In this episode of UEN Homeroom, Dani and Matt are joined by EdTech professional Carl Hooker. Learn more about how Mr. Hooker is helping shift the perspective on failure in education and encourages educators and their students to use it as a way to empower learning.
In this episode of UEN Homeroom, Dani and Matt are joined by EdTech professional Carl Hooker. Learn more about how Mr. Hooker is helping shift the perspective on failure in education and encourages educators and their students to use it as a way to empower learning.
Carl Hooker: https://carlhooker.com/
Hooked On Innovation: https://hookedoninnovation.com/
[MUSIC PLAYING] Hey, Matt.
Hey, Dani. How's it going?
Good. How are you doing?
I'm doing very well. So I have a question for you.
OK.
Have you ever failed at anything?
[LAUGHTER]
Every day.
Every day?
Feels like.
OK.
I feel like--
That's healthy.
Yeah, I feel like failure is one of those things that you should do fairly often.
I feel like if failure feels like failure, you're not doing it right.
It's true. You should be less emotionally involved than that. You should just fail and go, OK, this is just something that happened. Let's try again. Let's do better.
Oh my gosh. This is what I've been working on with my therapist for years now.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Little spotlight into Dani's life.
Yeah. Welcome, everyone.
Well, that's good because our guest today is all about failure.
What?
Yeah. He's going to tell us all about how to feel better about failure in schools and what it's like to kind of preach the gospel of failure to teachers all over the country.
All right. Well, who do we have with us today?
We have Mr. Carl Hooker.
[SQUEAL]
He is a former edtech director from Austin, Texas. And--
He's kind of a big deal.
Yeah, and he's the unofficial-- we talk about this in the interview, but the unofficial ambassador for technology and education for Austin, Texas. So he's an incredible person. I'm very excited to talk to him about all of the good work he's doing about failure.
All right. Well, we hope you enjoy our interview.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Utah Coalition for Educational Technology wants you to work together with them this year by presenting at their annual conference on March 14 and 15 in Provo, Utah. Join Utah educators, national speakers and groups, and local organizations for UCET '23 by presenting your ideas from your classroom. Share classroom practice in a lecture, form a panel on a hot educational topic, or sign up for the main stage for a 10 to 15-minute Utah ed chat. Look for the Call for Presenters in our show notes or head to ucet.org for links. Proposals close on October 14.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Carl, thanks for being here today. We're so excited to talk to you, learn from you, but also dive in to talking about I know a topic that's really close to your experience, and then also to what you're kind of out there teaching other teachers about, which is failure.
So first off, though, talking to you at conferences and seeing you present, you moved out of a school district tech role into kind of this national presenter edtech role. What made you want to make that move? And what-- aren't you afraid of-- like, when you moved into-- aren't you afraid it didn't work out?
I mean, it's funny. I have conversations with friends of mine that are considering transitions out of school districts or into school districts or vice versa, and I-- yeah, definitely for me it was not just jumping out there and taking a leap and not figuring out what was going to happen next. I spent several years working originally with a company called EdTech Teacher. We did some training with them where I was basically being hired out part time to do some work with them. So I was still doing my full time job.
And then started my own company, HookerTech LLC. And that company we started in 2015, kind of just on the purpose of going out, speaking at school districts. I really got a lot of-- I get a lot of charge and energy out of being in front of a crowd and kind of motivating the staff and talking about all the great things we can do in the classroom with technology primarily in those talks.
And at 2019, right before the pandemic I decided to just-- like, let's do it. I looked at my wife. She was like, yeah, let's try it. So it's just she and I. We run the company. It's just the two of us. There's no other income sources. This is it. The floor is $0. [LAUGHS] The ceiling could be who knows what. But we tried it, so it's a roller coaster life for sure. And then the pandemic hit, which added more bumps to it.
And then a fun side note that has nothing to do with education, but right before the pandemic my wife and I invested in a bar here in Austin called Idle Hands. And that was right before the pandemic hit. So imagine all of this stuff comes to a confluence on March 13, 2020. All my speaking stuff disappears. Most of our nest egg disappears. But somehow we're still here, which is why I always like to talk about risk taking and failure. And that's why the book came about, actually, as a result of a lot of this.
That is fantastic. And what a crazy story for when you decided to go off on your own. I've heard of a couple of people who were like, oh, yeah, so I started my business in 2019, and then-- so I think--
Crash.
Yeah, exactly. And I think it's nice for people to hear, like, you have a good attitude. You're laughing. You're smiling. You continue to do great things. So thank you for sharing that with all of us.
The other thing is-- and I think for people out there that are considering doing this kind of work, consulting work-- and it is a roller coaster, and I kind of make light of it. But I mean, there's a lot of-- it's a lot of hard work on the back end. It's not just about that moment when you step out on that stage and talk to teachers or talk to staff. It's all about all the stuff you've done prior to that, preparing your notes, preparing the meeting, getting all the stuff back into the back end of that.
And then when all that happened, we had talked about having to alternate different revenue streams just to kind of pull back the curtain. I was like, well, how else are we going to make money now? Because it's all coming from just me traveling somewhere to say something. And if that's your only way of making money, there's a chance-- that's going to be a problem too.
So we've had to come up with some other creative ways. Online courses, books, influencing. I never thought that would be a thing, but I'm actually doing some of that now too. Yes. Not TikTok dances.
Oh!
But-- [LAUGHS] yes.
[LAUGHS]
The power of yet. I do have a TikTok account. I had to get one for my-- because my daughter wants one, so I'm doing some research with her.
I love that.
That dreaded word, edu influencer is--
Oh.
--I don't think a lot of people go, yet.
I do celebrity too. I've been called that twice in the last week, and was was meant as a compliment, once was meant as an insult.
[LAUGHTER]
I take it all in stride. I'm used to it.
Well, this is a topic that's near and dear to my heart because I am a recovering perfectionist, so I want to know, what do you think facilitated this switch from perfectionism in education to more of a fail until we all succeed together-type model? And do you think that all educators are there now, or do we still have some work to do?
