Raising Digital Citizens: A Conversation with ISTE's Richard Culatta

Hear from ISTE's CEO Richard Culatta as he shares his unique professional journey and vision for the future of education technology. Learn how the merger of ISTE and ASCD aims to better support teachers and students through innovative practices. Discover Culatta's predictions for 2025, including the importance of prioritizing the student experience in school design.

International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE)
ASCD - professional development for educators at all stages of their careers
Digital for Good: Raising Kids to Thrive in an Online World by Richard Culatta - framework for preparing kids to be successful in a digital world
Coalition of Leading Education Organizations Introduces Five Quality Indicators for Edtech and AI Products, ISTE press release
Pica AI, AI photo enhancer

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 00:00:29
President and CEO of the Association of Technology

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

Bill Stites 00:00:34
And I am Bill Stites, the Director of

Bill Stites 00:00:36
Technology at Montclair Kimberly Academy in Montclair, New

Bill Stites 00:00:39
Jersey.

Hiram Cuevas 00:00:40
And I'm Hiram Cuevas, the Director of

Hiram Cuevas 00:00:42
Information Systems and Academic Technology at St Christopher

Hiram Cuevas 00:00:45
school. Hey,

Peter Frank 00:00:47
I am Peter Frank. I'm the Senior Director of

Peter Frank 00:00:49
certification and operations for Atlas.

Christina Lewellen 00:00:52
Hello, gentlemen. How's everybody

Unknown 00:00:54
today? Excellent, glorious. Counting down the

Unknown 00:00:58
hours. Our

Christina Lewellen 00:00:59
intro was a little different today because

Christina Lewellen 00:01:01
the Atlas Board of Directors decided earlier this week that

Christina Lewellen 00:01:05
my title would change to be more reflective of what other

Christina Lewellen 00:01:08
associations in The Independent School world have as the title.

Christina Lewellen 00:01:13
So I transitioned from executive director to President and CEO.

Christina Lewellen 00:01:17
So nothing really happened. I

Bill Stites 00:01:19
was wondering what was going on. I was like,

Bill Stites 00:01:21
seriously, how many times have we done this and you're messing

Bill Stites 00:01:24
it up? What's going on?

Christina Lewellen 00:01:27
No, I mean, really, all it meant was that I

Christina Lewellen 00:01:29
just put on the same clothes and showed up at the same office the

Christina Lewellen 00:01:32
next day. Nothing much changed, but that is my new title,

Unknown 00:01:35
the big ring that you now have to kiss Exactly. We'll

Unknown 00:01:39
get down and kneel down

Christina Lewellen 00:01:40
before you Well, I will sit on my throne.

Christina Lewellen 00:01:43
We're doing our intro today with Peter Frank. I normally start

Christina Lewellen 00:01:47
out and ask you guys a couple questions see how you're doing.

Christina Lewellen 00:01:50
I asked my staff for recommendations on what I should

Christina Lewellen 00:01:52
ask Bill in Hiram today, and Peter came in hot with a good

Christina Lewellen 00:01:56
question, but I refuse to ask it, so I'm just gonna go ahead

Christina Lewellen 00:02:00
and turn the mike over. Peter. Instant,

Peter Frank 00:02:03
as soon as I saw the question from Kristina of

Peter Frank 00:02:06
what do I really want to know from Bill and Hiram, having

Peter Frank 00:02:09
heard all of these podcasts, all of the various topics we've

Peter Frank 00:02:12
covered, I mean, you both share so much expertise and knowledge

Peter Frank 00:02:15
about all these different things. And so as soon as she

Peter Frank 00:02:19
asked, I thought, if I'm in a confrontation on water, for

Peter Frank 00:02:22
example, a boat, would you risk using fire to battle the

Peter Frank 00:02:27
zombies, or is it better to reserve that only in case

Peter Frank 00:02:31
everything else fails?

Bill Stites 00:02:33
No, I'm not using fire, right? Fire is a last

Bill Stites 00:02:36
resort, because that is going to damage you as much as it is

Bill Stites 00:02:41
going to right damage the zombies, because in that sense,

Bill Stites 00:02:46
you need simply distance from them, and you need to be able to

Bill Stites 00:02:50
somehow get them into the water. Because they're not swimming,

Bill Stites 00:02:53
they're kind of sinking at that

Christina Lewellen 00:02:54
point. Can zombies swim? No, no,

Bill Stites 00:02:58
zombies don't

Hiram Cuevas 00:02:58
swim. And then there's a little bit of wisdom,

Hiram Cuevas 00:03:01
if you remember the scene in Jaws when the lady shot the

Hiram Cuevas 00:03:06
flare gun after she used gasoline to put it on the shark

Hiram Cuevas 00:03:12
and she ended up blowing up the boat. Amateur hour, we always

Hiram Cuevas 00:03:16
have a melee weapon on hand right

Bill Stites 00:03:19
in the game that I play religiously, which is The

Bill Stites 00:03:22
Walking Dead no man's land. You have different types of

Bill Stites 00:03:25
fighters. You'd want to be in your bruiser mode, because you

Bill Stites 00:03:28
have your assault team, you have your ranged weapons team, then

Bill Stites 00:03:32
you have your melee weapon team, and then you have your bruisers.

Bill Stites 00:03:35
And this is where you would employ your bruisers, those with

Bill Stites 00:03:39
bats, those with things that are going to just not necessarily

Bill Stites 00:03:42
get at them in the same ways it's going to get them off

Bill Stites 00:03:44
you're you're teeing them up, golf clubs. I mean, you could

Bill Stites 00:03:47
use golf clubs at that point.

Hiram Cuevas 00:03:49
So I'm going to reference World War Z for you,

Hiram Cuevas 00:03:53
Christina. The actual weapon that you might want to have in a

Hiram Cuevas 00:03:56
boat is the Lobo.

Bill Stites 00:03:59
Oh, the Lobo. Yes, I remember them talking about

Bill Stites 00:04:02
the Lobo.

Christina Lewellen 00:04:03
I don't know what a Lobo is. Chat GPT, what

Christina Lewellen 00:04:06
is a Lobo? We

Bill Stites 00:04:07
can get Nicole Furlonge on this call, and she

Bill Stites 00:04:09
can explain all about the Lobo from their in depth reading of

Bill Stites 00:04:12
that.

Unknown 00:04:13
So essentially, the Lobo is short for the

Unknown 00:04:15
lobotomizer. Oh,

Christina Lewellen 00:04:17
that's terrible. We're

Bill Stites 00:04:19
talking about dead people to begin with. We're

Bill Stites 00:04:21
talking about zombies. I mean, we got to put this in context.

Bill Stites 00:04:24
What

Christina Lewellen 00:04:25
if there's zombies already on the boat, and

Christina Lewellen 00:04:28
all your weapons are gone and you can swim? So do you then

Christina Lewellen 00:04:33
burn the boat so that they drown and then you swim away? You're

Christina Lewellen 00:04:37
in the ocean, the middle of the ocean. Well, maybe not the

Christina Lewellen 00:04:40
middle of the ocean,

Bill Stites 00:04:41
yeah. I mean, are we on a pleasure cruise here? Is

Bill Stites 00:04:43
this like a center console boat, or are we in like a yacht? Like,

Bill Stites 00:04:46
seriously, like, Hiram and I, you know, we're on small boats

Bill Stites 00:04:50
here, so we're, like, we've got oz, because we could probably

Bill Stites 00:04:53
use Oz, because that's our level. That's how you have to

Bill Stites 00:04:56
think, maybe a pedal bone, that's our level. We're not at

Bill Stites 00:04:59
the price. Resident CEO level, where you're on much larger

Bill Stites 00:05:03
boats. Now you've got the new title, so you've got these new

Bill Stites 00:05:06
expectations for how you might be traveling. So you're thinking

Bill Stites 00:05:09
bigger boats than Hiram and I.

Christina Lewellen 00:05:13
There are no bigger boats. No,

Hiram Cuevas 00:05:16
the ring bill may actually be a Green Lantern

Hiram Cuevas 00:05:19
ring. Maybe she was selected. Yes,

Unknown 00:05:21
true, Peter,

Christina Lewellen 00:05:22
you started this. I

Peter Frank 00:05:24
know. I wish everyone could see like, this

Peter Frank 00:05:26
isn't a video podcast, but these are the moments that I really

Peter Frank 00:05:29
lament that we don't have a video podcast because for our

Peter Frank 00:05:32
listeners, we can all see each other. And when Bill and Hiram

Peter Frank 00:05:36
start going off on zombies, the facial expressions of Christina,

Peter Frank 00:05:40
the body language. Sometimes she'll just get up and we'd

Peter Frank 00:05:44
like, we don't even know where she went, like, she just leaves.

Peter Frank 00:05:46
It's gold. We could do a whole video montage of the reactions,

Peter Frank 00:05:52
because it's priceless.

Hiram Cuevas 00:05:53
We're gonna sell out another Atlas member,

Hiram Cuevas 00:05:56
though. But it's really important that people understand

Hiram Cuevas 00:05:58
that the quiet Barry Cole Meyer, oh yes, is also a

Unknown 00:06:03
huge zombie fan.

Christina Lewellen 00:06:06
Why you got a Chuck Berry underneath the

Christina Lewellen 00:06:08
bus? The zombie laden boat? That's not fair. He's not even

Christina Lewellen 00:06:12
here to defend himself.

Unknown 00:06:14
He would jump in.

Hiram Cuevas 00:06:15
He'd be on this so in Orlando, he walks up to our

Hiram Cuevas 00:06:18
group. Now, Jason Ramson is also a zombie afficionado. First

Hiram Cuevas 00:06:24
question we ask him, all right, new hotel, how many exits for

Hiram Cuevas 00:06:29
the zombie apocalypse? And within 30 seconds, there he

Hiram Cuevas 00:06:33
goes. Looks around four and he's spot on.

