --> 18:13.819 Association, which is the professional scientific body for psychologists in the United States. 18:14.398 --> 18:17.569 They have been looking at the effectiveness of edtech, 18:17.650 --> 18:20.934 and they're trying to not answer the question of whether or not edtech works 18:21.434 --> 18:24.909 or not, but it's when does it— what are the conditions for it to be 18:25.409 --> 18:28.726 successful, and when is it harming learning? What they're 18:28.742 --> 18:32.146 looking at is that the effects of edtech really depend 18:32.646 --> 18:36.470 on what the tool is asking the learner to do, how teachers are integrating it, 18:37.148 --> 18:40.475 the age and the needs of the child, and as well as what this 18:40.975 --> 18:44.982 tool is replacing. And not to be— I'm 18:45.482 --> 18:49.604 sorry. And not surprising here, they're finding that engagement in edtech is 18:49.732 --> 18:53.536 not necessarily translating to learning. Clicking frequently, 18:53.712 --> 18:56.906 responding to animations, interacting with rewards does 18:57.018 --> 19:00.212 not indicate learning. And I think that this is something that we've seen a lot 19:00.712 --> 19:04.015 of change in terms of the edtech apps. I would say 5, 10 years 19:04.515 --> 19:08.989 ago, every edtech app that was out there was really, really focused on engagement, 19:09.118 --> 19:12.692 on animations, on making students stare at the screen, 19:12.740 --> 19:13.542 I guess you could say. 19:14.087 --> 19:14.135 Yeah. 19:14.183 --> 19:16.475 Now, again, nowadays you're starting to see things change.

19:16.652 --> 19:20.323 You're not seeing as many edtech apps that are wholly focused on 19:20.499 --> 19:24.955 animations and engagement. You're seeing things more focused on 19:24.987 --> 19:28.370 the learning process. Schools are asking for the science 19:28.870 --> 19:32.105 and research behind edtech platforms rather than just looking 19:32.201 --> 19:35.439 for things that keep the kids engaged. So it's good to see 19:35.939 --> 19:39.367 that the American Psychological Association is seeing the same thing. They are 19:39.575 --> 19:43.727 also Putting in a warning here about AI. They're saying that AI can 19:43.823 --> 19:46.772 help a student produce a better essay when used for writing, 19:47.429 --> 19:51.052 but the final product does not necessarily indicate 19:51.552 --> 19:54.578 or mean that the student has become a better writer. So I think that for 19:55.078 --> 19:58.986 me is a big warning that AI could be masking the learning process if 19:59.486 --> 20:02.721 used. You might see or you might feel that students are learning because you're seeing 20:02.753 --> 20:06.600 the same products, but you're masking a potential problem 20:07.100 --> 20:10.498 here. So This is not drawing too many conclusions here, not drawing 20:10.515 --> 20:14.028 any conclusions on AI, but they are starting to 20:14.060 --> 20:17.815 enter the phrase of, or they're starting to enter the conversation 20:18.315 --> 20:21.087 around if AI is actually helpful for the learning process. 20:22.227 --> 20:25.997 And this is reminding me of, so I do middle 20:26.497 --> 20:30.425 school, high school robotics, right? After school with kids. And we 20:30.925 --> 20:33.651 do a lot of competitions and I think you can like, relate this to so 20:33.715 --> 20:37.058 many things and it's like, well, yeah, that makes sense. When we go to 20:37.090 --> 20:40.834 competitions, um, there are schools, 20:41.107 --> 20:44.498 there are programs where the teacher has like 20:44.998 --> 20:48.788 a cookie cutter, hey, you're gonna build this particular robot this particular way. And this 20:48.900 --> 20:49.125 is the— 20:49.125 --> 20:49.238 Yeah. 20:49.302 --> 20:51.359 You're gonna copy paste this code. You're gonna make this do this 20:51.471 --> 20:54.846 thing. That robot might be absolutely kick butt 20:55.346 --> 20:57.674 and dominate at the competition. That's cuz the adult did it and blah, blah, 20:57.738 --> 21:01.284 blah, blah, blah. Right? Versus the program that we put out, uh, 21:01.974 --> 21:05.341 we're very big into like, we don't tell the kid, we ask 21:05.841 --> 21:07.523 them questions. They figure it out in their head. 21:08.004 --> 21:08.100 Yeah. 21:08.148 --> 21:09.255 Uh, it's mountains and valleys 21:09.367 --> 21:12.703 in robotics and in coding. Uh, they have to talk to 21:12.719 --> 21:16.263 each other. They might end up building a robot arm that one kid 21:16.763 --> 21:19.968 thought was better, but he had the louder voice. And then they realize how 21:20.192 --> 21:24.041 teamwork and communication's gonna work and they end up with, you know, 20 different revisions. 21:24.987 --> 21:28.772 Man, do we know which group learned more and ended up 21:29.272 --> 21:32.076 with better programming and better communication skills and all that stuff? Yeah. 21:32.541 --> 21:35.219 The one that got to experience all the highs and the lows and the whole 21:35.331 --> 21:38.603 bit versus just being told what to do. That's what we're talking 21:38.635 --> 21:41.938 about. Like, you can make a kick-butt essay with AI, but you don't know how 21:42.438 --> 21:45.226 to write the essay yourself. Yeah. Yeah. 21:46.076 --> 21:49.861 You know, we know that easy, but I do think we live 21:50.361 --> 21:53.546 in this world now where we need to keep doing these surveys and collecting data 21:54.046 --> 21:57.616 to prove this thing so that we have policy and regulation in place that matches 21:58.116 --> 22:02.054 up with it. But of course, of course AI can help a student 22:02.102 --> 22:05.291 produce a better essay, but it's not going to help the kid 22:05.467 --> 22:09.072 overall long game. Like we know that, but I guess we need to like 22:09.713 --> 22:11.460 collect that data and share it. 22:12.453 --> 22:13.655 Well, even their comments 22:14.155 --> 22:17.901 around how engagement in edtech doesn't necessarily translate to learning, I kept thinking 22:18.401 --> 22:21.177 back to you know, my experience playing The Oregon Trail when I was a kid. 22:21.630 --> 22:25.412 I didn't learn anything about the Oregon Trail. I have no idea what the purpose 22:25.477 --> 22:28.726 of that thing is other than to shoot squirrels and avoid 22:29.226 --> 22:29.583 getting dysentery. 