Yeah, I don't think we're there yet. And I think for me, the personal motivation for why that switch came was a result of many things. One is my time in a classroom with students, I worked with all grades, but mostly 1st grade was actually the grade I spent the most time with. Four years teaching 1st grade.
And seeing these kids, and this one particular kid I mentioned in the book named Dustin, who was a perfectionist. He was the kid who would draw his little picture, and if it wasn't perfect he would erase it and then redraw it, and re-erase it and redraw it, so much that it just became this black smear of graphite all over his paper, and just in tears because he wanted it to be absolutely perfect. And so working with him and even talking about how perfection is kind of the enemy of done-- or enemy of finished kind of brought to light a few things early in my teaching career.
But then flash forward to my own kids going to school and I started seeing that schools seemed to exist more and more for conformity and compliance and less the less about just innovation and kind of outside-the-box thinking. I mean, you have some structured environments like GT classes and PBL things that try to do this on the side or academies. But generally, public school is about compliance and conformity.
So student A is writing down something while they're looking over their shoulder to ask their teacher, is this right? Is this wrong? Or their parent, is this right? Is this wrong? And so I wanted to really break from that.
And so part of the reason why I wrote the book was that was my main motivation just because I saw what was happening with my own kids, and I thought, how can we change this and at least allow more of this? Because I don't think it's ready for every teacher.
But I will say more and more teachers are being kind of open and willing to have this file fast, fail first, and recover kind of philosophy, which I think is good in a lot of ways because failure in education, not always the greatest word. We don't like using that word in education a lot.
Well, and we're going to dive into this a little bit later, but I think a lot of this push for perfectionism comes from the only measure in education right now, largely is state core testing. And so we're looking for a perfect answer there. And it can be hugely problematic for students because if they think, only way that I can prove that I am knowledgeable and good at this subject matter is this one test, then they're going to have a hard time with that test.
Right. So it's not about the learning. It's about the metrics of which we can only use to measure it. So in that case, we're the ones at fault because we've only provided the one metric.
And the good news is there's some new stuff coming out. I don't know if you guys are familiar with the work that's happening in South Carolina. I've worked with their Department of Data Science there, which is amazing. The gentleman who runs that is great.
He's basically saying, we can take data sources from everything. So say your kids are doing a Blooket or a Kahoot or a Gimkit or something, doing some sort of little formative assessment quickly in the class, taking all those data points, take your SEL data points, tie those in, and then bring it in and kind of paint a bigger picture of what a student actually is doing, the whole student, so to speak.
And so very early on in his research-- and he's working with a nonprofit on it. And I heard about it a few months right before I met you, Matt, I think at South by. Someone had just-- I just met this guy and I was like, this is what we need to hear more of. And why aren't more states doing this?
And the truth is it's because they have to be wanting to do it and then they have to have someone to help them with it, because if a state tries to build this from the ground up, I mean, they need programmers, which they don't have. So I mean, finding a third party or a nonprofit to work with I think was a great idea on their part.
So I do think there's hope for the future. But man, we move at a glacial pace in education. So [LAUGHS] one big test may be it for a little while, but maybe it's some portfolios. Throw a little portfolio in there. Couldn't hurt, right? Come on.
And now it's time for our student question of the day.
Hi. This is Zoe from Launch High School. How do we normalize failure being OK in schools?
I think we have to look at in the cases when I work with students and when I work with teachers I look at, what are the success stories that we've heard in life? Let's talk about-- let's reflect on those, first of all. Let's talk about famous failures throughout history. Let's talk about how Oprah Winfrey was told back in Maryland that she wasn't fit to be on television. How did she overcome that?
George R.R. Martin who wrote the Song of Ice and Fire, which now people know as Game of Thrones, in 1983 his publisher told him, you should quit-- you should quit writing books. Your writing is awful. And so he did for a number of years, almost a decade before he started writing A Song of Ice and Fire.
And so again, talking about these stories-- I have a lot of them that I share in the book too. But when I do my talks, Charlie Parker's one of my favorites. He went out on stage in Kansas City as a 16-year-old kid and started playing this off-rhythm music-- and this is the 1930s-- out of his saxophone. And people started booing. They didn't know what it was because the big band era, everything was, again, conform, comply. Sound familiar? [LAUGHS]
So he starts playing this off-rhythm music. And they booed him so much that the drummer takes the cymbal off of his drum and flings it and hits him in the back of the head to get him off the stage. And actually-- so taking a risk in that sense actually hurt him. But he continued to move on, and of course time with Miles Davis and became one of the forefathers of modern jazz.
So I think it's good to share those stories. It's also good to share the stories where they weren't so successful like Zeppelins or like the Ford [LAUGHS] Edsel. Or New Coke. Do you remember that? That was really fun.
[LAUGHTER]
And talking about how those companies recover. I bring up Apple a lot. Apple to me is a great success and failure story. It does both. They fired their creator. They brought him back. Back when the dotcom bust bubble burst in, like, 20-- 2001, 2002, instead of cutting employees like a lot of tech companies were doing, they added research and development.
And out of that came the innovation of this little device with a wheel that you could scroll, and there was music on it. Yes, it was the first iPod. It came out of that moment. So again, going against the stream. I think in order to normalize it we need to show the success, we need to show the failure stories, and then talk about that recovery of what that actually looks like.
So I use lots of examples in the book and in my talks, but I mean, I think for me it's just a matter of modeling it too in the classroom. And I think that's a big part of it. If a teacher says, yeah, you should do it, but then they don't do it, a student's not going to really take a risk if a teacher's not willing to.
And then I flip it on its head and say, teachers, by the way, aren't willing to take risks if the leaders aren't willing to. So it goes all the way up the food chain.
Oh, absolutely. And you kind of lead right back into the next thing I was wondering about. So sharing all of these stories of failure before success or after success and then success again are really helpful for us to see. But how do you model and facilitate failure to success in your role when you work with teachers? And how do you do that with students as well?
So a little background on me, I was in engineering in college. I took a year off to do the most opposite thing I could in engineering, which was drama. And so I was told I have a face only for radio, so acting wasn't going to be my thing. I have the voice. OK, I could do some of that.
