- We stand on the threshold of a great new age of exploration.

It's ultimate destination, the furthest reaches of the universe.

- 3, 2, 1.

[techno music] ♪ - Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Frontier on the campus of beautiful Research Triangle Park, North Carolina for RTP180.

[audience cheers and applauds] We'd like to thank everyone for braving the storms out here to get out for RTP180.

In June of 2022, our topic is education technology.

That's me, slightly smaller beard, slightly larger head.

I am weighed.

I am your MC for tonights events.

And I'd like to tell you a little bit about who brings this to you, that is RTI International, proud sponsor of RTP180 for a number of years.

Give it up for our friends at RTI International.

[audience applauds] If you're international and need any Rs, Ts, or Is, please seek them out.

Now the way this is gonna work, we have four speakers tonight on the subject of education technology.

They'll each be speaking for about five minutes.

At the end of that, we'll have about five minutes of Q&A from you, the audience.

So be sure while you're listening to them, think of some topics.

We may have some swag to give you if you're giving us some questions.

We love getting questions from you.

If you'd like to connect with us on social media during the show, please do that.

You can use #RTP180.

You can tweet it frontierrtp.

If you're watching us live on Facebook, first of all, hello, second of all, you can leave comments on Facebook, we'll get those as well.

We're also streaming live on PBS NC for those who can't be with us here tonight.

Now, normally if you're in this building during the week, you'll look a lot like this that's because you are currently sitting in the region's only free, pause for dramatic effect, co-working facility, that's right.

Free co-working if not in the heart of RTP, at least in the spleen, right here at Frontier.

Feel free to drop by, post up at a desk.

It's a great time.

We also have other events here.

We've got the Boxyard right across the street.

We have other activities coming up as well.

It's a full service retail outlet here, folks.

I'd like to specifically draw your attention to our "On the Menu" series.

Next one's coming up July 7th, lunchtime 12 to 1:00 PM.

If you or someone you know identifies as a women or minority owned business, this is the event for you.

We'll have Tammie Hall up here giving you tips and tricks, how to apply for grants, how to structure your business.

She'll give you information you need to know.

Feel free to come by and see that.

If you know someone who would benefit from that, feel free to pass that along.

Now I've said pretty much everything I need to say, it's time to move on to our first speaker of the evening.

He's the director of the master of arts in educational, innovation technology, and entrepreneurship program at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Please welcome to the stage, Todd Cherner.

[audience applauds] - [Todd] Thanks bud.

Hey, how are y'all doing?

- [Audience Member] Fine.

- [Audience Member] Good.

- [Todd] Woo.

- [Wade] Hey Todd.

- [Todd] Yeah?

- You need to be up there so they can see you on the camera.

- [Todd] Oh really?

- [Wade] Yeah.

- Okay.

- We good.

- You know, I'm a tall guy, so I take that for granted, but it really is long and not, no.

All right.

So anyway, this is my first like public speaking event since post COVID or wherever we are with COVID, so I'm very excited to be here tonight.

And tonight I'm gonna talk about the ed tech marketplace.

So that's my title and the ed tech marketplace is really near and dear to my heart.

And the reason it is is because I'm a former classroom teacher, I'm a researcher, I'm an innovator and I'm an entrepreneur.

And what the ed tech marketplace means to me is opportunities for teaching and learning.

And tonight I'm gonna talk to you about a, the ed tech marketplace as an end user, so the consumer side of it.

I'm not gonna talk about it as a developer as much, but people who use the products.

So this is a picture that I'm sure you all are familiar with.

This is taken at the North Carolina Technology in Education Society's annual conference in Raleigh.

I attend this conference every year.

It's attended by teachers throughout the state, throughout the region and it's wonderful.

And the reason I'm showing this is because it actually shows one version of the ed tech marketplace, right?

The vendors are there.

They're showing their products, they're showing their services, they're showing their wears and the conference goers, they browse and it's a really cool moment.

But this isn't the only place the ed tech market exists, right?

It exists if you search for products online.

It exists in the app store.

It exists in labs where they're developing products.

It exists in fairs and maker spaces.

All these different areas are where the ed tech marketplace exists.

And what I find really interesting about it is this is where we're seeing it go.

Currently, we're seeing huge investments in AR, VR, artificial intelligence, robotics, blockchains, and you can see on that graph and this is from one of the companies that I like to follow is HolonIQ, they have wonderful visuals, but if you were to pull up this data from the World Economic Forum, from UNESCO, a whole other variety, these trends are gonna be consistent.

And what this means is we are being flooded with different products and services being developed.

Some good, some not so much, some in the middle and this isn't new.

In fact, when the iPad came out 2012-ish, I actually started my own startup around this.

And the problem that I solve, that I saw at the time was there's an app for that.

Y'all remember that line?

There's an app for that, right?

And so all these teachers are getting iPads and they're being told, there's an app for that, but how do you actually teach with it?

Or better yet, how do you actually pick the ed tech you wanna use, the apps you wanna use?

And so we did a lot of AB testing and we found through research of our own through the peer review research that teachers were literally drowning in a sea of apps.

And we use this as our catch phrase.

Drowning in a sea of apps, App Ed Review as a lifesaver.

And this really resonated with people.

And our idea was we will help you pick the ed tech and we'll tell you how to use the ed tech and we'll rate the ed tech.

And we did it through a research base, but the reason I'm showing this is because the numbers you see here, they're the next evolution.

They're showing you what's gonna become.

This picture right here, and I really enjoy this picture, but this picture right here shows what classrooms look like today.

The students have some sort of tablet, some sort of device.

They're accessing their learning management systems, the digital tools, a whole variety of things, right?

We have robotics and stem and all these wonderful things that are out there.

When we think about this, that AR, VR, AI, we start to get into something called mixed reality.

And I feel Matsuda from Mirrorworld really does a nice job.

So if you look at that bottom graphic down there, it shows that the kids are wearing VR.

They're experiencing these learning immersive spaces.