22:29.696 --> 22:30.375 It was engaging. 22:30.909 --> 22:32.897 I still don't know what dysentery is, 22:34.530 --> 22:37.537 but I was always happy when, when it was when the character named after my 22:38.037 --> 22:40.864 older brother was the one who died in the river crossing. But again, I didn't 22:41.364 --> 22:44.465 learn anything about this. So we have a lot of engaging 22:44.965 --> 22:48.737 experiences in our educational pathway. Not surprising that 22:49.237 --> 22:51.968 engagement doesn't always translate to learning. Yep. Yep. 22:53.648 --> 22:56.846 All right. And then finally, the last research paper I have, 22:57.523 --> 23:01.115 uh, the National Bureau of Economic Research circulated a 23:01.228 --> 23:04.321 working paper on the impacts of Khanmigo. 23:04.869 --> 23:09.480 If you remember correctly, Khanmigo came out from Khan Academy in 2023, 23:10.173 --> 23:13.538 and not too long afterwards, Sal Khan came out and said, Yeah, 23:13.988 --> 23:18.097 it didn't really quite go the way we thought it did. And so an economist 23:18.242 --> 23:21.709 at the University of Toronto actually did a research 23:22.209 --> 23:25.803 study with a school district and found that students weren't 23:26.303 -->

23:29.703 quite engaged in this, just as Sal Khan had mentioned. They studied 23:29.896 --> 23:34.166 18 middle schools, around 7,000 middle school students 23:34.953 --> 23:38.805 using Khanmigo. And what they found is that students originally 23:39.305 --> 23:42.417 started to use Khanmigo to get an answer to a question, just like they would 23:42.917 --> 23:47.052 with any AI chatbot. But the science around Khanmigo to prompt 23:47.552 --> 23:51.316 the students and to ask them questions using the Socratic method didn't result in 23:51.816 --> 23:55.002 the kids wanting to use this thing anymore. In fact, 23:55.163 --> 23:58.497 a lot of their prompts still were looking for, just give me the question. 23:59.154 --> 24:02.136 And when they realized that this AI tutor wasn't going to do that, 24:02.360 --> 24:06.865 they stopped engaging. So I'm 24:07.365 --> 24:11.274 not surprised. I think when we all saw these AI tutors come out, we thought 24:11.774 --> 24:15.976 this was going to be an interesting move, especially because schools were paying enormous 24:16.073 --> 24:19.668 amounts of money for tutors after COVID. And there was a lot of federal funding 24:19.941 --> 24:23.536 that specifically mentioned tutoring. But I don't 24:24.036 --> 24:27.564 want to talk to an AI bot as a tutor. I want to talk to 24:28.064 --> 24:28.832 an AI bot to give me an answer. 24:29.731 --> 24:29.924 Right. 24:31.095 --> 24:32.411 So it's a good thing. 24:32.460 --> 24:34.241 And again, 24:34.305 --> 24:37.980 that's like, do you Do Chris and Mark, 24:38.943 --> 24:42.955 uh, like talking to, like, when we do tech support and they 24:43.455 --> 24:45.458 have the AI bot at the very beginning till you can get, you know, 24:45.538 --> 24:48.442 you have to like say stupid sentences to get to the real person. 24:48.988 --> 24:52.710 No, we don't. And, and like my parents 24:53.160 --> 24:56.914 and my grandparents, you know, did they like doing the, you know, 24:56.995 --> 25:00.348 call somebody on the phone and it does the automated message and you 25:00.364 --> 25:02.755 gotta, you know, punch through buttons to get to a real person? 25:03.172 --> 25:04.135 Operator, operator, 25:04.151 --> 25:05.018 operator, operator. 25:05.098 --> 25:05.435 Yeah. 25:05.756 --> 25:06.333 Yeah. 25:06.494 --> 25:07.569 So like, again, 25:08.227 --> 25:11.662 Like, we need data and we need these studies, but we 25:11.694 --> 25:14.664 could have— we could have just— we knew this is how it was going to 25:15.164 --> 25:17.024 be. We're wired like this. 25:17.699 --> 25:18.694 I know, I know. 25:19.159 --> 25:22.739 No one likes chatting with a robot. I mean, 25:22.932 --> 25:26.705 maybe that's just the thing that we've learned from tonight's episode is that nobody likes 25:27.205 --> 25:27.491 talking to a robot. 25:28.149 --> 25:28.390 Facts. 25:28.470 --> 25:29.546 Period. Facts. 25:30.140 --> 25:30.798 And now it's backed 25:31.298 --> 25:34.186 by facts and surveys and the

whole bit. They could have just asked us. 25:38.138 --> 25:41.708 It'd be great if you looked at a bunch of people's interactions with Conmigo 25:42.208 --> 25:45.375 and it just said, operator, operator, operator, give me a real person. 25:46.480 --> 25:47.323 Well, that was funny. 25:47.387 --> 25:50.128 What's the stat? 12.6% were low-effort 25:50.338 --> 25:52.819 messages like IDK, just give me it. 25:53.940 --> 25:54.231 Yeah. 25:54.538 --> 25:54.862 Yeah. Amazing. 25:55.590 --> 25:56.625 Just tell me the answer. 25:57.062 --> 25:57.984 It's amazing. 25:59.456 --> 26:02.982 Hey, this was not on our agenda, but very similar to this one. I saw 26:03.684 --> 26:06.308 a story this week coming out of NPR, 26:07.230 --> 26:10.899 and some of their podcasters or podcast hosts found 26:11.513 --> 26:14.747 really weird messages left in the comments on their 26:15.247 --> 26:19.058 Spotify accounts. And they started to think that like maybe this is some sort 26:19.558 --> 26:22.267 of scam or these are bots. They reported it to Spotify. 26:23.290 --> 26:27.065 And then like a Gen Z employee at NPR 26:27.194 --> 26:30.986 was like, no, these are kids. These are kids. So they— so NPR reached 26:31.050 --> 26:34.485 out to these commenters and said, hey, Can you tell us what's going 26:34.581 --> 26:38.053 on here? Turns out these are kids that had social media 26:38.553 --> 26:41.877 bans. They weren't allowed to go on social media, so they would find 26:41.910 --> 26:44.091 random podcasts on Spotify, 26:44.981 --> 26:48.266 tell their friends, and they use the comments section 26:48.525 --> 26:49.625 as their chat room. 26:51.293 --> 26:51.647 We, uh, 26:52.805 --> 26:55.331 we, we've had that. I'll try to pull that up while we're talking here. 26:55.862 --> 26:59.319 Uh, yeah, our podcast just had that. Like last 26:59.819 --> 27:00.664 week. This is really funny you're saying that. 27:02.274 --> 27:02.342 No. 27:02.443 --> 27:03.236 I'll try to get into 27:03.270 --> 27:03.995 it while we're going along. 