In this episode of UEN Homeroom, Dani and Matt talk to members of the Samsung for Education Team, Micah Shipee and Dee Lanier, who will be two of the featured speakers for the upcoming UCET 2023 Conference. Listen to expert insight into the world of innovative educational practices and get a sneak peek of what you can expect to learn at their UCET presentations.
In this episode of UEN Homeroom, Dani and Matt talk to members of the Samsung for Education Team, Micah Shipee and Dee Lanier, who will be two of the featured speakers for the upcoming UCET 2023 Conference. Listen to expert insight into the world of innovative educational practices and get a sneak peek of what you can expect to learn at their UCET presentations.
Register to attend the 2023 UCET Conference here.
Explore Additional Professional Development Opportunities on our website: https://www.uen.org/development/
[MUSIC PLAYING] Hi, Dani.
Hey, Matt. How are you?
I'm doing good. How are you?
Super awesome and super excited about (SINGING) UCET!
I am super excited as well, not just because I am the president this year, but also because I know all the cool backstage stuff that we're doing this year, and I can't wait for Utah educators to see all of it happen.
OK. And are we going to kind of give them a sneak peek of what you're talking about?
Absolutely. Today, we have a sneak peek from two of the featured speakers. These are speakers that will be at the conference, in a room, and they'll be speaking at different times during the conference from a national perspective. These two speakers come from the Samsung for Education team, which are Micah Shipee and Dee Lanier.
Oh my gosh. So listen in, but also mark your calendars.
Absolutely.
Mark those sessions. Put them in. Mark them as you're coming because these are two that you're not going to want to miss seeing there.
Absolutely. Let's jump right into it.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Join UETN Homeroom at UCET '23 on March 14 and 15 at the Utah Valley Convention Center. This year promises to be a great year with keynotes in a Utah Ed Chat format from local educators, including First Lady Abby Cox and Utah State Superintendent Sydnee Dixon.
Join presentations from experts all over Utah and around the world on a variety of topics, including technology integration, personalized competency-based learning, coaching, and more. Beyond some great presentations from UETN, explore UETN's photo booth and author meet-and-greet on the second floor. Register now for UCET '23 at ucet.org.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
All right. We are very lucky today to have some wonderful guests that are going to be at the upcoming UCET conference in March. And rather than try and introduce all of their accolades and amazing things they do in education across the country, we're going to have them start out by introducing themselves. So Dee, can you take it away for a second and introduce who you are? And then we'll jump over to Micah.
Sure thing. My name is Dee Lanier. I am a Samsung Education Coach. Been a longtime Google innovator and trainer and one of the founders of the Google Certified Coaching Program. Also, the creator, if you will, because I want to call myself a co-creator of a design thinking activity called Solve in Time! and also authored a book called Demarginalizing Design. Mostly, I am a former teacher. I'm a father, I'm a husband, and I'm happy to be here.
Fantastic. Micah, do you want to go ahead?
Sure. Hi. I'm Micah Shipee. I'm Samsung's Director of Educational Technology Consulting and Solutions. I'm a former middle school social studies teacher. I retired after 22 years. I'm a little young to retire, but I don't want to say I left teaching. I feel like after 22 years I get to say I retired, right?
Absolutely.
Author of a couple of books, WanderlustEDU and Reality Bites, and have the pleasure of working with a really awesome group of Samsung education coaches with people like Dee Lanier.
That's fantastic. And it's so great to have you both on the podcast today to talk UCET talk. What do you do? Which is a lot of innovation, design thinking, and process work in your day jobs across your different areas as well. So we'll start off with a softball question here. Why is innovation in education important? How can educators engage in innovative processes? And how can administrators support innovations in schools?
I think from a high-level view, I'll start it off and then send it over to Dee. Innovation is necessary because the world of the master of content is over with. So now just as a former history teacher, just about everything is Googleable. So being the sage on the stage, I found that I had to really shift my practice and embrace an innovative mindset that understood that critical thinking and helping students access information in a different way and then creatively demonstrate understanding, it's shifted during my career. So innovation as a form of not only embracing new technologies but new strategies is paramount in education right now.
Personally, I think about, number one, giving the distinction between replication and innovation. And much of what we have done in education for the last 50, 60, 70 years is a standardization of processes and a memorization and rote regurgitation, and just replicating what already exists.