But the difference that we're gonna start seeing according to Matsuda, is that it's not gonna be just computer generated, right?

We're gonna have, the physical environment is going to impact the immersive environment that they'll actually access through the AR and VR and this becomes mixed reality.

What's gonna happen is we're gonna continue to see investment in this.

We're gonna continue to see more and more choices come out.

Teachers are gonna continue to feel overwhelmed, and developers are gonna continue to develop these products.

Good, bad, but this is probably what we're gonna happen.

So I introduced the idea of critical consumerism.

And what this means to me is as the end user, you need to understand what it is you are looking for in an ed tech product and how you're actually going to use it.

Now, context, I believe is incredibly important.

I teach at a graduate school.

I taught high school at a title one school down in Central Florida.

I've worked with schools of all different spots, literally from South Carolina, all the way to Portland, Oregon.

It was kind of like the solar eclipse from a few years back in reverse, right?

So these are the questions that I think about.

These are my questions.

I wanna know who designed the ed tech, did the developer design it or was it designed through human centered works, right?

How would, did that happen?

I wanna know the data, what data actually demonstrates that the ed tech is effective.

And it's not only the data, I wanna know that that data is legit.

I wanna know that it's valid.

I wanna know who collected that data, how it's analyzed and how it's being interpreted, I think that's important.

And then the other thing that I wanna know is we have a variety of different pieces of ed tech, right?

Some of them do very similar things.

A really easy example that I'm sure a lot of us are familiar with is if you wanna compare Microsoft Word to Google Docs, or if you wanna get more involved Pear Deck to Nearpod.

What's better?

What makes it better?

What's the cost?

What are the alternatives?

As we move down to the bottom left, who's represented in the ed tech?

Who's not represented in the ed tech?

There's a lot of diversity, equity, inclusivity representation that needs to be considered.

And this, the research will tell you and your own works will tell you, there are people who are and who are not represented.

That needs to be a consideration.

I also think of college and career readiness, right?

I wanna know is the ed tech teaching valuable skills.

And not only college and career readiness, I also wanna teachers, I also wanna know about civic life.

I think media literacy is really important right now.

How's the ed tech doing that?

Is it supposed to do that?

And then how much background knowledge is needed to use the ed tech?

Like, is it intuitive?

Can I get in and get going?

Or how much professional developments need it?

So I leave you with this thought.

The ed tech marketplace is vast.

It is broad.

We are gonna see more and more ed tech come up.

Following the move to remote learning and back, we've learned lessons, good, bad, otherwise.

Be critical in your choices about which pieces of ed tech to use, how you're gonna use them and whom you're gonna use them with.

And I look forward to y'all's questions.

And I think I got that in five minutes, yeah?

- Sure.

We'll go with that.

All right.

Give it up for Todd Cherner.

[audience applauds] Now it is time for Q&A from you.

Raise your hand like this gentleman right up front is doing, I'll bring you the microphone.

You get to ask your questions.

First question, coming up.

- When you're evaluating an ed tech, what quantitative criteria do you use to rank one compared to the other one?

- I love that question.

Very early in my career, when I was doing App Ed Review, I was really confused by that, right?

'Cause we were looking at apps and like what makes an app a four?

What makes an app a three?

What makes an app a five?

Right?

Very subjective.

So the way that I do it is I actually draw from the research base, ooh, you got swag, I actually draw from the research base and we actually created a 26 point rubric that really gets in detail about what it is we want.

What are the aesthetics?

Where is the knowledge?

How is the design?

How are you able to use it?

The context again.

How is diversity represented?

How can you collaborate with it?

And so what we did is we systematically did a review of literature and then we use from that review of literature, we actually developed an entire rubric around it.

And I'd be happy to share it with you.

- A 26 point rubric is of course in the shape of a cube.

Next question is coming to you from your left.

- Yes, sir.

Great presentation.

My question is about the creators of ed tech.

What do you find is helpful for those who are producing this ed tech to be able to do, to help the consumer be more critical, even their efforts to sell their own products?

- Yeah, that's a great question.

So I think what we need to be when thinking about the developers is we need to be transparent in how it was developed.

Who was it tested by?

Who were the collaborators and partners who maybe helped co-design it, probably they weren't doing the technical side of it, but how were you actually able to build empathy?

How were you able to identify what is the challenge you're trying to respond to with the ed tech?

And then how did you actually prove, or at least demonstrate that your ed tech is actually doing that with a data informed approach?

I think that's really important and I think transparency in the design of how it was and then how it was tested is paramount.

- All right.

Another question coming here from stage center.

- I have a question about the overwhelmingness that the, that the teachers are feeling at this point, and you're gonna throw something else on them at this point.

I know you're reducing the number of apps, but what are you doing to kind of alleviate and make them feel better about accepting this type of teaching?

- That's a very important question and I really appreciate it.

So I think A, context is important.

You have to understand how and why they're using a piece of ed tech.

I think it's also important to remember that there literally have been centuries where we didn't have digital technologies and there's a craft to teaching and ed tech is not meant to replace the teacher.

I think when teachers are struggling and they're feeling overwhelmed, I think it is by far best practice to reduce the amount of ed tech they're using, find ed tech that has a lot of utility, can be used in multiple ways, but really focuses on a limited amount of ed tech.

So for example, a PowerPoint software, right?

So whether you're doing Google slides, PowerPoint, whatever, there's a lot of utility.

It's not just that, like if I can have people collaborate on it, one of the things I like to do for example, is I like to make it into a digital gallery walk to where I assign each student a slide and I create the slide as a template, and then I let the students populate that.

So now I'm using PowerPoint, not just for information, but I'm using it for collaboration.

And then I can use that with a think-pair-share technique.

So I think it's really matching the ed tech to pedagogical strategies that's important.

And I think when we just say, hey, this is good for this, this is good for this, this is good for this.

Now I have a bunch of pieces of ed tech that I have to monitor.