27:06.481 --> 27:09.865 By the way, check out VIZOR. That's V-I-Z-O-R. 27:09.995 --> 27:13.761 Check them out at vizor.cloud/k12techtalk. They can do your IT asset 27:13.794 --> 27:18.046 management and they can be your help desk solution. They are built for K-12. 27:18.564 --> 27:21.959 They go beyond basic asset inventory automating. They can help you do 27:22.459 --> 27:26.554 common K-12 tech tasks like move your Chromebooks to the correct OU, All that 27:27.054 --> 27:30.520 kind of stuff. They can disable lost devices, do your power washing, and more. 27:30.906 --> 27:34.824 So they keep the human in the loop, though, because that's something that AI 27:35.324 --> 27:39.303 Josh and Josh would both like. Check out visor.cloud/k12techtalk. 27:39.400 --> 27:42.611 If you do a demo with them, you can get some snarky tech 27:42.756 --> 27:46.400 cups from them as well, like a cup that says, have you submitted a ticket? 27:46.866 --> 27:50.302 Did you reboot it? And for Josh, human in the loop. Once again, 27:50.318 --> 27:51.009 check out visor.cloud. 27:55.570 --> 27:55.990 visor.cloud/k12techtalk. 27:58.995 --> 27:59.229 Should we 27:59.729 --> 28:00.772 pause and see if we can figure this out? 28:02.774 --> 28:02.989 Yes. 28:03.452 --> 28:03.716 I can't 28:04.216 --> 28:04.758 even find comments. 28:06.710 --> 28:07.346 Yeah, I clicked in 28:07.394 --> 28:10.754 there and it kind of just left me that I— because it was weird. 28:14.996 --> 28:15.589 I'm almost there. 28:17.405 --> 28:18.162 Was it on Spotify? 28:19.000 --> 28:21.353 Yeah. 28:25.608 --> 28:28.168 Okay, Mark, I found the Spotify comments. 28:29.310 --> 28:33.252 Uh, so we had— it was just on, I guess, 2 weeks 28:33.752 --> 28:36.077 ago, this episode, uh, got us— 28:36.093 --> 28:36.884 you're right. 28:37.886 --> 28:40.696 It was like, hey, there's like 12 comments or something, and it's just these kids 28:41.196 --> 28:44.928 talking to each other. There's a kid, Adam, He says, radio apple. 28:46.431 --> 28:49.809 And then he says, thank you, by the way. And like, that's not directed towards 28:50.309 --> 28:49.955 us. 28:51.012 --> 28:51.093 No. 28:51.495 --> 28:54.040 And then Alastro says, 28:55.247 --> 28:58.999 hey, are you okay? Will you answer 28:59.499 --> 29:02.944 this? And Em's like, I'm so sorry. And they just talk back 29:03.009 --> 29:06.245 and forth for a while. And then Alastro's like, oh, you scared 29:06.294 --> 29:09.954 me. Please don't go away. So, I mean, this is like, 29:10.021 --> 29:13.791 I think these are like, this is like boyfriend-girlfriend 29:14.291 --> 29:16.686 You know, they got their phones taken away or social media taken away, but they 29:16.718 --> 29:19.085 found a way. Love found a way. 29:19.214 --> 29:20.116 They found a way through the K-12 29:20.616 --> 29:23.635 Tech Talk Spotify account. You're right. 29:23.700 --> 29:27.277 These are kids having a conversation. I wonder if they're having this in school because 29:27.777 --> 29:29.358 you can kind of pick up like a little bit of the conversation. 29:32.320 --> 29:33.043 This is amazing. 29:33.139 --> 29:34.264 Love always finds a way. 29:34.987 --> 29:35.019 Aw. 29:35.646 --> 29:35.887 Through the 29:36.387 --> 29:37.397 K-12 Tech Talk podcast. 29:37.493 --> 29:40.610 We have a romance blossoming on our Spotify account. 29:40.723 --> 29:42.475 I'm going to hit reply. I'm going to say, get out of here, you kids. 29:45.978 --> 29:46.769 Signed, Josh. 29:48.287 --> 29:49.756 AI Josh. All right. 29:52.905 --> 29:56.723 Well, while you're— 29:56.950 --> 29:58.358 while you're— what's my word here? 30:02.825 --> 30:05.011 Oh, my God. Back to school. That is so funny. 30:08.836 --> 30:12.397 All right. Well, while you're chasing the kids out of our Spotify 30:12.897 --> 30:16.656 comment section with a broom, let's move on to our main topic, which is— A 30:17.062 --> 30:18.913 new study that came out of the— 30:18.994 -->

30:20.455 I did post it. I said, get out 30:20.955 --> 30:23.086 of here, you kids, dash AI Josh. 30:26.892 --> 30:27.955 Anyway, what were you saying, Mark? 30:28.809 --> 30:30.613 No, no, no. This is more important than chasing 30:31.113 --> 30:33.948 kids out of here. All right, let's move over to our main topic, which is 30:33.980 --> 30:37.609 the Government Accountability Office, the GAO, released a national 30:38.109 --> 30:41.696 representative survey of school districts, over 400 responses from school 30:41.728 --> 30:45.446 districts. And the headline of this is that 1 in 5 schools 30:45.558 --> 30:49.646 closed at least 1 day of school last year due to a facility emergency. 30:50.367 --> 30:50.399 Wow. 30:50.511 --> 30:52.756 You may have seen this on the news. I've seen this, a few of 30:53.256 --> 30:56.795 the major headline news providers covering this one. This cost our 30:56.843 --> 31:00.514 United States students roughly 3.5 million days 31:00.707 --> 31:04.618 of learning, and over 2 million students, an estimated 2 million students 31:05.118 --> 31:09.251 were impacted by this. This is a significant, significant issue if 1 in 5 schools 31:09.443 --> 31:13.371 is gonna close their doors during a school year because of a facilities-related 31:13.871 --> 31:17.685 issue. As you can imagine, the most common issues are plumbing or water 31:18.185 --> 31:21.551 related. I know firsthand we've had schools in my 31:22.051 --> 31:25.240 neck of the woods close because of a storm, maybe caused a 31:25.740 --> 31:28.480 flood or water penetration through the outside wall. 31:29.330 --> 31:32.795 We've had roofs with major issues. And then, as you 31:33.295 --> 31:35.955 can imagine, electrical is another significant issue for facilities. 31:36.244 --> 31:36.549 Mm-hmm. 31:36.597 --> 31:37.190 Sometimes that's 31:37.270 --> 31:40.639 outside provider related. The GAO did try to make sure that that data 31:40.703 --> 31:44.022 was excluded. So they're not trying to look at electrical 31:44.522 --> 31:46.779 issues caused by the grid, but actual facilities, 31:47.532 --> 31:50.819 building-related issues. So within that 31:51.319 --> 31:54.794 though, related to technology, almost 60% of districts reported 31:54.890 --> 31:58.000 isolated telecom or Wi-Fi internet outages, 31:58.754 --> 32:02.408 not related to the service provider, but related to the building 32:02.424 --> 32:06.031 itself. This is a very, very significant 32:06.531 --> 32:09.398 number when we're looking at the amount of students that are impacted by this and 32:09.414 --> 32:12.091 the percentage of schools that are seeing internet, Wi-Fi, 32:12.299 --> 32:15.787 telecom-related issues. Chris, how often are you going through an 32:15.887 --> 32:17.043 issue like this in your district? 32:19.167 --> 32:19.618 Every day. 32:21.615 --> 32:25.352 No, I'm looking at these stats and then we're talking about E-Rate funding 32:25.384 --> 32:29.680 going away because E-Rate has

