AI, Infrastructure, and the Evolving Role of Technology Leadership in Independent Schools

Peter Frank 00:00:02
Phil, welcome to Talking Technology with ATLIS,

Peter Frank 00:00:05
the show that plugs you into the important topics and trends for

Peter Frank 00:00:08
technology leaders all through a unique Independent School lens.

Peter Frank 00:00:12
We'll hear stories from technology directors and other

Peter Frank 00:00:15
special guests from the Independent School community,

Peter Frank 00:00:17
and provide you with focused learning and deep dive topics.

Peter Frank 00:00:21
And now please welcome your host. Kristina Lewellen,

Christina Lewellen 00:00:25
Hello everyone, and welcome back to

Christina Lewellen 00:00:27
talking technology with Atlas. I'm Kristina Lewellen, the

Christina Lewellen 00:00:30
President and CEO of the Association of Technology

Christina Lewellen 00:00:32
Leaders in Independent Schools. And

Bill Stites 00:00:35
I am Bill Stites, the Director of Technology at

Bill Stites 00:00:37
Montclair Kimberly Academy in Montclair, New Jersey. And

Hiram Cuevas 00:00:40
I'm Hiram Cuevas, Director of Information Systems

Hiram Cuevas 00:00:43
and Academic Technology at St Christopher school in Richmond,

Hiram Cuevas 00:00:46
Virginia.

Christina Lewellen 00:00:47
Hey, good morning, gents. How you doing?

Christina Lewellen 00:00:49
Hello. It's cold today. It is cold. And I know that there's

Christina Lewellen 00:00:52
been, you know, between the wildfires in California and the

Christina Lewellen 00:00:56
weather on this side of the country, where we all are

Christina Lewellen 00:00:59
located, lots of disruptions to learning. Did you guys miss some

Christina Lewellen 00:01:03
school days coming off of the holiday and into the first part

Christina Lewellen 00:01:06
of the year?

Hiram Cuevas 00:01:07
We sure did. We actually had a water crisis here

Hiram Cuevas 00:01:09
in Richmond, Virginia, where the pumps went down during that

Hiram Cuevas 00:01:13
first snowstorm, and so the city of Richmond had no water for

Hiram Cuevas 00:01:17
four days.

Christina Lewellen 00:01:18
Yeah, when I was at the Virginia Association

Christina Lewellen 00:01:20
of Independent Schools a couple weeks back, the talk of the town

Christina Lewellen 00:01:24
was, Do you have water? How long did you have no water? What do

Christina Lewellen 00:01:27
we do without water? So that cannot be a good situation. I'm

Christina Lewellen 00:01:30
glad that you guys are restored at this point.

Hiram Cuevas 00:01:32
We are all restored, and we did go virtual

Hiram Cuevas 00:01:34
for one day, but that was all we needed. Awesome.

Bill Stites 00:01:37
Jersey has been largely open and running. I

Bill Stites 00:01:41
shouldn't say I laugh, but when the south gets snow and what

Bill Stites 00:01:45
happens in areas where you're not accustomed

Christina Lewellen 00:01:48
to it? Oh, Virginia is shut down. Yeah, I

Christina Lewellen 00:01:51
can only imagine, like we are a mess right now. Yeah,

Bill Stites 00:01:55
my wife's from Vermont, so she laughs at me

Bill Stites 00:01:58
every time I complain about snow here. And then when we hear

Bill Stites 00:02:01
about snow anywhere, kind of below Washington, DC, it's

Bill Stites 00:02:05
probably the same type of thing. So, but no, we're all good.

Christina Lewellen 00:02:08
It's awesome, though, if you're a

Christina Lewellen 00:02:09
transplant, I mean, I've said it before on the pod. I'm from

Christina Lewellen 00:02:12
Buffalo area, and so when it snows, I go to the gym, I go to

Christina Lewellen 00:02:16
Costco, like, it's a good day for me, because I'm fine. I'm

Christina Lewellen 00:02:20
good. You know

Bill Stites 00:02:21
what? It's interesting, like, you're fine.

Bill Stites 00:02:23
And, like, if you grew up around, it's everyone else

Bill Stites 00:02:26
that's, like, moving around that you need to be, like, really

Bill Stites 00:02:30
mindful of. For

Christina Lewellen 00:02:31
the most part, they're home. They're

Christina Lewellen 00:02:32
afraid. So if you go out in the thick of it, you're usually

Christina Lewellen 00:02:35
pretty safe. Yeah, I think,

Hiram Cuevas 00:02:36
unfortunately, a lot of people think, because

Hiram Cuevas 00:02:38
they have four wheel drive, they can drive in anything and can't

Hiram Cuevas 00:02:41
drive

Hiram Cuevas 00:02:41
on ice. Doesn't matter.

Christina Lewellen 00:02:43
Stay in your lane. Folks. Stay in your lane.

Christina Lewellen 00:02:45
Well, we're gonna do that today. Stay in our lane because we had

Christina Lewellen 00:02:48
had a podcast not long ago that we recorded just the guys and

Christina Lewellen 00:02:52
me, and we kind of re introduced ourselves, and we're gonna drop

Christina Lewellen 00:02:55
that one sooner rather than later. And so it's a good follow

Christina Lewellen 00:02:59
up. I wanted to kind of stay in the lane of technology

Christina Lewellen 00:03:01
leadership. We've been in a space with this podcast where

Christina Lewellen 00:03:04
we've been talking a lot about Ed Tech leadership, and we've

Christina Lewellen 00:03:06
had some really notable, incredible humans on our pod

Christina Lewellen 00:03:10
that we I'm not even sure why we snagged them. They were good

Christina Lewellen 00:03:14
guests for us, and we learned a whole lot. But I really want to

Christina Lewellen 00:03:17
stay in the space of technology leadership at our schools,

Christina Lewellen 00:03:19
because I think there's a lot going on. I think our tech

Christina Lewellen 00:03:22
directors are feeling it like feel it all the feels in terms

Christina Lewellen 00:03:25
of the stuff that's being juggled. And so Bill and Hiram,

Christina Lewellen 00:03:28
I got from you guys your take on how things are going at your

Christina Lewellen 00:03:32
schools. This week, we're going to welcome in a couple of

Christina Lewellen 00:03:35
additional technology leaders, some of my absolute favorites. I

Christina Lewellen 00:03:39
know that you guys feel the same way we're welcoming today.

Christina Lewellen 00:03:41
Bradley lands. Brad is the award winning author of a book which

Christina Lewellen 00:03:45
is pretty incredible, but also is the Chief Technology Officer

Christina Lewellen 00:03:49
at the Langley school here in McLean, Virginia, and so

Christina Lewellen 00:03:52
probably dealing with some snow yourself. Are you guys open

Christina Lewellen 00:03:55
today? Brad or no,

Bradley Lands 00:03:56
so we are technically open, but it's a

Bradley Lands 00:03:59
faculty work day, and so faculty can work remotely if they need

Bradley Lands 00:04:03
to, but our campus is open for business. Love it,

Christina Lewellen 00:04:07
and also welcoming from New Jersey and

Christina Lewellen 00:04:09
one of Bill's BFFs. We'll get into that. Steve France from the

Christina Lewellen 00:04:13
Pingree school, you're the Director of Technology at the

Christina Lewellen 00:04:15
Pingree school. I had the opportunity to come up and visit

Christina Lewellen 00:04:18
the Pingree school extension not long ago, which was kind of

Christina Lewellen 00:04:21
cool. Are you guys open for business and enjoying the start

Christina Lewellen 00:04:24
of your

Steve Frantz 00:04:25
year? We are. We even made it open for a day of

Steve Frantz 00:04:28
service yesterday, which was a little bit of a struggle. We

Steve Frantz 00:04:31
literally had our facilities team like plowing grass so that

Steve Frantz 00:04:35
we had additional parking at our extra campus. Gotta love

Christina Lewellen 00:04:39
all these interruptions. So before we go

Christina Lewellen 00:04:41
down the path, I am going to let you guys in. Going to let you

Christina Lewellen 00:04:43
guys introduce yourselves a bit more and give a little bit more

Christina Lewellen 00:04:46
of your background. You are Atlas die hards and the smiling

Christina Lewellen 00:04:49
faces I see around every corner at the conference. So it's a

Christina Lewellen 00:04:52
real pleasure to have you guys here, and I'll do my best to

Christina Lewellen 00:04:55
keep bill and Hiram under control. But I never make any

Christina Lewellen 00:04:57
warranties or promises, so my lawyer. Told me to say that,

Christina Lewellen 00:05:01
let's start where I know it's going to go. So maybe if we do

Christina Lewellen 00:05:03
it in the beginning, when I'm a little sharper and I can keep it

Christina Lewellen 00:05:06
under control. Bill, you went to college with Steve.

Bill Stites 00:05:11
I did if anyone's looking for the dirt, if

Bill Stites 00:05:14
anyone's going to write a book, if anyone's going to do

Bill Stites 00:05:16
anything, you either talk to Steve or, in particular, his

Bill Stites 00:05:19
wife, who I went to school with, as well. I can actually say I've

Bill Stites 00:05:23
known Steve's wife longer than Steve's known his wife. Did

Christina Lewellen 00:05:27
you introduce them? No, that would

Christina Lewellen 00:05:29
have been fun.

Hiram Cuevas 00:05:30
I thought Bill was gonna say Friendster or MySpace.

Steve Frantz 00:05:33
Could you imagine if I had that hanging over

Christina Lewellen 00:05:36
my head? That's true. It's bad enough as

Christina Lewellen 00:05:38
it is, Right? Steve, it

Steve Frantz 00:05:39
is. It definitely is. But yeah,

Bill Stites 00:05:41
we went to college together at Montclair State,

Bill Stites 00:05:43
many, many moons ago, and then ended up living in the same

Bill Stites 00:05:47
development, which is where we bumped into one another, and

Bill Stites 00:05:52
where I've originally put forth the idea of Steve coming to work

Bill Stites 00:05:56
with me here, and then Kay, which is just where it all kind

Bill Stites 00:05:59
of came together on the school technology side. I

Christina Lewellen 00:06:03
love that. So Steve, let's go to your

Christina Lewellen 00:06:05
journey first. Then since Bill kind of did the bump set there,

Christina Lewellen 00:06:08
we now know that with an unfortunate run in in your

Christina Lewellen 00:06:11
neighborhood, you ended up being pulled into, well, fortunate or

Christina Lewellen 00:06:13
unfortunate, I'm not sure yet. Let's see that you got pulled

Christina Lewellen 00:06:16
into the Independent School world, and you worked with Bill

Christina Lewellen 00:06:18
for a while. So tell us a little bit about your background and

Christina Lewellen 00:06:21
why did you stay? He pulled you in, and then you're still here.