Christina Lewellen 00:06:41
Oh my gosh. This just goes to show the

Christina Lewellen 00:06:43
mistake that I made number one in allowing Peter Frank to come

Christina Lewellen 00:06:47
ask you anything

Peter Frank 00:06:49
100% we'll check the stats. We'll look at the

Peter Frank 00:06:53
analytics. This will be the highest rated, highest listened

Peter Frank 00:06:56
episode, all

Christina Lewellen 00:06:57
right. Well, before we let Peter go, you've

Christina Lewellen 00:06:59
been observing us quietly in the background. You're usually in

Christina Lewellen 00:07:04
stealth producer mode, and you've been a huge instrumental

Christina Lewellen 00:07:08
part of the success of this podcast. You keep things running

Christina Lewellen 00:07:11
smoothly. You yell at us when our audio is not good. So since

Christina Lewellen 00:07:17
we have you here for a quick minute, has there been any

Christina Lewellen 00:07:20
favorite episodes that you can recall, any of our guests that

Christina Lewellen 00:07:23
you particularly enjoyed, or what have you thought of this

Christina Lewellen 00:07:26
journey so far? I certainly didn't think we'd be logging 50

Christina Lewellen 00:07:29
plus episodes in a year, but here we are. So it's been just

Christina Lewellen 00:07:33
about a year since we really started rolling with this. Any

Christina Lewellen 00:07:36
thoughts or reflections as our behind the scenes Wizard of Oz?

Christina Lewellen 00:07:40
Yeah, knock

Peter Frank 00:07:41
on wood. When we first talked about the pace of

Peter Frank 00:07:43
the podcast, when you were instructing us we're doing this

Peter Frank 00:07:47
every week, there was definitely a question like, Man, I don't

Peter Frank 00:07:52
know. I mean, we definitely have the right people involved, and

Peter Frank 00:07:55
it seems like we have a like, a deep well from which we can pull

Peter Frank 00:07:58
guests. But I feel like there was still a linger in question.

Peter Frank 00:08:01
And gosh, at this point again, knock on wood. We just had a

Peter Frank 00:08:04
planning meeting the other day, and God, it's just the ideas

Peter Frank 00:08:06
keep coming. And we just heard this morning, Andre who does her

Peter Frank 00:08:09
scheduling, who does an amazing job with so much of this

Peter Frank 00:08:11
production, Andrea reported this morning that she reached out to

Peter Frank 00:08:15
a new batch of guests, and they're all just elated. There's

Peter Frank 00:08:17
a lot of energy and excitement to be on the podcast, which I

Peter Frank 00:08:20
think is fantastic. Yeah, I don't know that any episode

Peter Frank 00:08:24
sticks out, because everyone's been fascinating. It's always a

Peter Frank 00:08:27
different spin and a different topic. It sure is, and it's

Peter Frank 00:08:30
definitely great. You get the personal it's not even the AI so

Peter Frank 00:08:34
much of the cyber security or the other things we cover. It's

Peter Frank 00:08:36
like they have some personal story about their journey in

Peter Frank 00:08:39
this world, and that is often what's so interesting. I've

Peter Frank 00:08:42
loved being a part of it, and I'm glad I get to do it, and I

Peter Frank 00:08:45
appreciate

Unknown 00:08:46
that. Yeah,

Christina Lewellen 00:08:47
thank you for all of the help. Really

Christina Lewellen 00:08:48
appreciate it. Bill and Hiram and I have not yet managed to

Christina Lewellen 00:08:51
strangle each other, so we've been having a good time, and

Christina Lewellen 00:08:56
it's been a real pleasure. So thank you guys so much. Okay, so

Christina Lewellen 00:08:59
now that we've got all the zombie questions out of the way,

Christina Lewellen 00:09:02
it's time to pivot, and we're going to finally welcome to the

Christina Lewellen 00:09:05
podcast our guest today, Richard gullata, Richard, you are the

Christina Lewellen 00:09:09
CEO of ISTE and ASCD, a combination organization. Now

Christina Lewellen 00:09:15
let me pause there for a second and let you explain that piece

Christina Lewellen 00:09:19
of things you brought together ISTE with another organization.

Christina Lewellen 00:09:22
And for those who are listening primarily the Independent School

Christina Lewellen 00:09:26
world, they may not be tracking what ASCD is. Yeah,

Richard Culatta 00:09:30
happy to first of all, hi, Christina. It's

Richard Culatta 00:09:32
always fun to be back. Hello, hanging out with you. So glad we

Richard Culatta 00:09:35
could do this. Yeah? So almost two years ago now, we brought

Richard Culatta 00:09:38
together these two organizations. It's been a

Richard Culatta 00:09:40
process, right? We've been working on this ISTE, which is

Richard Culatta 00:09:43
very focused on accelerating innovation in education, and we

Richard Culatta 00:09:46
spend a lot of time talking about how we can use technology

Richard Culatta 00:09:48
to help be a lever to move that innovation along. And so that's

Richard Culatta 00:09:52
one organization. The other is ASCD, which is really the

Richard Culatta 00:09:55
association of curriculum leaders. So if there's a chief

Richard Culatta 00:09:59
academic officer. Officer, head of Curriculum and Instruction.

Richard Culatta 00:10:02
There's all the different titles, but that's really the

Richard Culatta 00:10:04
role that goes there in the public schools, it could be a

Richard Culatta 00:10:06
district reading specialist or something could also fall under

Richard Culatta 00:10:09
there. And we just thought, in this post COVID world, having

Richard Culatta 00:10:12
one group over here that's really about tech and innovation

Richard Culatta 00:10:15
and another group over here that's about curriculum and

Richard Culatta 00:10:17
instruction being two separate organizations wasn't serving

Richard Culatta 00:10:20
anybody well. Wasn't serving teachers Well, wasn't serving

Richard Culatta 00:10:22
kids. Serving kids well, wasn't there anybody well? So we are

Richard Culatta 00:10:25
bringing them together, and we have a our very creative new

Richard Culatta 00:10:27
name is ISTE ACD, for now anyway. And what we're doing is

Richard Culatta 00:10:32
we're keeping elements of both organizations, but we're also

Richard Culatta 00:10:35
gradually pulling the two together. So for example, this

Richard Culatta 00:10:38
summer, in June, we will have our co located annual

Richard Culatta 00:10:42
conferences. So we'll still have ISTE live, and then we'll also

Richard Culatta 00:10:44
have as CDs annual conference, but they will happen in the same

Richard Culatta 00:10:47
place at the same time. If you register for one, you can go to

Richard Culatta 00:10:51
sessions from the other, stuff like that. So we're just working

Richard Culatta 00:10:53
to bring these groups together to help make learning better for

Richard Culatta 00:10:56
kids. Sounds like that's going really well. There are days

Richard Culatta 00:10:59
where it goes really well. And there are days where I'm like,

Richard Culatta 00:11:01
how many forms does one have to fill out in order to merge to

Richard Culatta 00:11:05
organizations, in order to

Christina Lewellen 00:11:06
be legal with ignorable right? A lot many

Christina Lewellen 00:11:09
forms, lots of

Richard Culatta 00:11:10
forms. But from a team side or staff side, it's

Richard Culatta 00:11:13
been fantastic. Our team has been wonderful. And you know,

Richard Culatta 00:11:16
our community of educators around the world has been very

Richard Culatta 00:11:18
supportive, so that helps us get through the other logistics.

Bill Stites 00:11:21
Having attended both conferences over the years,

Bill Stites 00:11:24
when I heard about the merger, I was very excited by it, because

Bill Stites 00:11:27
I would go to each of them and whether we were talking about

Bill Stites 00:11:31
curriculum pieces and I was looking for the tech pieces or

Bill Stites 00:11:34
or vice versa, you know, attending ISTE and trying to

Bill Stites 00:11:36
find those different things, it was one of those things. I don't

Bill Stites 00:11:39
think I necessarily would have thought of it on my own, but

Bill Stites 00:11:43
when I heard about it, I was like, Oh, my God, that makes

Bill Stites 00:11:45
perfect sense. You know, in terms of the way in which the

Bill Stites 00:11:47
two of them have come together, the Co Location is great. And it

Bill Stites 00:11:51
was funny, you mentioned it because I had a conversation

Bill Stites 00:11:54
with one of my colleagues about the conference this year in

Bill Stites 00:11:56
June, about sending some people down to ISTE, and I didn't

Bill Stites 00:11:59
realize it was going to be co located. So in terms of the

Bill Stites 00:12:02
running of those two, they're going to function as two

Bill Stites 00:12:06
distinct conferences, but the registration will allow you to

Bill Stites 00:12:10
move between both seamlessly. That's right.

Richard Culatta 00:12:13
So we'll run two separate programs. There'll

Richard Culatta 00:12:15
be a shared main stage program, and there'll be a shared Expo

Richard Culatta 00:12:18
experience, so there'll be some overlap, but then the programs

Richard Culatta 00:12:22
will run separately. But as we said, the badge, if you register

Richard Culatta 00:12:25
for ISD live. That badge will let you into any of the ASCD

Richard Culatta 00:12:28
sessions and vice versa. And so people can have as much or as

Richard Culatta 00:12:31
little if they want of the other event or just stick with the one

Richard Culatta 00:12:34
that they came for. Either way,

Christina Lewellen 00:12:35
that's awesome.

Bill Stites 00:12:36
And what I think is great about that, and you

Bill Stites 00:12:38
mentioned it, and this, again, came up in the conversation I

Bill Stites 00:12:41
had this morning is the expo portion of it, one of the things

Bill Stites 00:12:44
I remember distinctly about the conference has been walking

Bill Stites 00:12:48
around that floor and just the sheer number of vendors and

Bill Stites 00:12:52
people that were there to talk to and connect with and really

Bill Stites 00:12:56
find out so the fact that that's going to be a shared Space, I

Bill Stites 00:13:00
hope you booked a big venue, because I'm expecting you're

Bill Stites 00:13:03
gonna have a ton of people and that, I mean, if nothing else,

Bill Stites 00:13:07
that experience, getting all those people in one place, I

Bill Stites 00:13:10
think is worth the price of admission alone,

Richard Culatta 00:13:13
100% No, I totally agree. And a couple

Richard Culatta 00:13:15
things, if any of the listeners here aren't aware, one of the

Richard Culatta 00:13:18
things that we have is our expo experience at ISTE is a little

Richard Culatta 00:13:22
different because we don't allow sales. You can do demos, you can

Richard Culatta 00:13:26
ask questions, certainly, if that leads to a sale down the

Richard Culatta 00:13:28
road, that's fine, but we don't allow sales on the expo floor.