accomplished its goal and 32:29.809 --> 32:31.094 it doesn't really make sense. 32:32.524 --> 32:33.424 No, no. 32:33.890 --> 32:37.489 These are very, very dire numbers. 14% of schools 32:37.617 --> 32:40.248 are rated in poor or very poor condition. 32:41.673 --> 32:44.862 And the majority of schools are saying that facilities budgets just don't 32:45.362 --> 32:49.140 cover their needs. I don't think we should see any surprise by this one, 32:49.204 --> 32:52.648 but the amount of investment when you think about this to bring us back up 32:53.148 --> 32:56.366 to speed is astonishing to think about. Now, 32:57.695 --> 33:01.397 let's talk about how this impacts technology first and foremost. Now, we've had a lot 33:01.897 --> 33:04.905 of issues with electricity in my experience. We've also had a lot of issues with 33:05.405 --> 33:09.167 heat, either too much heat or not enough heat. 33:09.856 --> 33:13.109 We've had some buildings that have been shuttered because of 33:13.478 --> 33:17.003 burst pipes in the wintertime. We've also had some 33:17.067 --> 33:19.983 internet outages due to overheated network closets. 33:20.447 --> 33:24.742 Most of our schools did not have built-in 33:25.254 --> 33:28.539 air conditioning, so we would start to see equipment shut down. And there are times 33:29.039 --> 33:31.343 where we did have to say to facilities, we need to shut the internet down 33:31.843 --> 33:36.006 before our equipment is damaged. And then obviously, water penetration 33:36.506 --> 33:40.035 is a major issue. I can— I think I've lost track 33:40.099 --> 33:43.247 of how many network closets got a rainstorm inside because of something 33:43.296 --> 33:47.456 burst or a storm. So what types of facilities-related 33:47.956 --> 33:49.978 issues do you experience in your neck of the woods most? 33:51.151 --> 33:52.099 Yeah, the excessive 33:52.115 --> 33:55.295 heat one, we— I mean, we, we're dealing with that now. 33:56.066 --> 33:59.890 We probably have— I think we have 3 switch locations 34:00.966 --> 34:04.661 that, that because of the location, they were put into rooms 34:04.725 --> 34:08.329 that Yeah. That don't have AC. So, so they're 34:08.829 --> 34:11.995 more just getting whatever the environment is, is, is giving. 34:12.108 --> 34:16.235 That's, that's what that switch is sitting in. And we've noticed 34:16.735 --> 34:20.002 it more recently because with battery backups 34:21.130 --> 34:24.836 and the software that we use to manage them, we're tracking temperature a 34:25.336 --> 34:28.954 little bit better than we did in the past. And seeing 34:29.054 --> 34:32.420 that I guess that's been like 2 weeks 34:32.920 --> 34:36.542 ago. We were realizing we've had issues in one area, and I've 34:36.590 --> 34:40.006 always assumed it's power flicker or it's, 34:40.359 --> 34:43.294 uh, you know, just something going on that we couldn't quite figure out. 34:43.486 --> 34:43.582 Yeah. 34:43.743 --> 34:47.191 Well, it's just getting hot. Like, yeah, that's the issue. Uh, 34:47.335 --> 34:51.344 it's, it's, it's, it's not been something else going on. It's that 34:51.844 --> 34:55.049 room got really hot and that switch isn't operating correctly now kind of 34:55.549 --> 34:59.125 thing. Uh, Man, I can think over the years a couple times with water issues 34:59.141 --> 35:02.722 and water issues and technology, you know, just, you know, just freak you out and 35:03.222 --> 35:06.624 it's just a terrible situation. I can think of colleagues that have gone through, 35:07.555 --> 35:12.035 uh, what, what you just described, water issues. I, we have one switch, 35:12.453 --> 35:16.403 uh, in an area that forever reason, and, and we haven't changed it, 35:16.483 --> 35:19.887 but, and I inherited it. It's like a switch and it's, man, it's just right 35:19.951 --> 35:20.385 near a sink. 35:20.433 --> 35:20.546 Mm-hmm. 35:21.059 --> 35:22.762 And like, we just like cringe at it, you know? 35:22.826 --> 35:26.359 But that's, that's again, That's what made sense with the placement of it. 35:26.824 --> 35:28.735 Well, that's just asking for a problem to happen too. 35:29.233 --> 35:29.425 Yeah. 35:30.356 --> 35:34.065 Uh, way back forever ago, random story kind of, but I can remember 35:34.565 --> 35:36.955 we were doing a bunch of fiber work. This is at a previous school district, 35:37.581 --> 35:42.108 uh, and they were running fiber into a building. So they put this pipe, 35:42.156 --> 35:44.628 you know, that the fiber was gonna come through, but they hadn't pulled the cable 35:44.661 --> 35:48.176 through yet. Um, and I was, it was over summer 35:48.192 --> 35:51.420 and I walked into the library that goes to a switch closet. And I 35:51.484 --> 35:54.889 could hear water. Um, and that, that's not, 35:55.403 --> 35:58.599 uh, that's not right to hear running water. 35:59.419 --> 36:02.615 Uh, and open up the switch closet, like water was pouring out. 36:03.033 --> 36:06.422 So the, the, the company doing the fiber work had just 36:06.922 --> 36:09.747 put in the pipe and didn't like, you know, seal it in any way. 36:10.196 --> 36:10.212 Oh. 36:10.421 --> 36:13.264 So it had rained outside. So it was just like a water fountain. 36:13.794 --> 36:17.248 Like it was just, it was just flowing. And again, that's facilities is what we're 36:17.748 --> 36:21.515 talking about. That's construction work happening. Yeah, man, not even digging into like, 36:22.300 --> 36:26.418 you know, things getting, uh, cut or damaged just because of construction 36:26.482 --> 36:29.574 work going on. Uh, I mean, I've experienced different 36:29.606 --> 36:30.712 things with that over time. 36:31.753 --> 36:32.731 I'd say, you know, 36:33.436 --> 36:36.672 our issues really stemmed— I would say half of it was related to, 36:37.922 --> 36:41.399 uh, the fact that our buildings were built well before the internet existed. 36:41.447 --> 36:44.700 And so everything that we did was retrofit, and air

