Why One-and-Done EdTech Dies in the Classroom

Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

When I have to describe what I do, I tell people I get to play with all the toys. I'm the coordinator in the educational technology department, so I work with anything related to our STEAM initiatives across the district, K through 12. That's implementation of educational and instructional technology, support of our after-school programs in drones, robotics, and esports, and supporting our faculty, staff, and students day to day.

I do. In a single day I can visit a classroom and talk to a teacher about using an Anatomage board in a science lesson, then go support one of my esports programs with the technology they need, then help someone in a STEAM lab with a pedagogical practice for implementing different technology, and work with our Verizon coaches, because we're a Verizon Innovative Learning Schools district. I get to do some really cool stuff.

Good question. We have a director of CTE, our educational technology department, and ed services. I report directly to ed services, but I partner with CTE, with ed services on both primary and secondary needs, with college and career, and always with IT, because when you work in educational technology you want a good relationship with the IT department at all times.

Vendors come across our desk and reach out to a specialist on our team, to me, sometimes to the director or even the superintendent, and things get pushed to us to take a look. We'll meet with vendors, see what their product does and how it could work within our system, and if it's promising we expand the conversation to the edtech department. Sometimes we take it to ed services or CTE to ask, is this an initiative we should push? If we want to pursue it, we work on a quote and start the process. It often takes multiple levels of conversation and multiple hands. It's not one person saying yes and pushing it through.

Anytime you're talking about funding in a district, it comes from multiple sources: state funding, federal funding, ELO-P, which is for extended learning programs, usually primary grades, and LCFF, which supports your unduplicated students. Sometimes we get grant funding too.

Honestly, those conversations can happen at any dollar amount, because sometimes there's something we want to push through and we have to make the case for why it's necessary. I wouldn't say there's a single threshold. Multiple voices, multiple hands, multiple conversations always need to happen. Sometimes the answer is yes without a conversation, sometimes it's we need to think about it, and sometimes it's no.

Do some homework on the district you want to work with. Look at the district, but also the makeup of the city and the county, and how things differ from district to district, or even school to school.

What are the scores saying? What does the state data show over time, so you have an informed idea of what's going on? Don't assume a school in Orange County has lots of money, and don't assume that just because a district is Title I or in an urban setting, it either has money or has a need for your product. Do the research, see what programs they're already using, maybe talk to some people before you get to the directors who make decisions, so you at least know what's in use and what a district might need.

I look for things that can really impact a student's life and elevate STEAM programs. I have my own biases, if I see esports, or STEAM, or Lego, that piques my interest, but I have to bracket that bias and ask: is this something our district could benefit from, something our students will benefit from, something that could actually be successful, and what's the outcome? Cold calling is hard. I did it fundraising for my university, and my wife was in marketing, and you get people who don't want to talk or don't have the time. With an email, how do you frame it to be interesting? I look for keywords that might pique my interest, then I do a little digging. But I have to bracket my bias, just because it says esports or Lego doesn't mean I'll automatically be interested. Too many cold emails get archived.

They can, if they realize what happened and follow up: oh my gosh, I'm so sorry, we did that. If an email is clearly written by AI and they didn't spend time to correct the formatting, that's a problem. It bothers me less with customer-support emails that say at the bottom, this is an AI chatbot and a human will review and get back to you. But if a vendor sends something written by AI and doesn't take the time to format it properly, I tend to ignore it.

Peer networks are very important. Mine are primarily on LinkedIn now, but I also have a ton of people I've built up over 15 years in my phone or by email. There are a lot of people locally in Southern California and across California I can reach out to. If there's a product I'm unsure about, I can ask, do you know this company, or this tool, have you used it? They'll either have an opinion or point me to someone with insight. That's an important part of doing research, you start talking to people. My network has been curated over a long time, and I've spent time cherishing and building those relationships, so even if I don't talk to someone often, I can connect every once in a while, sometimes with a question about a product, sometimes just to keep the connection going.

Curated relationships are very important. In the edtech realm it's a niche group, so I build it through conferences, I've gone to CUE, now CALIE, for years, and a lot of these people also go to ISTE, and we have our California CITE conference, where a lot of networking happens. Those relationships don't happen overnight; they're built over years, and I keep those connections in my phone and use them every so often.