Richard Culatta 00:13:31
We are specifically not a sales floor because we want educators

Richard Culatta 00:13:35
to be able to go and explore without feeling like they're

Richard Culatta 00:13:38
getting their arm twisted into buying something. And that's

Richard Culatta 00:13:40
part of the magic of it. It's why, you know, we have our

Richard Culatta 00:13:42
companies that come and participate and say, Why do we

Richard Culatta 00:13:45
have so much more engagement at ISTE live the expo than we do

Richard Culatta 00:13:48
other places are like because we've made it clear that it's

Richard Culatta 00:13:50
the same space. You're not going to get pounced on. So we'll

Richard Culatta 00:13:53
continue that with the co located event. And one other

Richard Culatta 00:13:56
thing that I should mention while we're talking about the

Richard Culatta 00:13:58
event is that for several years now, we have also done a CTO

Richard Culatta 00:14:02
forum, a meet up that we do in partnership with Atlas, and so

Richard Culatta 00:14:05
we'll be very excited to keep doing that again this year, and

Richard Culatta 00:14:08
we really try to carve out some topics for that that are really

Richard Culatta 00:14:12
targeted at people whose role is overseeing technical

Richard Culatta 00:14:15
infrastructure and issues related to supporting learning

Richard Culatta 00:14:19
from a technical side.

Christina Lewellen 00:14:20
Yeah, we've already started brainstorming a

Christina Lewellen 00:14:22
bit with our partners at ISTE and cosin to put that program

Christina Lewellen 00:14:26
together, so we're really excited about it. And thank you

Christina Lewellen 00:14:28
so much for continuing to have Atlas be a part of that we love

Christina Lewellen 00:14:31
that. Let's take a step back. I would love to talk about your

Christina Lewellen 00:14:35
professional journey, because it is a unique one. I can't imagine

Christina Lewellen 00:14:40
that you anticipated that you would find yourself at the helm

Christina Lewellen 00:14:42
of ISTE when you first started walking down your path. So tell

Christina Lewellen 00:14:45
everybody a little bit about your professional journey. Yeah.

Richard Culatta 00:14:49
So you know, it is not the journey that anyone

Richard Culatta 00:14:51
would have planned, which actually suits me just fine. I

Richard Culatta 00:14:54
have always just been fortunate to ask the question, Where can I

Richard Culatta 00:14:58
make the most difference for. Good, right? That's always the

Richard Culatta 00:15:01
question I ask it every time when I have a job opportunity.

Richard Culatta 00:15:03
And so it's led me in some interesting paths. I started as

Richard Culatta 00:15:05
a teacher. I taught high school Spanish. I then went on and

Richard Culatta 00:15:08
taught pre service teachers, so teachers getting their

Richard Culatta 00:15:11
licensing, which I love. I'd be happy to still be doing that.

Richard Culatta 00:15:14
And a unique opportunity came out for me to come out to the

Richard Culatta 00:15:17
Washington, DC area and help do some work in government, and I

Richard Culatta 00:15:21
did that for a bit, and ended up being appointed by the White

Richard Culatta 00:15:24
House to serve as the Director of the Office of Education

Richard Culatta 00:15:27
Technology for the US Department of Ed I did some work on the

Richard Culatta 00:15:30
Hill too. So I sort of lived the policy world for a bit, also

Richard Culatta 00:15:34
something I never would have guessed that I would have done,

Richard Culatta 00:15:36
and then had a chance to go back to my home state of Rhode Island

Richard Culatta 00:15:39
and work as the Chief Innovation Officer for the State of Rhode

Richard Culatta 00:15:42
Island for a bit, which, again, was fascinating to have that

Richard Culatta 00:15:45
federal experience and then State experience. But all that

Richard Culatta 00:15:48
time, you know, Mike core wanted to be back in the education

Richard Culatta 00:15:52
world, more directly in the education world, and so when the

Richard Culatta 00:15:55
opportunity came up to come join ISTE, an organization that I'd

Richard Culatta 00:15:58
been a member of back from when I was a teacher, I jumped at the

Richard Culatta 00:16:01
chance, and that's where, where I've been ever since. And then,

Richard Culatta 00:16:03
obviously, recently, now it's merged into this new combined

Richard Culatta 00:16:06
organization.

Christina Lewellen 00:16:07
When you came into your role at ISTE, you

Christina Lewellen 00:16:10
know, when I came into my role at Atlas, one of the first

Christina Lewellen 00:16:13
organizations I heard about was ISTE, and I think a lot of our

Christina Lewellen 00:16:15
tech leaders on the Independent School side tend to love ISTE

Christina Lewellen 00:16:20
because of that experiment on the floor situation that you've

Christina Lewellen 00:16:25
designed, which is that they can go and check things out without

Christina Lewellen 00:16:28
a lot of obligation, and get a lot of great ideas to bring back

Christina Lewellen 00:16:32
to their schools. Over time, we have found opportunities to work

Christina Lewellen 00:16:36
together, and really it's been so incredible of ISTE to welcome

Christina Lewellen 00:16:40
Atlas into the fold, because we're much, much smaller, and we

Christina Lewellen 00:16:44
represent just one piece of the educational pie. But we had you

Christina Lewellen 00:16:47
come over to our event in Orlando, as we were all scraping

Christina Lewellen 00:16:51
our way out of the pandemic, and you joined us, and you were a

Christina Lewellen 00:16:54
main stage speaker at the Atlas event. They loved having you.

Christina Lewellen 00:16:58
Loved hearing about your perspective on the world, and

Christina Lewellen 00:17:02
that was even before AI became a part of the conversation, just

Christina Lewellen 00:17:05
talking about what is going on with technology in education

Christina Lewellen 00:17:10
today? I know that's a huge question, but you probably get

Christina Lewellen 00:17:13
it a lot. So what do you think of technology today in

Christina Lewellen 00:17:17
education, and how has it changed since you were teaching

Christina Lewellen 00:17:20
Spanish all those years ago. Well,

Richard Culatta 00:17:22
back when I was teaching Spanish, many years

Richard Culatta 00:17:24
ago, at one point, I did something really, really crazy,

Richard Culatta 00:17:28
which is, I made a video, I brought it in, and we used

Richard Culatta 00:17:32
videos to explain some key concepts. And it was like, Wow.

Richard Culatta 00:17:36
You know, just in case anybody's wondering how old I am, but

Richard Culatta 00:17:39
we're at a really interesting crossroads right now, I think.

Richard Culatta 00:17:42
And actually, I think back to some of the things that we

Richard Culatta 00:17:44
talked about when I visited your event not that long ago. We were

Richard Culatta 00:17:48
talking about, how do we create healthy conditions for tech use

Richard Culatta 00:17:51
in schools? In fact, we created a guide, a joint guide, with

Richard Culatta 00:17:54
ISTE Atlas and cousin around how to help create healthy

Richard Culatta 00:17:58
conditions for tech use. That was before. I don't think any of

Richard Culatta 00:18:01
us in our crystal balls could see this whole cell phone in

Richard Culatta 00:18:04
schools thing blowing up the way it has, right? It's like the

Richard Culatta 00:18:07
only thing that we can talk about, other than AI. So as I

Richard Culatta 00:18:09
look today, we have an interesting situation, which is

Richard Culatta 00:18:13
one where we have unprecedented amounts of technical

Richard Culatta 00:18:16
infrastructure. It was the digital infrastructure that I

Richard Culatta 00:18:19
dreamed I would have had back when I was teaching, and never

Richard Culatta 00:18:22
could have even imagined that we would have been in a world that

Richard Culatta 00:18:25
not only would every kid have a device, but they would have

Richard Culatta 00:18:28
multiple devices, at least one from the school, probably two

Richard Culatta 00:18:31
from home, right in many cases. I think what we are seeing,

Richard Culatta 00:18:34
though, is in the rush to improve infrastructure, which

Richard Culatta 00:18:38
was largely accelerated by COVID, by the way, and it's hard

Richard Culatta 00:18:41
to think of a silver lining coming from COVID. But if there

Richard Culatta 00:18:43
was any silver lining, having some attention drawn to the fact

Richard Culatta 00:18:46
that we needed better infrastructure was something

Richard Culatta 00:18:48
that came out of it. But in the rush to do that, we moved faster

Richard Culatta 00:18:51
with infrastructure than we did with conditions for healthy use,

Richard Culatta 00:18:56
and we're feeling the backlash of that now. I think, though, I

Richard Culatta 00:19:00
would say my worry is there is a movement, and it's a powerful

Richard Culatta 00:19:05
movement that says, whoa. The way to solve this is pull all

Richard Culatta 00:19:08
that tech back out, shut down all those devices, turn off the

Richard Culatta 00:19:11
networks, right? And that, unfortunately, does not help set

Richard Culatta 00:19:16
up our kids today for success in their future, learning or life,

Richard Culatta 00:19:21
and so we have to do is get ahead of that narrative and say,

Richard Culatta 00:19:24
Wait a minute. Yes, we know there are a whole host of

Richard Culatta 00:19:27
digital dysfunctions that we have created that we've allowed

Richard Culatta 00:19:30
to be created because we haven't provided enough structure and

Richard Culatta 00:19:33
context around helping our kids be smart users of technology.