But from that, there's a lot of stuff-- I do a lot of work with improv. And some of the tenets of improv and the yes and versus yeah but mentality is actually now ingrained in business. Like, Pixar, Google, Apple, they all have this yes and philosophy. And basically, I'll explain it really quickly.
And that is when you're having a conversation with somebody, do they counter you with, yeah, but that'll never work, or yeah, but this will never-- or is it more of a yes, and we should try this? In other words, adding to the conversation versus setting up the roadblocks.
And so a lot of the things I do with students but also with teachers is set up this philosophy of, how do we create a yes and culture where we're going to just add on to each other's ideas and build on it versus tear each other apart? And that's really where I start.
And then if I do workshops with them or get a little bit deeper into the woods, I do lots of little activities where we talk about individual risk taking versus group risk taking. So it's one thing for me to say to you, hey, I want you to sing a song right now in front of the entire room. It's another thing for us to sing along as a group.
We can kind of hear each other a little bit, but we're all doing it. We're all kind of smiling and laughing. But it's a bit of a risk, but we're all sharing that risk. And so even talking about the psychology about what that looks like, and how do you do that in your classroom?
And then setting up a little activity. It's just one-minute, two-minute brain breaky-type stuff where every time you're having kids take risks, maybe they mess up, they celebrate that failure, and then they recover from it again and taking the time to reflect. So lots of stuff there. I threw it all at you like a fire hose. But hopefully, you got something out of that.
I always say if you pick up one thing out of any of my talks or anything, I'm like, that's a successful day. So maybe one thing out of this podcast will be successful. [LAUGHS]
Absolut-- I absolutely love that. Like, the idea of yes anding, that kind of Second City improv work. How is that-- just kind of a side question here. How has that played a role in how you build your work outside of school districts? I know that you do a lot of that in your talks and you're doing that in podcasting, but how does that kind of inspirational, on the fly, fun yes anding play a role in how you present yourself to teachers?
I'll be honest. It's one of my most favorite things to do. I actually prefer to do those kind of sessions. And I have a few of them-- like, one's called Nailed It, which is like the TV show Nailed It with desserts where I have teachers going to these different edtech challenges, and then we just kind of laugh at the creations that we come up with.
I have a couple of other ones where we just-- that's all we do is improv, brain break-type, kind of risk taking failure activities. And those, one thing I know is I know how I'm going to start them, but I have no idea how the audience is going to react. I have no idea what they're going to come up with.
And every time is so unique. I get a lot of energy and charge out of doing those type of activities. And so for me, when I'm speaking to teachers, when I'm going out and talking to staff about all of these activities and things, I like kind of the idea that I don't know what to expect myself.
So again, it goes back to that modeling. I mean, I could sit there-- and don't get me wrong. When you mentioned perfection, I also very much struggle with perfectionism. And so I want make sure my slides look right and everything's timed out perfectly. But the truth is, there's going to be times when you have that teachable moment just like in class where it's like, this is an opportunity for us to really talk about this as a staff. I'm not going to just say, well, because I have three minutes left I need to click to the next slide. No, let's finish out that conversation and talk about it.
And that's the exact same stuff we want to do in our classrooms. We want to say, mm, we didn't get to Objective 1.34 whatever in science today. However, we did have a very enriching discussion about conflict resolution because of something that happened on the playground today, and that's a meaningful thing that they need to know as well even though it's not maybe an academic standard. So again, long way to give you a short answer.
[LAUGHS] Well, I was just thinking as well, we were talking a little bit before we started recording, it seems like yes anding has been kind of your rallying call in your post-district and maybe even in your district career. Has there ever been any moments where you've yes anded yourself into a situation where you went, oh my goodness. How did I get here? What am I doing? Is this-- like, is this a dream that's happening, right?
Every day of my life.
[LAUGHTER]
Every day in my life. I always ask this question of the audience. I'm like, how many of you have ever failed in your life? And everybody always raises their hand. But then when I say, how many of you are failures, nobody raises their hand. I'm like, that's a different thing, right? I go, I fail every day.
Yeah. And yes anding myself into the position I'm in now there are the moments where I'm like, wow. OK. So now I've written seven books. Now I'm hosting my fourth podcast. And I don't know what the Guinness Record is, but I'm going for it. How many podcasts can I host? So I'll guest host on yours just to check it in there at some point down the road. [LAUGHS] But there are times when I'm looking at it. It's like, this is just insane.
Now I will tell you, this also affects personally in my household, this mentality of risk taking and yes anding. Because of course when you three girls and one of which-- the oldest which is a teenager, there's a lot of times when they know that I don't like to say no.
So when they come up to me, they're like, Dad, can I have TikTok? I'm like, uh, no, but have you thought about this? Or I'll say, how about this? Pitch it to me. Pitch it to me why you need TikTok. What's it going to add to your day in terms of value? How does it work? How are you going to communicate if there's anything that goes wrong on it? Those kind of things.
I want a pitch-- give me a pitch deck. And guess what? If you pitch it right, you may turn my thinking around on it. Same with my middle child with a cell phone. Same thing. She's working on me on the cell phone. I was like, you've got to get a pitch deck.
So my philosophy in life-- and it's one that I live with here in the house-- is that no is the first hello, which means that any time someone says no to you, that's just their way of saying hello in a different way. Eventually, you can get them to say yes. You've just got to work on it.
Which is very much like a marketing, salesy thing, and I hate marketing and sales. But to be honest, we're all kind of in it because we're always trying to sell ideologies and innovation to our students and our staff. But yeah, that's our thing.
So again, a great mantra, but be careful when you're dealing with teenagers because then they're like, Dad, you said no, but it's the first hello. Yeah, sorry. [LAUGHS]
Oh my gosh. I love that. I feel like Carl Hooker school of parenting is maybe the next big thing for you because as a mom, I have found that just no just comes out of my mouth. Like, it doesn't matter what the question is. Sometimes the answer is no. But maybe I need to switch to just full-time yes day.
Well, not full-time yes day. I will say I-- so the way I integrated, it, yes, there is-- we, by the way, are far from perfect parents. In fact, I've tried to get my wife to create another podcast yet about how we mess up as parents almost every day.