Christina Lewellen 00:06:24
So tell us your story. Well, to give it

Steve Frantz 00:06:27
a little context, like we ran into each other at

Steve Frantz 00:06:29
the video store. So just time frame, right? Like it gives you

Steve Frantz 00:06:32
a good timeline on this. I miss the video

Christina Lewellen 00:06:35
store. Yeah.

Bill Stites 00:06:37
Gotta love blockbuster. VHS, not DVD. Were

Christina Lewellen 00:06:40
you kind did you rewind?

Steve Frantz 00:06:42
As a former video store employee, I always rewind,

Steve Frantz 00:06:46
Okay, excellent. I got a job, and I was working in the graphic

Steve Frantz 00:06:49
arts world, working on computers all the time, because, like,

Steve Frantz 00:06:53
anytime that a computer went down, we were down. So I learned

Steve Frantz 00:06:56
how to repair things very quickly. Bill got the bump to

Steve Frantz 00:07:00
the Director of Technology at MKA, and was looking for a new

Steve Frantz 00:07:04
technician. And he's like, how would you feel about working in

Steve Frantz 00:07:07
a school? And I was like, Yeah, I'll give that a try. That was

Steve Frantz 00:07:11
in 1999 so I put in 14 years under Bill's tutelage.

Unknown 00:07:18
Shall we say that's more like a sentence,

Christina Lewellen 00:07:22
a sentence, then you got paroled. I did Time

Christina Lewellen 00:07:25
with Bill. I did a lot of time with Bill. Did you get out with

Christina Lewellen 00:07:27
time served?

Steve Frantz 00:07:30
I'm still paying. I'm on like, some level of

Steve Frantz 00:07:33
probation, I guess, at this point still. But about 12 years

Steve Frantz 00:07:37
ago, I took a role at the Pingree school, basically a

Steve Frantz 00:07:42
lateral move to be a little closer to home. I had one year

Steve Frantz 00:07:45
old at home that I wanted to spend a lot more time with, and

Steve Frantz 00:07:49
basically helped Pingree launch a bunch of different initiatives

Steve Frantz 00:07:52
here and took over the director role almost two years ago now.

Christina Lewellen 00:07:56
Awesome. Congratulations. Thank you.

Christina Lewellen 00:07:59
Let's shift to Bradley for a second. Brad Tell me a little

Christina Lewellen 00:08:02
bit about your journey, and before we get too far,

Bradley Lands 00:08:04
go Dukes. Yeah, go Dukes. Absolutely. I did

Christina Lewellen 00:08:09
not graduate from I'm from New York, but my

Christina Lewellen 00:08:11
youngest is a Duke dog at JMU, and she's pursuing accounting.

Bradley Lands 00:08:16
Awesome. Yeah. So I went to school at JMU, and

Bradley Lands 00:08:19
that's kind of how I ended up staying in the Northern Virginia

Bradley Lands 00:08:21
area after I got my teaching degree, but I always knew I

Bradley Lands 00:08:25
wanted to be a teacher. So my background is actually in

Bradley Lands 00:08:27
education. I started off my career as a middle school math

Bradley Lands 00:08:30
and science teacher, and my short story is just saying yes

Bradley Lands 00:08:35
pretty much to everything. It was always like yes, and so my

Bradley Lands 00:08:38
principal at the time asked me to step into our CTE role of

Bradley Lands 00:08:43
career and technical education. So I said, Sure, and you know, I

Bradley Lands 00:08:46
had to get certified, and I ended up teaching technology

Bradley Lands 00:08:49
after that. And so after that, I became an instructional

Bradley Lands 00:08:52
technology coach, and then got my admin degree. And I was

Bradley Lands 00:08:55
really passionate about technology and education, and I

Bradley Lands 00:08:58
just wanted to pursue that as my next career move. And so I ended

Bradley Lands 00:09:02
up at the Langley School, where I was the Director of Technology

Bradley Lands 00:09:05
and Innovation for nine years, and then most recently, two

Bradley Lands 00:09:07
years ago, I became the chief technology officer at the

Bradley Lands 00:09:10
Langley school. And so I have a unique perspective, because my

Bradley Lands 00:09:14
background is in education, and I have had to come a long way to

Bradley Lands 00:09:17
learn all about the IT side, the networking infrastructure and

Bradley Lands 00:09:21
Atlas has definitely helped me with that a lot. So I'm happy to

Bradley Lands 00:09:24
be here. Thank you so much for having me.

Christina Lewellen 00:09:26
Yeah, thank you guys both. So I want to jump

Christina Lewellen 00:09:28
into something, as I mentioned in our intro, I had just

Christina Lewellen 00:09:31
recently had a conversation just the three of us, our co host

Christina Lewellen 00:09:34
podcast, where I asked the guys a bit about what they were

Christina Lewellen 00:09:38
seeing and feeling as tech director. And so I'd like to ask

Christina Lewellen 00:09:41
both of you what your top priorities are right now, what

Christina Lewellen 00:09:45
are some of the things that you're thinking about, what are

Christina Lewellen 00:09:47
some of the projects that you're working

Steve Frantz 00:09:49
on at your schools? So from my perspective,

Steve Frantz 00:09:51
you know, AI is all the discussions and meetings that we

Steve Frantz 00:09:54
have, particularly with our ed tech side of the school,

Steve Frantz 00:09:57
figuring out what tool you. Going to use, where you're going

Steve Frantz 00:10:01
to go with those tools. What's the line in the sand as to where

Steve Frantz 00:10:04
you're allowed to use those tools, both for the students and

Steve Frantz 00:10:08
for the educators? So that's a big part. And then on the other

Steve Frantz 00:10:12
side of things, we're always keeping up with, like, you know,

Steve Frantz 00:10:14
the newest technology, and there's always big upgrades

Steve Frantz 00:10:16
happening in the school. So like, we have a full switch

Steve Frantz 00:10:19
replacement happening this year, which is something that, aside

Steve Frantz 00:10:22
from my department, nobody sees, nobody knows about. But it's an

Steve Frantz 00:10:26
enormous expenditure of money, and it's a lot of time, and it's

Steve Frantz 00:10:30
a lot of effort, and like looking at all the different

Steve Frantz 00:10:33
resources that are available, all the different new things on

Steve Frantz 00:10:36
the market, and figuring out which tool to go if we switch up

Steve Frantz 00:10:39
technology that we've currently been using, and what path we go

Steve Frantz 00:10:43
down on that front too? Yeah,

Christina Lewellen 00:10:45
like switches and changing s is are

Christina Lewellen 00:10:48
like the most thankless jobs, right? Because nobody really

Christina Lewellen 00:10:51
knows all the work that goes into it. It's a massive lift,

Christina Lewellen 00:10:54
and then at the end of the day, it's the same as yesterday,

Christina Lewellen 00:10:56
right? To the outside world, yes, when you're looking at

Christina Lewellen 00:11:00
tools, where would you say your line is? Are you kind of pro AI?

Christina Lewellen 00:11:05
Are you concerned about like as a school?

Steve Frantz 00:11:07
So from the school, there's still a lot of

Steve Frantz 00:11:09
discussion happening, because there are some very strong

Steve Frantz 00:11:12
opinions, and there are people that are very pro tools and

Steve Frantz 00:11:16
figuring out great ways to use them, and we're trying to figure

Steve Frantz 00:11:19
out some cool ways that we can use them outside of the

Steve Frantz 00:11:22
classroom to show our community the power of the tools like one

Steve Frantz 00:11:26
of the things that we're currently doing is we're working

Steve Frantz 00:11:29
on putting a bot together right now that is going to contain all

Steve Frantz 00:11:33
the information from like our handbooks, our different

Steve Frantz 00:11:37
protocols within the school, how to access different resources

Steve Frantz 00:11:41
within the school so that instead of you having to, like,

Steve Frantz 00:11:43
search through a resource page within our portal, you can go to

Steve Frantz 00:11:47
the bot and say, you know, type in a question. It's like, you

Steve Frantz 00:11:50
know, how do I log into ADP? Or what is the best way for me to

Steve Frantz 00:11:55
change my FSA contributions? And hopefully, the bot will deliver

Steve Frantz 00:12:01
the correct answer, which is the other piece that we're kind of

Steve Frantz 00:12:03
dealing with too, you know, like we're feeding the content in. So

Steve Frantz 00:12:06
we, we actually did go with a product that we're still kind of

Steve Frantz 00:12:10
playing with and testing that puts like, kind of like guard

Steve Frantz 00:12:12
rails on our information, and it's not allowing all of our

Steve Frantz 00:12:16
school information to go out into, like, the greater engine,

Steve Frantz 00:12:19
right? So, you know, we're putting that box around our

Steve Frantz 00:12:21
information, but we're hoping that the systems will still,

Steve Frantz 00:12:24
like, deliver the information in an appropriate and helpful way,

Steve Frantz 00:12:27
because that'll be a good way to get buy in from members of our

Steve Frantz 00:12:30
community. Yeah,

Bill Stites 00:12:31
absolutely. Steve, what is the tool that you're

Bill Stites 00:12:34
using? Because this is something that I've gone down the road

Bill Stites 00:12:38
with on a couple of occasions. We talked to like Hudson Harper

Bill Stites 00:12:42
and other people on the pod about that, in terms of, like,

Bill Stites 00:12:44
trying to figure those things out. And it's those guard rails.

Bill Stites 00:12:46
It's protecting your own information, like I played with

Bill Stites 00:12:49
po and a few others, you know. But again, these are largely

Bill Stites 00:12:54
bots that once you make available, they're open in

Bill Stites 00:12:58
public. There's not a way to contain it to just your

Bill Stites 00:13:01
community, and then again, those guard rails around the actual

Bill Stites 00:13:05
information that you're putting in that it's not feeding the

Bill Stites 00:13:07
larger llms that are out there. So what is the tool? And how

Bill Stites 00:13:11
have you thought about and talked about those pieces?

Steve Frantz 00:13:14
We had a task force, as most schools do. We

Steve Frantz 00:13:17
played with a bunch of the different education tools that

Steve Frantz 00:13:19
were available, and we landed on school AI as a tool that we were

Steve Frantz 00:13:23
going to go with. And school AI has great feature sets for

Steve Frantz 00:13:27
educators, and they have some great ways for them to put

Steve Frantz 00:13:31
together lessons and different things that they're going to

Steve Frantz 00:13:35
utilize the AI tools that they can just then push into our LMS

Steve Frantz 00:13:38
Schoology. But we're still kind of in that process where we're

Steve Frantz 00:13:42
playing so we've purchased school AI as like our platform

Steve Frantz 00:13:46
for the school, and within that, we can build our own bots, and

Steve Frantz 00:13:49
we can feed our own information into those systems. When

Bill Stites 00:13:52
that bot is then available. Is there a way in

Bill Stites 00:13:55
which you can make it so that it's only people that are at a

Bill Stites 00:13:59
Pingry domain? How do you control access to that bot?