Richard Culatta 00:19:36
But the way to fix that is not to ban access to technology. The

Richard Culatta 00:19:40
way to fix that is have those conversations. Talk about what

Richard Culatta 00:19:44
appropriate use is. Talk about what it means to use technology

Richard Culatta 00:19:48
for good. Talk about what it means when technology becomes a

Richard Culatta 00:19:51
distraction and really help build those great digital

Richard Culatta 00:19:54
citizens that we need to be our future leaders. Yeah,

Christina Lewellen 00:19:57
and so Bill and Hiram my. Co hosts here are

Christina Lewellen 00:20:01
both former educators who moved into their Chief Technology

Christina Lewellen 00:20:05
Strategist role at their schools, and so we talk about

Christina Lewellen 00:20:09
these issues a lot. One of the things that I know that the guys

Christina Lewellen 00:20:12
are most excited about and have actually helped on the Atlas

Christina Lewellen 00:20:16
side be advocates for, is the product index, because another

Christina Lewellen 00:20:20
piece of this puzzle is sorting all of that with all of these

Christina Lewellen 00:20:23
vendors and making sure that we understand our cyber risk and

Christina Lewellen 00:20:26
making sure that we're protecting our young people's

Christina Lewellen 00:20:29
data. And so there's also those issues too. So not just the cell

Christina Lewellen 00:20:33
phone bans, it's just more complex. We talk about it all

Christina Lewellen 00:20:36
the time, and I know that I'm beating the guys to the punch,

Christina Lewellen 00:20:39
but my question lies in we often talk about how schools are even

Christina Lewellen 00:20:43
more complex than businesses and enterprise, because you're

Christina Lewellen 00:20:47
dealing with young humans and you're dealing with adults in

Christina Lewellen 00:20:50
different roles. So when it comes to some of those safety

Christina Lewellen 00:20:53
issues, what some of the work that you guys are thinking

Christina Lewellen 00:20:55
about? You know, obviously it's great to have technology

Christina Lewellen 00:20:58
amplifying education, but then there's also these concerns that

Christina Lewellen 00:21:00
we need to kind of keep our hands around.

Richard Culatta 00:21:03
Yeah, by the way, that is such an important

Richard Culatta 00:21:05
point, I think, is that in businesses, in companies, in

Richard Culatta 00:21:09
even higher education, you're essentially creating structure,

Richard Culatta 00:21:13
policy strategies for adults, and you can kind of group them

Richard Culatta 00:21:17
all in one category, right? In schools, you don't get to do

Richard Culatta 00:21:20
that. And it's not even two categories, not adults and kids,

Richard Culatta 00:21:23
because a kindergartner is in a very different situation than a

Richard Culatta 00:21:27
middle school student or a high school student. And so even

Richard Culatta 00:21:30
policies, you know, we talk about creating healthy digital

Richard Culatta 00:21:33
use policies, you can't have one of those and expect that it will

Richard Culatta 00:21:36
apply to an entire range of students, right? We have to be

Richard Culatta 00:21:39
able to be thinking at different levels, what does privacy look

Richard Culatta 00:21:42
like? It's again, very different for kindergartner than for a

Richard Culatta 00:21:45
junior in high school. What does access look like? And so yes, it

Richard Culatta 00:21:49
is very complex. I did want to just circle back you mentioned

Richard Culatta 00:21:52
something this product index, which I'm really excited about.

Richard Culatta 00:21:55
Excited to be working with Atlas on it and several other amazing

Richard Culatta 00:21:58
partners. And you know, what we basically found is there wasn't

Richard Culatta 00:22:02
a good central place that anybody could go to to see how

Richard Culatta 00:22:08
individual ed tech products lined up with any sort of review

Richard Culatta 00:22:13
or validation. Is the term that I use right right now, if you

Richard Culatta 00:22:16
want to see, hey, is this particular product, whatever it

Richard Culatta 00:22:19
is? Is it accessible? Does it meet privacy requirements? Does

Richard Culatta 00:22:23
it meet basic pedagogy requirements? You'd have to go

Richard Culatta 00:22:25
to eight different places. We did some research and found that

Richard Culatta 00:22:29
schools, on average, spend around 40,000 hours, 40,000

Richard Culatta 00:22:33
hours reviewing apps to know if they can be put in front of

Richard Culatta 00:22:37
kids. That is an enormous amount of time that should be instead,

Richard Culatta 00:22:41
put towards helping kids in all kinds of other ways, or, if

Richard Culatta 00:22:43
you're adults in the system, helping support your teachers

Richard Culatta 00:22:45
better, right? Not reviewing apps. So what we're trying to

Richard Culatta 00:22:48
do, and it's a big lift, but we're excited to be working on

Richard Culatta 00:22:50
it with you, which is create this thing called the product

Richard Culatta 00:22:53
index, and say, here's all of the products that we're aware

Richard Culatta 00:22:56
of, any that we find, and we assign them a number. It's like

Richard Culatta 00:22:59
an ISBN number, right? But it's for a learning product and a

Richard Culatta 00:23:02
digital product. And then anybody who has made a

Richard Culatta 00:23:06
validation on that product, it doesn't have to be just ISTE.

Richard Culatta 00:23:09
Doesn't have to be just Atlas. But if there's an organization

Richard Culatta 00:23:12
that says, Hey, we are an expert on accessibility, we've reviewed

Richard Culatta 00:23:15
that product, and we can tell you, here's its good parts,

Richard Culatta 00:23:18
here's where it might be struggling, we will list that on

Richard Culatta 00:23:20
the product index. And so the hope is that we can at least cut

Richard Culatta 00:23:24
down some of that 40,000 hours and give some time back to

Richard Culatta 00:23:27
schools by offloading some of that review, some of the

Richard Culatta 00:23:31
validation of products, to others, which

Christina Lewellen 00:23:33
is so valuable to the Independent

Christina Lewellen 00:23:36
School world too, especially for our smaller schools or less

Christina Lewellen 00:23:39
resource schools that maybe have a lone ranger tech department,

Christina Lewellen 00:23:42
and they're trying to keep up with all these privacy policies

Christina Lewellen 00:23:45
and interoperability issues, and so having the product index,

Christina Lewellen 00:23:49
what we're trying to do at Atlas is encourage vendors in the

Christina Lewellen 00:23:54
Independent School community to get into that index, get listed,

Christina Lewellen 00:23:59
follow the steps, work With the ISTE team, the ED search team,

Christina Lewellen 00:24:02
to get the product listed. That makes it easier for our user

Christina Lewellen 00:24:06
community to then go and find independent school resources, or

Christina Lewellen 00:24:10
just ed tech resources in general, for school. But if

Christina Lewellen 00:24:13
there's independent school specific products or tools, S is

Christina Lewellen 00:24:18
for example, we're wanting to make sure that those are listed

Christina Lewellen 00:24:20
there so that our independent schools can get the benefit of

Christina Lewellen 00:24:23
it as well. Bill and Hiram are huge advocates.

Richard Culatta 00:24:26
Yeah, yeah. And just in case, if we have some

Richard Culatta 00:24:27
companies that might be listening to this, some product

Richard Culatta 00:24:30
developers, we don't charge for that, you can list for free if

Richard Culatta 00:24:33
you want to have your product reviewed and validated. There

Richard Culatta 00:24:35
are ways that we can do that, and there are some minimal

Richard Culatta 00:24:37
charges for that. But to be listed, we're not charging. We

Richard Culatta 00:24:40
want people to get in, get their product listed, so it's easy.

Richard Culatta 00:24:42
Listed, so it's easier for schools to be able to find the

Richard Culatta 00:24:45
right tools and apps.

Bill Stites 00:24:46
This is something that Hiram and I are going back

Bill Stites 00:24:48
and forth on. I mean, I've got probably three emails in my

Bill Stites 00:24:52
inbox right now from Hiram going back and forth on these types of

Bill Stites 00:24:55
issues. But again, I alluded to the conversation I was having

Bill Stites 00:24:58
with a colleague this morning and this. Came up at that point

Bill Stites 00:25:01
as well, because we were looking at a product, we were looking at

Bill Stites 00:25:05
a tool that we were using to help evaluate that product. And

Bill Stites 00:25:09
one of the things that I looked at, and this is a question that

Bill Stites 00:25:12
I have, because on certain pieces, you know, you might

Bill Stites 00:25:16
evaluate something, and there's one version of it to evaluate,

Bill Stites 00:25:20
but I think where we get caught is that there is, and this is, I

Bill Stites 00:25:24
think, partially a result of COVID. We've mentioned this

Bill Stites 00:25:27
before, is that there is the free version of something, and

Bill Stites 00:25:30
then there is the paid version of something. And when I was

Bill Stites 00:25:34
using the tool that I was looking at, there wasn't a

Bill Stites 00:25:38
distinction as to what version of that they were evaluating,

Bill Stites 00:25:43
because there were literally three tiers to this product, and

Bill Stites 00:25:48
each tier offered different levels of data protection. They

Bill Stites 00:25:52
offer different levels of other types of services. So when

Bill Stites 00:25:57
you're using the product index that you have now, how is it

Bill Stites 00:26:01
evaluating those tools, and is it making those distinctions

Bill Stites 00:26:05
from that freemium version of it, where you're paying with

Bill Stites 00:26:08
social capital, or the ones where you're actually entering

Bill Stites 00:26:12
into a financial arrangement? I specifically avoided the word

Bill Stites 00:26:17
contract, because even the free ones, you're entering into a

Bill Stites 00:26:20
contract with these people. How are you approaching those types

Bill Stites 00:26:23
of tools? Because those are the ones that come us at us from the

Bill Stites 00:26:27
faculty, more so than some of these other ones that are just

Bill Stites 00:26:30
kind of box products.