That said, I do think the no-- using that no and practicing them with a no-- because not everyone in life is going to yes them. And I think we're preparing these kids not to be kids. We're preparing them to be adults.
And so for us I'm like, OK, when you get rejected in life, is that a time for you to stop what you're doing? It's going to maybe be a roadblock for your creative movement, but I mean, how do you get around it? In fact, in a lot of ways the most creative things that have ever been created have been as a result of roadblocks and as a result of overcoming those barriers. So for our own kids practicing no I think is good.
So I think it's good that you say no to your kids. I think your next challenge to them is going to be, OK, I've said no to you. Now convince me to say yes. And then you put the work on them and see if they can come up with it. I think that's always the fun game to play.
I love it. I'll work on it and get back to you.
There you go. Yeah. Let me know how that goes. I'd be curious because I just made that up. [LAUGHS]
Well, along that, how do we get our kids and our students, our own children, how do we get them to accept failure in a positive way, or that it's just another chance to continue on?
Yeah, I think that's-- and that's something else that I've learned over the years of just talking about failure is this idea that failure makes a really great teacher. You learn a lot from your mistakes if given the time and opportunity to do it.
So with students when we talk about them accepting failure, one of the first things I talk about in the book a lot-- and I talk about this in life, I think this is important for learning-- is, when are you reflecting on what you've done? Are we taking time in our day to reflect? Not only in school, but just in general in life.
Like, whenever I go to put my kids to bed-- this is not another parenting trick, but maybe it is. We always go through the same three things. It's like, what did I do well today? What did I do that I could probably do better? And then what am I going to try to do tomorrow? So going through that kind of mantra in our head, that kind of reflective meditation of just thinking and reflecting on how our day went, and then how can we improve?
And that there's no ceiling on excellence. I mean, so you can't just-- just because, oh, yeah, I've mastered this test. Therefore, I'm done. No. Continue to learn, continue to grow. And so I think with kids we just have to continue to give them those opportunities and channels to do it.
Unfortunately, because we're kind of under a time famine in education, I call it, we're getting through so much content that we don't have time to even take one minute at the end of a day to say, hey, what did you learn today? What's something you picked up? And maybe they just internalize it in their head or they write it in a little book or jot it down on a Google Doc.
But giving them that one minute, or I even say, can you give me five minutes on Friday? I've asked teachers, if you can give five minutes to your class on Friday just to say, let's reflect on the week. What did we do well? What could we do better? Going through that reflective practice I think is so much more in letting us accept failure and not feeling like it's the end of the world when we finally make that mistake.
I think you made some great points in there, especially about that we may be telling our students, oh, you don't know this yet, and we're embracing the power of yet or embracing growth mindset. And then we're like, OK, we're moving on from Chapter 2 to Chapter 3. It doesn't matter who got it and who didn't. So it's kind of backwards, right? What are we saying versus what are we doing?
Yeah, and that's the challenge in all of this too. And I'll be honest. I set out to do a lot of this work and I was thinking, the reality is the parameters of which we have to work in is curriculum is going to have to happen. Assessments that we just talked about, those big state assessments, that's part of our life.
So what little changes can we make in a classroom that's not going to mean an overhaul of the curriculum, or god forbid the grade book, which is a whole nother hot button issue that I've been dealing with lately? How do we change enough of the language and the words that we use in the classroom and then actually our actions to say that we are embracing this idea of risk taking and failure?
And so with teachers, a quick example. I'll say you're explaining something to students. Let's say it's Flipgrid. I'm sorry. Now it's Flip. Formerly-- the artist formerly known as Flipgrid.
[LAUGHTER]
And you're trying to teach them how to use Flip and you're like, all right. So go here, click on this, click on this. That's one way to do it. Or what you could do is what I do usually is I say, hey, guys, look. There's this platform. It's called Flip. I have it up on the screen. What do you think it does? What do you think it-- what's the purpose of this? And then they kind of ask some questions.
OK, well, how do we record? I don't even-- like, what am I supposed to click on, right? By the way, this is any grade. I do this with 3rd graders, 7th graders. And they lean in and they're like, oh, oh. Maybe this. Like, oh, I'm going to try this. Whoops, I messed up, and you make a mistake.
And instead of saying, oh, I hate this, let's turn it off, we're not to do it, instead say, what did I do wrong? How do we make this better? And ask them that. So again, it's modeling that kind of language and the importance of what words we choose with our students. And honestly, technology gives us many opportunities to fail because it fails almost every day. So it's a great space for that. And so for me, I think it's a lot of that modeling, and again, in terms of language to get them to accept that failure.
I love everything that you just said, but one thing that really stuck out to me over the last couple minutes is this idea of reflection on process in the classroom. But a lot of the tech leaders I've been talking to, especially here in Utah recently, have been conversations surrounding reflecting on what's happening with the pandemic, but then also reflecting on, where are we going with edtech?
And one question that was really posed to me over the last couple weeks by an edtech leader here in Utah was, when do I know that my job as an edtech director, edtech coach, is obsolete? And so I just would love to get your thoughts on that. What is the future of edtech? When do we know we're obsolete? How does reflection and failure play a role in those areas?
It's funny because my team-- I had an edtech a group that I [INAUDIBLE] on campus. This is an amazing group. We called ourselves the iVengers, which was-- at the time The Avengers were coming out and we were an iPad district so iVengers. We all had weird names. I was-- I forgot the name of the guy. Nick Fury. I was iFury. That was my name. Anyway, because I gathered all this great group of people.
But we talked about that as a position. And a lot of them said, you know, if I keep teaching the teachers all these skill sets, eventually we'll be obsolete. And I was like, actually, if you're doing your job perfectly, I mean, sure, you'll be obsolete. But the truth is there's always change, and they always need that support. And time, again, is finite.
So as a teacher I only had so much time to research, what are the right tools I need to use and how do I need to use them? You are an extension of those teachers, is what I would tell them.