Steve Frantz 00:14:03
Oh, yeah. So it's, again, it's a walled garden, so

Steve Frantz 00:14:05
you have to have a pingree.org email address to get into the

Steve Frantz 00:14:10
system, and it's going through our single sign on with Google

Christina Lewellen 00:14:14
and Brad, how about you? What are you

Christina Lewellen 00:14:15
seeing and what are you kind of wrestling? Any cool projects on

Christina Lewellen 00:14:19
the horizon at the Langley school.

Bradley Lands 00:14:21
Yeah, so with other schools AI has been a huge

Bradley Lands 00:14:24
initiative for us. And in addition, you know, just upping

Bradley Lands 00:14:28
our cyber security and looking into data privacy and security

Bradley Lands 00:14:32
policies such as data retention, looking at data retention

Bradley Lands 00:14:36
schedules, and then also developing a strong business

Bradley Lands 00:14:40
continuity plan has been a really big project for us.

Bradley Lands 00:14:43
Coming out of the pandemic, a lot of people realize that we're

Bradley Lands 00:14:46
moving a lot of data into the cloud, way more than we even

Bradley Lands 00:14:49
used to. And so schools are starting to realize how much

Bradley Lands 00:14:52
data we have in the cloud, and looking to come up with really

Bradley Lands 00:14:56
strong data retention plans and schedules to make sure. We are

Bradley Lands 00:15:00
being responsible and safe with that data. But I'd love to speak

Bradley Lands 00:15:04
a little bit about AI, because it was actually one of our

Bradley Lands 00:15:06
annual priorities this year. And so we had a really big

Bradley Lands 00:15:09
initiative moving forward with AI, and we had a task force as

Bradley Lands 00:15:13
well. The first thing we did was develop a policy, both for

Bradley Lands 00:15:17
faculty and staff, and then we created a separate policy for

Bradley Lands 00:15:20
students. And then after we had a policy, we were reviewing

Bradley Lands 00:15:24
different tools, and school AI is amazing, we ended up going

Bradley Lands 00:15:28
with a slightly different tool just because we thought it met

Bradley Lands 00:15:31
our needs a little bit better. But this one's really under the

Bradley Lands 00:15:33
radar. It's called Chat for schools, and it's developed by

Bradley Lands 00:15:36
skill struck. And there are a couple things about it that I

Bradley Lands 00:15:40
really like it operates very similarly to school AI and the

Bradley Lands 00:15:43
fact that it is domain protected, you have to log in

Bradley Lands 00:15:47
with Google two factor authentication, the single sign

Bradley Lands 00:15:49
on. Then it's limited to our domain, but it has two portions.

Bradley Lands 00:15:53
One portion is for the faculty and staff, or the employee side,

Bradley Lands 00:15:56
which actually integrates Chat, GPT, 4.0 and then the student

Bradley Lands 00:16:01
side actually integrates Claude, which is more designed for not

Bradley Lands 00:16:04
giving you direct answers, but more of the coaching, the kind

Bradley Lands 00:16:07
of the mentor model, which is really neat. And for teachers,

Bradley Lands 00:16:11
they can easily integrate their Google Classroom, rostering with

Bradley Lands 00:16:15
it. And then they can enroll students by integrating Google

Bradley Lands 00:16:18
Classroom, and they have the ability to look at all of their

Bradley Lands 00:16:21
students, chat log and their history. So there's a lot of

Bradley Lands 00:16:24
transparency that goes along with that. I think we set up all

Bradley Lands 00:16:28
the right moves in terms of setting everything up, security

Bradley Lands 00:16:30
wise, digital privacy wise, making sure that it all checks

Bradley Lands 00:16:34
out because, like school, AI chat for schools, allows content

Bradley Lands 00:16:37
to come in, but it does not go back and train the LLM, which is

Bradley Lands 00:16:40
really nice. And so it does have those safety features built in,

Bradley Lands 00:16:44
as well as content filters. And so if a student were to enter

Bradley Lands 00:16:47
into the chat bot, it has a series of content filters that

Bradley Lands 00:16:51
can actually be customized, and it can raise a little flag that

Bradley Lands 00:16:54
notifies the teacher or the admin if something was entered

Bradley Lands 00:16:57
inappropriately or dangerous. And so, you know, we have the

Bradley Lands 00:17:00
tech side, I think, pretty well figured out, which is great. The

Bradley Lands 00:17:03
hardest part is figuring out how teachers can use it responsibly

Bradley Lands 00:17:07
and safely and ethically with their students. And so we're

Bradley Lands 00:17:10
still trying to figure out what are some good ways that students

Bradley Lands 00:17:14
might be able to learn about the technology, and how might they

Bradley Lands 00:17:17
utilize it in specific use cases without them losing those

Bradley Lands 00:17:21
fundamental skills and without them becoming too dependent on

Bradley Lands 00:17:24
it. And so that's what we're still trying to figure out.

Steve Frantz 00:17:27
What's your buy in look like currently? So it's

Bradley Lands 00:17:30
been mixed, for sure. I've led a lot of

Bradley Lands 00:17:33
different trainings with faculty staff, and then particularly our

Bradley Lands 00:17:36
middle school students in seventh and eighth grade. And at

Bradley Lands 00:17:39
first it was very low, until they saw how powerful it was.

Bradley Lands 00:17:45
When we did an active training workshop, and I actually asked

Bradley Lands 00:17:48
them to use a template prompt, and they got to see the

Bradley Lands 00:17:52
reactions and the results firsthand, they were like, wow,

Bradley Lands 00:17:56
this is really, really powerful. And then started having

Bradley Lands 00:17:59
discussions such as, how might you be able to use this in your

Bradley Lands 00:18:03
unique role here at Langley, you know whether you're on the

Bradley Lands 00:18:05
business side or whether you're a teacher, right, and then

Bradley Lands 00:18:08
working within their department to come up with really effective

Bradley Lands 00:18:11
ways to add prompts to help them with their administrative tasks

Bradley Lands 00:18:15
that will hopefully alleviate more time for them to focus on

Bradley Lands 00:18:19
what really matters, You know, their students and helping our

Bradley Lands 00:18:21
school be successful.

Hiram Cuevas 00:18:24
So I have a follow up for both of you. I'm kind of

Hiram Cuevas 00:18:27
on that bus of wanting to have a bot here as well. Would love to

Hiram Cuevas 00:18:31
throw in all sorts of information doing so much work

Hiram Cuevas 00:18:34
in the cyber area. As Bill knows, we're very worried about

Hiram Cuevas 00:18:37
data privacy. Are any of you concerned with, God forbid

Hiram Cuevas 00:18:42
something happens where those guard rails are actually

Hiram Cuevas 00:18:45
breached. It's not a matter of, is it going to happen? It's just

Hiram Cuevas 00:18:49
a matter of when it's going to happen. I mean, we're seeing

Hiram Cuevas 00:18:51
what happened to Power School recently. We've seen what has

Hiram Cuevas 00:18:53
happened to other major players. It seems like there's so much

Hiram Cuevas 00:18:58
information out there. God forbid you're throwing in

Hiram Cuevas 00:19:02
business office plans or development plans into your bot,

Hiram Cuevas 00:19:06
and all of a sudden now it gets exposed thoughts.

Steve Frantz 00:19:11
It's scary. It definitely is, and that's the

Steve Frantz 00:19:14
thing. It's not a matter of like, if it's when it just seems

Steve Frantz 00:19:17
that there's security breaches happening all over the place, to

Steve Frantz 00:19:21
places that you think are secure, and you know you're

Steve Frantz 00:19:23
relying and most of the services that we're using these days are

Steve Frantz 00:19:27
cloud based, and you know we don't control access to the

Steve Frantz 00:19:30
information. And it's always going to be a concern. Yeah,

Steve Frantz 00:19:34
it's

Bradley Lands 00:19:34
definitely a concern, and I think schools

Bradley Lands 00:19:37
should be addressing it. What we've tried to do is build into

Bradley Lands 00:19:40
our policies very specific expectations and guidelines on

Bradley Lands 00:19:44
how our employees should actually use the tool, and so we

Bradley Lands 00:19:48
have constant reminders such as making sure you don't put any

Bradley Lands 00:19:50
private information in make sure that you don't put any sensitive

Bradley Lands 00:19:54
data into your prompts or to your chat bots, and making sure

Bradley Lands 00:19:58
that you don't enter any real per. Proprietary information

Bradley Lands 00:20:01
that could potentially get out there. So our system only uses

Bradley Lands 00:20:04
data that we input. It doesn't source any of our internal

Bradley Lands 00:20:07
documentation or, you know, backgrounds, documents or files

Bradley Lands 00:20:11
that we have. So right now, it's just the data that we enter. But

Bradley Lands 00:20:15
you know, if you were to think of using something like Google

Bradley Lands 00:20:17
Gemini in your Google workspace account, you know, Google Gemini

Bradley Lands 00:20:20
is supposed to be pulling all of your data that's in your Google

Bradley Lands 00:20:23
Drive, that's in your Gmail so that's another layer of data

Bradley Lands 00:20:26
privacy that you are going to have to think about, and we're

Bradley Lands 00:20:28
going to have to think about if we use some sort of tool that

Bradley Lands 00:20:31
will be integrated with all of our files and all of our data.

Bradley Lands 00:20:34
But right now, the current tool that we use is just based on

Bradley Lands 00:20:37
user input.