If I'm able to really consolidate that and find a really good return on investment of my time to learn it and really be able to use it in multiple ways without having to switch platforms all the time, I think that is a key.

- Our last question will be coming from the center aisle here.

- Thank you.

Nice presentation, Todd.

Thanks.

Thanks for your thoughts.

My wife is a teacher, so you know, you are right, you know, they use quite a bit of applications and they're lost in it.

So one thing, you know, she's more concerned is the kids are more glued to the computers because of the virtual learning and all these things, right?

Now, on top of that, we are introducing this mixed reality and we have been talking about metaverse.

So how do you balance the real reality versus kids starting in a virtual reality all the way from very young age?

- Yeah, that's a, that's also a doozy of a question.

Really nice.

So I'm concerned that people are losing to a degree, the ability to communicate face to face.

I think sometimes when we start having all these mixed realities, I think that we need to be able to balance it out with person to person interaction.

And I think there really needs to be a strong balance between what we do with technology and then what we do with our analog.

I do think the metaverse is coming.

Whether it's coming sooner or later, we'll find out.

But I do think that we need to be able to have people to have identities and be able to understand that they have an identity that perhaps is their digital identity, but they still have an analog identity.

As these become more blurred, I think it's gonna be important that they know where that lines of blurriness happen and to really form their humanness.

And that's, I have a concern there.

And I'll be honest with you, like I think, I don't want technology to take away our humanity and I think there's a way to balance it out.

I don't think we know what that answer is yet to be completely honest and I think we're moving very fast in that direction.

I think the investments that I showed up there are accelerating that pace.

And that's something that I think about a lot, to be honest with you.

- All right, give it up for Todd Cherner.

[audience applauds] - Thanks there.

- Some great stuff about the proliferation of ed tech, but the train rolls on.

At this time, please welcome our next speaker of the evening.

She's an educator by trade, a mama by grace and a connector of people by nature.

From Nurtured Nest, please welcome Kathryn Dunn.

[audience applauds] - Hello.

Thanks guys.

I have a few cue cards.

I am a little foggy.

I had COVID about two months ago and still haven't got my brain power back yet.

So [laughs] if you see me fumbling, that is why.

I am a former educator too.

It's always fun, I had fun listening to Todd's but today we're gonna talk about a little something else, how ed tech, I am ed tech that he was just talking about, but I wanna talk to you afterwards.

So when I tell people about what we do, we offer on-demand parenting classes.

And if they're folks that raise children before this digital revolution that we're currently in, they say things like this, you know, my kids are just fine, okay.

So some of you may be being like my kids are just fine.

The thing is they're coming at it from a really good place, a place of experience, but these seasoned parents are not acknowledging the fact that the overwhelming amount of information that we're faced with as parents today can be, you know, it lose it, when there's perspective out there, there's information and honestly, it's pretty overwhelming for most.

In fact, the information overload can really just keep us from being able to answer simple questions that we used to be able to answer, like, what should I feed my kid?

Well, now, there's a lot of opinions and a lot of perspectives out there, skewing simple decisions.

And this is a statistic, one of the organizations that I follow closely, Zero to Three, they put a lot of good things.

This was pre pandemic and only 12% of parents then felt really prepared to bring their child home.

Of those same folks, 87% of them said that they work hard to be a good parent, but only 73% of them were saying that it was their biggest challenge still.

So, and really the reason those challenges arise is because our parents today are trying to raise their children during all these societal shifts, okay.

So they want them to be conscious of boundaries and they want them to be tech responsible.

They want them to have zero tolerance for bullying.

There're just so many things that have changed just in the past 10 years that parents are bombarded with on a daily basis.

And it's making us reassess really our values as parents.

And you know, how on earth are we supposed to help that 73% of parents?

As you're sitting here, some of you may be those parents, bombarded on Instagram, and it's ed tech is how they're gonna do it.

Really, there are very few folks already in this space.

And I wanna tell you some of the benefits of it.

So at Nurtured Nest, we focus on on-demand parenting education.

So allowing parents to have on-demand education, lets them do it in their own space, on their own time and it allows them to revisit it.

And that's because your brain is a lot like a muscle.

So in order to saturate the information and learn new concepts, it needs to rest and recover.

And so on-demand learning, when it comes in small chunks, it allows parents to watch, to reflect, to rest and revisit.

And that's truly how adults learn.

There's also another concept here and if you are parenting young children, you've probably read a couple blogs about it, it's mental load.

And if you aren't familiar with this term mental load, it is the concept where one parent in the household is kind of the go to, the manager.

They're the person that decides when the child is gonna start their solid foods, what they're gonna eat, what preschool they're gonna go to.

And it's really heavy.

And traditionally it's been women, okay.

You could have guessed that, right, but I don't know why because back in 1975, 47% of women were in the workplace.

Now, we're at 70% and we're still the one bearing the mental load.

And the thing about on-demand is it allows everyone to learn.

So if you have an on-demand class like ours, both parents are able to access it, even the caregivers, even the grandparents.

Everybody has the information.

There's no longer the mental load of that one managing parent in the household.

And that is bringing equity that has not been the norm for all these ages.

Quickly.

We focus, we actually connect with hospitals and you may be wondering why on earth are you connecting with hospitals?

They've traditionally been the source of parenting education, the only known trusted source in a community.

And if you haven't watched the news, hospitals are struggling.

They're understaffed.

They're essentially shut down to outside folks.

So they aren't holding, many of them are not holding in person classes and they need ed tech, not only to empower the families with the education they need, but to meet the needs of parents that are part of this digital revolution, and so our company brings it to 'em, And it's very interesting, I was, sorry, I wrote notes on the consumerism, critical consumerism, Todd, I wanna talk to you about that, but, you know, we feel like we're doing the right thing, trying to get, source the right experts, trying to get some funding so we can actually run some of those tests to see, you know, how it takes.

But anyways, so I'm excited to be part of the ed tech world and bringing it to parents to empower them to be the best they can.