conditioning as well. 36:45.293 --> 36:48.580 And there are schools that had air conditioning Most of 36:49.080 --> 36:52.833 the buildings, they're retrofit for it. And so when you're retrofitting a building for internet 36:52.913 --> 36:56.364 and for air conditioning and, and these kinds of things, you're, 36:56.460 --> 36:59.621 you're going to naturally run into issues. You're never gonna have the right ventilation. 36:59.670 --> 37:02.350 You're never gonna have the right heating and, and cooling in place. 37:03.104 --> 37:07.052 And now what I would say, probably half of our issues stemmed from that type 37:07.552 --> 37:11.225 of stuff. In Boston, here in Boston, 80% of our schools 37:11.725 --> 37:15.706 were built before World War II. When you think about how long ago 37:16.206 --> 37:19.547 that was, and 80% of our school buildings are that 37:20.047 --> 37:23.421 old, it's astonishing to think about how many buildings had to be retrofit 37:23.921 --> 37:27.614 for plumbing, for wireless, for internet, 37:27.631 --> 37:31.285 all those kinds of things. The other half really stems 37:31.317 --> 37:34.930 to— really stems from just human issues. 37:35.918 --> 37:38.008 Contractors cutting through pipes, as you mentioned, 37:39.740 --> 37:41.894 maintenance going on without us being aware of it. 37:42.813 --> 37:46.483 I remember every summertime we'd have a list of all the facilities, major renovations 37:46.499 --> 37:49.737 going on. And the one project that I was like, I don't even tell my 37:49.849 --> 37:53.969 team about the window replacement at all these schools. Well, turns out 37:54.754 --> 37:58.248 when you have a school that's built before World War II, how do you 37:58.264 --> 38:01.823 get the internet lines into that building? You're not cutting, cutting a pipe through. 38:01.871 --> 38:02.207 That's funny. 38:02.672 --> 38:04.884 You know, a foot, a foot of wall. 38:05.012 --> 38:08.186 So they go through the windowsills. That internet 38:08.282 --> 38:11.888 was dropping every day. Sometimes in the summertime because 38:12.388 --> 38:15.061 a contractor would go to replace a window and just cut the internet lines. 38:15.221 --> 38:18.506 So that was the other major, major issue that we ran into. 38:19.820 --> 38:23.025 And I would say it was every springtime when all the little bulldozers came out 38:23.525 --> 38:26.984 from the winter hibernation and started cutting through all the street lines, we had the 38:27.484 --> 38:27.577 most issues. 38:28.650 --> 38:30.750 We have one building that has some old 38:31.695 --> 38:35.269 electricity stuff to it, and when we went one-to-one at that 38:35.301 --> 38:39.439 building, we had to run some new electric. Yeah, a particular 38:39.616 --> 38:42.263 outlet that was going to be where the Chromebooks were going to be charged at. 38:42.680 --> 38:46.530 Yeah. And man, the tickets we would get because the teacher wanted to move that, 38:46.594 --> 38:49.498 you know, charging

station to a different outlet, and then we— 38:49.562 --> 38:49.899 Yeah. 38:50.316 --> 38:55.273 You know, popped a fuse or whatever. And, uh, even those tension 38:55.773 --> 38:58.754 points then between tech department and teacher because we're forcing them to put, 38:59.509 --> 39:01.979 you know, technology in a particular place in the classroom. 39:02.300 --> 39:02.674 Yeah. 39:02.901 --> 39:06.414 When that's just, that's because we're working with the facility that we're working 39:06.479 --> 39:09.048 with. That's not us being bullies or whatever. 39:10.984 --> 39:13.979 And then the issues that come with that because, you know, we're overloading. You know, 39:14.044 --> 39:17.796 that school wasn't designed for hundreds of Chromebooks to be in 39:17.893 --> 39:17.941 it. 39:18.854 --> 39:21.316 So. I remember like the best innovation of the last 39:21.816 --> 39:25.349 20 years was whoever invented the smart charging cart that would strategically 39:25.381 --> 39:29.123 charge Chromebooks on, you know, in banks of 39:29.623 --> 39:29.356 charging. 39:30.758 --> 39:33.565 Random to think about if, uh, I don't 39:34.065 --> 39:36.644 remember if this was a national thing. EMITS, does that mean anything to you? 39:37.093 --> 39:38.119 That may be a Missouri thing. 39:38.696 --> 39:38.728 No. 39:38.776 --> 39:40.204 So early days, 39:40.877 --> 39:43.700 way before 1-to-1, uh, it was like, uh, 39:44.710 --> 39:48.094 a 2-to-1 kind of vibe. Uh, you would put computers 39:48.594 --> 39:51.574 in, into a classroom, uh, and in this school district I was at, 39:52.440 --> 39:55.487 it was one of these EMITS rooms, uh, and they ran, uh, 39:56.578 --> 40:00.075 a, an, an, a switch on the wall, uh, 40:00.219 --> 40:02.979 like to turn power on and off. It was called like the kill switch. 40:03.669 --> 40:07.600 So like, if all the kids, all the elementary kids were in that computer 40:08.100 --> 40:11.081 lab and like, you know, a bad pop-up came up on a kid, 40:11.595 --> 40:14.515 the teacher could run over and hit the kill switch and shut the power off 40:15.015 --> 40:18.750 to all the computers. But then later as that progressed, and that's like a 40:19.250 --> 40:22.873 terrible thing to do, uh, we would have issues with someone hit that 40:22.889 --> 40:25.632 light switch and killed all the computers in that room. Yeah. 40:26.835 --> 40:27.011 All right. 40:27.059 --> 40:31.291 Well, enough reminiscing. Let's talk about what to actually do about this because, 40:31.788 --> 40:35.507 well, I would say this doesn't start necessarily with good news. The majority 40:36.007 --> 40:39.963 of school district buildings are paid for by capital bonds, and capital 40:39.979 --> 40:42.912 bonds are typically voted by the local school community. 40:43.040 --> 40:46.775 So one of the things that the GAO has pointed out is that school districts 40:47.275 --> 40:50.478 are just not applying for capital bonds or not issuing bonds to 40:50.542 --> 40:54.133