So I don't know that the job itself will ever be obsolete. I do think it's going to continue to change and grow. I see a future, especially with funding and the way it is in schools, I see a future where there's going to be more people doing work like I'm doing where maybe they have, instead of a single campus, maybe they're on two or three different-- two or three different districts, work with the person who's helping build the vision and a pathway for the professional development in terms of technology integration. So I think that might be a future.
I always say that the rearview mirror is smaller than the windshield for a reason, right? We need to always be looking at where we've been, but just a little bit. The most thing [INAUDIBLE] we need to be focused on is where we're going.
And so for me at EdTech when you talk about-- I get excited thinking about Web3, crypto, a lot of the metaverse stuff that could be coming down the road. I don't know that it's necessarily going to be Ready Player One like or what that might look like, but that tells me that I know for a fact that there's going to be some change. And probably in the last minute, something's happened in edtech that has changed everything again.
And I'm not talking about just names from Flipgrid to Flip, because that happens it seems like every year too. Adobe Spark now to Adobe Express. Yeah. Let's keep changing those, right? Keeps us on our toes.
So yeah, a combination of things, Matt. I'd say looking forward to that future, knowing that there's always going to be an ever-changing future gives me some job stability. But also knowing that-- having some comfort in knowing that if need be, we could just spread out a little bit more or we can influence more people that way in terms of why I went from a local job to a national one in that sense.
Oh, absolutely. And I think also that transition from very tool-centric, here's how you use edtech tools, or here's how you use iPads or Chromebooks in your district to more of a pedagogical focus on, and now here's how we use those tools to do really magical things, and it's kind of that transition to more of the coaching role. So I completely agree with you. I don't think-- I don't think we're going away as much as we're shifting into whatever it is that our educators need from us.
Yeah. And we can get a little overwhelmed with tools. And don't get me wrong. There's a lot of teachers-- and I was one of them-- it was like, ooh, a new shiny thing. Let me see how I can use this in my classroom. Pokemon GO, when that came out, we're going to use that. When Minecraft came out, we're going to use that, right? TikTok now, right?
But I do think that the best classrooms, just to what you were saying, best classrooms I ever walk into in terms of technology integration are the classrooms where the technology's almost invisible. It's part of the-- it's a pencil. It's a pair of scissors. It's the oxygen in the room. It's not a, oh, we're going to do a Chromebook lesson about Google Slides today, and then we're going to talk about the solar system.
No. Instead, we're going to do a solar system activity where you're going to present the information about the particular object that you're focusing on. And you can use a variety of tools. Heck, you can even use a diorama in a shoebox if you want, and we're going to capture a picture of that. I'm going to have you reflect on it as we post it to our digital portfolio.
So I think that's kind of the future, and I think that's the leaning of where we want kids to go and also staff to go, obviously. But it's funny. We also don't want to give up control sometimes. So it's a balancing act with teachers. And I say we because that's also me. I feel that too sometimes.
Oh, yeah. We're all a little-- just a little bit of control freaks. It's who we are. It's why we became educators. And we've just got to learn to balance that.
All right, Carl. So we're going to go back to that idea of high-stakes testing. And it's a big pain point in education, a big-- we can all feel like failures after [LAUGHS] seeing our results of whatever high-stakes test. So I'm wondering, what are some ways to move away from high-stakes testing, and how can we normalize alternative assessments? And I think too, not just for whoever is looking at the results, but for our students as well because they can feel not great after taking some of those kinds of tests.
Yeah, and I think we need to probably start with a baseline that assessment in general is not a bad thing. I think the high-stakes ones you're talking about, yes, there's a lot of negative correlations with that, and I agree with those.
I think in general, assessments is something we do every day. An assessment is whenever we make a judgment based on an action. And so this happens-- when you're walking through a classroom you can look at kids' faces and tell which ones kind of are picking it up and which ones aren't. By the way, you're assessing when you're doing that. And so I think we have to think about, first of all, what does assessment look like, and how can we make it a little more widespread?
One thing we learned during the pandemic is assessment doesn't have to just be synchronous either. I mean, you can actually give assessment over a course of a week or a month, doing longer form projects. I think we've done that before with pandemic too. But now I feel like that's been highlighted that we don't just have to do synchronous assessment like, here's the quiz, kids. Now turn it back in.
So to get back to your question about the high-stakes testing and how do we normalize those alternate ones, I think we have to first of all present the data and research behind what those alternate ones look like. Why is it important to have a mix of synchronous and asynchronous?
Why is it important to have a mix of what I call Google-able or nonGoogle-able assessments? Questions that you can just ask-- the fact-based stuff versus the give me your opinion on-type information. And so not either one of those is right or wrong, but how do we mix that into the classroom setting?
And then finally, I think the action point is going to have to be portfolios, and I think that's where it's coming to a head. The good news is on a state front-- and I've testified a couple times here in Texas at the legislature about this idea of, how do we add in an extra layer of that portfolio-based assessment? And I think we're getting closer, and I think using rubrics and things like that will help.
But the truth is we're all kind of biased to what we consider the traditional model of school because we all grew up in it. So we all know the ABC system of grading. We all know what a score is, SATs and this.
But colleges are starting to move away from it too, and I think that might help us. So if we can get a little bit of pressure on the state to come up with at least some alternate forms of assessment on top of maybe the high-stakes ones since they've signed these, in Texas, a $384 billion contract-- million, I should say, not billion. That would be crazy. But yes, maybe next.
[LAUGHTER]
So if we can get them to say, and now let's also include this portfolio of these extra data points like they're doing in South Carolina, I think that's moving us closer to it. And then finally, if higher ed actually does come back and say, you know what, we're not going to place so much value on the SAT and ACT anymore. It's still important and it's part of what makes you a possible student in our school, but I think that's helping lessen the load on that as well.
So I'm excited about that part of where we're at in this educational journey. I do think we're getting to a point where we're going to be able to get away from just the (DRAMATIC VOICE) one test to rule them all.
[LAUGHS]
My Lord of the Rings reference. I've got to put that in there too.
Now I'm just equating testing with walking into Mordor, and that's just fantastic.