Richard Culatta 00:26:32
Yeah, great question. And I really like your

Richard Culatta 00:26:34
distinction there. There really aren't tools that are free,

Richard Culatta 00:26:38
especially if you consider the value of data. So if you are

Richard Culatta 00:26:41
putting data from your school into a system, there is value

Richard Culatta 00:26:44
being exchanged there. So nothing is free. Sometimes it

Richard Culatta 00:26:47
might involve a transfer of currency. But, you know, I think

Richard Culatta 00:26:50
your point is really a good one, and it's tricky. Instead of

Richard Culatta 00:26:53
giving you a really good answer, I'm going to actually complicate

Richard Culatta 00:26:56
it even more by the fact that not only do we have the sort of

Richard Culatta 00:26:59
the freemium version, or a plus version, or whatever. And we do

Richard Culatta 00:27:02
try to indicate that whenever we can on the index. But it's even

Richard Culatta 00:27:05
more tricky, because, you know, back in the day, right? It was

Richard Culatta 00:27:08
very clear what version of a particular piece of software you

Richard Culatta 00:27:11
were on, you know, it's 13.5 and we'd upgrade to 13.6 right? And

Richard Culatta 00:27:15
so much of the software that we use in the education space

Richard Culatta 00:27:19
doesn't even have versions, right? It's just being

Richard Culatta 00:27:21
constantly, iteratively updated, which, on some ways, is a good

Richard Culatta 00:27:23
thing. It makes it even harder, though, to be able to evaluate

Richard Culatta 00:27:27
and it's part of why traditional research sort of these long,

Richard Culatta 00:27:31
random control tile, you know, three year RCT style studies

Richard Culatta 00:27:35
just don't work in the digital space. One of the ways that we

Richard Culatta 00:27:39
try to do that is with the validations that we issue on

Richard Culatta 00:27:43
products. They have a life cycle, and so after a certain

Richard Culatta 00:27:47
amount of time, I think it's three years, a product has to be

Richard Culatta 00:27:51
re upped, as if they come back, and they have to be re evaluated

Richard Culatta 00:27:54
to see if those elements that were evaluated the first time

Richard Culatta 00:27:58
either are still there, or if they've improved, or in some

Richard Culatta 00:28:00
cases, if they now are not meeting the criteria, we would

Richard Culatta 00:28:03
be able to state that. And so that's sort of our crude method

Richard Culatta 00:28:06
right now, is just to say, Hey, you don't get a ones, and then

Richard Culatta 00:28:08
you're good for the rest of your life. But I'm sure there are

Richard Culatta 00:28:10
better ways and other ways that we could be thinking that. And

Richard Culatta 00:28:13
so maybe an invitation to your members and others that are

Richard Culatta 00:28:15
listening to that is if you can think of ways that would be

Richard Culatta 00:28:18
better without being too onerous, right? It's hard. If it

Richard Culatta 00:28:20
becomes too onerous on the developers, and they're like,

Richard Culatta 00:28:23
Ah, we're out. We're not going to participate. So how can we

Richard Culatta 00:28:25
make it easy but still make sure it's clear you know when and

Richard Culatta 00:28:29
where a validation has been done. So any feedback that you

Richard Culatta 00:28:32
have, or others have, I'd love to hear, Richard.

Hiram Cuevas 00:28:35
I love the fact that you are working hard to try

Hiram Cuevas 00:28:38
and streamline it and make it as easy as possible. I will tell

Hiram Cuevas 00:28:41
you right now I've already benefited from the time savings

Hiram Cuevas 00:28:45
because I've also provided this information to our instructional

Hiram Cuevas 00:28:49
text, because they get questions about software from the

Hiram Cuevas 00:28:52
trenches, and they're very interested in trying to support

Hiram Cuevas 00:28:55
their folks. And now it kind of takes the first level or layer

Hiram Cuevas 00:28:59
of the review out of my desk and places it with the instructional

Hiram Cuevas 00:29:03
text to provide them the agency to say, Okay, I've reviewed

Hiram Cuevas 00:29:06
these things. These are the gotchas that you got to wonder

Hiram Cuevas 00:29:08
about. And if we need to pass this on to the next level, I can

Hiram Cuevas 00:29:12
then review it. And so much of it is educating your faculty

Hiram Cuevas 00:29:17
about the nuances associated with terms of service. The other

Hiram Cuevas 00:29:22
issue is the terms for the AI learning of the bot itself,

Hiram Cuevas 00:29:27
because so often you have to look carefully that they are not

Hiram Cuevas 00:29:31
training the machine with your information from your particular

Hiram Cuevas 00:29:34
school. And this is where Bill and I have had the conversation

Hiram Cuevas 00:29:36
of using AI to leverage the terms of service than

Hiram Cuevas 00:29:41
demonstrating to our faculty are these are the points that AI has

Hiram Cuevas 00:29:43
said are problematic with this particular application that you

Hiram Cuevas 00:29:48
need to be cognizant of. This application leaves its site and

Hiram Cuevas 00:29:51
goes to other third parties, which now means you need to look

Hiram Cuevas 00:29:55
and review at all those terms of services for each and every one

Hiram Cuevas 00:29:58
of those third party apps that they. Connect to thank you.

Hiram Cuevas 00:30:01
First of all, you've been a huge help to us, along with the other

Hiram Cuevas 00:30:05
partners that we are utilizing, and it's really an important

Hiram Cuevas 00:30:08
part to our tool kit.

Richard Culatta 00:30:09
Yeah, thanks. I appreciate that. And you bring

Richard Culatta 00:30:11
up some of the complexities here, right? Miraculously, we've

Richard Culatta 00:30:14
been talking for, you know, 15 minutes and haven't brought up

Richard Culatta 00:30:16
AI yet. But Hiram, your point is, AI adds a bunch of

Richard Culatta 00:30:19
complexities too. One of the things that I worry about is I

Richard Culatta 00:30:21
visit schools and I'll hear somebody say, Hey, don't put any

Richard Culatta 00:30:24
data into AI because it will be taking all of your data. I'm

Richard Culatta 00:30:27
like, Well, wait a minute, that's not necessarily true. And

Richard Culatta 00:30:29
then on the flip side, right? And it's done with good intent,

Richard Culatta 00:30:32
right? But like at our team here, we have AI tools that we

Richard Culatta 00:30:35
use that we have licensed, and part of the license is that our

Richard Culatta 00:30:38
data stays protected. But that doesn't mean that doesn't mean

Richard Culatta 00:30:40
that you could then just go grab another tool off the internet

Richard Culatta 00:30:43
and use it and have the data be protected. You all know this,

Richard Culatta 00:30:45
but trying to take something that's complex and nuanced and

Richard Culatta 00:30:48
simplify it enough is just a tough challenge, and I think we

Richard Culatta 00:30:52
all need to keep our heads in this game and be constantly

Richard Culatta 00:30:54
thinking, how can we make this easier for educators to

Richard Culatta 00:30:59
understand and make sense of when, when they aren't tech

Richard Culatta 00:31:01
experts, and they shouldn't have to be in order to be able to get

Richard Culatta 00:31:04
a fairly simple answer on is this tool, one that I can use

Richard Culatta 00:31:07
safely in my classroom.

Hiram Cuevas 00:31:08
And the interesting piece there is that

Hiram Cuevas 00:31:10
all of these applications are now introducing AI, and that's

Hiram Cuevas 00:31:14
another layer that you now have to not only review it initially,

Hiram Cuevas 00:31:17
but it's now a new version because of that AI.

Christina Lewellen 00:31:20
So Richard, you authored a book that is

Christina Lewellen 00:31:23
really popular in our community. I always have a copy nearby as

Christina Lewellen 00:31:26
well. It's called Digital for good, raising kids to thrive in

Christina Lewellen 00:31:29
an online world. And you wrote this a few years back. I'm

Christina Lewellen 00:31:33
curious now, if you think that you would include any thing else

Christina Lewellen 00:31:38
in it, if you were to go back to press, are there pieces of the

Christina Lewellen 00:31:40
puzzle that you understand a little differently now, given

Christina Lewellen 00:31:43
that AI has sort of burst onto the

Richard Culatta 00:31:45
scene, you know, it's interesting you asked

Richard Culatta 00:31:47
that question, because I do think about that. The good part

Richard Culatta 00:31:50
is, I actually think the framework, the principles that I

Richard Culatta 00:31:53
present there, and if you're not familiar with the book, there

Richard Culatta 00:31:55
are five key principles that I present around helping young

Richard Culatta 00:31:59
people become healthy digital citizens. How to have good

Richard Culatta 00:32:02
digital well being is a term that I like to use. And those I

Richard Culatta 00:32:04
wouldn't change at all. I think they are spot on, and I think

Richard Culatta 00:32:08
the concepts underlying them really make sense. What is

Richard Culatta 00:32:10
interesting, though, is to see how the world has shifted

Richard Culatta 00:32:15
because of AI. And I do talk about AI in the book, because

Richard Culatta 00:32:18
that was something that was clearly, you know, could see

Richard Culatta 00:32:20
that coming even before the major explosion, but I think

Richard Culatta 00:32:23
it's accelerated some of the concepts that I bring up. So for

Richard Culatta 00:32:26
example, one of the things that I talk about is this sort of

Richard Culatta 00:32:29
binary of this information is good or bad, right? Or this

Richard Culatta 00:32:32
information. And one of the things I talk about the book is

Richard Culatta 00:32:34
it's not that simple. Most of the book is just saying, hey,

Richard Culatta 00:32:36
it's not that simple, right? So one of the things I say is,

Richard Culatta 00:32:39
there can be information that is biased, but if the purpose is to

Richard Culatta 00:32:44
be persuasive, if it's to provide a persuasive argument

Richard Culatta 00:32:47
that might be very appropriate to hear a viewpoint, it would be

Richard Culatta 00:32:51
totally inappropriate to use that as a factual piece of media

Richard Culatta 00:32:55
if you were doing a different sort of assignment in school and

Richard Culatta 00:32:57
so helping young people understand the nuance of when do

Richard Culatta 00:33:00
I want Something that's opinion. When do I want something that's

Richard Culatta 00:33:03
fact? When is something that the purpose is advertising that has

Richard Culatta 00:33:06
all been complexified to make up a word with AI. And so I think

Richard Culatta 00:33:10
what I would say is, if I were to do anything else, if I were

Richard Culatta 00:33:12
to rewrite the book, I would just increase the level of

Richard Culatta 00:33:16
urgency that I would put behind having some of these

Richard Culatta 00:33:19
conversations that I suggest with kids, because it is moving

Richard Culatta 00:33:24
much faster, both for positive and negative, but you can get

Richard Culatta 00:33:27
answers much faster, but also you can get misled much faster.