So I know that when I was in school, the whole goal was for me to turn in something that did not surprise the teacher. It should be what the teacher expected, right? And then even unfortunately in many creative spaces sometimes, the goal is to replicate something that already exists.
But when you think about what the demands of the world are and what we are launching our students into, it is into a place where they are collaborating, right? So they're not working individually. And they are coming up with solutions to problems that exist. And so that requires thinking about things in new and different ways and gathering more information in order to produce something that does not already exist.
So that's a future that we are launching our students into. We need to make sure that they are prepared for that. And so that requires innovation and not replication or standardization.
I love that. That just makes me so excited as an educator for, what's in the future? It's not the same old. It's new and exciting. Design thinking has played a really big role in both of your careers and outlooks on education. Why is that such an important process for educators to explore? And if teachers are new to this idea of design thinking, what are some recommendations for starting into that practice?
I think one of the-- Dee is really our design thinking expert. For me, the most attractive piece to the design thinking as a framework or a model for understanding or approaching strategies is the importance of empathy and really understanding the shoes of others, the experience of others, the background of others and how it informs their worldview and their perspective on various tasks that we might bring to the table as educators.
I've really been happy at Samsung to hear the phrase voice of customer used all the time. Not only what does the expert want, but what does the average user want? What is the voice of the customer? That's been really kind of exciting to hear. How we go through with the design thinking process and come up with producables I think is more in the wheelhouse of Dee's expertise, so I'll let him carry on this.
You know I'm over here shaking my head because I consider myself an expert in nothing, but a learner. And I am sort of obsessed with design thinking, so we'll leave it at that in terms of how you would I think maybe describe my level of, quote, "expertise" in design thinking.
And first of all, I would clarify that design thinking is first and foremost a mindset and not a mode or a model. And that is, I think, what Micah just said in that it is engaging in the people who are affected by whatever said problem. And that is different than some one individual in isolation coming up with a quote, "solution" to a problem without engaging the people who are affected by the problem, right?
And also, how we define what problems are. So problems are big and complex, and they affect people and their environment, and they may have detrimental outcomes if not solved is my layman's way of defining it in comparison to just coming to the solution to the puzzle, right? Coming up with an answer to something that should be predictable.
Again, when we talk about complex problems that exist and we think about our environment, we literally think about our world. We think about different things that are affecting us in various communities. There are real problems that have to be solved. And so therefore, having some framework for coming to solutions, plural, is helpful in comparison to what is oftentimes a two-step process, right?
I'm going to state the problem and then we're just going to throw a bunch of brainstorm solutions, and then the people in power are going to pick the best one and then we're going to go with it. And then if it fails, we'll just say, well, we tried our best or we did our best, and we'll defend it to the hilt, which is really a very, very flawed methodology in comparison to taking the time, slowing down. I really think of it as mindfulness with others.
And taking the time to really analyze what is happening and how other people view the problem, how it affects them, and then hearing some of their ideas about how those things could be solved, and co-creating solutions. And then iterating on those solutions as we as a collective see those solutions work well in some cases, and in other cases we see additional things that could be improved. And so it oftentimes looks more like a five or six-step process, again, versus a two or possibly three-step process.
But then also it's recursive as well, correct?
Absolutely, it is. Absolutely, it is.
So we're explicitly thinking cyclically in many ways, right? We are thinking-- we've identified a problem. We've communicated with the people that are affected by it. We've done our research. We've empathized with it. We've come up with some solutions, and then we creatively share out what that solution is. We attempt it. We try it. And that is really-- that launch stage is really a testing ground.
Now we're testing it with the people who are affected by it the most, and they're the ones who are instantly-- they're the instant feedback loop. They're the ones that are sharing things that are working well, things that can be improved upon. And if it's a collective practice and effort, there's more buy-in and there's more long-term commitment. But that requires every person involved to have a collective long-term mindset versus an individual or short-term mindset.
I absolutely love that. And one of the things that struck me about commonalities between both of your books-- so I'm thinking WanderlustEDU on Micah's side and Demarginalizing Design on your side, Dee-- is that both of you really speak to the idea of bringing in groups that are not normally brought into the decision making process or brought into the innovation process. And for a minute, I want to think about, how do we draw students and parents into the process of designing for education, for innovating within education in a way that improves the overall experience for everyone involved?