I didn't get to see the outcome directly, but the vendor supporting us definitely had a conversation with the one showcasing the product. When you're showing videos or data, it's important that it reflects the student population in that district. I don't want to see a bunch of students I know are in a private boarding school with access to very specific equipment in very small groups. That doesn't help me.

Vendors who get it come prepared. And if they do mess up, they come back with data that supports the district they're trying to reach. If you mess up, it takes a lot to rebuild that relationship, but owning it and making the correction is huge, here's the data you were looking for, and that we want to support you with. And if a vendor is working through a reseller we have a relationship with, that reseller already knows our system and will tell them, make sure you know these things, because these matter to the district.

Let's talk learning theory. At heart I'm very much a constructivist, I believe in teacher facilitation, but I'm also a constructionist. If you take Papert's theory, people learn from building things. A model I think works is use, modify, create. Most people get it right away: if you build a Lego kit, you have instructions, you use it, you build it. But that's not where it stops. You can build a beautiful Star Wars Lego set and be done, but the beauty of these construction projects is you can go back and modify it, tweak it, build something a little different. And then you can go further and create something completely new. Take a Star Wars landspeeder: build it, then modify it with some extra wings, then take it all down to the pieces and create something new, a house instead of a landspeeder. The same goes for any STEM project. I don't believe in building something, putting it up on the shelf, and forgetting about it until the next year. That's a waste of a student's time. Give them something they can build and connect with, then let them extend the learning by modifying it or creating something new, maybe tied to sustainability goals or a physical-computing device like a micro:bit. A kid is far more inspired to build something out of their own creativity, and then explain their thought process and why it works. That's learning. Just building a windmill from a packaged product, there's some learning there, but go further.

I won't point a finger at any single product. But when we talk to vendors, I ask: can kids build the project and then make something of their own? Plenty of products out there are one-and-dones. My key questions are, can this interface with microcontrollers? Can it interface with other computing devices? Can it interface with other products on the market that students can build on? Or, show me examples of student creativity based on your product that are something completely new. Those are the things I look for.

Yes. That way we avoid the one-and-done and can build on things that expand learning and interest. We have some amazing STEAM lab technicians across the district with kids coming through their labs all day, and they come up with amazing lessons that go beyond a base project.

You're getting into my personal bias a little. I love Lego, I still have all my Legos from the '70s and early '80s in bins that I gave to my son. I love things that interface with Lego, because you can add a micro:bit, an Arduino, a Raspberry Pi and create really cool stuff. I like that versatility, and I like the versatility of something like cardboard, too, because it's easy to cut, tape, and get, and you can interface it with more cardboard or with microcontrollers and do some really cool things. I love anything that lets a kid use their imagination.

That's hard, because products sometimes have a shelf life and don't stay amazing year to year. So I go back to what I said: I love building blocks. Give me things that interface with a lot of different tools and let the kid build, that's amazing. And if the vendor keeps upgrading their product instead of keeping a static line and not updating it with new technology, programming, or AI interfacing, that matters. Those are important things a product needs to reflect over time.

Most districts don't love annual renewals; sometimes we'd rather buy something and not have to renew every year. So if there are new product lines or kits that interface with the previous ones and let us do that original project plus add more, those are good to keep investing in. Over time you build relationships with specific vendors, and you want to have those conversations, curated relationships again, hey, where's your product going next year, is it going to interface with what we're doing now and what we want to do?

Understand what we're about and know what the district's about. You have access to public documents, our mission and vision, our scores, what we may be struggling with, what our focus is. Know your district, know the people you're reaching out to, and invest in some research. That takes time, which is why a cold email with no research behind it is hard to get its foot in the door.

For the past six years or so we've had an annual STEAM Fest, a huge district-wide focus on STEAM, where we see what our schools have been creating. Each year has a theme, and this year's is Raiders of Innovation. Schools love to compete for trophies in creativity, build, and design, and we showcase esports, drones, and a lot of vendors. It's held at Compton College, and we get to celebrate all the awesome things our teachers, staff, and students have done over the year.

I hope to see you there, I'll be running around doing a lot of different stuff.

Gentlemen, thank you very much.