Richard Culatta 00:33:31
And so I think really getting ahead of that matters. The one

Richard Culatta 00:33:34
thing that I've been pondering recently I would have another

Richard Culatta 00:33:37
chapter in the book, maybe on this, if I were to rewrite it,

Richard Culatta 00:33:40
is in the AI world, the value of answers becomes much less and

Richard Culatta 00:33:46
the value of questions becomes much greater. And I think that

Richard Culatta 00:33:51
has some major implications for our schools that we haven't

Richard Culatta 00:33:56
grappled with yet, right? And it doesn't mean that having an

Richard Culatta 00:33:59
answer isn't important, right? Air is much more important for

Richard Culatta 00:34:02
us than gold, but the value of gold is much greater because

Richard Culatta 00:34:05
it's rarer, right? And so in a world where answers are much

Richard Culatta 00:34:08
easier to come by, the value goes down. Questions,

Richard Culatta 00:34:11
interrogating, those answers, questioning, knowing how to make

Richard Culatta 00:34:15
a right question, that value goes way up. But our schools are

Richard Culatta 00:34:18
largely designed around valuing answers, not questions, and

Richard Culatta 00:34:22
that's something that we're going to have to really start to

Richard Culatta 00:34:24
grapple with over the next couple of years. It's

Bill Stites 00:34:27
interesting, because the question represents

Bill Stites 00:34:29
your ability to synthesize the answer, synthesize the content,

Bill Stites 00:34:34
hear what you're saying, and then engage in that dialog back.

Bill Stites 00:34:37
So it's that give and take is a great point. I mean, I literally

Bill Stites 00:34:40
wrote it down, yeah, in my notes, and I'm highlighting

Bill Stites 00:34:43
there's some like, that's spot on in a way that I really hadn't

Bill Stites 00:34:46
thought of before.

Richard Culatta 00:34:48
And, you know, think about that even just for

Richard Culatta 00:34:49
assessment alone, right? Almost all of our assessments are based

Richard Culatta 00:34:53
on here's a thing. Give me an answer, right? And, you know,

Richard Culatta 00:34:56
imagine what it starts to look like when we say, you. Here's a

Richard Culatta 00:35:00
scenario. What questions do you have about it? That's a far more

Richard Culatta 00:35:03
authentic assessment, but it's also not the sort of assessments

Richard Culatta 00:35:06
that we're preparing teachers now to be able to create and to

Richard Culatta 00:35:09
deliver. And so there's a lot of relearning that we're going to

Richard Culatta 00:35:12
have to be doing as we shift into this world. That leads me

Christina Lewellen 00:35:15
into something that I had planned to

Christina Lewellen 00:35:16
kind of ask you about something that I'm interested in, because

Christina Lewellen 00:35:19
I say often on the pod. You know that I have a daughter. My

Christina Lewellen 00:35:22
oldest daughter, is going to school to be an educator, and

Christina Lewellen 00:35:25
shockingly to me, they're not teaching her about AI in school.

Christina Lewellen 00:35:30
She's a junior, she's done practicum. She'll be in the

Christina Lewellen 00:35:33
classroom in a year and a half, teaching, and they're not

Christina Lewellen 00:35:37
talking to her at her school about AI tools about changing

Christina Lewellen 00:35:42
how we assess, really the scaffolding to know how to use

Christina Lewellen 00:35:46
AI for younger students. Just curious, what you think about

Christina Lewellen 00:35:50
that. Do we have to get going here? Folks like, do we need to

Christina Lewellen 00:35:53
get step in?

Richard Culatta 00:35:55
Yes, is the answer to that. Look, this is a

Richard Culatta 00:35:59
huge issue. One of the biggest concerns that I hear when I talk

Richard Culatta 00:36:04
to school leaders is the lack of adequate preparation for

Richard Culatta 00:36:10
incoming new teachers coming out of teacher education programs.

Richard Culatta 00:36:16
It's such a big deal actually that we started recently the

Richard Culatta 00:36:19
coalition of educator prep programs that also agree that

Richard Culatta 00:36:24
this is a problem, and we're working together to try to do

Richard Culatta 00:36:26
something about it. And so we've created this coalition of about

Richard Culatta 00:36:29
100 now teacher education institutions from around the

Richard Culatta 00:36:32
country, and we're coming together and saying, what do we

Richard Culatta 00:36:35
do to help really rethink the role of technology? AI, of

Richard Culatta 00:36:39
course, but it's beyond that in this group, in fact, just next

Richard Culatta 00:36:42
month, we're bringing all of those Deans together out in

Richard Culatta 00:36:45
Silicon Valley to sit down and say, and we're going to meet

Richard Culatta 00:36:48
with some of the top leaders from the AI world and just say,

Richard Culatta 00:36:52
How does this impact what you're doing? How do we think

Richard Culatta 00:36:54
differently about this? One thing that I'll share is that

Richard Culatta 00:36:57
all of the institutions that are part of this sign a pledge, an

Richard Culatta 00:37:00
agreement that they will actively build in key elements

Richard Culatta 00:37:05
of effective technologies to their curriculum for pre service

Richard Culatta 00:37:08
teachers, and they have to do work to help their faculty be

Richard Culatta 00:37:13
more prepared in order to deal with these issues. But I mean,

Richard Culatta 00:37:16
we are just getting started. This is a huge issue. There are

Richard Culatta 00:37:19
1000s of teacher preparation program just in the US alone,

Richard Culatta 00:37:23
and we have got to spend more time helping them get ready,

Richard Culatta 00:37:26
because the teachers that show up in the classroom today are

Richard Culatta 00:37:29
not coming with the depth of understanding that they need,

Richard Culatta 00:37:33
because their teacher prep programs have not built that

Richard Culatta 00:37:36
into the curriculum,

Christina Lewellen 00:37:37
right? And look no shade, right? Because

Christina Lewellen 00:37:39
there's tons of other stuff that has to get handled. So she's

Christina Lewellen 00:37:42
learning all the basics, and she's learning about the

Christina Lewellen 00:37:45
pedagogical foundation that she needs to have to be effective in

Christina Lewellen 00:37:49
the classroom. But it's interesting because it does put

Christina Lewellen 00:37:52
a lot of pressure on atlases technology leaders to have

Christina Lewellen 00:37:55
teachers coming into the classroom that really are just

Christina Lewellen 00:37:57
not grounded in the options. It puts a lot of pressure on our

Christina Lewellen 00:38:00
tech leaders to then get them caught up in a hurry, you know,

Christina Lewellen 00:38:04
in terms of what's possible in the world, and also what kind of

Christina Lewellen 00:38:06
graduates we're trying to send out into the world,

Richard Culatta 00:38:09
100% and if I could make it, maybe an

Richard Culatta 00:38:11
invitation back, which is if you are, particularly if it's a

Richard Culatta 00:38:15
school that is in an area where new teachers tend to come from

Richard Culatta 00:38:18
one or two institutions, right? And you know, I realize,

Richard Culatta 00:38:20
especially if it's a smaller independent school, you're not

Richard Culatta 00:38:23
hiring 2030 teachers. You may be having two or three teachers,

Richard Culatta 00:38:27
but even if it's two or three teachers, and you're finding

Richard Culatta 00:38:30
that they have some skills gap, particularly around how they're

Richard Culatta 00:38:34
using technology, please communicate that back to those

Richard Culatta 00:38:37
higher ed institutions. One of the things that we found as we

Richard Culatta 00:38:39
were working with these EPP programs, they were saying we

Richard Culatta 00:38:41
aren't hearing any problems. And we went, are you kidding? And so

Richard Culatta 00:38:45
we started facilitating conversation going back, and

Richard Culatta 00:38:47
they're like, well, like, you know, I think there wasn't an

Richard Culatta 00:38:50
awareness of how far the gap had gotten. And so just in a nice,

Richard Culatta 00:38:53
like you said, Christina, in a supportive way, we're not

Richard Culatta 00:38:55
throwing anybody into the bus, but a nice we just say, Hey dear

Richard Culatta 00:38:58
so and so, head of the Dean of such and such school. Just

Richard Culatta 00:39:01
giving you a heads up that we love hiring your students, but

Richard Culatta 00:39:04
they are showing up without the expertise that we need in these

Richard Culatta 00:39:07
areas. If there's anything we can do to help you, please let

Richard Culatta 00:39:09
us know. And just keeping that on their radar, I think, is

Richard Culatta 00:39:12
really, really important.

Bill Stites 00:39:13
I think that's a great shout out for the merger

Bill Stites 00:39:16
of the two organizations, because I think it takes the

Bill Stites 00:39:20
idea of putting those curricular leaders and connecting them on

Bill Stites 00:39:24
the IT side of things. My degree is in early childhood Ed. You

Bill Stites 00:39:27
know, I think I had one computer class, and it was in college and

Bill Stites 00:39:30
it was in the stone age, but there was one course on that,

Bill Stites 00:39:34
but it was not really focused on anything that had to do with

Bill Stites 00:39:39
pedagogy, as Christina saying there wasn't any connection to

Bill Stites 00:39:42
it at that point. Granted, it was harder back. You know, this

Bill Stites 00:39:45
is late 80s, early 90s that I'm talking about here, so the

Bill Stites 00:39:47
connections weren't as evident. But again, it's one of those

Bill Stites 00:39:50
things that continue, and I think the merger brings the two

Bill Stites 00:39:54
of those things closer together, because it puts them both in the

Bill Stites 00:39:57
same conversation. Because organizations. Nationally, those

Bill Stites 00:40:00
two groups are now one in the same so I think that's fabulous.