There's really interesting historical examples of this. In the 1920s, parents identified the radio as emerging technology that their children needed to figure out. So there were stories of parents buying box radios and giving them to schools, saying, here. Teach my kids.
And so the parents-- I think what we can learn from that is that parents historically want to be part of that story. And I think part of the onus on us as educators is to make sure that we are making ways for parent voice, the voices from the homes to be part of the school community, not to build up walls that assume the teacher knows best. We have to have a dynamic relationship with schools. And I think I can still say we as a former teacher. And that's paramount that schools and their parent communities are connected.
However, schools are where the teaching professionals live, and the teaching professionals should take that mantle very seriously to accept the radio, to look at it and be like, well, I'm not going to turn this on in my classroom and just listen to it. But maybe we can take it apart and talk about how this thing works and use some critical thinking skills related to the science of, I don't know, sound waves.
But also, flip it and talk about writing a script and creating a narrative to be used in this new communication technology. So that kind of hack I think has been part of our teaching ancestry for thousands of years, working backwards from emergent technology, figuring out, OK, how is this meaningful?
Because initially, the attention is there. People are excited about it. Its relevance might be there. But then we have to build stages of knowledge acquisition that they can confidently approach and then have measurable outcomes in some cases to demonstrate mastery.
I'm over here pumping my fist in agreement in every single way. I absolutely love how you even ended the illustration of the radio as maybe they create a narrative around that, that creative thinking. It just oozes from you. You can't help yourself.
[LAUGHS]
So I will always refer to you still as an educator because you're always educating me.
Thank you.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So nothing but agreement there. Again, I'm always thinking about distinctions, right? So oftentimes things are put in a binary. Either/or thinking is prevalent as it pertains to society in general, education specifically.
And so I think about how, again, roles are oftentimes identified as the education system is one of which as it pertains to parents. Parents are delegating the education to the educational system, to the school. And so delegation tends to be what is just culturally normative. Not saying it is right or wrong, It's what has been, and it continues unless it is disrupted.
But I think collaboration, if that is part of the ethos of a school community, it catches on. It's not normal. It is absolutely not normal for there to be a collaborative relationship between students, teachers, and parents and other community members. But there are some great examples or some sort of far-off examples. When I say far-off, just hard to find, but they exist, of schools that really do build a more wraparound community, have more concentric circle models versus you drop your kids off here and then this is what happens here.
And this may be silly, but I see one example as a primary way for schools to try and change the expectations of what that school community is for their students and their parents in terms of expectations, and that's at the beginning of the school year. That is when you have a parent night, how are those parents invited?
What time is that event? How much effort is put into making sure that we can have as much representation as possible? How can we overcome challenges of time and distance and tribal means and all of that? But then how do we prop up the students to be the primary facilitators of explaining what happens in the school community versus the expert and administrator just sharing and throwing information on the parents?
I mean, I think during COVID we saw this opportunity arise with doing virtual parent-teacher conferences and parent meetings and engagement. Everyone got used to doing everything via virtual conferencing, so that removed a lot of barriers for some.
But what continued was the same old, same old, which is, I'm going to talk to you and lecture you and going to share with you all the things that we do, and then after 50 minutes hit you with, are there any questions?
[LAUGHTER]
Everyone's thinking, no. I just want to leave now because you've bored me to death and you've overwhelmed me with information. And I've even seen this in spaces where class looks very different than didactic instruction. But unfortunately, the communication to parents is still done in a format which is antithetical even to this creative/innovative environment that the school is attempting to produce.
And so I think it has everything to do with the effort from the school to create a different format as it pertains to communication with parents. And that includes it being much more dialogical, right? How many times are questions asked in those meetings to the parents? Frequently, right?
And then that can be messy, but we were just bringing up design thinking. There's still a systematic approach, and it's very intentional. But in many ways, I really want to give kudos and applause to schools that really do integrate creative thinking, innovation, the arts. They do really, really special things. I would say you can-- if they're not already doing this, you can create a complete culture change by inviting your parents and your students into a more collaborative space, even in those parent conferences.