Bill Stites 00:20:38
I think those pieces in particular around, you

Bill Stites 00:20:41
know, what you decide to put in, I mean, Brad, before you went

Bill Stites 00:20:45
down the road with Google, I was thinking about, you know, all

Bill Stites 00:20:47
right, well, the stuff that you might put in to create these Q

Bill Stites 00:20:50
and A box, it's not necessarily confidential information. It's

Bill Stites 00:20:54
not necessary, but it's generally policies and

Bill Stites 00:20:57
information that might not necessarily be made publicly. It

Bill Stites 00:21:01
might be like something that was in a PDF that you put on your

Bill Stites 00:21:04
schools, faculty or staff portals, you know, those types

Bill Stites 00:21:07
of things. But when you mention what is potentially or is

Bill Stites 00:21:12
happening with regard to the way in which things like Google are

Bill Stites 00:21:16
looking at everything that you've got, those are definitely

Bill Stites 00:21:19
those moments where you know, you kind of like, take a deep

Bill Stites 00:21:22
breath, and you're like, Okay, let's really try to understand

Bill Stites 00:21:24
this and figure this out. There was a post recently up on the

Bill Stites 00:21:29
community board on the ATLAS website, about what's available

Bill Stites 00:21:33
for Gemini and what's not and what's free and what's part of

Bill Stites 00:21:36
it for education versus what you actually have to pay for and

Bill Stites 00:21:40
back and forth. So it's definitely not clear. It's

Bill Stites 00:21:42
definitely not easy, and it's definitely concerning in terms

Bill Stites 00:21:46
of what's going on. The one thing I wanted to bring up when

Bill Stites 00:21:50
it comes to school leadership is the business continuity work,

Bill Stites 00:21:56
the number of conversations you and I have had around this, both

Bill Stites 00:22:00
formally and informally. You know, seeing the ways in which

Bill Stites 00:22:03
you've been going out and gathering all of this, I'm not

Bill Stites 00:22:06
sure people are really aware of the work that you've been doing

Bill Stites 00:22:09
at the school there, to really formally pull all of this stuff

Bill Stites 00:22:13
together to answer a lot of those questions about, again,

Bill Stites 00:22:17
you mentioned, data retention is just one of them, but all these

Bill Stites 00:22:20
policies and procedural type things around the way in which

Bill Stites 00:22:25
we run school, the way in which we operate, in the way in which

Bill Stites 00:22:29
systems work, and what happens when those systems don't work,

Bill Stites 00:22:33
is an area of leadership that I really think that you've stepped

Bill Stites 00:22:36
out on, and you've really done a lot of work on, and If you can

Bill Stites 00:22:40
kind of enlighten the larger community about what it is

Bill Stites 00:22:43
you've been doing, because I think it's an area of leadership

Bill Stites 00:22:46
in our space that we all think about and worry about, but

Bill Stites 00:22:50
you've actually started to do a lot about it.

Bradley Lands 00:22:54
Wow. Thank you so much, Bill. I really appreciate

Bradley Lands 00:22:56
that it's been something that I have seen as a gap that needs to

Bradley Lands 00:23:01
be filled. I've been using lots of Atlas resources, which has

Bradley Lands 00:23:05
been super helpful. You know, looking at different cyber

Bradley Lands 00:23:08
security plans, looking at different data backup plans, all

Bradley Lands 00:23:13
kinds of templates that are in the Atlas, 360 manual, which has

Bradley Lands 00:23:16
been really, really helpful. But I noticed one thing that's been

Bradley Lands 00:23:18
really difficult to find is an actual full on business

Bradley Lands 00:23:22
continuity plan that involves the entire school, right? Those

Bradley Lands 00:23:25
other documents are within the technology department

Bradley Lands 00:23:28
specifically. So what's needed is really for the senior

Bradley Lands 00:23:32
leadership team at your school to really sit down together and

Bradley Lands 00:23:35
work hand in hand to develop a fully comprehensive policy that

Bradley Lands 00:23:39
goes through lots of different scenarios, ones that are not

Bradley Lands 00:23:42
just technology focused or technology related. And so I've

Bradley Lands 00:23:46
been the leader on our task force for our business

Bradley Lands 00:23:49
continuity team, and it's been really insightful, partnering

Bradley Lands 00:23:53
with our Director of Operations, with our director of academic

Bradley Lands 00:23:56
programming, and also with our Director of Communications. And

Bradley Lands 00:24:00
so the four of us have really been meeting once a month to

Bradley Lands 00:24:03
fully build out a comprehensive business continuity plan, and

Bradley Lands 00:24:08
we're going to eventually put that final template, or that

Bradley Lands 00:24:11
final version, before our head of school and our CFO, and then

Bradley Lands 00:24:14
we're also going to put it forward toward our broader

Bradley Lands 00:24:17
senior leadership team to get feedback and review. And we're

Bradley Lands 00:24:20
actually at the place now where we have a fully functioning

Bradley Lands 00:24:23
draft that we're ready to share out, and so our goal is to have

Bradley Lands 00:24:27
this fully completed for the next school year, for 2526

Christina Lewellen 00:24:32
that's awesome. So it's not just for

Christina Lewellen 00:24:33
technology, no. What are some of the weird things that you didn't

Christina Lewellen 00:24:36
necessarily think about that ended up being in the draft that

Christina Lewellen 00:24:39
you have right

Bradley Lands 00:24:40
now? There were just so many different types of

Bradley Lands 00:24:42
emergencies and crisis that could happen. One of them could

Bradley Lands 00:24:45
be a faculty member gets really injured, or it could be a threat

Bradley Lands 00:24:49
to your school's reputation. And so something that would really

Bradley Lands 00:24:53
have to involve your entire senior leadership team thinking

Bradley Lands 00:24:56
about what steps need to be taken first and then how. Do we

Bradley Lands 00:25:00
first, contain the situation, incident responses first, then

Bradley Lands 00:25:04
you think about business continuity second, and then

Bradley Lands 00:25:07
finally, third, you think about, how can you continue to resolve

Bradley Lands 00:25:11
this issue, reflect and try to tweak any of your current

Bradley Lands 00:25:15
policies so that you know how to move forward. Lots of different

Bradley Lands 00:25:18
things can happen in a school and creating this business

Bradley Lands 00:25:21
continuity plan is just so helpful, because it's like a

Bradley Lands 00:25:24
handbook ready to go in case anything happens. And I've

Bradley Lands 00:25:28
actually gotten some templates from NBOA, which has been really

Bradley Lands 00:25:30
helpful. They have a couple different templates that I

Bradley Lands 00:25:33
looked at and was like, Yeah, I think this would work for us. Or

Bradley Lands 00:25:35
no, this part probably isn't going to work for us. And we

Bradley Lands 00:25:38
took that along with Atlas resources, along with having

Bradley Lands 00:25:41
really positive conversations with people, and kind of

Bradley Lands 00:25:44
developing our own unique business continuity plan that

Bradley Lands 00:25:47
really addresses our schools specific needs and our action

Bradley Lands 00:25:50
steps in an event that's really incredible.

Christina Lewellen 00:25:53
I'm sure that's going to be very useful.

Bill Stites 00:25:55
One of the things I'm curious about is where

Bill Stites 00:25:58
within that, and it was great to hear who's involved with that,

Bill Stites 00:26:00
because it's not just the tech thing, right? Where did the idea

Bill Stites 00:26:05
for looking at this start? Did it come from you? It did okay.

Bill Stites 00:26:09
And again, how did you get the buy in to kind of get that

Bill Stites 00:26:13
going? Because I think even amongst the school as a whole, I

Bill Stites 00:26:17
mean, we talk about it a lot, but the school as a whole often

Bill Stites 00:26:20
doesn't see it as this comprehensive need, and how did

Bill Stites 00:26:23
you develop that buy? In?

Bradley Lands 00:26:25
Great question. So a couple years ago, we

Bradley Lands 00:26:28
partnered with education collaborators, right? And they

Bradley Lands 00:26:30
did a cyber security audit for us. And in the cyber security

Bradley Lands 00:26:34
audit was a category of business continuity, and at that time, we

Bradley Lands 00:26:38
realized we really didn't have any policies in place. We had

Bradley Lands 00:26:41
procedures and actions, but we really didn't have any written

Bradley Lands 00:26:44
policies for an incident response plan or a cyber

Bradley Lands 00:26:47
security breach. And so we were able to, over time, fill in

Bradley Lands 00:26:51
those gaps. But then one of the items was still business

Bradley Lands 00:26:54
continuity plan, and I was thinking, wow, this is an area

Bradley Lands 00:26:58
that we really need to have, you know, just for risk mitigation,

Bradley Lands 00:27:02
and I couldn't find any really strong resources of any

Bradley Lands 00:27:05
independent schools that actually had a fully functioning

Bradley Lands 00:27:08
business continuity plan. And so I was like, Hey, this is an

Bradley Lands 00:27:11
opportunity to do some real groundbreaking work here, and

Bradley Lands 00:27:14
I'm really excited to do it. And then once we saw that, it was a

Bradley Lands 00:27:18
category, our senior leadership team backed me up and said,

Bradley Lands 00:27:22
yeah, if this is a cyber security audit and this is a gap

Bradley Lands 00:27:25
that we have, you know, we fully support this. And so I asked if

Bradley Lands 00:27:28
I could be the task force lead on this, and our Head of School

Bradley Lands 00:27:31
was like, yes, absolutely, you know, don't forget to include

Bradley Lands 00:27:34
these people. I think this would be a really well rounded team so

Bradley Lands 00:27:37
that you could kind of cover all of your bases. And we started

Bradley Lands 00:27:39
that in September of this year, and we've been meeting once a

Bradley Lands 00:27:42
month ever since. And so our goal is to have a, again, a

Bradley Lands 00:27:45
working plan by next school year.

Hiram Cuevas 00:27:47
You need to present this at Atlas, if you

Hiram Cuevas 00:27:49
haven't done so already, exactly,

Christina Lewellen 00:27:53
it's gonna be a great topic for future

Christina Lewellen 00:27:54
conversation. Well done.

Bradley Lands 00:27:57
And again, this isn't going to be perfect,

Bradley Lands 00:27:59
right? This is like the first iteration. But I hope that

Bradley Lands 00:28:02
regardless of what our actual plan looks like, I hope that I

Bradley Lands 00:28:05
can talk to other people and say, This is the process that we

Bradley Lands 00:28:09
did. These are the steps that we took to hopefully guide some

Bradley Lands 00:28:12
other schools and other institutions on similar steps

Bradley Lands 00:28:15
that they might be able to take within their school and their

Bradley Lands 00:28:17
product might look completely different, right based on their

Bradley Lands 00:28:19
schools need, but going through the process and being able to

Bradley Lands 00:28:22
speak on that process, I think could be helpful. What did you

Bradley Lands 00:28:26
find were your biggest risks? Great question. In terms of

Bradley Lands 00:28:30
risks, I'm not sure, but we try to address the potential risk if

Bradley Lands 00:28:36
that were to happen, and so we kind of mapped out lots of

Bradley Lands 00:28:40
different possible scenarios, and what our response would be

Bradley Lands 00:28:44
for those different types of scenarios, and that included

Bradley Lands 00:28:47
creating an incident response team right then and there,

Bradley Lands 00:28:50
assigning specific roles, and then making sure that you assign

Bradley Lands 00:28:53
a scribe to be able to document, because you're going to have to

Bradley Lands 00:28:56
fill out a lot of paperwork afterwards, you know, you're

Bradley Lands 00:28:58
going to have to fill out a lot of forms, and you're going to

Bradley Lands 00:29:01
have to report but one thing that our school recently did, we

Bradley Lands 00:29:03
have a sub committee of our board that is our audit and risk