Which is the name of the street that I live on. True story. So I live on Mordor Cove. I can't make this up. You can look it up. It's in Austin. Yeah, now you know where my house is. But yeah, I live in Mordor. So yeah, all the streets are named after Lord of the Rings. That's a whole nother story.
Carl Hooker just doxxed himself.
[LAUGHTER]
Yes, exactly.
So I want to dive a little bit deeper into what you just talked about there because I think there's a lot of teachers who are interested in this idea of, let's look at alternative grading methodologies. Let's talk about alternative assessment properties. And one of the big ones like you pointed out is portfolios.
Could you give us a little bit deeper dive into that? So what does a portfolio model look like? And where have you seen this done well across the country, around the world? And what kind of special steps have they taken maybe as a state-wide group or individual LEAs, individual districts to get that process going?
Well, I think first of all the best places-- before we get into the portfolio part, the best places I've seen it done are definitely those schools that are more project-based. They maybe have a different instructional model. So less so in the traditional sit and get curriculum that we see a lot of times in K-12 schools. More so in those academies where you have capstone projects, things that are real world, that have authentic application. Those seem to be the ones that get done the best.
That said, it doesn't mean we can't still do it in traditional public schools too. And so I'll give you an example of what we did in our district. So our district, we used a tool called bulb, which it's bulbapp.com. It's a free-- you can use it for, I think, up to 10 collections.
And it's just basically-- it's kind of a website/blog mixed together where you can go in and the kids can create their own sets of goals. They can go and look at their best work. They can have a draft side that no one else sees that's their own reflective part of the portfolio. But then they can have a public-facing one.
And then the great thing is when they leave our institution, they can actually take that with them. So bulb transfers the ownership to them, and now it's their digital portfolio that they can go to get into college or career after that.
And so the big challenge with any of this, again, is time. So how do we allow time for this? Because I think teachers agree that longitudinal growth and assessment and being able to reflect on it is super important. Unfortunately, we're so focused on the micro moment of, OK, here's your quiz at this very second that we don't spend the time on that.
So again, five minutes at the end of the week. Have the kids go in, find some of their best work, reflect on it, do a video reflection, a written reflection, audio, it doesn't matter what. Put it into this document so that they can see the growth and then the teacher also has access to it to see that kind of growth over time.
And I think starting to do that small, small steps, like I said, maybe just once on a Friday, maybe about one goal-- I saw one grade level that did this in Colorado, this school. They did-- basically, every kid set up their SMART goals. And they said, all right. What's your goal for this year? Write it down, and then I want you to write down how you're going to accomplish it. Then I want you to post evidence on how you accomplished what that goal was.
And it could be a variety of things. It wasn't always academic. One kid put to reduce his screen time usage. And this was right before the pandemic, so I was like, sorry, kid. That ain't going to happen. But [LAUGHS] after the pandemic, maybe. So again, getting them to model it. And it's such an important part. I mean, reflection is, again, such a part of that process.
So I feel like there's the [INAUDIBLE] learning cycle which goes into this where we talk about learning in schools. The first thing that we do really well is we teach new skills. That's the number one thing we do in schools well.
The second thing we do not so well but OK is authentic application of those skills, meaning we give them opportunity to actually use these things in the real world. You hear this all the time as math teachers. Like, when am I ever going to use this in real life, the students say. So finding those ways to do it.
The third one is the peer, coaching, and mentoring part. Again, we're starting to run out of time now so we don't have time to do that much in schools, but that's also important to have that cycle of evaluation and feedback.
And then the last one is reflection. And again, unfortunately, that's the last one. So a lot of times-- and even I, by the way, guilty as a teacher. Hey, we ran out of time today, guys. Sorry. Let's keep moving. Tomorrow-- we'll get to this tomorrow. So I miss out on that time of reflection.
But if we can do all four of those things really well in school, we're going to be producing kids that create, innovate, go out on their own. They're free thinkers. And I think that's what we really want. Hopefully that's what we really want in schools, although politically maybe not so much, but we won't go there.
[LAUGHTER]
Absolutely. So along with that, Carl, how do we-- one of the big things that I think when we talk about this kind of work of portfolios and then also talking about normalizing this at the state level and maybe even the national level is getting districts and teachers to connect with one another, to discuss these issues, discuss even just something as simple as what we're talking about with failure is really, really difficult.
So how have you seen districts or how have you facilitated different districts or different state organizations to be able to come together and discuss and further the good work in normalizing failure and normalizing alternative practices for assessments and things like that?
Well, I'm pretty lucky because I'm actually tied into a couple of big organizations. One is The Alliance for Education and the Future Ready schools. And so that to me-- I'm a national faculty member for them. And we work with schools-- I mean, I want to say maybe almost half of the schools in the country now are signed on to the Future Ready pledge.
And so before the pandemic, we would gather quite regularly with these teams from each school. So it wouldn't just be, let's say, a teacher gets to go to this thing. But instead, it's a teacher with a librarian with a principal with a tech leader with the superintendent. Have a team from a school actually go and talk about all the changes and things they need to do to get their schools, quote, unquote, "future ready."
Well, a big part of that future ready framework is, again, taking risks, having ideas and ideologies on how to normalize risk taking and failure in your schools. And so then instead of us just telling them, this is what you should do, we present them with, here's the information. Here's the brain science behind it. Here's why we think it's good for kids. How would you do this in your schools?
And let them come up with what works best for their environment because every district has got its own set of issues. So just going in and blanket at least saying, everybody should do this, well, kind of depends on what environment you're in.
There's a lot of kids-- Maslow is the hierarchy they need. They need to be fed and have a safe place, and that's number 1. And then you can start talking about engagement and risk taking and that. But I mean, first we need to get schools to where they're at that level. And sometimes we're not. I mean, so working with that organization.
The other one I work with a lot is Tech & Learning, which I think, Matt, I think you came to the one I did in New Orleans. Yeah, yeah. That's a great group too. And Tech & Learning has been around forever. There used to be a magazine in the '80s. Now they're tech&learning.com.
But that one I'm working mostly with, again, tech leaders, but also educational tech leaders and using that message. So for the course of the next eight ones-- I think we're doing eight of them this year, regional events-- each one of those will feature me having at least something-- some sort of activity when it talks about risk taking and failure, just to kind of introduce the concept and have them reflect on that as well and how they can impart some of that practice in their schools.