I absolutely love that, Dee, because I'm just thinking back to something both you and Micah had said over the last couple minutes about design thinking about empathy. And I think with parents, if we're not empathizing with their position that they may, A, may be holding some residual frustrations or fear of what an educator can say to them in a parent-teacher conference. But also, the feelings of being judged for what might be happening with their student. I think acknowledging those and empathizing with those as an educator, as an administrator can really open up some doors for better quality communication, and like you say, some real change in the classrooms.
Agreed. And if I can add just one other piece, because I think you just spoke to [INAUDIBLE] that is the fact that oftentimes there's a cultural divide between the parents and the teachers, right? And that gap can be really large unless it is attempted to be crossed, right? If it's never attempted to be crossed, then I have my perspective. You have your perspective. And if we have a delegation model, your job as a parent is to trust me when you drop your child off. My job is to instruct them. And then on occasion, my job is to inform you, right?
Like, that is a very noncollaborative sort of relationship. And if I do not understand the dynamics of who you are, what your background is, and what is happening within your home, then I can never truly fully understand and support your child. And so those things must change.
But relationship is the same way. So we say that the most important thing for a teacher to do is to build relationship with their students. Oftentimes, there's an extra-- and this is a burden, and I want to definitely acknowledge that this is much, much harder, and also just reveals how underpaid and under-resourced teachers are if an additional expectation would be added that they really build relationship with the parents as well.
I agree, Dee. I think you're just making me reflect on the systemization of education. We've systemized it so much and created these boundaries so stringently that we forget that a teacher is being trusted with the single most important thing for a parent, and that's their child. The single most important aspect of my life is my children, and I'm trusting my children to somebody else.
And so as a parent I need to take a step back and think outside of the system. And as an educator I need to take a step back and put on my human hat and remember who I'm dealing with here. When I would meet a parent or I would coach a child and see the family, I would instinctively react to that child in a different way.
Coaching, clubs, all the things that teachers do "extra," quote, unquote, unpaid, [LAUGHS] those things provide the most meaningful relationships. And a relationship's first approach is fundamental for, I think, creating positive change and establishing trust with families.
Absolutely. And I think Dee, really you capitalized on something there, that even if a teacher has figured out how to collaborate with students and have them be the creators and do all of these wonderful things, when we go back to talking to parents, we're right back into our old communication ruts. Like, this is what we do and this is how we do it.
And you maybe haven't even thought like, oh, dealing with humans extends beyond just our students. Their parents are humans as well. And--
[INAUDIBLE]
Yeah, exactly. So we all kind of know that edtech is full of the newest things and stuff for schools, and kind of like your example with a radio being dropped off at a school. But the newest technologies can often be really overwhelming for our educators. How can educators and their administrators best approach new tech adoption in their schools? And in your experience, who should be part of that decision making process? Who's in charge of who gets to adopt what in schools?
The idea around adopting new technology-- thank you for using the word adopt rather than integrate. That would feel like-- integrate is like interlocking bricks like LEGOs, you know? Shoving them together. Adopt infers ownership and meaningfully applying something new.
I think there's two things that really need to happen in schools, and it's really in society. It's not just schools. It's human nature we're talking about. One is to understand that technology is going to amplify our practice. So it's going to make things that we do really well better, and it's going to make things that we don't do really well worse.
So if our classroom management as teachers is our low point or perhaps the area that needs the most work, inserting new technologies of almost any single kind is going to make that worse. So there are teacher skills that we have to sharpen, if you will.
The other thing I think that really helps is understanding while it may feel like you're the first person to do this, it may feel like this is an uphill battle, it may feel like this is an unsurmountable task, again, our teaching ancestors have been adopting new technology for a long time. I used the radio as an example, but my other favorite is the pencil. It took 100 years for Chicago schools to standardize use of the pencil.
The pencil. I mean-- and we were picking at Chicago, right? Now not anybody in Utah, of course, because that would never happen there. But in the case of Chicago, it's because they documented it. That's why we know.
But here, you can think about educators giving kids a new tool for the first time. See if this sounds familiar. OK. I'm going to give them this new tool. What are they going to do with it? How will I keep track of what they're doing? How will I monitor what they're doing? Imagine that, a kid with a pencil and a piece of paper. Or how will I keep it sharp? How will I maintain the tool?
All these ideas are the same thing we do with Chromebooks, tablets, laptops. Same thing. What are they going to do? How am I going to keep the power on? How am I going to maintain them?