Bill Stites 00:40:04
The question that I do have to follow up on the topic of the

Bill Stites 00:40:08
book and the idea of raising kids, and talking about where

Bill Stites 00:40:14
schools fit into that, when we talk about everything that

Bill Stites 00:40:18
people put upon schools in terms of educating our children and

Bill Stites 00:40:22
raising our children. Where do the parents fall in this mix?

Bill Stites 00:40:26
Where do we as adults with these kids outside of the classroom

Bill Stites 00:40:30
fall into that mix? And we've talked about this before, in

Bill Stites 00:40:33
terms of our own modeling of the use of technology and how we're

Bill Stites 00:40:37
going about doing it. Where do you see that distinction, like,

Bill Stites 00:40:43
Where can we let the school off the hook a little bit here, and

Bill Stites 00:40:46
say that this is not something that institutions are going to

Bill Stites 00:40:49
be able to solve on their own? What are the parental

Bill Stites 00:40:52
responsibilities here?

Richard Culatta 00:40:53
Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for asking

Richard Culatta 00:40:55
that question. I really appreciate that. So I have a

Richard Culatta 00:40:57
chapter in the book that's called Digital well being is a

Richard Culatta 00:41:00
team sport, and the whole purpose of that is to make this

Richard Culatta 00:41:04
point that you're making, which is, this is not something that

Richard Culatta 00:41:06
schools can do on their own. And one of the things that we really

Richard Culatta 00:41:09
need to be clear about is that we see in schools that do this

Richard Culatta 00:41:12
really well, where we visit schools and you're not having

Richard Culatta 00:41:14
cell phone issues or having good technology use, what you notice

Richard Culatta 00:41:18
is that there are principles that are reinforced at home and

Richard Culatta 00:41:22
principles that are aligned similar language that are

Richard Culatta 00:41:24
reinforced at school, and both help each other, because parents

Richard Culatta 00:41:27
will say the same thing, by the way, they'll be like, well, if

Richard Culatta 00:41:29
kids go to school and there's no structure around this, how hard

Richard Culatta 00:41:31
is it for me to create structure at home, right? And it's this

Richard Culatta 00:41:34
tension. What My recommendation is, and I think this is really

Richard Culatta 00:41:37
critical, is schools can help parents provide some structure,

Richard Culatta 00:41:40
they should not determine what their conditions for tech use

Richard Culatta 00:41:44
are at home. That's a parent's job. It's a family's role. But

Richard Culatta 00:41:47
some basic guidelines can be very helpful. Parents we know

Richard Culatta 00:41:50
trust their schools, and so when they go to their school, and if

Richard Culatta 00:41:53
the school says, hey, here are some of our principles for

Richard Culatta 00:41:56
healthy tech use, and it can't be written in some legal

Richard Culatta 00:41:59
language that nobody understands right? Plain language, right?

Richard Culatta 00:42:02
And by the way, also, please watch out for the positive

Richard Culatta 00:42:05
versus the negative. It's like, here's a list of all the things

Richard Culatta 00:42:07
you should never do with technology that's not very

Richard Culatta 00:42:09
helpful because you can't practice not doing something. So

Richard Culatta 00:42:12
if the school says, Here are some core principles, we use

Richard Culatta 00:42:15
technology to help encourage curiosity. We use technology to

Richard Culatta 00:42:19
help make other people feel welcome and involved. We use

Richard Culatta 00:42:23
technology to help make our community a better place. We use

Richard Culatta 00:42:27
technology to fact check, right? We use technology to engage with

Richard Culatta 00:42:31
people that we know and trust, particularly if it's with

Richard Culatta 00:42:34
younger kids. You want to work some of that in. If you just

Richard Culatta 00:42:36
provide some of those guidance to parents and say, here's our

Richard Culatta 00:42:39
conditions at school, how could you have some conversations at

Richard Culatta 00:42:42
home to mirror some of those? And when you do that, what we

Richard Culatta 00:42:46
see is that parents often are willing to pick up and run with

Richard Culatta 00:42:49
that role. They just haven't been given enough of a framework

Richard Culatta 00:42:53
structure to know how to start those conversations. And there's

Richard Culatta 00:42:56
a lot of misinformation out there on the interwebs about

Richard Culatta 00:42:58
this. And so a lot of parents think they're doing the right

Richard Culatta 00:43:00
thing, they go, I said an hour, two hours, and my kid has two

Richard Culatta 00:43:04
hours of screen time every day, and you're like, really, what

Richard Culatta 00:43:06
are they doing? I don't know, but it's two hours aren doing

Richard Culatta 00:43:08
the right thing. You're like, Nope, you're not, because there

Richard Culatta 00:43:10
are some things that they shouldn't be spending five

Richard Culatta 00:43:12
minutes doing, and other things that you could probably spend

Richard Culatta 00:43:14
even longer than that. And so just helping redirect the parent

Richard Culatta 00:43:17
energy with some context can be really helpful in actually

Richard Culatta 00:43:21
taking some of that burden off of the schools because the home

Richard Culatta 00:43:24
can support it. Richard,

Hiram Cuevas 00:43:25
I'm so glad you mentioned that partnership,

Hiram Cuevas 00:43:27
because it's just another chapter in the parents

Hiram Cuevas 00:43:31
experience about at risk behaviors that they're going to

Hiram Cuevas 00:43:34
have to deal with with their children at a very young age.

Hiram Cuevas 00:43:37
You're talking about drugs and alcohol, then you might be

Hiram Cuevas 00:43:40
talking about fast driving and staying out late, and what games

Hiram Cuevas 00:43:43
you're playing online, and this is just another piece to that

Hiram Cuevas 00:43:48
puzzle, and the ongoing conversations are absolutely

Hiram Cuevas 00:43:51
essential, and you're right, the best schools have that

Hiram Cuevas 00:43:54
partnership with parents, and they really have developed great

Hiram Cuevas 00:43:58
relationships with the parents associations, and that can

Hiram Cuevas 00:44:02
really carry that message out to the broader community.

Richard Culatta 00:44:06
And Hiram, I think this is such a great

Richard Culatta 00:44:08
point, because parents in other areas generally do a pretty good

Richard Culatta 00:44:12
job, right? Yeah, we all have our faults. I have four kids.

Richard Culatta 00:44:16
There's lots of things I haven't done right, but generally we do

Richard Culatta 00:44:18
okay. And so I find that often, if we can compare digital well

Richard Culatta 00:44:22
being to other areas, it also helps lower the burden. So

Richard Culatta 00:44:26
here's one that I often use. You know, I talk to parents, they

Richard Culatta 00:44:28
say, Who's responsible for helping their kids be healthy

Richard Culatta 00:44:31
eaters food well being. We'll just call it that, right? Do you

Richard Culatta 00:44:34
have food time? Do you come in and set a clock and say you can

Richard Culatta 00:44:37
eat whatever you want for an hour? You can eat Twinkies for

Richard Culatta 00:44:40
an hour, but as long as the clock, you'd stop it. No, of

Richard Culatta 00:44:42
course, you don't. You talk about there are some foods that

Richard Culatta 00:44:45
have, what is it more value than others? There's broccoli and

Richard Culatta 00:44:49
chicken, and then there's Twinkies and Doritos. And it

Richard Culatta 00:44:51
doesn't mean we can't ever eat a Twinkie or a Dorito but, boy, we

Richard Culatta 00:44:55
better have balance. And when do we know when we're done eating?

Richard Culatta 00:44:58
Is it because the timer goes off? Or is it because we

Richard Culatta 00:45:00
recognize that we're feeling full, right? If we talk about

Richard Culatta 00:45:03
how parents can do that in other areas, they go, oh, yeah, look,

Richard Culatta 00:45:06
it's the same thing. We're just applying it to our digital diet

Richard Culatta 00:45:10
as opposed to our food diet.

Christina Lewellen 00:45:12
That is a fantastic analogy. I don't think

Christina Lewellen 00:45:15
anyone will forget that absolutely. So let me ask you,

Christina Lewellen 00:45:18
Richard, I'm curious, what AI tools are you using regularly?

Christina Lewellen 00:45:23
What kind of captures your curiosity? Right now, I use

Richard Culatta 00:45:28
every AI tool I can get my hands on. I think

Richard Culatta 00:45:30
that's actually really important, as an education

Richard Culatta 00:45:32
leader, that we are testing out a lot of these tools so we can

Richard Culatta 00:45:34
see what's impressive. You know, I love when we're like, Wow, I

Richard Culatta 00:45:38
can't believe how cool that is. And then also I'm like, That's

Richard Culatta 00:45:40
it, right? I think that's important. I really love some of

Richard Culatta 00:45:44
the image generating tools. I think a lot of times when we

Richard Culatta 00:45:47
think about AI, we think about text, but I do a lot of

Richard Culatta 00:45:50
presenting and teaching, and when I do, I generate all of the

Richard Culatta 00:45:53
images using AI, because you can just get these really awesome,

Richard Culatta 00:45:57
creative visualizations that you can't get other ways. Recently,

Richard Culatta 00:46:00
I've been playing with a tool called pika, which is or pika, I

Richard Culatta 00:46:03
guess, a tool that creates video, generates AI video,

Richard Culatta 00:46:05
amazing. It's just mind blowing. And then I've been trying to

Richard Culatta 00:46:09
push myself to use some of the text based tools in ways that

Richard Culatta 00:46:14
are pushing their bounds a bit more. I worry that sometimes we

Richard Culatta 00:46:18
slip into using AI like just a search engine, right? Just give

Richard Culatta 00:46:22
me your answer. Hey, can give answers? Yeah, it's okay. It's

Richard Culatta 00:46:25
far better when you push the limits on it. So one that I do

Richard Culatta 00:46:28
is often when I'm presenting and I'll have a big number, right, a

Richard Culatta 00:46:30
number that's hard to comprehend, how many 1000s of

Richard Culatta 00:46:33
hours schools use reviewing apps, right? And so one of the

Richard Culatta 00:46:36
things that I'll do is I'll go into AI and say, Hey, give me

Richard Culatta 00:46:38
some analogies to help think about how to convey a big number

Richard Culatta 00:46:42
or a large concept. AI is great at coming up with analogies, so

Richard Culatta 00:46:46
that's a way that it helps me be able to communicate better. I

Richard Culatta 00:46:50
also think it's really interesting to use AI as a

Richard Culatta 00:46:53
feedback tool. So I'll take something that I've written,

Richard Culatta 00:46:55
I'll put it in there, and I'll ask, you know, if somebody were

Richard Culatta 00:46:58
to find a flaw in my thinking here, what would it be? And it

Richard Culatta 00:47:03
gives some really good feedback to that. I speak two languages.