That is it.

[audience applauds] - Great stuff there.

Ed tech is not just for schools, it's also for parents.

If you have a question from Kathryn Dunn, please raise your hand.

We've got one right here, front and center.

Here you go.

- Thank you, you did a great job.

My question is, you know, there's a lot of ways that people have philosophies of parenting, right, all different, you know, very, people fight against,- - Yeah.

- You know, what's the best way to parent.

Does your platform promote a certain philosophy or is there a certain research or people that you follow or do you have sort of a mix?

What does that look like?

- Absolutely.

Yes.

There are a lot of opinions about parenting, right?

So we stick to the trusted sources of the American College of Obstetrician and Gynecologist, ACOG, AAP, and so we try to stick to, it's been hard lately, we used to have a lot of resources that we'd share from the CDC, but recently their ratings have gone down with parents.

So, but we try to stick to the traditional trusted, we are pro-vaccine.

And it is hard, man.

We get attacked on social media sometimes when we promote things about, I think we said something about the sleep, like they've just updated the sleep standards in the US and people have opinions.

So yeah.

[audience laughs] - Shocking.

People have opinions.

That's weird.

- Right?

I know, on the internet.

- Other questions, other questions, other questions?

Raise your hand, I will bring you the microphone.

We got one all the way over by the window here on the right I'm coming, I got little legs.

All right.

And our next question.

- I was just curious when it comes to, you know, providing education from others, does it take into account like different, you know, education for different circumstances or different type of cultural, like things when it comes to parenting, especially because I know,- - Yeah man.

- As I mentioned earlier, there's different types of parenting and then there, you know, different families who have access to different types of resources.

They may have access to more, they may have access to less and you know, how do they apply that if it's something that they may learn, but just may not have the means to like achieve or get - Yes.

That is so important.

It, that makes me so giddy, because cultural understanding is actually a part of every single one of our classes and not just being like, well, we know that your family, you know, is from Indian distant and you might do these things.

It's more so coming from, we know some of you may be raised, you know, like this and your family may be like this, you may be coming from it.

We have a class focus on grandparents, and so we talk in there about how, you know, some of you may not be really excited about having a grandchild.

Others aren't.

And so we do try to build that in the content that we build, but we call it out specifically because that's so darn important, right, when it comes to parenting, acknowledging like where you came from and who are your people and how that affects how you're gonna parent.

Yeah.

Good question.

Okay.

- Excellent questions here tonight.

Anybody else with another question, please raise your hand.

We've got one over here to your right.

Probably should have just stayed over here.

All right, here you go.

- So on one of your earlier slides, you mentioned that the, you had anonymous access to the material.

Is it anonymous access or anonymous presence?

And why did you decide to go one way or the other?

- So there's an, there can be anonymous presence and it's actually through research.

So as pre pandemic, there was a research study done with only mothers, as you can guess, there's not a lot of research in this space.

And so the mothers in this study from 2019 said that they were more likely to ask hard questions if they were anonymous.

And so our platform allows you to be both.

If you would like to form community, you can.

And if you just wanna ask one of those nitty gritty, nasty questions that you don't want anybody to know that you really wanna know, you can do that too.

Yeah.

Cool.

- All right.

We've got time for one more question.

If anyone has one, otherwise we've got, well, we do, never mind, I will not finish that sentence 'cause it is not relevant anymore.

I really just need to stand on this side of the room apparently.

All right.

I am getting my steps in.

It's true.

- So is there a certain age that like parents, like child has to be into, like to, for them to go through the program, like, is it better if they do it before they're born or if they're like in the teenage years?

- Yeah, and I didn't really talk much about our product 'cause that's not the goal of tonight, but we start, right now, we start with childbirth.

And so we get folks in, then we wanna go backwards, we're actually gonna go to conception.

So a lot of us have figured out when we started to have kids, it's actually pretty hard to get pregnant.

And so we're going backwards.

But right now we're in the perinatal space, which means the pregnancy through the first year of life.

And we plan to move forward with that.

So a class that's solely for one year olds, but it's on-demand right now, so it's like hunt and peck almost like if you want the childbirth class and you're gonna breastfeed, so you get breastfeed, but we also have a formula class.

So if you want to feed formula, you can pull that out of the cart.

So there isn't a specific age and our hope because we know that parenting doesn't get easier, it just changes and people still have the questions, except for we don't go to the pediatrician as much once your children age, you know, pass one.

So we're hopeful to have that content soon.

Yeah.

Cool.

- All right.

- Thank you guys.

- Big hand for Kathryn Dunn.

[audience applauds] All right, if you didn't get a chance to get your questions answered, some, if not all of our panelists will be sticking around after the event, you can grab 'em, say hi, ask 'em any questions you have not been able to get to so far.

So I turn my page around, but now it is time for our next speaker of the evening.

He's the founder and CEO of Betabox Learning, a Raleigh based education company with a mission of sparking and sustaining hands-on learning in K12 schools.

He's my old friend.

He's about to be your friend.

Please welcome Sean Newman Maroni.

[audience applauds] - Thank you.

Can we just give a round of applause for Wade with that great stride over to the, very impressive.

[audience applauds and cheers] Okay, so yeah, my name is Sean and I thought it would be good to start off with this quote from the philosopher slash, you know, legendary punk band, The Offspring, because I think it really captures what has happened in the K12 school systems over the last couple years and the song is called "The Kids Aren't All right".

And I think a lot of us saw that, we just heard an incredible talk about parents, parents, we understand.

No, I'm not a parent, but parents understand that we went through a hard time and it has shown up at, my company kind of felt like getting hit by a truck when COVID happened to us because we run a very hands-on service.

We go out to schools with a mobile unit.

We do robotics, technology, all sorts of really cool hands-on education.

All of that went to zero when the school shutdowns occurred.

And so this is what it felt like for our mission.

But even more than just the shutdowns, this graph actually made me emotional the first time I saw it.

