00:01.86

Eric Stano

This is Tech in EdTech. I'm Eric Stano, and I'm joined today by Dr. Annalies Corbin, the CEO and founder of PAST Foundation, a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to transforming education by integrating anthropology with science and technology, also the author of Hacking School. We're going to be talking today about why Dr. Corbin believes the future of education depends on strategic innovation and not short-term fixes. So welcome, Annalies. I appreciate you joining me today.

00:35.78

Annalies Corbin

Oh, thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm looking forward to it.

00:39.84

Eric Stano-

That's great. Well, let's jump right in and start with what excites you about technology in education today? We'll start broad and then we'll narrow in. But what excites you?

00:50.29

Annalies Corbin

Sure. You know, technology in general excites me. I'm going to be perfectly honest. I'm a techie kind of gal, if you will.

00:59.08

Eric Stano-

Okay.

01:00.72

Annalies Corbin

I love to try new things. I love all the stuff that's happening in the world of technology today. It's just intense, because it's so fast, right? And there's a lot of excitement to me in that because there's so many tools and there's so many solutions that are out there. And the ability to be able to play in that space is an opportunity to learn so much. I think that's the thing I get excited about.

01:21.98

Eric Stano-

Right. So, a really exciting context, but to pivot slightly, why do you think innovation of that sort in education so often falls short of real change?

01:34.39

Annalies Corbin

Because of time, right? I guess really, let me back up.

01:38.98

Eric Stano

Sure.

01:39.17

Annalies Corbin

So time is definitely one of the key strategies around that, but the other one is a strategy period, right? I think that when we think about innovation, generally. We fail to recognize that innovation requires that there's some real planning around it. You know, great ideas are awesome, but great ideas cannot become a reality if we don't have strategic thought around what implementation will look like. What are the positives? What are the negatives? What are the consequences? What are the big, giant wins that have potential? And oftentimes what I see happening in education, innovation in particular, is there is a lack of understanding that to take great ideas and not just implement them, but sustain them over time, that true strategic way to think about innovation, that's where we've got some pretty substantial gaps that are happening.

02:37.97

Eric Stano

And you're sort of touching on this, but maybe just to put even a finer point on it, can you talk a little bit about what you consider to be the pitfalls of reactionary versus innovation?

02:51.23

Annalies Corbin

You know, we have a thing that happens, right? And that thing that happens, let's go back and pick, you know, a giant one that has been in everybody's ecosystem and sphere in the last five years, and that was the arrival of a global pandemic, right? And the reality of that moment was that we threw everything we had at the wall and across many, many different kinds of industries, but certainly within education, to try to pivot. And the reality of it is we had lots of the pieces and parts that were necessary for us to ensure that we could have learning to continue during that moment, but because we hadn't strategically thought about the way we utilize, for example, technology is a great element here, then we were not gonna be able to be strategic in what we could and couldn't do, how we thought about the people in the equation, and certainly not about the outcomes that we were looking for. There was no strategy around it. So it was 100% reactionary. And for the first couple of weeks, I would argue maybe that's okay. But as it was really clear that this was gonna linger on, we needed to sit down and get real strategic real fast. And we did not do that.

04:01.33

Eric Stano

Right. I think that sounds like a really good example. You suggested that you know time is a key element there. And you know, we weren't really given a heads up that a global pandemic was on its way.

04:14.03

Annalies Corbin

Right.

04:15.23

Eric Stano

So time was obviously at a premium there, and the impact you just articulated.

04:21.92

Eric Stano

I think, you know, I have in my notes here, and I think this is another example maybe you've touched on in other settings, but the two to three year federal funding cycle and its unintended consequences. Can you talk a little bit about that in this context?

04:36.14

Annalies Corbin

Sure. I refer to this often as the federal band-aid to fix education, right?