Bradley Lands 00:29:07
management committee, and our head of school actually led a

Bradley Lands 00:29:10
risk management conversation. And so the last year, we

Bradley Lands 00:29:14
actually had a spreadsheet, and we had different faculty and

Bradley Lands 00:29:17
staff and senior leadership team members complete this Google

Bradley Lands 00:29:20
form where we kind of identified risk areas at our school, and we

Bradley Lands 00:29:24
kind of rated them zero through 10. And so with this result, our

Bradley Lands 00:29:28
head of school aggregated this data, and we came up with a risk

Bradley Lands 00:29:32
analysis based on our own input. And so we were able to rate

Bradley Lands 00:29:37
every single type of event that could occur and where we thought

Bradley Lands 00:29:41
our current risk was, and then we were able to use that to help

Bradley Lands 00:29:44
form different categories that informed us on our business

Bradley Lands 00:29:47
continuity plan. And so a lot of them were things that could hurt

Bradley Lands 00:29:51
our reputation, student safety, student security, cyber

Bradley Lands 00:29:55
security, those were the top hits that we thought would

Bradley Lands 00:29:58
probably be the highest. Focused on the risk assessment. I think

Christina Lewellen 00:30:02
this leads us well into the next topic of

Christina Lewellen 00:30:05
conversation that I wanted to bring up anyway, and that is

Christina Lewellen 00:30:07
that things have gotten complicated in the realm of

Christina Lewellen 00:30:10
technology leadership in independent schools, and you

Christina Lewellen 00:30:13
just rattled off a bunch of things that even if technology

Christina Lewellen 00:30:16
is only one tiny piece of it, it's something we're still

Christina Lewellen 00:30:19
thinking about, like security cameras, or whatever that might

Christina Lewellen 00:30:21
be. So I'd love to ask both of you how you think the role of a

Christina Lewellen 00:30:26
technology leader at an independent school has changed,

Christina Lewellen 00:30:29
and I think that obviously it's changed a lot from 20 plus years

Christina Lewellen 00:30:33
ago, but what about just even since the pandemic, once we all

Christina Lewellen 00:30:36
came back from the pandemic knowing what we know now and all

Christina Lewellen 00:30:40
the tools we acquired and everything that's happened with

Christina Lewellen 00:30:43
AI, it has gotten a lot more complicated. How would you

Christina Lewellen 00:30:45
characterize that shift? Even in the last five years,

Steve Frantz 00:30:49
we have a lot more cameras in our school. It's

Steve Frantz 00:30:51
actually kind of interesting. It's like the focus has changed

Steve Frantz 00:30:54
from just being the, you know, the people that keep the

Steve Frantz 00:30:57
computers running in the office, to managing security systems

Steve Frantz 00:31:01
throughout the school, managing print systems throughout the

Steve Frantz 00:31:05
school. It's like, we don't have desktop printers anywhere.

Steve Frantz 00:31:08
There's like, you know, copy centers that are full of copiers

Steve Frantz 00:31:11
that are managed by our team, but we spend a lot of time one

Steve Frantz 00:31:16
either just like, figuring out places where there are areas of

Steve Frantz 00:31:19
concern, or we're patching holes along the way where it used to

Steve Frantz 00:31:24
be that we spend a lot of time, just like, you know, making sure

Steve Frantz 00:31:27
that the day to day was kept up and running. Things have just

Steve Frantz 00:31:29
gotten a lot more expensive, too. It's been interesting. Our

Steve Frantz 00:31:32
budgets keep going up and up and up because we have just growth

Steve Frantz 00:31:36
around the school. Everywhere we go, our number of employees in

Steve Frantz 00:31:39
the school over the past like five or six years, has increased

Steve Frantz 00:31:43
by 15%

Bradley Lands 00:31:46
Yeah, that's great point, Steve. And you

Bradley Lands 00:31:48
know, in addition to that, our cognitive load and our hardware

Bradley Lands 00:31:51
load has sky rocketed as well. And what happens, unfortunately

Bradley Lands 00:31:54
in our department, a lot of times, is that we continue to

Bradley Lands 00:31:57
keep adding more devices and new software. And rarely do we get

Bradley Lands 00:32:02
rid of anything. And so we have to continue to learn and adapt

Bradley Lands 00:32:07
and be responsible for more and more equipment and more and more

Bradley Lands 00:32:10
online accounts. And it becomes overwhelming a lot of times. And

Bradley Lands 00:32:14
if you were to look at your own organization's data map, you

Bradley Lands 00:32:18
know how complicated that must be with all those online

Bradley Lands 00:32:21
services and figuring out what flows into what, you know, it

Bradley Lands 00:32:24
just continues to get more complex and more complex. And so

Bradley Lands 00:32:27
in addition to the budget, you know, it's just cognitive load

Bradley Lands 00:32:31
and being able to manage more and more devices and more and

Bradley Lands 00:32:34
more platforms every year, let alone having to learn a new

Bradley Lands 00:32:38
generative AI solution. You know, on top of everything, the

Bradley Lands 00:32:41
way technology moves so fast, it's hard to catch up, and it's

Bradley Lands 00:32:44
a lot of time and energy to catch up as well, while still

Bradley Lands 00:32:47
maintaining all of your current systems

Bill Stites 00:32:49
that you have in place. When Steve was here with

Bill Stites 00:32:52
me at MKA, it was great because Steve was my right hand. We

Bill Stites 00:32:56
worked well off of one another. It was great because we were

Bill Stites 00:32:59
able to accomplish different things now, Steve, you know, I

Bill Stites 00:33:02
don't have a Steve. Steve now has an APU. And at Pingree, if

Bill Stites 00:33:07
you don't know, a poo is basically Steve's. He's a

Bill Stites 00:33:11
wizard. Mr. Wizard, that's where I was going to go. I call up who

Bill Stites 00:33:15
when I have questions. You know, we work through those things.

Bill Stites 00:33:18
And Brad, you mentioned this, you know, in terms of that

Bill Stites 00:33:20
cognitive load, the sheer amount of things Steve rattled off,

Bill Stites 00:33:24
like all of those different things that when Steve and I

Bill Stites 00:33:27
started together, we weren't even thinking about. It was

Bill Stites 00:33:30
things that didn't even resonate with us in terms of even being a

Bill Stites 00:33:34
concern. And now that they are all there. And I think one of

Bill Stites 00:33:37
the questions again, I'll go back to a recent survey that was

Bill Stites 00:33:41
posted on the the Atlas community board about what

Bill Stites 00:33:43
staffing looks like. How do you see each of you maintaining that

Bill Stites 00:33:49
cognitive health around trying to learn all these things,

Bill Stites 00:33:53
remaining sane? Or how have you either added or outsourced a lot

Bill Stites 00:33:58
of that over time? Have your respective staffs gone

Hiram Cuevas 00:34:02
up in size as a result of this cognitive load we

Steve Frantz 00:34:06
have. We've added, like, a technician, slash

Steve Frantz 00:34:09
security technician role to the tech department. He was a member

Steve Frantz 00:34:13
of our facilities team, and was already running wires for us,

Steve Frantz 00:34:16
and he was part of, like, you know, that team. But like, you

Steve Frantz 00:34:19
know, anytime we needed data runs, run. He was doing that

Steve Frantz 00:34:21
stuff. We had him trained in terminating fiber. But like now,

Steve Frantz 00:34:25
like he's responsible for connecting door lock mechanisms,

Steve Frantz 00:34:29
putting up our security cameras all over the place. We have 300

Steve Frantz 00:34:33
plus cameras throughout our three campuses. We're making

Steve Frantz 00:34:36
sure that we have every ounce of the basically non teaching space

Steve Frantz 00:34:42
covered, just so that we can make sure that we have the

Steve Frantz 00:34:46
resources available for anything you know, like if there's an

Steve Frantz 00:34:49
emergency that happens in the school that we have footage that

Steve Frantz 00:34:52
we can direct people to the right location, because we can

Steve Frantz 00:34:55
actually see it live on the camera. We also use our cameras

Steve Frantz 00:34:59
often to help the. Kid find a misplaced laptop that they swore

Steve Frantz 00:35:03
was in the cafeteria and that they left it in the cafeteria,

Steve Frantz 00:35:06
but then we have the footage of them walking out of the

Steve Frantz 00:35:08
cafeteria with the laptop in their hands. Some of those

Steve Frantz 00:35:11
things are fun. We have, like these little detective jobs that

Steve Frantz 00:35:13
go on, but we expanded our team to do that. We're looking at

Steve Frantz 00:35:17
expanding to an additional role of like, a theater tech director

Steve Frantz 00:35:22
that's going to handle some of the AV needs that go on

Steve Frantz 00:35:25
throughout the school. Because, like, right now, my team is

Steve Frantz 00:35:28
responsible for, like, anytime we do a stream of something

Steve Frantz 00:35:31
like, we're taking care of that we don't manage the theater, but

Steve Frantz 00:35:35
we manage the technology within the theater. I have a knowledge

Steve Frantz 00:35:39
about, like, wireless microphones that I did not have

Steve Frantz 00:35:41
a little while ago. Like I'm literally sitting inside of our

Steve Frantz 00:35:44
podcast studio, there's mics and headphones all around me that

Steve Frantz 00:35:49
are part of a system that I didn't know about. So one of the

Steve Frantz 00:35:52
things that I loved about this world and this job is that it's

Steve Frantz 00:35:55
constantly changing, but that change has been on overdrive,

Steve Frantz 00:36:01
particularly since the pandemic. Yeah,

Bradley Lands 00:36:03
and for our school, I wouldn't say we've

Bradley Lands 00:36:05
added any positions, but in working with education

Bradley Lands 00:36:09
collaborators, we were able to partner with them to help us

Bradley Lands 00:36:12
rethink or restructure our technology department. And so

Bradley Lands 00:36:16
that was really helpful, by thinking of what our school's

Bradley Lands 00:36:19
needs are, and then what are the positions that make the most

Bradley Lands 00:36:22
sense to be able to handle the load for those needs? That's

Bradley Lands 00:36:26
kind of how I recently stepped into my new leadership role of

Bradley Lands 00:36:29
Chief Technology Officer, because we had kind of it, and

Bradley Lands 00:36:32
we had academic technology, but we didn't really have anyone

Bradley Lands 00:36:35
with oversight that would be able to kind of manage all the

Bradley Lands 00:36:38
technology at the school level. And so we did a technology

Bradley Lands 00:36:42
restructure within our department, which really, really

Bradley Lands 00:36:44
helped. And then last year, we started partnering with a local

Bradley Lands 00:36:48
MSP to offload some of our network services for our network

Bradley Lands 00:36:53
management, which has been really helpful, so that we could

Bradley Lands 00:36:55
focus more on the people interactions at our school,

Bradley Lands 00:36:58
helping students, helping the business office, helping our

Bradley Lands 00:37:01
teachers and have most of our networking needs outsourced. You

Christina Lewellen 00:37:06
guys have come through the Atlas community

Christina Lewellen 00:37:08
and taken advantage of a lot of resources, whether it's the

Christina Lewellen 00:37:11
Atlas Leadership Institute or now you're both T list

Christina Lewellen 00:37:15
certified. A big part of my role is I travel around the country.