So understanding that this is not the first time we have adopted new technologies, there are parallel examples, I think helps us take a deep breath and calm down a little bit as we start to explore new technologies. That's an important part of it.
The other side of it is I know a lot of times the schools, we want to bring educators into the room, so we think-- we look around and we're like, OK. Who's my geek? Who's my Leroy Jenkins? If you don't know who Leroy Jenkins is, look it up. So I'm looking around like, who's my risk taker? Who's my gamer? Who's going to jump right in?
And that's fine. I think people that you might call the adoption curve innovators in that case are great to have as part of the story. But oftentimes, an innovator or somebody who takes that leap very quickly doesn't have the social commodity, for lack of a better phrase. They don't have following of other people.
If someone sees Micah try out a new game in the classroom or a new strategy in the classroom, they might think, OK, that's just because Micah does weird stuff all the time. But if one of my colleagues who is a little hesitant, a little cautious, a little more moderate but has a lot of teaching success and respect does it, people are going to look and say, oh, OK. I'll try that.
And those were our first followers in the TED Talk language of Derek Sivers, the first follower, one of my favorites. You could also call them early adopters. And they're the real change agents. They're not the first people to dive in. They're the second.
And so what I'm getting at is when we try to bring voice of educators into the room, we need to be thinking about, who are the people that we want to have at the table? It's not just the geekiest people on the planet. Schools do that very often. They're like, oh, this is a new 23-year-old teacher. They try new things. Yeah, but they don't really have the depth of knowledge. They don't have the street cred, if you will, of some of their colleagues.
So balancing that out with people who have been in the industry for a while and are accepting change-- so I'm not talking about laggards who won't change or will sit there with their arms crossed in a meeting about technology. That's not who I'm talking about. I'm talking about the majority of people who will adopt change, but maybe a little slower, a little more cautious, and will bring up concerns that relate to how we approach this technology. What are we going to do with it? How are we going to maintain it? And they help us to be thoughtful. Dee, what do you think?
Man, I just think-- well, first, I think that technology is a tool, right? And so when we consider different forms of technology as tool, then we should be evaluating its usefulness, its efficiency. And there are some that don't get it, some that would say, this rock and hammer and chisel has worked perfectly fine for me [LAUGHS] in comparison to a pencil, just to run with that analogy a little bit more.
But it does definitely involve the people who are willing to adopt the newer and to try it and to showcase what they are doing with others. Then I also think the real linchpin is professional development and coaching. And when I did work with Digital Promise and Google and we had the privilege of eventually creating what is now known as the Certified Coaching Program, it really revealed itself as a second digital divide.
The difference between-- the first form of digital divide that we're often most familiar with and speak about is access of students and teachers, having access to certain pieces of hardware and software and internet access. And largely, especially in many urban areas, those gaps have been filled.
And so great. Now we have more access more than ever. We have high-speed internet in classes. We have devices of various sorts. We even are now in many spaces taking inventory of, what is internet access like at home? And then also providing resources for students.
So we are much better than we were positionally in terms of bridging those gaps. And there's still a long way to go in many areas, especially rural. But nonetheless, that's just the first digital divide.
The other divide is teachers actually having professional development, having training on how to use, and then having ongoing support in continuing to learn how to use. And so that's where coaching comes in.
And some of the research done by Digital Promise revealed that the difference between two schools-- so you can have two identical in the form of how much technology is present within the school and internet access being with the student population. So they could be very similar in that regard.
But in one space, technology is being utilized a ton, and in another space technology is being utilized in a very minimal capacity. What comes to mind is just creating digital worksheets. What's the difference?
Well, the difference is the teachers in this community having access to professional development, high-quality professional development, being a part of personal learning networks so they have people who are helping and supporting, and actually having a role and position of a coach who is just like an instructional coach. I'm here to help you enhance your practice, and my job is to help you get more comfortable and to do better with what you are attempting to utilize within your classroom setting.
And so those things, that combination of things of having a personal learning network or having a community network, having access to high-quality, professional development, and having ongoing coaching really seems to be a significant difference between the haves and the have nots, if you will, as it pertains to technology use and adoption.
Ooh.