pay for construction buildings, which is making the problem so much 40:54.309 --> 40:57.708 worse. Almost 50% of districts have not attempted a bond 40:58.208 --> 41:02.021 in the last 5 years. And almost 100% of those districts 41:02.521 --> 41:06.045 report unmet capital needs. Part of this is it's 41:06.109 --> 41:09.363 a lot of work to issue a bond in a local community. 41:09.796 --> 41:12.698 The other part of it is it's a lot of political capital that you need 41:13.147 --> 41:16.898 to expend in order to get a bond through. And so if districts aren't 41:16.994 --> 41:20.570 able to do that, we're not seeing any sort of reprieve come 41:20.682 --> 41:22.397 for district school buildings. 41:23.489 --> 41:27.425 Bonds also impact school technology. A lot of school districts 41:27.925 --> 41:30.767 put their networks partially or fully on a bond issue, 41:31.442 --> 41:34.944 and a lot of districts have also used bonds to pay for student devices. 41:34.992 --> 41:38.494 So are you seeing anything? How do bonds work in your 41:38.510 --> 41:41.322 neck of the woods, and have you been involved in those in your district? 41:42.205 --> 41:46.238 Yeah, I'm a school district. We run a bond every couple years that we 41:46.800 --> 41:50.595 can, and our community typically votes yes. for that. 41:51.870 --> 41:55.210 Most years, technology does not have a 41:55.420 --> 41:58.821 place in the bond issue. It's the roof, it's the parking lot. 41:59.368 --> 41:59.529 Okay. 42:01.236 --> 42:02.911 I'd say I've experienced a couple 42:02.927 --> 42:06.550 bonds where we've gotten to do like a new security camera system. If it's something 42:07.050 --> 42:11.195 to do with physical security, again, those like outward things that the 42:11.695 --> 42:14.731 patrons are going to see, that's been a thing. The most 42:15.231 --> 42:17.727 recent bond that we did, Uh, and it was a new experience for me in 42:18.227 --> 42:20.678 my career. We got to put, uh, our servers through that, 42:21.481 --> 42:24.320 uh, and I was a little bit nervous about that, relying on, again, what you 42:24.449 --> 42:27.673 just said, like, well, if this doesn't pass, yeah, uh, 42:27.978 --> 42:31.171 then what happened to me on my servers? Because we need, we need new servers. 42:31.524 --> 42:34.588 I know this isn't a rant again about E-Rate, but this is 42:34.636 --> 42:35.631 why E-Rate's important. 42:36.000 --> 42:37.139 Yes, yes, yes. 42:37.299 --> 42:38.310 Facilities wins, 42:39.128 --> 42:43.009 uh, so technology needs another place to get its funding. And if 42:43.138 --> 42:46.776 E-Rate goes away, we're gonna be relying on bond. We're gonna be relying on capital 42:47.276 --> 42:48.731 and we're gonna be fighting over who gets the money. 42:49.548 --> 42:50.045 Well, that's gonna be my 42:50.545 --> 42:55.446 next question. Should E-Rate go away? Because we have this current E-Rate question and 42:55.494 --> 42:58.699 you need to start shifting stuff over to a bond.

Do you think that your 42:58.764 --> 43:02.690 community, given everything that's going on with AI and 43:02.706 --> 43:06.104 screen time and the politics around technology, would your 43:06.152 --> 43:09.518 community be open to a technology bond or do you think 43:10.018 --> 43:11.809 that would be an uphill battle moving forward? 43:12.644 --> 43:13.287 I'd say yes 43:13.787 --> 43:16.821 for where I'm at, uh, but man, I bet that's a hard conversation for a 43:17.321 --> 43:18.154 lot of people in other areas. 43:18.668 --> 43:18.732 Yeah. 43:18.812 --> 43:21.045 And like, again, if you start prioritizing 43:21.141 --> 43:24.932 things, because I've, I, I have, I've thought through this with E-Rate. 43:25.012 --> 43:26.490 If E-Rate were to go away, 43:27.807 --> 43:30.650 E-Rate is always my UPSs, always my, 43:31.662 --> 43:34.666 uh, my switches, my networking, my wireless. Uh, 43:35.517 --> 43:38.906 so if that's not E-Rate anymore, Yeah. Then that's gonna be 43:39.406 --> 43:42.842 capital. And then if that's my capital, you know, you just 43:43.342 --> 43:46.955 keep trickling it down, then what is impacted? My classroom technology's impacted, 43:47.003 --> 43:50.618 like my smartboard, my projector, my teacher computer that we 43:51.118 --> 43:54.377 have, my student computer that we have good rotation plans on. 43:54.490 --> 43:58.378 I think that's when the world starts changing in not a good way when, 43:59.149 --> 44:02.442 you know, we're keeping devices for longer. We're really trying to stretch out 44:02.587 --> 44:04.579 how long an interactive whiteboard's gonna last. 44:05.976 --> 44:09.637 That would be my, you know, if, if, if capital is 44:09.669 --> 44:13.266 just facilities versus tech, man, I could prioritize my 44:13.766 --> 44:15.273 tech pretty quick on what we just have to have. 44:15.690 --> 44:15.947 Yeah. 44:16.092 --> 44:16.574 And at the end 44:17.074 --> 44:19.480 of the day, what is going to suffer is what's sitting in the classroom. 44:19.961 --> 44:20.138 Right. 44:21.374 --> 44:22.771 Well, this is another reason for, 44:23.879 --> 44:27.749 if you're listening to this and you have not submitted a comment to the FCC 44:28.455 --> 44:32.293 for the— to save E-Rate, This is another reason for you to think about 44:32.793 --> 44:35.297 it, or this is something else for you to put in there around the conditions 44:35.797 --> 44:39.456 of your buildings and the lack of bonds, a lack of funding for facilities that 44:39.956 --> 44:42.989 are impacting technology and how detrimental a loss of E-Rate would be. 44:44.290 --> 44:47.213 So once you read this report, what are you going to do on Monday morning? 