Christina Lewellen 00:37:20
I get into a lot of rooms with heads of school, and I try to

Christina Lewellen 00:37:23
advocate for technology leaders and help them see how complex

Christina Lewellen 00:37:28
this role has gotten, even to the point where T list can help

Christina Lewellen 00:37:31
them sort out hiring challenges. Because even hiring people into

Christina Lewellen 00:37:35
our communities is not necessarily the easiest thing to

Christina Lewellen 00:37:38
do. How in the world do you capture in a single job

Christina Lewellen 00:37:41
description everything that the technology leader at a school is

Christina Lewellen 00:37:45
doing that is getting more and more difficult, and it's

Christina Lewellen 00:37:48
definitely giving the Atlas leadership a cause for pause.

Christina Lewellen 00:37:52
We're trying to sort through that, because succession issues

Christina Lewellen 00:37:56
will be an issue that we deal with here in our industry in

Christina Lewellen 00:37:59
very short order. So I'm just curious why you guys pursued

Christina Lewellen 00:38:04
those initiatives, and do you think that it helped? Do you

Christina Lewellen 00:38:07
think that it helped you sort all of this complexity? Yeah,

Bradley Lands 00:38:11
I'd be happy to share my story. So a couple

Bradley Lands 00:38:14
years ago, we had our network engineer decide to retire after

Bradley Lands 00:38:19
30 years at working in our school, and he literally built

Bradley Lands 00:38:22
the infrastructure from the ground up, and he contained a

Bradley Lands 00:38:25
lot of institutional knowledge. And so when he left, it was

Bradley Lands 00:38:29
really challenging trying to get all of his institutional

Bradley Lands 00:38:33
knowledge documented somehow for our team to be able to implement

Bradley Lands 00:38:37
moving forward. And so that was the main reason why we decided

Bradley Lands 00:38:41
to do a technology restructure at our school is really thinking

Bradley Lands 00:38:43
about, do we want to have another person who has all this

Bradley Lands 00:38:46
institutional knowledge in this one particular area? How can we

Bradley Lands 00:38:50
distribute some of this leadership and some of these

Bradley Lands 00:38:53
different tasks in a way that makes a little bit more sense?

Bradley Lands 00:38:56
And how do we create a succession plan moving forward?

Bradley Lands 00:38:59
And so that was really helpful, and I very much wanted to be a

Bradley Lands 00:39:01
part of this new team. And so as soon as this happened, I

Bradley Lands 00:39:05
actually applied for the Atlas Leadership Institute. When we

Bradley Lands 00:39:07
found out that our network engineer was leaving, I didn't

Bradley Lands 00:39:10
know what our school is going to do. All I knew was that I need

Bradley Lands 00:39:13
to learn more about networking and infrastructure so I can help

Bradley Lands 00:39:17
our school, because I was in the academic role pretty much single

Bradley Lands 00:39:20
handedly. And so going through that Atlas Leadership Institute

Bradley Lands 00:39:23
was so helpful to help me with a mentor, you know, talking one on

Bradley Lands 00:39:27
one, learning more about networking and IT

Bradley Lands 00:39:30
infrastructure, meeting with other people in the Atlas

Bradley Lands 00:39:33
Leadership Institute community, working on projects together.

Bradley Lands 00:39:36
That whole year was just amazing, because we were working

Bradley Lands 00:39:39
on really complex problems, collaboratively working together

Bradley Lands 00:39:42
and coming up with real solutions that we would be able

Bradley Lands 00:39:45
to implement in our own schools. And so after going through that

Bradley Lands 00:39:49
Atlas Leadership Institute, it kind of gave me more confidence

Bradley Lands 00:39:52
and more knowledge and experience to be able to take on

Bradley Lands 00:39:55
more responsibilities in slightly different roles that I

Bradley Lands 00:39:58
had before. And then finally. Me getting the T list certification

Bradley Lands 00:40:02
also kind of validated that I have learned so much more in the

Bradley Lands 00:40:06
last couple of years, and I have done a lot of professional

Bradley Lands 00:40:08
development. And for me, it was kind of more validation, like,

Bradley Lands 00:40:11
Yes, I am ready to step into this new role. I feel confident

Bradley Lands 00:40:14
I have that was community behind me. I have so many people I

Bradley Lands 00:40:17
could reach out to, whether it's resources or just having

Bradley Lands 00:40:20
conversations. And so it was been extraordinary going through

Bradley Lands 00:40:24
the Atlas leadership program itself, and then just continuing

Bradley Lands 00:40:27
to stay connected and looking at all the forums and the

Bradley Lands 00:40:30
community. And I just feel so supported. And I feel like Atlas

Bradley Lands 00:40:34
has really helped me to grow professionally, to help prepare

Bradley Lands 00:40:37
me for this role that I'm in now.

Steve Frantz 00:40:39
And then I couldn't agree more, it's like

Steve Frantz 00:40:41
the Leadership Institute was great in that it built out my

Steve Frantz 00:40:45
professional network 10 times what I had had, and it

Steve Frantz 00:40:49
distributed it from being like this small, tight group in like

Steve Frantz 00:40:53
the New Jersey area, to being across the country, our little

Steve Frantz 00:40:57
mini cohort group that I had from Within the Leadership

Steve Frantz 00:41:01
Institute still meets on a regular basis and has zoom

Steve Frantz 00:41:03
calls, even though we've been graduated since last March or

Steve Frantz 00:41:06
April, and just going to the conferences as well. Actually,

Steve Frantz 00:41:10
like, you know, all you have to do is just kind of hang around

Steve Frantz 00:41:12
with Bill and you're like, literally meet everyone, because

Steve Frantz 00:41:15
he seems to know everybody at the conferences.

Bill Stites 00:41:18
I was waiting for that the mayor of Atlas,

Steve Frantz 00:41:21
following him around, you get exposure to a

Steve Frantz 00:41:23
lot of people that you wouldn't necessarily get exposure to, and

Steve Frantz 00:41:26
that it actually is very helpful, because then you have

Steve Frantz 00:41:29
those people in your back pocket when you have questions.

Christina Lewellen 00:41:32
Yeah. I mean, we're truly a community,

Christina Lewellen 00:41:34
and Bill is a great question asker. I mean, he even asked our

Christina Lewellen 00:41:38
staff some questions recently about a platform that he was

Christina Lewellen 00:41:42
curious about, and he asks the right people the right

Christina Lewellen 00:41:44
questions, and that's part of what the Atlas community brings,

Christina Lewellen 00:41:47
I think, is that it's a place where you can go and ask

Christina Lewellen 00:41:50
questions and they actually know what you're talking about. We're

Christina Lewellen 00:41:52
not enterprise, we're not a business, we're not higher ed.

Christina Lewellen 00:41:56
There are unique circumstances to independent schools. We're

Christina Lewellen 00:41:58
also not public. And so that brings with it some challenges

Christina Lewellen 00:42:01
from the tech side of things, for sure,

Bill Stites 00:42:03
I think that's a big piece of what you were all

Bill Stites 00:42:06
saying as well, is how quickly this moves. I always laugh at

Bill Stites 00:42:10
the people who will dub themselves the expert in this,

Bill Stites 00:42:13
because it moves so fast, and that's what I've said all along.

Bill Stites 00:42:16
I may not have the answer. I most likely don't, but I know

Bill Stites 00:42:20
where to turn to ask the question to get that, Steve, I

Bill Stites 00:42:24
think you alluded to it in terms of, like, just your experience

Bill Stites 00:42:27
with the T list broadening out from our New Jersey group, which

Bill Stites 00:42:31
is a very robust group, to that larger national community. It

Bill Stites 00:42:36
just expands your repertoire and that Rolodex of people you can

Bill Stites 00:42:40
turn to in ways that I think very few others have the

Bill Stites 00:42:44
opportunity to do. To

Steve Frantz 00:42:46
go back to like, the staffing related questions,

Steve Frantz 00:42:48
one of the things that I've found, and one of the things

Steve Frantz 00:42:50
that my team does, is like, we make sure that there's overlap.

Steve Frantz 00:42:54
There's not one person that's just responsible for like one

Steve Frantz 00:42:57
thing. There are two people that have overlap in their roles to

Steve Frantz 00:43:01
make sure that if like somebody goes down, for the count, for

Steve Frantz 00:43:03
whatever reason, we have somebody who can still handle

Steve Frantz 00:43:07
90% of what that initial person was responsible for. But on the

Steve Frantz 00:43:12
other side of it, looking for like the person to fill a role

Steve Frantz 00:43:15
these days is like looking for that unicorn, like pulling

Steve Frantz 00:43:19
somebody from corporate IT, where the world is extremely

Steve Frantz 00:43:24
different, and the relationships with the users is very

Steve Frantz 00:43:28
different. There has to be like a growth plan, and just getting

Steve Frantz 00:43:31
like a corporate IT person up to speed on working in an

Steve Frantz 00:43:35
educational environment, because it's a very different world.

Hiram Cuevas 00:43:39
What do you mean? I can't use this software.

Steve Frantz 00:43:43
I have strong tech users, and I have less strong

Steve Frantz 00:43:46
tech users. Sometimes you have to hold hands a little bit more,

Steve Frantz 00:43:50
and you have to talk at a level that the user is going to

Steve Frantz 00:43:53
understand. So you know, me throwing it around a bunch of

Steve Frantz 00:43:57
like acronyms is not helpful, but me talking to the level of

Steve Frantz 00:44:01
the user is useful and helpful, and I think that's one thing

Steve Frantz 00:44:04
that our department does really well. You know, we have an

Steve Frantz 00:44:07
environment that's inviting. We have a couch, we have a coffee

Steve Frantz 00:44:10
table. People come sit down and we'll have discussions with us.

Steve Frantz 00:44:14
Sometimes they sit down a little too long, and sometimes they

Steve Frantz 00:44:16
discuss a little too long, but in general, it's a welcoming

Steve Frantz 00:44:19
environment, and we have those spaces where you can sit at a

Steve Frantz 00:44:23
table and work together side by side, and we can have the spaces

Steve Frantz 00:44:27
where you can have the conversations. And I think that

Steve Frantz 00:44:29
that also helps getting buy in from your community, because

Steve Frantz 00:44:34
like, if they feel comfortable talking to you, they're going to

Steve Frantz 00:44:37
ask the right questions. You're going to be able to ask them the

Steve Frantz 00:44:39
questions, and you're going to be able to ask for their

Steve Frantz 00:44:42
assistance in trying something new or doing something

Steve Frantz 00:44:45
differently, and they're going to be a little more receptive, I

Steve Frantz 00:44:48
think so.