So I'm lucky because I have some vehicles that I can use. I say lucky, but I've also done a lot of work trying to make those connections to make that happen.
And I'm sure there have been some failures along the way.
[SIGH] Every day. Again, every day. I mean-- yeah. By the way, that organization, the Tech & Learning one was where we got to do one of my most epic training of all time, and it was at Skywalker Ranch.
[GASP]
So if ever you're ready-- are you ready for the story? I can tell you real quick. OK. This, by the way, embodies much of the talk we just did.
Imagine, if you will, 60 to 70 superintendents/curriculum-type assistant superintendents gathered in a space. We have 24 hours. And they threw it to me and they say, what do you want them to do?
And I said, here's what we're going to do. We're going to make a mini film festival, a 24-hour film festival. All of these folks-- some of them don't know technology very well, but that's OK. We have mobile devices. We can do this quick.
They're going to pick a topic of one of six main topics that are happening in schools. Maybe it's assessment. Maybe it's SEL. Who knows what? They pick the topic.
And then I have a wheel that they have to spin, and that wheel has genres of what kind of movie they're going to make. So maybe it's a musical about assessment, or maybe it's a-- [LAUGHS] maybe it's a Western.
Assessment, The Musical.
A Western about DEI. I don't know. And so they nervously get up. They create their teams. They go up and they spin the wheel. They get their genre. And then they have 24 hours from that point to make a film about it. And then we got to do the viewing of said films in Lucas's-- George Lucas's private screening room at Skywalker Ranch.
And we got to use the ranch as backdrops. So we got to film there. Green screens are set up. It was incredible. And the movies-- I still have all of them. There's 12 teams. And there's some classic ones.
But my favorite one was a guy that actually interacted with the screen himself, almost like Jurassic Park where he was talking to the screen and the screen would talk back to him. He had timed it. They'd practice it. It was pretty impeccable. I was like, that was impressive. So they won the-- we had little trophies made for them like Oscars. But yeah. The Yoda statue.
That's fantastic.
Sorry. I forgot how I got on that, but I had to bring it up because we talked about it off camera before. I was like, I've got to figure out a way to tie this in.s that was it. [LAUGHS]
Cassandra, our producer, lost her mind a little bit that she got-- that you-- they got to film on Skywalker Ranch. [LAUGHS]
Yes! Have you ever been there? I mean, it's-- honestly, when I was driving up I was like-- we were in a bus and I saw this little rabbit run by. And I thought, is that animatronic or is it real? I couldn't tell if it was real. Did they have the rabbit bounce right-- no, it was a real rabbit. I was like, OK. Thanks. [LAUGHS]
So Carl, amazing story, but I've got to end this, and this is probably a question for Dani, actually. So I think of you as kind of the educational world's unofficial ambassador for Austin, Texas.
Yes.
So I've been trying to convince Dani and a few other people to go to Austin for South By Southwest EDU Week, which is one of my favorite conferences. Why should we go to Austin? What is great about education there? Why is South By Southwest such a great conference?
So I've known Ron Reed and the folks at the South By since 2005 EDU. So there's two-- so as you know, South By Southwest is the brainchild of this original group that started in the early '80s in Austin where it was mostly-- actually, it was a bunch of gaming guys that got together in a basement at one of the hotels. That's how it started. There was, like, 20 people there at the first conference.
And then they started pulling in film and music. And over time, South By Southwest grew to a 10-day event that embodied basically the best in film, TV, cinema, music, and then, of course, the industry of gaming.
And what's happened since then is in 2005 they did a little spin-off called EDU, South By Southwest EDU. So it happens three days prior to the main South By.
It's a very unique time in Austin. It's probably the most gorgeous time in Austin, which is unfortunate because everybody wants to move here. So the weather's always in the 70s. It's beautiful every day.
But what I love about the event is especially for folks that-- if you're going to a conference-- the typical educational technology conference, you want to go to learn about tools and stuff like that, this is not your event. This is more for those kind of forward-thinking, forward-leaning folks that are looking for visionary stuff.
That's where I've learned about things like getting crypto in schools, and how do we actually use blockchain technology to help kids with the Learn to Earn program like they're doing in South Central High School in LA? I got to hear about that.
I mean, I got to hear rappers from a school in Florida talk about how they use rap with their students to really engage them in just learning reading, writing, part of the ELA process because kids were just failing on that front. And now they've got them up there. And they had students come up on stage and actually rap freestyle right there in front of us.
So lots of things like that. It's not the typical edtech conference. But the other thing I love about it-- this is very subtle-- but they start at 10:00, which is nice. They don't start at 8:00 in the morning.
You have me sold.
So they give you some-- [LAUGHS] you're in? You're in?
I'm in.
So they give you time to go into the mixer. And the mixer started around 4:30. It's a very collaborative, social experience. And so Matt and I, we both experienced this the same way because Dan [? Reiter, ?] who we both are friends with, we were at a session with Dan.
And he had said, if you have an opportunity to have a great conversation with someone or you have to run off to a session, he goes, take the opportunity to have that conversation because you can go to a session and get the notes and all that later. But man, that opportunity, you never know.
So we actually modeled that and said, let's go to lunch. So that's what we did while we were there. And actually, had a great conversation that's led to other things.
But that's the other thing. It's just that the people that are there, the creative energy that's there is great. So Austin itself, I've been here since '93. There was about 300,000 people when I got here. There's like 2.2 million now.
But it's still an amazing town. And I know a really great bar on Rainey Street downtown if you ever want to go. [LAUGHS] Just a little plug for Idle Hands there if you're ever down there. But yeah, it's right by the convention center, actually. So yeah, come on down. We'll host you.
There'll be several events at the bar too because actually Run from Run-DMC. I don't know if you guys know the-- yeah. I met DMC. I signed my book and gave it to him because I've said, most people ask you for an autograph. I'm going to give you mine just because, why not? Take a risk.