44:48.209 --> 44:51.951 You've seen just how dire the situation is. You've seen how funding is 44:51.983 --> 44:55.660 becoming more and more of a challenge for buildings. What is a lesson for a 44:56.160 --> 44:59.450 technology director to use this for outside of requesting E-Rate 44:59.950 --> 45:00.477 funding? What are you going to do locally? 45:02.599 --> 45:03.065 I was hoping 45:03.565 --> 45:03.806 you were going to tell me. 45:04.272 --> 45:06.590 No. Well, I was going to say you've got 45:07.090 --> 45:09.100 a good relationship with your facilities director, right? 45:09.728 --> 45:10.050 I do. 45:10.291 --> 45:13.461 He happens to be a friend. We sit— we, we— you could take 45:13.961 --> 45:17.243 friendship aside, uh, at my school district, and it's 45:17.743 --> 45:21.098 a good thing. Tech department and maintenance facilities 45:21.194 --> 45:23.934 department, we are in the same area. 45:24.336 --> 45:24.514 Yeah. 45:24.739 --> 45:28.437 Uh, so when— and actually, this is a great example, Mark. You, you've, 45:28.607 --> 45:32.602 you've You've asked a great question. We are in the middle of doing bond 45:32.650 --> 45:35.525 work. We are getting a new elementary building. 45:36.440 --> 45:40.102 And so far, up until what I'm about to say, I was 45:40.198 --> 45:43.571 in this email thread and working through the plans and figuring out the electric and 45:44.071 --> 45:47.537 all this kind of good stuff. And John, our maintenance and facilities director, 45:47.586 --> 45:51.504 he walked in this morning with new plans that 45:51.681 --> 45:54.861 I wasn't a part of, that he was just 45:54.893 --> 45:55.326 kind of given. 45:55.391 --> 45:55.535 Mm-hmm. 45:56.739 --> 45:58.457 And I got to see those new plans because 45:58.505 --> 46:02.824 we have a good working relationship, because we touch base on what's going on between 46:02.856 --> 46:05.216 the two of us, you know, that, that, that good pulse of a thing. 46:05.730 --> 46:10.258 And there were changes made in those plans that would impact tech that 46:10.322 --> 46:13.501 if I didn't have that relationship, I wouldn't have been in that loop. I would 46:14.001 --> 46:16.937 have been behind or whatever. So I got to get ahead of that because of 46:17.437 --> 46:20.372 the relationship that we have, whatever kind of thing. So yeah, if you're asking for 46:20.872 --> 46:23.725 like, what should you do, I think you can take a page out of that 46:24.225 --> 46:27.556 is to have a relationship with, with those departments, 46:27.572 --> 46:31.019 like work with those people. And you talk about like getting a seat at the 46:31.083 --> 46:34.449 table. You can literally get a seat at the table, like have lunch 46:34.465 --> 46:37.864 with them, like have a meeting with them, sit down 46:37.928 --> 46:41.823 somewhere with them and just talk about what's going on at 46:41.919 --> 46:45.510 your side of the house with the school district, just to make sure 46:46.010 --> 46:46.456 that you're in sync with things. 46:46.889 --> 46:49.085 Yeah. Yeah. I— that's the best thing that I 46:49.453 --> 46:52.788 wish I had done this a lot earlier is just to establish a regular meeting 46:52.964 --> 46:56.803 with your facilities department, your facilities owners and building owners, 46:57.718

--> 47:00.450 the stuff that you can learn about what they're planning to do, 47:01.173 --> 47:04.499 the stuff that you can teach them about your work. I don't think our 47:04.548 --> 47:07.858 facilities team really knew how much their electrical 47:07.906 --> 47:09.143 work impacted our internet. 47:09.240 --> 47:09.336 Right. 47:09.593 --> 47:10.541 I thought it was obvious, 47:11.859 --> 47:15.201 but it wasn't until I pointed out just how much downtime we were receiving 47:15.233 --> 47:18.528 from their electrical upgrades that they started to actually reach 47:19.028 --> 47:21.385 out to us ahead of time. And even better, when they had an outage, 47:21.417 --> 47:22.396 they would reach out to us. 47:23.086 --> 47:25.011 Um, I can, I can go back to the, 47:25.027 --> 47:27.723 we were talking about like the, the switch getting overheated. 47:28.140 --> 47:28.397 Yeah. 47:28.942 --> 47:32.472 What did I do? I talked to our facilities person and 47:32.488 --> 47:35.857 he made a phone call to try to reach out to that location. They were 47:35.922 --> 47:38.762 going to do some different things to try to get more airflow and different things. 47:38.810 --> 47:42.179 That's not, I'm a tech guy. Like, I don't know how to fix the 47:42.195 --> 47:45.661 air and the heat, man. Like, I don't know. Uh, but I know that that 47:46.161 --> 47:49.366 switch needs a problem. So again, there's communication there. Yeah, that we're not on an 47:49.414 --> 47:50.119 island, you know. 47:50.616 --> 47:52.989 No, I'd say a box of donuts goes pretty far in 47:53.021 --> 47:54.768 the facilities department as well. If you're— 47:54.768 --> 47:56.676 Maybe a couple. Those guys are usually bigger. 47:57.750 --> 47:58.391 Just— 47:58.391 --> 48:01.645 let's just hope that your district is not listening 48:02.145 --> 48:04.931 to this episode for many reasons today. 48:06.310 --> 48:07.368 What else can we do, Mark? 48:07.769 --> 48:09.452 Yeah, I would say this is, this is really 48:09.952 --> 48:12.930 important for us to keep track of what your district's bond movements are. 48:13.523 --> 48:16.954 If your district is going out for a new facility, a new building 48:16.986 --> 48:19.839 or a building renovation, is to be aware of that proposal. 48:20.737 --> 48:24.278 being aware of where that is. And if you can somehow sneak some 48:24.778 --> 48:28.764 of your equipment into that proposal, all the better for you for longevity of 48:29.264 --> 48:32.898 your equipment. So anytime you start to see conversation in 48:32.930 --> 48:36.423 your district about a new school building or about a building renovation, 48:36.519 --> 48:41.022 that's the time for you to go make yourself a seat at that table and 48:41.086 --> 48:45.076 find out how is this going to impact your work and 48:45.172 --> 48:48.618 is there a possibility that you can start to sneak in some of those bond 48:49.118 --> 48:52.454 funds for some of the work that you're doing, or at least just be prepared 48:52.470 --> 48:55.295 for when that work starts, what that impact is going to be. 48:55.375 --> 48:55.455 Yeah. 48:56.017 --> 48:59.965 If you've ever gone through a building renovation or a building, a new building itself, 49:00.495 --> 49:03.399 it's a huge, huge time suck. 49:04.346 --> 49:07.267 And it's a lot of meetings, it's a lot of conversations. 