Christina Lewellen 00:44:50
What makes for a good technology

Christina Lewellen 00:44:51
department, given all these things that we've been talking

Christina Lewellen 00:44:54
about, if you were to look from the outside, in a strong tech

Christina Lewellen 00:44:57
department, what is the characteristics of. That tech

Christina Lewellen 00:45:00
department.

Steve Frantz 00:45:01
I think it has to be a yes environment more than a

Steve Frantz 00:45:04
no environment. I think that that is helpful in getting the

Steve Frantz 00:45:07
ball rolling. I think, again, having a team that is receptive

Steve Frantz 00:45:13
and helpful is key. You know, like, there's the old SNL skit

Steve Frantz 00:45:17
with the tech guy who would just, like, push you out of the

Steve Frantz 00:45:21
way, like, literally knock your chair over trying to get to your

Steve Frantz 00:45:24
computer so you can put hands on the computer. You need to let

Steve Frantz 00:45:27
the user do the work whenever possible. And I think that that

Steve Frantz 00:45:31
is helpful. And you need to have the people that can do for us,

Steve Frantz 00:45:35
you know, like, we don't outsource anything, all of our

Steve Frantz 00:45:38
infrastructure, all of our work. You know, we have APU, like Bill

Steve Frantz 00:45:41
had mentioned, APU is he's literally like an enterprise

Steve Frantz 00:45:44
risk management box in our organizational chart, because he

Steve Frantz 00:45:49
was a student at our school. He started the tech department at

Steve Frantz 00:45:53
our school, and has been a consultant at our school since

Steve Frantz 00:45:56
1993 and he has institutional knowledge that we can't replace,

Steve Frantz 00:46:02
but he shares as much as he can, and he will teach you how to do

Steve Frantz 00:46:07
the things that you need to do. So you need the members of the

Steve Frantz 00:46:09
team that are not worried about losing some rung on the ladder

Steve Frantz 00:46:14
because they've shown you how to do something that takes away

Steve Frantz 00:46:17
from like, their special skill set. It's a big part, like we

Steve Frantz 00:46:20
are a very collaborative group, you know, like if we have to

Steve Frantz 00:46:24
climb up on a ladder and help run a wire, we do that. If we

Steve Frantz 00:46:28
need to bring a speaker set to like a classroom because

Steve Frantz 00:46:31
somebody else on our team can't do it and get everything up and

Steve Frantz 00:46:35
running, we do it so, like you see every member of my team

Steve Frantz 00:46:38
doing a little bit of everything, it

Christina Lewellen 00:46:41
reminds me of when we asked on Jeff

Christina Lewellen 00:46:43
Dayton's episode, what's the weirdest thing that you get

Christina Lewellen 00:46:46
asked to do as a tech director? And he said, somehow I got

Christina Lewellen 00:46:49
involved with fixing bikes. It doesn't surprise anybody. Brad,

Christina Lewellen 00:46:55
how would you answer that question? What do you think a

Christina Lewellen 00:46:57
strong tech department looks like today?

Bradley Lands 00:46:59
Steve shared so many great things. One thing

Bradley Lands 00:47:02
that I always try to keep in the back of my head is that we're in

Bradley Lands 00:47:05
the service industry, and so having really good relationships

Bradley Lands 00:47:09
is really important, and doing something which I learned from

Bradley Lands 00:47:13
Dan Pink called up service, it's providing a better service

Bradley Lands 00:47:16
experience than the user would anticipate or expect. And I

Bradley Lands 00:47:21
think that's really important, because we're always trying to

Bradley Lands 00:47:24
combat the unfortunate stereotype of tech departments,

Bradley Lands 00:47:27
you know, being condescending or being rude. You know, did you

Bradley Lands 00:47:31
restart it? Did you unplug it? Did you plug it back in? And so

Bradley Lands 00:47:34
battling that negative stereotype every single day by

Bradley Lands 00:47:38
trying to provide up service, I think is really helpful. And

Bradley Lands 00:47:41
then the second thing is just being a lifelong learner,

Bradley Lands 00:47:44
knowledge and experience is one thing. People can always learn

Bradley Lands 00:47:48
systems. People can always learn new technology, new devices, new

Bradley Lands 00:47:51
programs. I think the attitude is, what's most important, it's

Bradley Lands 00:47:55
the mindset that you're adaptable, you're flexible, you

Bradley Lands 00:47:58
can always learn. And if you don't know the answer, that's

Bradley Lands 00:48:01
okay. We'll find a way to find the answer. It's not all about

Bradley Lands 00:48:05
how much knowledge you have or how many skills you have. I

Bradley Lands 00:48:07
think it's more about the growth mindset and being flexible and

Bradley Lands 00:48:10
adaptive.

Christina Lewellen 00:48:11
Bill and Hiram, Do you guys agree with

Christina Lewellen 00:48:13
that assessment? Does that make for a good tech department? I

Christina Lewellen 00:48:15
think sounds pretty good.

Bill Stites 00:48:17
Absolutely, 100% I just wonder where Steve got all

Bill Stites 00:48:20
of his ideas from I was singing about the couches, the tables,

Bill Stites 00:48:24
the coffee machine. I don't know where he would have picked

Bill Stites 00:48:27
those. Jenny zagriello, oh, okay, thank you No. But I think

Bill Stites 00:48:34
those are definitely those types of things. I think the one

Bill Stites 00:48:37
caveat is when Steve said, try to beat the office that says yes

Bill Stites 00:48:41
more often it needs to be yes with like, maybe a non verbal,

Bill Stites 00:48:46
like Aster expire when you kind of say it, because you have to

Bill Stites 00:48:49
really understand the level of detail to the Yes. But I think

Bill Stites 00:48:52
that helps, because people expect this to be easy because

Bill Stites 00:48:58
they don't know differently. It's our job to make it seem

Bill Stites 00:49:01
easy without them having to feel that. Because if we want them to

Bill Stites 00:49:05
really adopt and use these tools and to feel comfortable coming

Bill Stites 00:49:09
in, that tone needs to be set early and often totally

Hiram Cuevas 00:49:13
agree with that bill. I mean, it's so important

Hiram Cuevas 00:49:16
for folks to feel like their ideas can be met with the

Hiram Cuevas 00:49:19
service that we can provide. Sometimes it's just a matter of

Hiram Cuevas 00:49:23
providing a little bit of the detail so that they can manage

Hiram Cuevas 00:49:25
the expectation.

Christina Lewellen 00:49:27
Before we start wrapping up, I want to ask

Christina Lewellen 00:49:29
Brad, you were compelled to write a book, can you tell us a

Christina Lewellen 00:49:33
little bit about that?

Bradley Lands 00:49:35
Sure, it was during the pandemic I saw that

Bradley Lands 00:49:38
there were lots of teachers that were kind of getting out of the

Bradley Lands 00:49:42
profession. It was too hard, it was too daunting. There were too

Bradley Lands 00:49:45
many expectations of them. And I had always kind of wanted to

Bradley Lands 00:49:49
write a book for a long time, and I had been slowly writing a

Bradley Lands 00:49:53
blog, and I had been slowly collecting different quotes from

Bradley Lands 00:49:56
some of my favorite books, and I thought it was just the right

Bradley Lands 00:49:59
timing, and I. Wanted to create a book that I thought could be

Bradley Lands 00:50:02
uplifting, could be encouraging, but also offer some practical

Bradley Lands 00:50:05
strategies and advice from lots of different research and

Bradley Lands 00:50:08
experience that I had encountered in my profession.

Bradley Lands 00:50:10
And so I created a book. I did it pretty much by myself, even

Bradley Lands 00:50:15
though I had a lot of eyes on it that were really helpful. I did

Bradley Lands 00:50:18
hire a professional editor, which is, like a non negotiable.

Bradley Lands 00:50:21
That's something that you always have to do. But I also did

Bradley Lands 00:50:24
everything on a Chromebook, because that was the device that

Bradley Lands 00:50:27
we supplied our students with. And I wanted to prove as like a

Bradley Lands 00:50:31
sub goal, that I could actually write a book, a professional

Bradley Lands 00:50:34
book, get it on the marketplace and sell it all by using a

Bradley Lands 00:50:37
Chromebook. I think that was a really powerful sub goal of

Bradley Lands 00:50:40
mine, and I'm really proud that I was able to do it, all of my

Bradley Lands 00:50:43
illustrations that I did, Google Drawings, you know, my website,

Bradley Lands 00:50:46
that I had Google Sites, my documents, Google Docs. I did

Bradley Lands 00:50:50
everything from my Google Drive workspace account, and so I

Bradley Lands 00:50:53
thought that was really, really cool, and it was just something

Bradley Lands 00:50:56
I was really passionate about. It was my passion project that I

Bradley Lands 00:50:58
was able to eventually turn into a product. And it's something

Bradley Lands 00:51:01
I'm really proud of. The work that I've done, the research

Bradley Lands 00:51:03
that I've collected, and the conversations that I've had with

Bradley Lands 00:51:06
people, and I'm hoping that even if one or two people read the

Bradley Lands 00:51:10
book and they find one thing that was really inspirational or

Bradley Lands 00:51:12
one strategy that they could take away from it, then that

Bradley Lands 00:51:16
will truly fill my heart. So it was a fun project. Thanks for

Bradley Lands 00:51:19
asking.

Bill Stites 00:51:20
That's awesome. So, but how I know that you came out

Bill Stites 00:51:23
of the classroom versus coming out of it directly is that you

Bill Stites 00:51:27
actually wrote something that someone's going to have to read.

Bill Stites 00:51:30
Because if there's anything texts don't do is we never read

Bill Stites 00:51:32
anything. Steve will read it when you record the audio book

Bill Stites 00:51:36
version of it. There's

Christina Lewellen 00:51:38
apps for that. You can just have aI read

Christina Lewellen 00:51:40
it to you, I guess, right, exactly No,

Bill Stites 00:51:42
but I love it. I think it's great to be able to

Bill Stites 00:51:45
get that out there, to share that with everyone, and the fact

Bill Stites 00:51:48
that doing it using the tools that we're trying to get

Bill Stites 00:51:52
everyone to buy into, I think sends a message all unto itself,

Bill Stites 00:51:56
which is fabulous.