So, you know, for the people that are not data scientists in the room, let me spell this out for you.

This was created by the office of Learning Management and Recovery for North Carolina and it's actually one of the most comprehensive learning loss reports that has been done by any state.

And what they did is they took a cohort from 2018 and they tried to basically predict the test performance and then they compared that to this most recent batch of students.

And so the bigger bars on the right, on that side, that's bad.

Those should be the same, but they're larger.

And you'll also notice that the blue is a little bit larger than the purple.

That means that learning loss, so basically not performing as well as what was projected on things like standardized tests is actually disproportionately affecting economically disadvantaged counties.

And so that's the blue over there.

And that was unfortunate for us to hear because that's where we do our work.

So we go out to some of the most rural areas of North Carolina to create these opportunities and experiences.

And so it just felt like years of work at Betabox, we just got this big gut punch again, like being hit by a truck because it just felt like we were so set back in our mission due to the, all of this stuff that's been happening.

But then we got a little glimmer of hope because that solution, or that report proposed a couple solutions.

And that one that's highlighted there was one of the solutions that this report that said, hey, this would be a good thing for us to invest in, recapturing student interest through enrichment and instructional resources.

And that's really what we do.

All right.

Quick show of hands.

Have you ever had a moment where like your faith in humanity was just completely restored?

Maybe somebody lets you into a parking space or something like that?

Just anything.

All right.

Got some hands up.

Has that moment ever been created for you in your life, by any chance, by like a Republican state legislator?

Keep any hands up if.

[audience member laughs] No?

No hands?

[laughs] Well, I'm the only one because this guy actually took a chance on our pilot program and we got it funded to expand Betabox.

His name is Representative John Torbett.

Yes, he's a Republican.

He's a great guy because he saw the same thing that we saw that students are hurting and needed this experience.

So we got to put out this press release a little while ago, back in February, hey, we're gonna be providing this program for more than 30 school districts, a hundred schools.

I'm gonna show you what it looks like in a moment.

So this is like pretty exciting, you know, but this talk is about overcoming obstacles.

I want you to take a look at that right there, the date we put out, this press release.

Same week, I actually got into pretty bad car accident, driving one of our Betabox's to one of those rural schools in a county, actually in South Carolina.

So this really did feel like getting hit by a truck, actually, 'cause that's what happened.

And I was in the hospital for about a month, but I'm all better now as you can see, and that was one of our Betabox's that got destroyed.

So this was one of those low points in the entrepreneurial journey, right?

You hear about the roller coaster, the up and down.

So we just had that big up, this great new pilot is funded, right?

We're a part of solving this big national problem and then boom.

But overcoming obstacles, right?

One foot in front of the other.

This is what we teach our kids, right?

When they're at the Betabox and they're not getting the program to work the way they want it to work, it's like, Hey, you're not gonna get it right the first time.

That's what science and technology is, right?

It's this story of putting one foot in front of the other, struggling and working through a problem.

So we built a new one.

We built three new ones actually.

And hopefully I can show you what it looks like.

[modern hiphop music] - Today, I learned how to program a car from a computer.

Today, I learned how to program a car from a computer today.

Do you think you ever might do something like this in your career?

- Yes, I do.

[modern hiphop music] - You know one of our programs is actually in Mississippi?

But it's the tip of the iceberg.

[music drowns out the speaker] - We were plugging it then... - Just trying to get students excited.

This is something you could do.

[modern hip hop music] [students conversing] - Think definitely engaging and pulls the children in, it makes them want to be able to learn.

[modern hiphop music] [students conversing] [modern hiphop music] - We gonna get a robot, check out the world.

[modern hiphop music] [student applauds] - You just don't.

[modern hiphop music] - Like, you know, maybe I just look at this as a potential trajectory for me.

So this program's pretty exciting 'cause we're gonna do that experience for 12,000 students throughout the state of North Carolina throughout the next year or so.

And then briefly I do wanna just make a call, for anybody that's interested in the data side, please come talk to me after, because you know, we're gonna be having all of these students complete a short career interest quiz basically after that's gonna help us get data that we need to really prove, hey, is this something that works?

Does it affect learning loss?

And we're building out our logic model for that now.

So if there's any researchers, education evaluators, please come talk to me after.

Would love to chat with you.

If you know any schools, you can just send 'em to that link.

That's the applied page.

So any school, this is totally free for schools.

Please send them there and then hopefully we can get them enrolled in the program.

And there's a bunch we do for teachers in schools afterwards, I should mention, but, you know, that's a talk for another day.

And again, that's my email.

If you're interested in that data question, please reach out to me, would love to chat.

And I'm happy to take any questions.

- All right.

Give it up for Sean Maroni there.

Kind of a brief inside, I've known Sean since he started doing this project however many years ago, it's probably what 10 or so, it's been a while.

- Almost that many.

I don't like to think about it sometimes [laughs].

- Yeah.

It's been a while.

It's honestly one of the coolest things I've ever seen.

It's a portable experiential learning facility that can go anywhere.

Places that don't have access to this type of technology, they can bring it to them for a limited time, longer term time.

It really is just an amazing project and I've been a big fan of it from the beginning.

- Hey, thanks.

- Yeah, it's awesome.

But now let's get some questions from you about how Betabox is doing this sort of stuff.

So we've got one from our speaker up here.

- I'm blown away.

That's just fantastic.

- Thank you.

- I was wondering, there have been several other buses and other groups that have gone around with DNA, DNA testing, all of that, UNC has one.

Did you look at that and learn what you could from that and how did you adapt?

- Yeah, absolutely.

So I mean, this is like a non-zero sum game.

The more enrichment that's available, the better.

And so we mostly focus on computer science technology and engineering.

So we haven't gone into the sciences.

We are now.

So we're doing like gel electrophoresis and some other stuff starting in the fall.

You know, we made a specific decision to set ourselves up as more of a for-profit entity actually.

And so we don't charge the schools.

We have industry partnerships and other things that we do.