Powerful. Like, both of you, that was incredible answers. And I love that you're both diving into this idea of it's got to be something that is holistic. Everyone needs to be involved, that there needs to be training, that needs to be ongoing [INAUDIBLE]. And I love that you're both bringing in this idea of coaching and early adopters and coaching those early adopters to move forward. It's now time for our student question.
I'm Katie from Cottonwood High School. My question is, as an audience member, who is your favorite educational speaker? Why are they such a good speaker?
Oh, man. I wasn't ready to pick one. Dee, go ahead.
You can do a couple if you want.
This is easy, but it's cheating. This one is easy for me, but it's so cheating. I mean, it's my buddy, my brother, one of my best friends on the planet, Ken Shelton. So it won't be-- though I will change it up and say the venue won't be me just to go to listening to one of his keynotes or going to one of his sessions, though I definitely learn a ton from him in those particular spaces.
But it's he and I going to get coffee and sitting down and chatting. And yeah, that's not even-- I have no hesitation in answering that question. It's being able to talk about some of the deeper issues happening.
Ken is very-- he will always push things back to interrogating what is happening on the system level, and not just looking at the educator as an individual practitioner and what they are responsible for doing and doing different. He's definitely a huge proponent of that.
But he's a provocateur, if you will, of what is normative on a system level and what needs to be changed there. What policies must be adapted? What are the expectations that if you kind of do the revolutionary thing, no holds barred, I'm going to risk it all approach in education, for some that might be incredibly detrimental to their career, and for others they may get awards for it.
And so how do you ensure that on a top level those things are being encouraged as we speak about innovation and education? Who will be punished versus who will be rewarded? He takes that approach. And I think he's become contagious because I now look at everything through that lens.
You're so good at that, Dee. You're so well prepared. I totally agree. Ken Shelton is a rock star. He helps stretch my thinking every time I hear him speak.
There's others. It depends on my mood. I think sometimes if I want a little tug at the heartstrings, I listen to Jeff Heil. You know, Jeff Heil has a fantastic experience working with underserved populations. And when he speaks and tells me about his students and his homeless population, it makes me want to be a better teacher for every student that I serve.
When I hear Ari Flewelling speak about her experiences as a minority in education, it's just different. It's a different experience that's different than mine, and it increases my mindset and my worldview and helps me to be more empathetic towards the experience of others.
And of course, my buddy Jesse Lubinsky. He's one of the most well-prepared speakers, I think. I think he studied stand-up to come up with the deliver and the punch line that can bring a meaningful laugh to the edtech conversation.
I love those answers. And we asked you that because we have a conference coming up that you both will be speaking at. It's the UCET conference. And UCET is a conference that focuses on sharing innovative practices with technology and really beyond. What do you see as some of the best practices schools have adopted during the pandemic throughout the US? And did the pandemic create more or less opportunities for innovation in schools?
I think the pandemic created more financial opportunities with ESSER funds. But with ESSER funds, it's like winning the lottery. I mean, I know that's not really fair to say about education because we don't have enough money as it is.
But imagine you won the lottery and you don't have guidance on how to spend the money. And some of the best plans I've seen out there are really based on the iterative process of recycling new, getting ready for more, getting ready for more, maybe upscaling a little bit but understanding that technology does have a shelf life.
So some of the best plans have been not thinking about the here and now and the latest and greatest. It's, what's going to stay with us duratively? And what organizations are going to be here in 10 years? Because there's some real big flash-in-the-pan organizations out there. They're doing some pretty cool stuff. But who's been around for a while and who's going to be here in 10 years to support us if we want to do more or be more or invest in more tools within a specific technology company's ecosystem?
So we've seen that. We've also seen a stretching of thinking. I think that we saw how automation can help with some of our teaching tasks, but automation is also a dangerous thing. I found myself excited that I could get through grading papers really quickly with a Google Form, but then realized I'm not really providing the feedback to students that's going to help them grow the most.
So shifting to paperless-- and many schools hadn't before the pandemic-- but that forced disruption helped us to understand that a digital transition is good. Now it's time to make sense of it all and to look back at our change in practice, a change in survival mode, and now look at, how do we make it meaningful?
And as Dee pointed out, one of my favorite things is thinking of professional development as the solution for adoption. So we want to really adopt new change and new strategies. That comes from coaching and guidance. It's not always natural. We have to have thought leadership and someone to guide conversation.