Bradley Lands 00:51:58
Well, thank you guys. I appreciate you asking

Bradley Lands 00:51:59
about that. So

Christina Lewellen 00:52:01
we're heading into Atlas annual

Christina Lewellen 00:52:03
conference season, and we will be celebrating 10 years, believe

Christina Lewellen 00:52:07
it or not, of Atlas conferences, which is kind of crazy. So my

Christina Lewellen 00:52:10
question for all four of you is, what are you looking for this

Christina Lewellen 00:52:14
year at the Atlas conference?

Steve Frantz 00:52:17
Well, Brad Lee's presentation, clearly, I know

Hiram Cuevas 00:52:21
one thing the conference always does for me,

Hiram Cuevas 00:52:23
and it doesn't have to be the 10 year, but the 10 year has a

Hiram Cuevas 00:52:26
special spot in my heart is the fact that it rejuvenates me.

Hiram Cuevas 00:52:30
It's at a time of year where the requests are coming in, end of

Hiram Cuevas 00:52:35
school activities are piling up, and you're already gearing up

Hiram Cuevas 00:52:39
for summer all at the same time, if not sooner. So it's very

Hiram Cuevas 00:52:43
cathartic for me to leave the conference and be re energized

Hiram Cuevas 00:52:49
for the weeks to come. Plus, I get some quality Stites time.

Bill Stites 00:52:53
I think for me, one of the things that I'm looking

Bill Stites 00:52:56
forward to this year in particular, I mean, it's nice

Bill Stites 00:52:59
that it's the 10 year, the fact that it's in Atlanta, which is,

Bill Stites 00:53:03
I'll just say, is easy to get into and out of, from a flight

Bill Stites 00:53:07
standpoint, really has made it something that we're making an

Bill Stites 00:53:11
event of here within the team. So I'm going to be bringing, I

Bill Stites 00:53:16
think we have a total of, including myself, six people.

Bill Stites 00:53:19
We've got our three campus ed tech folks coming. We've got our

Bill Stites 00:53:23
coordinator of information systems, we've got our k8

Bill Stites 00:53:26
director of stem coming and myself. So it's going to be an

Bill Stites 00:53:30
opportunity to really get them out, to see what happens within

Bill Stites 00:53:35
the larger community, to be able to come together as a team,

Bill Stites 00:53:39
because we don't often get, you know, where three campuses

Bill Stites 00:53:42
spread out all over the place, to really get together and spend

Bill Stites 00:53:46
some quality time as a team as well. So it's really an

Bill Stites 00:53:50
opportunity for us to build, not only our own professional

Bill Stites 00:53:55
knowledge and growth, but build as a team as well. Because if

Bill Stites 00:53:59
there's anything I really like to do at an atlas conference,

Bill Stites 00:54:01
it's to go out and have a nice meal with everyone, to sit down

Bill Stites 00:54:04
and have a nice beverage, because I think a lot of those

Bill Stites 00:54:07
conversations that we have they occur in the sessions. They

Bill Stites 00:54:11
occur between the sessions, but they really occur like maybe in

Bill Stites 00:54:15
the morning, if you're in the gym, or if you're at night, when

Bill Stites 00:54:17
you're in the lobby and you're doing all those things you get

Bill Stites 00:54:20
together, or when Alex Inman throws a party for everybody and

Bill Stites 00:54:23
everyone shows up, all of those things that you do, you're

Bill Stites 00:54:27
building team in ways that you don't have the opportunity to do

Bill Stites 00:54:30
on the day to day when we're doing school. I'm gonna see

Steve Frantz 00:54:34
my Atlas, like small cohort. I'll see some of

Steve Frantz 00:54:36
the other members of like my leadership institute, small

Steve Frantz 00:54:39
cohort. But I think my whole small cohort has put in to go. I

Steve Frantz 00:54:42
don't know if everybody's been approved just yet, but hopefully

Steve Frantz 00:54:45
they will be. So we always have a great time just reconnecting,

Steve Frantz 00:54:48
even though we do see each other almost every other week on a

Steve Frantz 00:54:51
zoom call, just to catch up and vent and just chat about stuff.

Steve Frantz 00:54:55
I also look forward to finding out the things that I don't know

Steve Frantz 00:54:58
that's a fun part of this, like look. Through, like the

Steve Frantz 00:55:00
offerings and being like, I have no idea what they're talking

Steve Frantz 00:55:03
about here. And like, reading a little deeper and be like, I

Steve Frantz 00:55:06
think I need to go to that. And those are always the fun ones,

Steve Frantz 00:55:09
where you can pick up some new knowledge, because again, like I

Steve Frantz 00:55:11
said earlier, it's always changing as much as we try to

Steve Frantz 00:55:14
keep up on things there. People are thinking in different ways

Steve Frantz 00:55:18
and thinking about things differently than you are, and

Steve Frantz 00:55:20
it's great to get that experience, get that

Steve Frantz 00:55:23
presentation, you know, under your belt, so you can kind of

Steve Frantz 00:55:25
bring it back to your school,

Bradley Lands 00:55:27
absolutely. And for me, it's just the

Bradley Lands 00:55:29
relationship building, extending in network, seeing people in

Bradley Lands 00:55:32
person. You know, we do a lot of virtual calls, and we stay

Bradley Lands 00:55:36
connected virtually, but just there's nothing that replaces

Bradley Lands 00:55:39
seeing people in person. And it's just so great to hang out

Bradley Lands 00:55:42
with people that, you know, meet new people. And I was just

Bradley Lands 00:55:45
thinking about this, it would be really fun for the 10 year to

Bradley Lands 00:55:47
really reflect and think about, you know, how much Atlas as an

Bradley Lands 00:55:50
organization, has grown in those 10 years, and then also

Bradley Lands 00:55:53
reflecting as what are some new challenges in technology that

Bradley Lands 00:55:57
our community is facing right now, and what are still some of

Bradley Lands 00:56:00
the challenges that haven't changed in those 10 years. And I

Bradley Lands 00:56:04
just love trying to problem solve when we go to these in

Bradley Lands 00:56:07
person conferences, whether it's like a side conversation during

Bradley Lands 00:56:10
a break, whether if it's at dinner, whether if it's during a

Bradley Lands 00:56:14
session, just talking with people always learning new

Bradley Lands 00:56:17
things, asking what their solutions are at their school,

Bradley Lands 00:56:19
and then trying to collaboratively problem solve

Bradley Lands 00:56:22
some things that we're all going through together. Yeah,

Christina Lewellen 00:56:24
and I would add, I'm literally looking

Christina Lewellen 00:56:26
forward to the vendor community being there. You guys are always

Christina Lewellen 00:56:29
at Atlas. You understand that I always give the big speech from

Christina Lewellen 00:56:32
the podium, which is these companies that are at Atlas

Christina Lewellen 00:56:35
specifically are there to support and uphold independent

Christina Lewellen 00:56:40
schools, because it's easy for them to be elsewhere. There are

Christina Lewellen 00:56:43
bigger events, there are larger trade shows, where they can go

Christina Lewellen 00:56:47
and spend their money and get a lot more eyeballs, which is why

Christina Lewellen 00:56:50
I always really appreciate that they're there for our people and

Christina Lewellen 00:56:54
our community. The vendors who come to the Atlas conference are

Christina Lewellen 00:56:57
no joke like they're there to earn in the business, yes, but

Christina Lewellen 00:57:01
also to be partners with independent school

Christina Lewellen 00:57:03
technologists, and that is something that is very near and

Christina Lewellen 00:57:06
dear to my heart. And I don't take lightly. There are some new

Christina Lewellen 00:57:09
companies that we haven't worked with before. I think that the

Christina Lewellen 00:57:11
reputation is sort of getting out that if you want to have a

Christina Lewellen 00:57:14
conversation with independent school tech leaders, this is

Christina Lewellen 00:57:17
where you go to have those conversations, and I really

Christina Lewellen 00:57:20
value that. So I'm really proud of our vendor community for

Christina Lewellen 00:57:22
being so supportive, and proud of our independent school

Christina Lewellen 00:57:25
technology community for spending time with them and

Christina Lewellen 00:57:29
making them a part of the event, rather than something separate

Christina Lewellen 00:57:32
or an add on. They're right there with us. They're having

Christina Lewellen 00:57:35
meals, and the vendors are taking part in the conversations

Christina Lewellen 00:57:38
during sessions, and I just love seeing that, because I think

Christina Lewellen 00:57:41
that we bring a better product to our students and to our

Christina Lewellen 00:57:44
schools if we're solving problems together, like you guys

Christina Lewellen 00:57:47
said. So guys, this has been incredible. I'm so grateful that

Christina Lewellen 00:57:51
you guys took the time out of your days, your busy schedules,

Christina Lewellen 00:57:54
to spend some time with us on the pod. It's long overdue. Brad

Christina Lewellen 00:57:58
and Steve. I know we're gonna see each other shortly at the

Christina Lewellen 00:58:00
Atlas conference, but until then, thank you so much for

Christina Lewellen 00:58:02
being here and thanks for sharing your perspective. Feel

Christina Lewellen 00:58:05
free to come back anytime and join us so that we can have more

Christina Lewellen 00:58:08
conversations.

Bradley Lands 00:58:09
Thank you so much for having us. It was great.

Bill Stites 00:58:11
Thank you So Brad, I want to let you know too. Just

Bill Stites 00:58:14
as we were closing out here, I just hit purchase on Amazon, so

Bill Stites 00:58:19
consider your book having one more reader, and as I read it, I

Bill Stites 00:58:23
will actually record it, so Steve can actually then process

Bill Stites 00:58:26
the book as well. So I'll do an audio book. The last

Steve Frantz 00:58:30
thing I want to hear is more me. Is you read a

Steve Frantz 00:58:33
book to me.

Christina Lewellen 00:58:36
I think that would be fabulous, actually. And

Christina Lewellen 00:58:37
then we can record your reaction to listening to Bill Stites in

Christina Lewellen 00:58:41
your ear for the audiobook, it'd be pretty good.

Bill Stites 00:58:43
Hiram and I will do it. Yaba,

Hiram Cuevas 00:58:45
David, do

Christina Lewellen 00:58:50
alright guys. Thanks so much. Have a

Christina Lewellen 00:58:51
great day.

Peter Frank 00:58:54
This has been talking technology with Atlas,

Peter Frank 00:58:56
produced by the Association of Technology Leaders in

Peter Frank 00:58:59
Independent Schools. For more information about Atlas and

Peter Frank 00:59:03
Atlas membership, please visit the atlas.org if you enjoyed

Peter Frank 00:59:07
this discussion, please subscribe, leave a review and

Peter Frank 00:59:10
share this podcast with your colleagues in the independent

Peter Frank 00:59:13
school community. Thank you for listening. You.