49:07.893 --> 49:11.424 And these things happen over, I don't know, the last one I did 49:11.924 --> 49:15.564 was probably 4 or 5 years of development. And all of a sudden everything 49:15.661 --> 49:19.788 hits you at the same time. Being aware of what that is 49:19.886 --> 49:22.697 like and what that means to go through for your work is, 49:23.542 --> 49:24.728 I would say, the next thing that I would do. 49:26.728 --> 49:27.434 You had a note 49:27.483 --> 49:30.815 in our show notes too, a good thing to do is about logging. 49:33.002 --> 49:36.999 If you know that you're having an issue and it's related to a facilities 49:37.660 --> 49:41.474 outage, a facilities problem, to actually log that and 49:41.491 --> 49:44.636 document that. I think that's great advice. And Mark, 49:45.002 --> 49:48.374 Forever ago, I think you talked about this at a Midwest Tech Talk keynote that 49:48.874 --> 49:51.746 you came out with us, was about, you know, 49:53.174 --> 49:57.108 having papers ready about things that you would recommend. And if your boss is 49:57.608 --> 49:59.837 ever asking you for something, that you have that bad boy ready to go. 50:01.057 --> 50:03.594 I think that could apply to this too. If you have— 50:03.642 --> 50:04.493 Mm-hmm. 50:04.750 --> 50:08.652 If you tech department are paying attention to facilities 50:08.764 --> 50:12.088 things that would help your department out, Yeah. Man, 50:12.217 --> 50:15.735 talk about that relationship going well. If you can document and 50:16.235 --> 50:19.543 you can log and you can end up helping getting facilities improved, uh, 50:20.009 --> 50:23.351 because you've helped with the data collection, with that documentation on 50:23.383 --> 50:26.532 those problems, I think that could go a long way too. And then your boss 50:27.032 --> 50:29.778 is asking you a question and you get to help the facility, 50:30.436 --> 50:33.345 uh, do some improvement because you have that ready to go. You can talk about 50:33.845 --> 50:36.301 that, man. We've had that leaky thing happen for 2 years. This is how it's 50:36.801 --> 50:40.132 impacted the tech department. Man, we've needed, you know, that switch has overheated 10 50:40.197 --> 50:43.748 times in the last year. If we could get some air conditioning in that 50:44.008 --> 50:46.557 area, I think that would be a major impact as well. 50:47.215 --> 50:47.633 For sure. 50:49.240 --> 50:49.513 Yeah. 50:49.722 --> 50:52.292 I mean, this is, you know, partly, partly a, 50:53.658 --> 50:56.769 a dire situation that our buildings are in and partly a depressing one when you 50:56.801 -->

51:00.399 think about the lack of funding and the lack of, of, of forward momentum 51:00.432 --> 51:03.320 on this one. But at least if you can be aware of the issue and 51:03.417 --> 51:07.206 be aware of who the decision makers are in your district. You can 51:07.706 --> 51:10.582 make sure that you're, you have a seat at the table and you're not on 51:10.614 --> 51:11.325 the table itself. 51:13.022 --> 51:14.240 I love it. And we 51:14.740 --> 51:14.825 need to, you're right. 51:16.854 --> 51:18.689 Yeah. All right. 51:20.701 --> 51:21.055 Josh, who? 51:23.761 --> 51:23.778 Oh, 51:24.343 --> 51:24.764 whatever. 51:25.248 --> 51:26.525 All right. 51:28.061 --> 51:30.680 Well, it's been good hanging out with you, Mark, and also good to hang out 51:30.728 --> 51:34.109 with our sponsors. So a couple of them, and I want to talk about I 51:34.237 --> 51:37.718 have like, we're gonna be in like 6 different places between K-12 Tech 51:37.782 --> 51:40.911 Talk and K-12 Tech Pro over the next couple minutes. I wanna talk about them. 51:41.472 --> 51:44.986 But a quick shout out to IncidentIQ. There's a webinar coming up 51:45.002 --> 51:47.905 with them on October 15th. I'm gonna hang out with that webinar. 51:47.970 --> 51:51.804 We're gonna talk about overcoming skepticism in the 51:51.884 --> 51:55.414 AI workspace, in particular, like in your K-12 tech 51:55.914 --> 51:59.825 department, in your K-12 tech operations. A shout 52:00.325 --> 52:03.579 out to Managed Methods. Check them out at managemethods.com. And a shout out to Fortinet. 52:04.274 --> 52:08.073 Email fortinetpodcast@fortinet.com. But some events 52:08.573 --> 52:12.500 coming up. Nathan with K12 Tech Pro, he's gonna be in Nebraska October 52:13.000 --> 52:15.996 27th. If you're gonna be in Nebraska at that conference, 52:16.060 --> 52:19.419 hang out with him there. He's gonna have a table. The K12 Tech Talk podcast, 52:19.484 --> 52:22.850 me and Mark, we're gonna be in Vermont Fest. That's November 4th through 6th. 52:23.671 --> 52:27.176 And then at the same time of that, K12 Tech 52:27.257 --> 52:31.026 Pro is gonna be down at the Mornet Conference in Missouri, also November 4th through 52:31.526 --> 52:34.953 6th. We hope to see you there. Uh, and then K-12 Tech Pro with Nathan 52:35.002 --> 52:38.359 will be at the ACOT in Arkansas. That's November 10th through the 52:38.375 --> 52:41.298 13th. Uh, while me and Mark, we don't think Josh, 52:41.893 --> 52:45.892 uh, will be at the HECC Indiana conference November 11th through the 13th. 52:46.390 --> 52:48.896 Uh, we'll be hanging out there and doing a session as well. There was somebody 52:49.396 --> 52:52.398 on K-12 Tech Pro talking about that conference. Uh, I think he was a little 52:52.414 --> 52:55.530 bit excited. I know we are, uh, to get to do that. Uh, and then 52:55.562 --> 52:59.156 a long way away, but April 12th through the 14th, Hopefully all 52:59.656 --> 53:03.003 3 of us will get to be at COSIN in Orlando, and we'll get to 53:03.503 --> 53:06.529 do a great episode there and hang out with our COSIN friends. 53:07.540 --> 53:08.301 Anything else, Mark? 53:09.436 --> 53:09.841 That's it. 53:10.895 --> 53:11.121 All right, 53:11.138 --> 53:13.585 thanks for listening. Shoot us an email, info@k12techtalkpodcast.com. 53:16.692 --> 53:17.162 See you later.