Oh, man. Yes, and amen. I just keep nodding my head over here. I don't know why I need to add anything. But I will say I am pleasantly surprised in some instances where new practices have been put in place. And most importantly, better spectacles have been put on in order to see what is happening in students' lives, their social and emotional well-being, what life at home is in certain cases, what controls teachers intend to utilize for good purposes, but in a remote setting or a distance learning setting. You don't have those controls.
And so what does it mean for an educator to consider and to think differently about, OK, I have a less controlled environment. And if I cannot stipulate whether or not a student has their camera on, mostly because we cannot stipulate that they showcase what they have behind them-- that could be siblings. [LAUGHS] That could be a number of things.
Creativity is oftentimes bred out of constraint. And I think the pandemic created all kinds of constraints that were really, really tough for schools and educators in general to figure out.
But in many cases, they figured some things out, right? They realized, oh, we make sure that our students have access to technology and we do certain things differently in order to engage our students. I realize I don't have a controlled environment where it is mandated that you all have your heads up, that you have your hoodies off, that you're looking at me when I'm speaking to you for 30 minutes and that you are taking notes, right?
When those controls are gone and there are different constraints that teachers have to think about, I think some good practices came in replacement to some of those things and creative ways to engage students, creative ways to-- it's like, if a teacher is constantly asking themselves, how do I have my student pay attention today, how can I potentially trick them, if you will, into turning their camera off and wanting to show their face, like, how do I do that? That sort of reimagined way of engaging students I think is a really, really powerful opportunity.
And what are some different technologies that can be utilized that encourages interaction? So what are the Pear Decks, linear pods that are out there? So versus me just giving you information that is having you interact with me back and forth.
So they're learning new practices, learning new tools. Some of the teachers that may not have saw edtech professional development as crucial to their personal development noticed that it is. And so they started developing themselves and developing with community. So there are lots and lots of opportunities. I think some teaching strategies and engaging more blended learning practices, right? So these are all great things.
Now in some cases-- definitely not all, so I definitely don't want to put a negative swath of generalization out there. But in some cases, I've noticed-- and I'm thinking about my own kids' experience. Once students came back into the building, it was a return to, quote, "normal" when there really was an opportunity to create a referendum on that entire perspective, to notice that certain things were never working, right?
Those things never work. Like, when a student has full agency to say, I don't want to pay attention to you anymore, watch this, I'm going to turn off my camera, I have better things to do, I am going to-- right? When a 6th grader has the same amount of agency as a university student, we have to draw the parallels and see what happening here.
Sometimes it's not engaging practice. It does not actually require that students have interaction with you. It just requires that they look like they are taking notes and that they test well. So again, for all the schools and the teachers that have continued on the pathway of thinking how to engage students differently and to use different practices to do so, I am more than ecstatic to see as examples and to support as a practitioner as well.
That's fantastic, Dee, and Micah. We could not agree with you more on all of those points. And I kind of want to-- I think any listener would have a good idea of what your sessions that you set may look, sound, and what they'll learn from you. But what can they expect from you? What kind of things are you planning on presenting? What kind of ideas would you like to share with Utah teachers and administrators?
I have three things I want to be sharing about. One is a people-first approach to tech rollouts. So what I'm talking about there is a deeper dive into this adoption curve. How do we strategically understand the people part of adopting new technology? Because it can be very strategic. And not manipulative. It brings a whole group of people in.
I'll be doing a very basic, let's get messy, hands-on design thinking workshop where we'll go through an empathy-driven approach to creating end results. A lot of fun to do. I've used it with my 7th and 8th graders. They really enjoyed that process.
And then talking about emergent technology and how it's informing the workforce. So not only the future of education, but the future of work, and talking about how there's different skills that we need to adapt in order to-- or adopt in order to better prepare our students for their future, which is quite different than our past.
And I will be bringing a combination of things that are from two of my published works, one being my book, Demarginalizing Design, really which is perspective building, but is very much interactive. And so we will have conversation over these things that speak to is really mindset over mode first, mode or model first.
And really, again, borrowing from one of my best friends, Ken Shelton, when you trouble the narrative, it then at least causes you to pause and to think. If this is the way that we've always done things, there is a perspective that at least interferes with that being the best way necessarily for all people.