And Run's son actually was doing some documentary work, and I invited them to the bar for an event we were doing with BrainPOP. And he came and hung out with us, and I was like, this is just the coolest thing, man. There's people from all different industries mixing together. So yeah, come check it out. And I don't work for South By, nor do I get any plugs for any of this, but I do love the city. Yes, I do.
Like, I said unofficial ambassador, but very good ambassador. Just to wrap it up, where can we find you at on the internet? I know we've got TikTok, but where else can we find you, Carl?
[LAUGHS] I will be impressed if you can find me on TikTok. There are a few things I've been doing on TikTok. I am trying. I am taking those risks with my kid.
carlhooker.com is kind of like my base of operations. My blog is hookedoninnovation.com. But from both of those you can link to the podcast I'm doing right now. I've got four of them out. Like I said, I just launched my fourth one today, so I've got four different podcasts out there. The books are on there.
Twitter is probably the easiest way just to connect and collaborate with me. I'm on it a lot. I connect with everybody. Even if you don't agree with me, that's fine. It's @MrHooker. Don't go to @Hooker because that's a very inappropriate person to look at, [LAUGHS] as much as the name, as we might imagine.
So @MrHooker. Yeah, connect. My DMs are open, which I always cringe when I say because now I sound like a kid, but that's OK. Feel free to-- I didn't say slide into the DMs. I just said they're open. But yes. And I'm on Instagram and a few other things, but let's just stick with Twitter for now. [LAUGHS]
Sounds good. Well, Carl, thank you so much for being here with us and talking about failure and all the different ways that teachers and students can fail with a smile on our face and move towards success.
Before we end, can I ask you guys both to take a risk?
Yes.
Oh, man.
OK. This is-- I'm not going to make you sing it.
OK. I was like--
I have to ask--
--I feel like it's karaoke or something.
This is always my thing. You're sitting there. Imagine the situation. You're going into a space and they said, listen. You have one chance. You have to sing a karaoke song of choice that you just know that you can nail or get pretty close to. What's your karaoke song of choice? And you don't have to sing it.
"The Sign," Lizzo.
Ooh! I like it. That's spicy. What you got, Matt?
I may have practiced it on the way in today. I don't get to do a lot of car seat karaoke these days because I work from home, but I already got my practice in. But we're not doing it live. Matt?
I can't hear a little bit of that? Give me a little-- no? OK, OK.
No. There's a few that I could probably do, but I think probably my favorite one is there's a song called "The Reasons," by The Weakerthans that whenever it comes on, I just-- I belt it out. And it's one of those bands that if you know who The Weakerthans are, you're cool.
I'm looking-- I'm searching them right now because I was thinking "The Reason" by Hoobastank, which is--
No, no. Not that song. Nope. Nope.
No. That one depresses me.
This one's a great one about trying to explain why I love you as a person to a person that you're in a relationship with and them being like, I kind of hate you.
[LAUGHTER]
And it's just a really fun song, so yeah, that would be my song.
What's yours, Carl?
Insight into Matt's background there. That's good. I'm going to look that up. No, mine is I-- so I suffer from an affliction where I have 1986 to 1992 rap music memorized for some reason. Like, I know pretty much any song from that era. My go-to one over the last couple of decades has been Digital Underground's "Humpty Dance" because I did it at my wedding.
I've done it in front of-- there's actually video footage of me at [? ISDE ?] before I was actually Carl Hooker. I mean, I was always Carl-- before I was known as anybody. There was a viral link that went out once of this guy on stage singing, and that was me at an [? ISDE ?] karaoke event. This is, like, 10 years ago before the EdTech karaoke thing blew up.
But that's a fun one because again, shared risk taking, everyone's laughing, we're all trying something different. And again, going back to your point about perfectionism, we're not going to be perfect when we sing it, but we're going to get out there and just own every minute of it anyway, because you know what? It's three and a half minutes and then we're done. [LAUGHS]
I love it. Thank you, Carl.
Thanks for making us take a risk, Carl. Appreciate it.
[LAUGHS] We survived!
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There's a lot of takeaways from this interview. There's a lot of things that we could walk away with. But I'm walking away with a brand new term for something that has always plagued my thoughts about education, which is the term time famine. I have never heard that term, and I absolutely loved that he used that term because it states so clearly the pressure of time in education.
Yeah. You're absolutely right. There's so much that we want to do and that we're asking educators to do, and there's just never enough minutes in the day no matter how you split it up.
That's true. So what are you taking away from this?
Oh my gosh, so much. But I loved his comparison to education with acting and the yes and versus yeah but. So I've heard the yes and before, but I love it in the way that he used it. What about you, Cassandra?
Ooh. I'm with you. I'm thinking there's so much. It was-- what a wonderful interview. But something that stuck with me is something I'm actually doing just with my husband, but at the end of the day, what was your highlight? It's so important to reflect. And I want to start practicing, oh, well, what could we do better? Because it's just such a good--
What are you going to do tomorrow?
Exactly.
So we do the same thing, but we do just a reflection on the day, the good things. But I like that it's like, OK. What was good? What could you do better? And then what are you going to do tomorrow? Because like he said, the windshield's bigger than the rearview mirror. What is your plan to make all of this happen? And I think that really puts the ownership on us. Like, what am I going to do to be better, to do better tomorrow?
Exactly. And I know Cassandra, you're taking away as well how to get to Skywalker Ranch and start filming there as well.
[LAUGHS]
There's a great networking opportunity. Yeah. It just sounded so cool. And being with a bunch of superintendents, very important to schools and things. Very cool.
Yeah. I just-- I love his stories. I'm so glad that we get to share our interview with the Utah community and dive deeper into those-- kind of the gospel of failure and how we can instill it into the classrooms.
Absolutely. I think it's-- I think as a teacher, failure, especially in front of your students, can be really scary. But once we accept and recognize that that is where some huge growth can happen and where we can model that for our students so that they aren't afraid of failure, that's what we need to be doing as educators. So I really appreciate the message.
100%. Well, it was an awesome interview, and we'll see you guys next time.
Yeah. And who are we going to see in Austin? Meet us there.
Yeah, exactly.
Thanks for listening.
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