Richard Culatta 00:47:06
I speak Spanish and I speak fluent Spanish, but I'm not a

Richard Culatta 00:47:08
native Spanish speaker. And so sometimes I'll take something,

Richard Culatta 00:47:10
I'll put it in that I've written in Spanish, and I'll say, if you

Richard Culatta 00:47:13
were going to detect that I was not a native speaker, what about

Richard Culatta 00:47:17
this thing that I've written would be the clue? Awesome. So

Richard Culatta 00:47:21
pushing these tools to really give me input and feedback to

Richard Culatta 00:47:24
improve my performance, actually, I think helps me

Richard Culatta 00:47:27
become a better human. I love

Christina Lewellen 00:47:29
that. And as we're winding this down, if a

Christina Lewellen 00:47:33
school leader comes up to you and kind of sheepishly says, I

Christina Lewellen 00:47:36
haven't thought about AI, our school's not using it. We don't

Christina Lewellen 00:47:39
have policies in place? Do you have any recommendations on

Christina Lewellen 00:47:43
where to start? It's the question I tend to get most

Christina Lewellen 00:47:45
often. So I'm curious what you would say if a school kind of

Christina Lewellen 00:47:49
admits to you that they feel behind the ball on this, where

Christina Lewellen 00:47:52
do they begin? That's

Richard Culatta 00:47:54
a great question. And I often say this

Richard Culatta 00:47:56
is a no guilt, no shame space, right? But we do have to get

Richard Culatta 00:48:00
involved, right? So the worst thing that somebody could do

Richard Culatta 00:48:02
say, Yeah, I'm gonna sit this AI thing out that will be

Richard Culatta 00:48:05
detrimental. And so please, please, don't do that. But I

Richard Culatta 00:48:07
think if you're just getting into it, you know, I would say,

Richard Culatta 00:48:10
give some time to explore. That's the advice that we give.

Richard Culatta 00:48:13
Is sometimes schools want to rush right into making policies

Richard Culatta 00:48:16
right. And policies are really not what we super need here,

Richard Culatta 00:48:20
right? Some guidance, yes. But if you have a good digital use

Richard Culatta 00:48:23
policy, if you have a good data privacy policy, honestly, review

Richard Culatta 00:48:27
them a little bit. But I don't know that you need a special,

Richard Culatta 00:48:29
separate AI policy. What you need is, sometimes to explore,

Richard Culatta 00:48:32
and we recommend for school leaders making sure that you're

Richard Culatta 00:48:37
giving that time to your teams as well. So take a chunk of

Richard Culatta 00:48:40
time. Maybe you get a two hour faculty meeting. Maybe you say,

Richard Culatta 00:48:42
hey, instead of doing what we normally do and talking about

Richard Culatta 00:48:45
stuff, we're going to take this time and we're going to let you

Richard Culatta 00:48:48
explore how you could use AI to generate assessments that are

Richard Culatta 00:48:52
more exciting and more aligned to the work that you're doing.

Richard Culatta 00:48:54
And then just play for a bit, and then come share what's

Richard Culatta 00:48:56
working and what's not. And so that idea of just starting to

Richard Culatta 00:49:00
explore is the best thing you can do. And then the next steps

Richard Culatta 00:49:03
become much more obvious, because you'll see what AI does

Richard Culatta 00:49:06
well, you'll see where there are problems, and you can start to

Richard Culatta 00:49:09
build what those conditions are for how you want to use it in

Richard Culatta 00:49:12
your

Christina Lewellen 00:49:13
school. Richard, by time we release this

Christina Lewellen 00:49:15
episode, we'll be in the beginning of 2025 right now we

Christina Lewellen 00:49:17
record at the end of 2024 as we're all kind of stepping out

Christina Lewellen 00:49:20
the door. But my final question is, what do you predict for the

Christina Lewellen 00:49:24
coming year? What do you expect we'll be thinking about and

Christina Lewellen 00:49:27
talking about in 2025

Richard Culatta 00:49:29
Wow, that's a great question. I will say what

Richard Culatta 00:49:32
I predict, and maybe I'm interpreting that as what I hope

Richard Culatta 00:49:34
maybe I'm manifesting by treating it as one in the same

Christina Lewellen 00:49:37
nothing wrong with that. I hope and

Christina Lewellen 00:49:40
predict that we will

Richard Culatta 00:49:42
have deeper conversations about the

Richard Culatta 00:49:45
experience of school for students, I feel like we've used

Richard Culatta 00:49:50
a lot of lenses to help us design our school the

Richard Culatta 00:49:54
experience, right? We rigor, accountability, state test

Richard Culatta 00:49:57
scores, and by the way, not that those are bad things, tradition.

Richard Culatta 00:49:59
And there's another one, right? Those are bad. But there is a

Richard Culatta 00:50:02
lens that we often forget we often leave off the table, and

Richard Culatta 00:50:06
that is the lens of student experience. We often design

Richard Culatta 00:50:10
schools without really prioritizing making it an

Richard Culatta 00:50:12
amazing experience for students. All of you that are listening to

Richard Culatta 00:50:16
this, I'm assuming you have some tech expertise, right? Just

Richard Culatta 00:50:19
given your community. And you know what it feels like when you

Richard Culatta 00:50:22
pick up a piece of software where there was just no good UX

Richard Culatta 00:50:26
team, and you click and you click the back button and it

Richard Culatta 00:50:28
logs out. And you know, you have to read all this sorts of stuff.

Richard Culatta 00:50:31
You information is hard to find. The menus don't work, right? It

Richard Culatta 00:50:33
doesn't work on mobile. Those are all UX problems, right? And

Richard Culatta 00:50:37
we know how you just want to, like, poke your eyes out when

Richard Culatta 00:50:39
you get software like that. Unfortunately, we have not

Richard Culatta 00:50:43
prioritized UX of school. And I really hope, and I'm going to do

Richard Culatta 00:50:47
everything I can do to make this a priority in the coming year,

Richard Culatta 00:50:50
is say, what would it look like if we designed the school around

Richard Culatta 00:50:54
an amazing user experience for this student? What if we had

Richard Culatta 00:50:58
IKEA design our school right now, I don't mean just because

Richard Culatta 00:51:01
the fur should be cool, but you know what I mean? You know what

Richard Culatta 00:51:03
I mean, like the walking through an experience, as opposed to

Richard Culatta 00:51:05
just pulling furniture off of racks. What if we had Disney

Richard Culatta 00:51:08
designer school or whatever? Think of an experience that

Richard Culatta 00:51:11
you've had. It feels like a lot of our schools maybe were

Richard Culatta 00:51:13
designed by the DMV. What I really want to do is think

Richard Culatta 00:51:16
about, how do we have Disney or IKEA be the designer of our

Richard Culatta 00:51:19
school, and really pay attention to things like, what does a form

Richard Culatta 00:51:22
look like and is it written in language that's appropriate for

Richard Culatta 00:51:26
kids? What does it test look like? And is it test a joyful

Richard Culatta 00:51:30
experience it should be. There's no reason why assessments

Richard Culatta 00:51:32
shouldn't be joyful experience. What does our tech look like?

Richard Culatta 00:51:36
Can I log in with one simple password? Do I have to change my

Richard Culatta 00:51:39
password every 30 seconds and not hit the back button, because

Richard Culatta 00:51:41
it's going to explode, right? Going to explode, right? All of

Richard Culatta 00:51:44
those things turn into creating what the user experience is. And

Richard Culatta 00:51:47
I think we just need a lot more attention on making sure school

Richard Culatta 00:51:50
feels more like Disney than like the DMP.

Christina Lewellen 00:51:53
Richard cullata, every time I spend 40

Christina Lewellen 00:51:55
minutes with you, I feel inspired for 40 months. So

Christina Lewellen 00:51:59
hopefully it won't be that long until we speak again, but you

Christina Lewellen 00:52:02
have been just a delight. Thank you for giving us such

Christina Lewellen 00:52:04
incredible food for thought, to think through and be inspired

Christina Lewellen 00:52:07
by. You're doing great work, sir. So keep it up. Stay

Christina Lewellen 00:52:11
healthy, stay happy, because we need you in this space.

Richard Culatta 00:52:14
You're very kind. Thank you so much. It's

Richard Culatta 00:52:16
always a pleasure to get to talk to you, and thank you for the

Richard Culatta 00:52:18
great work that you and your great group of school leaders

Richard Culatta 00:52:20
are doing. It's really, really impressive to watch the

Richard Culatta 00:52:23
innovation that comes out of the independent school sector. We

Richard Culatta 00:52:26
need that. So please, please, please keep it going.

Christina Lewellen 00:52:28
We will. You know, we will. Thank you,

Christina Lewellen 00:52:30
Richard, appreciate you being here.

Peter Frank 00:52:34
This has been talking technology with Atlas,

Peter Frank 00:52:36
produced by the Association of Technology Leaders in

Peter Frank 00:52:39
Independent Schools. For more information about Atlas and

Peter Frank 00:52:43
Atlas membership, please visit the atlas.org if you enjoyed

Peter Frank 00:52:47
this discussion, please subscribe, leave a review and

Peter Frank 00:52:50
share this podcast with your colleagues in the independent

Peter Frank 00:52:53
school community. Thank you for listening. You.

What's New

Through the Portal: The Future of School

Transcript

What's New