So let's look at that a little bit more critically, and then let's work more collaboratively as a community. I'm using things that in and of themselves are not normative oftentimes in schools, right? It's a specialist who is an expert who then individually delivers and is rewarded. And so we will dive deep into some interactive process there.
And then speaking of process, we will utilize some design thinking using Solve in Time!, which is really a rapid prototyping tool for coming up with solutions to problems that exist. That can be extended to a project that could really be long term. And so really driving the distinction between problem-based learning and project-based learning and seeing also how they are not opposed, but they can complement one another.
That's awesome. I mean, I'm excited. I'm ready. Is it happening yet?
It's going to happen very soon. And I don't know about Dani. I'm sure she's feeling the same way. But I could listen to both of you talk about education all day. We are so appreciative of your time and your thoughts about innovation, about design thinking, and that you're coming to Utah to join us and share some of your ideas as well.
Excited to be there. Can't wait.
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Well, I was excited about UCET before, but I'm even more excited about it now. Those two were incredible.
Yeah, and they're just one of a few speakers that we're going to have at UCET, but we'll get to that in a second. I just absolutely love Dee and Micah's energy and how positive they are about how to do innovative practices in schools, how to bring in the community, how to make everyone feel accepted and part of the overall schema.
Absolutely. And I think part of the way that they did that was acknowledging this idea of people first. Like, we are all humans in here who are trusting teachers to teach our kids, trusting parents to take care of those students at home. And there's this whole environment of trust and this relationship that's often really, really neglected.
And so I thought it was just really powerful the ways that they were talking about getting community involved and having parents be a part. And I love that they started with, it starts at back to school night.
Absolutely. And it starts on PTCs.
Yes! Yes.
I think that's such a valuable thing to take away from this is having clear, open communication where it might be just acknowledging how fragile people feel.
Yes.
And then moving forward with that fragility and looking for ways to help each other out, not decline each other's-- and make each other feel awkward.
Yes. And that's one of the things that we got from the pandemic I feel, is that we need to be more empathetic. Everyone's having a hard time. And I think going along with that is not just going back to, OK, we're back to normal. We should never be back to normal. That changed us. That changed our processes for the better, I think, in a lot of cases. So let's take what it changed for the better and roll with it. How can we make education more accessible to parents?
Absolutely. And if you're looking for ways to learn more about how to change education, become an innovator--
Eeks!
--come check out UCET, March 14 and 15. We have a few national guests. Micah and Dee definitely will be there. We're also bringing in a national Google expert, Eric Hertz, as well as we'll have sponsored rooms by Google and Apple and all sorts of edtech companies.
Our keynotes this year are coming from Utah education, all layers of it. So we have all the way from First Lady Abby Cox and State Superintendent Syd Dixon down to a student at a school in Iron County. So we're working with a lot of layers there. Check out the schedule. Just learn more about that. But it's really exciting to see all of these different voices in education in Utah coming together to speak at UCET.
Are we talking about Abby Cox, friend of the program Abby Cox?
Exactly.
I feel like she's been on twice, so now she's just--
She's definitely a recurring guest, for sure. Yeah.
OK. Just making sure. And what are you most excited about? And you can't say that it's over. I know as UCET president, I know the stress that you're under. But what are you most excited about for this conference?
So there's three things that-- so I'm excited about all of our speakers. We have some of the best in Utah, best in the country coming to UCET. But for me this year, we're instituting three new areas that I'm really excited about. So in our expo area, we're going to be working with the Utah STEM Action Center to do a makerspace so you can go and learn how to do 3D printing and all sorts of stuff that they're going to be doing in that space. We have some speakers in that space as well.
Number two is in the expo area we're working with the Friends of the Salt Lake Public Library system to have a book sale for educators for K-12. So they'll be selling donated and discarded books for a very cheap price to any educator that wants to stop by and grab some books for their classroom or for their students or for their child.
And then the last one is we're working with the ULEAD initiative at the State Board of Education to run the Highlight Hive, which is a poster area session that will happen just north of the keynotes. And then my favorite thing-- I know I'm-- is that we're doing-- the keynotes are called Utah Ed Chats this year. And so based off of the Ed Chat on Twitter-- and those are short, TED-style talks where educators will be able to share their passion points on Utah education. So lots of really good things to look forward to this year.
All right. We hope to see you all there.
See you.
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