But the reason for that, I noticed a lot of those buses sit on the campuses.

They actually don't get out to the schools nearly as much 'cause their grant runs out and then it just sits there.

So I decided, hey, like let's try to make something more sustainable with like a business model.

So the other piece of what we do is the hands-on learning mobile unit is like 10% of what we do for the schools.

Afterwards, we offer a ton of hands-on learning lesson plans, professional development, and an equipment checkout program.

So every school that gets the mobile unit, up to five teachers, well, really it's more than that now, they get free access to all of that.

So you can check out a 3D printer, a set of drones, the robot cars from us, like at no cost.

And so that's one example of a set of services that we now provide - Other questions about what they're doing over a Betabox?

Please raise your hand, we'll be able to bring the mic out to you.

Get those questions answered.

We got one over here to your left.

- The age.

- Middle school and high school.

So this program's gonna mostly focus on like the transitionary years 'cause that's where the learning loss report like six through eighth.

And then we do a little bit more career focused experiences at the high school level.

We do some experiences for fourth and fifth grade, but really it's sixth grade and up that we focus on.

- All right, we've got one coming over here to your right.

- I think you mentioned, you said you have three of these.

So what territory, like how far are you expanding?

- Yeah, we have 12 mobile units.

We operate in Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina and North Carolina.

So this program is one of like five programs of similar scale that we're currently operating.

- They're everywhere.

All right.

We've got a couple here at the back.

We'll go right here to my gentleman with the same haircut as me.

[Sean and audience laugh] - That's right.

Hello Sean.

Awesome.

You're doing a great job.

Can you hear me okay?

- Yes, absolutely.

- So, really inspiring story.

I'm interested in two things.

One is that, how did you get interested in this?

And secondly, when you had that COVID experience, did you come up with some thoughts of how some of this can actually be done through simulation and 3D models and all that?

So that many times you're not able to take the whole physical setup to a school and sometimes they can actually learn through, I'm sure that video may not be so effective because that's passive, but some type of simulation might be helpful.

- Yes, absolutely.

So for me again, it's non-zero sum.

So we do, I'll answer the second question first and then the first one.

So that simulation stuff, incredible enrichment to do right after the mobile unit leaves, right?

We focus on the very hands-on piece because the staff that we bring out there are also really important.

The social connection, being able to see somebody, hey, this person went to the same high school that I did and now they're teaching me this and you know, that kind of in person connection with our staff that go out with the mobile unit is actually a really important piece.

So that's one of the reasons that we've stuck this very hands-on real world thing.

But afterwards we do a lot of lesson plans for teachers and they leverage a lot of simulation and other technologies that can be done in the classroom.

To answer the first question, you know, why did I get interested in this?

You know, I realized I got really lucky.

You know, I kind of won the geographic lottery 'cause I grew up and I didn't have any choice in the matter in a place where they had a really great school system, you know.

So I grew up in an area where I got a cool education.

My dad was an engineer.

He brought home all sorts of cool hands-on stuff for me to do.

And then I had a few experiences in college, some things that I did, some volunteer stuff and I realized like, oh wow, [laughs] I live in a complete bubble and like 95% of American young people don't get the experience that I got.

So that was the initial kernel of just kind of realizing, just realizing that, right.

And so that was the initial thing that catalyzed it and I've still been doing it today just because like the stories like that video that you saw, I mean, you know, it's just a cool thing to be a part of.

Next question is coming from about two people back.

- Hey, so a great story.

I love your product.

How do you incorporate student voice and choice in your model?

So do you like ever have focus groups to get student ideas or do you do any like pre-research to kind of figure out what you're gonna do, like what you're gonna offer at this school or is it all teacher driven?

I'm wondering like.

- Yeah, I mean we do, well, first of all, it's kind of like almost how I imagined standup comedy would be like, if the audience doesn't laugh, like, you know, your thing stinks.

So we get a lot of real world feedback from teachers or I'm sorry, from students in real time.

So we look for the wow factor.

Like when students are like, there's some good student voice right there.

So there is a tight feedback loop with the experiences themselves and we're constantly iterating, tweaking the scripts, looking for those moments, really kind of designing it to optimize for like the excitement or the moments.

And then the other piece is we do student testing and teacher testing for like all of our follow up lesson plans and our real world experiences.

So we're testing actually some science stuff right now.

So we've shipped out kits to teachers.

They're trying them in their classroom.

They're giving us, you know, they're giving us what they saw.

So, you know, we do get a lot of student voice, like by trying things and failing with things out in the mobile unit, and then the teacher stuff, we try to get feedback from them ahead of time.

And now our last question will be coming right in front of you, Sean.

- Don't know if you want it in front of you, I might say it.

Yeah.

You can hear me without the mic.

- Yeah, sure.

- The TV people... - Oh the TV.

So how do you... - It's on, just talk into it.

- All right, so the couple questions I had for you with this program, it, I think it's great.

I think, have you looked at both domestic and international with this for one thing.

And have you looked at working with NGOs in this arena?

- Yes, we do get emails.

- I'm not done.

- Oh, I'm sorry.

- I'm gonna be.

No, but no, I think it's a great arena for that.

And have you looked at setting up mentoring groups with this as an extension of what you're doing?

- We haven't looked too much into mentoring groups.

So I'm curious if you wanna chat with me after about your ideas there.

In terms of international, we get emails like once a month from people all over the place that, you know, wanna bring this experience.

We did do a partnership with one organization called DAI that provided this service, we actually set up a makerspace in Oman, which was a really cool experience.

We don't focus on much international though, 'cause there's a lot of challenges like right here in the US, right in our state.

You know, you drive 20 miles up the road and they need this, right.

So, you know, we mostly focus on like the Southeast of the US right now.

It doesn't mean the service can't be incredibly valid and useful in other places, it's just not really where our focus is right now.

- All right.

Give it up for Sean Newman Maroni.

[audience applauds] All great questions.

And once again, I do encourage you to check out the website, it's pretty brilliant stuff.

But now we're moving on to our final speaker of the evening.

He's at the school of science and math as a bridge between the school and the public.

He loves straddling disparate worlds coming to us from Duke University, David Stein.

- [David] Thank you.

Thank you.

And no thank you for having me follow him.

I mean, that's unbelievable [laughs].

That was a really great presentation.

So let me just run you through.

You've been looking at a large scale, I'm gonna take you down to a real micro scale.

I work with eight schools and our job is to play with the technology, play with it in schools, get teachers excited about it and also to create a steady flow of students.

We've converted a lot of Duke students into ed tech.

And so they're now going out into the ed tech fields and we'll give you some names.

That'd be great.

So one of the things we're finding is that AI, AR and animation are things that are really catching people now.

I'll just block you every once in a while.

So we're gonna just tell you some of these things, and as has been mentioned before, you need three components to really make it work.

Web-based, free, and intuitive.

And the free thing was great with what you're doing.

And it's ironic, but sometimes the hardest things to understand, like artificial intelligence are really some of the easiest things to introduce to schools.

And let me give you a couple of examples.

This, a number of you might be familiar with is just a simple drawing program and you just draw on it, it guesses.

- Quick draw is a game a few of us at Google made.

You draw and the computer uses machine learning to guess what you're drawing.

- I see square or a suitcase or canoe.

Oh, I know, it's shoe.

- It's an experiment that uses some of the same technologies that helps Google Translate recognize your handwriting.

- To understand handwriting or drawings, you don't just look at what the person drew, you look at how they actually drew it, which strokes did they make first, which direction did they draw them in.

You train the computer on millions of characters from hundreds of languages and over time it learns whether you wrote look or whether you wrote book.

- Training is a big part of how the computer can get your drawings.

As people, it's easy for us to look at these three drawings and know they're all cats, but to a computer they're very different.

One is just a head.

One has a full body and one is just facial features.

To get the computer to understand, you have to show it a lot of cat doodles.

And then it starts to see pattern.

- So some of the common elements, if an AI system is learning that is that pointy ears, whiskers, and so all of those have a common element to it and then the computer learns that.

And we found that that works with everything from preschoolers and students with autism, all the way to people with dementia.

So it's been something that has cut across lots of different demographics.

And then, all right, so you can just see it and appreciate it, but how do you get students actually using and experimenting and creating things with AI?

And again, here's another example that we've had very good success with.

[upbeat music] - With Teachable Machine, we set out to make it easier for anyone to create machine learning models, without needing to write any machine learning code.

When it first launched in 2017, it allowed everyone to get a feeling for what machine learning is all about.

But now Teachable Machine puts the power of machine learning in your hands, allowing you to save your models and use them in your own projects.

So let's say you wanna build a.

- So it's really straightforward.

So we work with and train kids so that they can choose, they want to distinguish between themselves and their brother.

And so we were able to do a lot of this virtually, which was great during the pandemic.

And so, you know, they get to choose what they want and to start exploring and figuring out how it works.

Augmented reality is a personal favorite of mine.

And I'd be happy to argue VR versus AR with people, but I'm a strong believer in AR, I don't think we wanna be hiding.

I'm sorry, Todd, I don't think we wanna just be hiding all the time behind glasses and you're not part of the environment.

Here's just an example.

You guys familiar with this one?

You just take this little app and you take a dollar bill and you put women on it.

And you get to choose the women and you learn a lot about the history of women in the process.

We've done things with making books come alive.

We just published a book on young activists and in it, there's lots of graphics and each one of those graphics is a trigger with videos.

And so you can really learn from that as well.

And adding depth to public displays, I'll show you some of that and library book teasers.

But we first started like, much like Todd did and we went through 30 different programs that are used for creating AR in schools, particularly ones that are free and web-based.

And the two main contenders were Reality Composer, which is free from Apple.

Incredibly powerful, if you haven't played with it, I highly recommend it.

Big downside is that it's only with Apple devices and getting things through the store is just a nightmare.

MyWebAR is free.

It's web-based.

It's really easy to use and it's pretty powerful.

You can see the range of things that you can do with it.

It can just pull from a QR code, it can pull from a graphic and you can add lots of different features.

So they're using it in lots of different ways.

We focused on mostly for books and for historical things.

So front row seats, you have a real advantage if you want to go ahead and just capture that and get the link because I'm about to show you something else that will link to this.

And I discovered in the early tryouts coming here is that you're too far away.

And I had no idea what the space was, so I didn't realize that wouldn't work, but this is how we learn.

So if you just take it and you've got your, except the camera.

And this is the civil rights mural, Downtown, Durham, by the Arts Council.

And you can't see it here, but with the AR that we've created, sure enough, there's best of enemies there.

And you can go and you can see a clip of the movie.

You can learn about the characters and all of those people come alive and you know who they are, as opposed to just seeing a mural.

And it's just like, oh, it's a bunch of people, all having something to do with civil rights.

Something similar with the book tags.

We worked with middle school students.

They created lots of information about these books.

And then we set up hang tags, put it in the media center, put it in the regulator bookshop so that someone's looking at a book and think, oh, do I really want this?

You just click on that and you can learn more about the book.

So you think animation, which is so easy, you know, you take a picture, you move, you take a picture, you move, you'd think that would be so easy to do with students, it actually turns out to be the hardest of the three.

And some of the things are, it takes a long time to do it and it's hands-on and you do it in small groups, but it's still very labor intensive and these days teachers don't have a lot of that time.

So we tried to find shortcuts to do it working in teams.

And here's a project at, this was Rogers-Herr year round middle school.

And they have Chromebooks like all the other schools do, but the students stopped really taking care of them.

And so they said, all right, we need to make something that kids will watch that will encourage them to take care of it.

And so we tried several different video techniques.

So this, just one little animation they did.

[dog growling] [drum roll] [cymbal clangs] So on that, don't go yet, on that, they had eight different things that you should be careful of with your Chromebooks and we did everything from green screen and animation and doing animation based on using Google Slides.

Lots of different ways to do it.

Here's another example for students studying history.

This was done in two hours.

So you really can do pretty impressive things in just a short amount of time.

This is about Robert Smalls.

He went out of Charleston.

[upbeat instrumental music] Can't do the volume.

And he stole this warship right out of Charleston Harbor through all of the hazards and turned it over to the Union army.

[upbeat instrumental music] So there he is, he's changing flags.

[upbeat instrumental music] He even went so far as to go back and pick up his family and other people's family.

They cut, they, it was so clever, they cut the hair of the captain and they collected it and they made a wig.

So as he's going through the harbor, he looks like the captain and he used his hat and the kids paid all attention to this.

[bell rings] And there we go.

Perfect timing.

So that's it.

The end.

[audience laughs and applauds] - Perfect timing indeed.

You got questions on AR, AI in an educational setting, now's your chance to ask David Stein, please raise your hands, we'll bring the microphone out to you and you can get your questions answered.

- For the next 30 seconds,- - We're gonna... - We have a special going on for questions.

- Yeah, true, blue light special.

I hope you remember that.

- Do you know he's the voice of the Hurricanes?

- Oh.

- Yeah, okay.

- Is that me?

[David laughs] I sound just like that guy.

All right, your next question's coming to you from your left.

- Yes, sir, have you all looked at any college and career readiness, learning, and training in some of the technology that you explore?

- We haven't.

That's a great question.

We have worked mostly with younger students, middle school, and then earlier, we've done a lot with data exploration at the middle school level, which will be lots of career opportunities down the road.

We've tended not to do it into the high schools because their schedules usually are so packed, it's hard to get in and do those activities.

- All right, next question.

Next question, coming right here from the front row.

- Okay, you said you prefer AR over VR, help the unlettered here [audience laughs] and tell us why.

- Sure.

Augmented reality is you can just wear your own glasses or you just have your phone as the intermediary.

So if you're driving, you can use augmented reality, it appears on your dashboard and it'll just have arrows going like, turn left, turn left over here, and it can give you warnings that way.

Virtual reality, you put goggles on and you're tethered usually in some way.

And I think there's a place for it, but in terms of widespread use, I don't think it's gonna have as broad an impact as AR.

- There you go.

Other questions about AR, AI, VR in an educational setting.

We've got one coming from my friend over here by the window, making me get my steps in.

- All right, can we get a question from someone over there next?

Just so he goes back and forth.

- I was just curious when it comes to, oh, when it comes to the implementation of like an AR program into like education and younger grades, how do you convince the schools that this would be a benefit, especially when, you know, there's the traditional learning model.

Like people now are starting to get, you know, a little bit more used to the remote environment, but it took, you know, a global pandemic for people to be able to be okay having students, you know, use more technology in the younger grades, especially cause I think it's normally so hands-on and so in person.

How do you, you know, convince schools and teachers that this is a beneficial technology to implement, especially when it could potentially be a lot of work and potentially money for the school?

- I only caught part of that and I'll answer that part and then wait, if you can help me if,- - Sure thing - For what I'm missing.

The technology has to be relatively easy to use and I'll give another example.

For new teachers, we use 360 video cameras.

And setup was next to nothing, we just put it in the center and let it run.

And then I provided, you know, I captured that and I sent it to the teacher and I said, look through your classroom, see what's going on.

Particularly in elementary schools where you're working in centers.

So the teacher was up here and she had students working all around and she wasn't even aware that there was a student just sitting there.

He would drop something, he'd spin it around, he'd pick it up, he'd drop something, he'd spin around.

She was oblivious to that because she was a new teacher.

So we used that with zero training and she was able to just learn a little bit more about what was happening in her classroom.

We didn't share with the principal or any other supervisor.

It's just, we've done that a bunch.

It's just something that she can get.

- And I think the second part of the question was with school budgets being limited, how do you convince people to bring this new technology, potentially at a cost into their schools?

- Well, the, we have just done stuff that's free because they're just not gonna do it.

But the, it still begs the question of training and that comes at a premium now because teachers have very little time.

- All right, we've got our last question coming right here, center aisle.

- Oh, wait a minute.

He's a troublemaker.

I saw him before we talked.

- Yeah, a lot of trouble.

David, I'm interested to know, is this the Duke school of education that's doing this?

Or what's the Duke research behind this, you know, that you're part of?

- This is an, actually an endowed situation through PepsiCo.

Thank you very much PepsiCo.

And it's just meant for education technology resources for helping out in the schools.

So.

- And I've actually got one more question.

When you present machine learning to the students, what is the thing that really kind of catches their attention and gets them excited about machine learning?

What's the most accessible part of it?

- You know, it's really funny, it's writing.

And we've shown it, you know, where they can just say, okay, I've got, someone, he's trying to escape and there's a bad guy coming after him and I need to write a story about this.

And the AI program writes a story and they're like, oh my God, that's amazing.

- Anyone who can write your term paper for, he's a good friend.

Ladies and gentleman, give it up for David Stein.

[audience applauds] All right, folks, this concludes RTP180 for June of 2022.

Our topic has been ed tech, but because RTP180, we get a new topic every month.

Next month, we'll be bringing you, pause for dramatic effect, I'll just tell you, it's sustainability.

So I'll have five speakers up here on the topic of sustainability, making the world a more sustainable place.

Once again, doors at 5:00, show starts at 6:00.

Now, before we open the bar back up, 'cause I know that's what you want.

[audience laughs] I know, been doing this for a while.

Thank you so much for braving the storm coming out here.

Give it up one more time for all four of our speakers.

[audience applauds] Thank you to everybody tuned in on PBS NC in and our Facebook live stream on behalf of RTP180, presented by RTI international.

I've been your MC, Wade Minter, saying thanks for coming out and have a safe journey home.

Good night, everybody.

[audience applauds]