04:41.86

Annalies Corbin

And that is the reality. If we think about the way most, not all, but most federal funding in the U.S. works, they are on the cycles that are tied to our congressional allocations. And those will be two, maybe three-year cycles, depending on what you're talking about and, you know, particular which line item or which program or department that it's coming out of has different ways of doing or thinking about these things.

But these Band-Aids, if you will, these new, great, shiny, silver bullets, I've also heard them referred to oftentimes in education as that, or this thing, it's this new thing. We should all be doing it. It's going to solve the X, Y, or Z problem that we're all struggling with. But the problem is that two or three years is not long enough to have a comprehensive systems change effect because culture hasn't shifted around whatever this thing is that we're trying to fix. And the reality is there's humans in the middle of everything, and we have to have a culture shift. And if we don't get to the point of any of these initiatives where we've literally changed the culture behind the idea and the way implementation of human interactions happens, it will not stick. And so we just, two or three years later, the next shiny object shows up. And we slap another Band-Aid on that same problem. And oftentimes we don't even pull the old Band-Aid off, right? And so we're literally...

06:05.83

Eric Stano

Just aggregating the band-aids as we go.

06:08.74

Annalies Corbin

We're hemorrhaging the ideas around innovative solutions that should fix our problem. What we're not doing is tackling the root cause of the thing by giving the innovations, the ideas, the research, the R&D that's happening long enough to be tested, to be modified, and then to be systemic in its longevity as a solution. We don't do that.

06:42.20

Eric Stano

Right, right. No, and I think there's probably many examples outside of education where this is also true, but, keeping with education, and this was a good preamble, I think, talking about the education system, broadly speaking, let's narrow in, if we could, on schools and AI in particular, because obviously that is a topic that is omnipresent in everyone's lives, particularly in education. And you've compared today's resistance to AI in schools to how the internet was once feared. And what do you think the lessons are?

07:20.31

Annalies Corbin

Well, I'll go back to time, right?

07:23.85

Eric Stano

How much time do we have to talk about it?

07:26.70

Annalies Corbin

You know, it's a funny thing. We laugh about it. We're chuckling here with each other. But the reality is, I think that that is one of those great equalizers, right? You know, the internet came along and everybody in education threw up their hands. Oh, my gosh. Right. You know, students are going to be able to look anything up. Right. This crazy thing, the Internet, and it's unpoliced and it's unstructured. Is it even going to be safe? And what kind of information is going to be out there? And that was the conversation we were all having. And so schools started putting in policies. And don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing that we shouldn't be asking these questions as our roles of protecting children within an educational environment. We absolutely should. But we need to quickly move on from this doom and gloom, oh my gosh, this is going to be a terrible thing, and step back and say, what could this thing, this tool, after all, it is simply a tool, right?

What could we learn from and with it? And instead of being reactionary and saying, oh my gosh, we have to have policies that say, you know, children can't look anything up on the internet because they'll be cheating. Instead, let's teach them what the power of this thing is, right? You know, the internet could give us every opportunity under the sun to learn how to verify and evaluate information.

08:39.76

Eric Stano

Right.

08:39.82

Annalies Corbin

You know, how to verify data, you know, and the list goes on and on. Well, AI is exactly, I feel like a bit of deja vu. I'm going to be perfectly honest, right? Because it's exactly in my mind, the exact same conversation.

08:53.47

Annalies Corbin

It's just that it's the conversation for the year, you know, 2023, 2024, 2025, this moment. And where we are doing the same thing. We did not learn the lesson the first time around. That was at the end of the day, the internet can be a powerful tool that can be utilized for a million different things, and students directly benefit from it.

09:17.90

Eric Stano

Right, right.

09:18.19

Annalies Corbin

Well, AI is just like that.

09:18.46

Eric Stano

And yeah, and you can't close Pandora's box. So it's best to figure out how you actually utilize it to a positive end. So given that, what do you think true AI literacy is going to look like in a K through 12 or a post-secondary classroom going forward? Once everyone gets their arms around the fact that is a tool that's not going away. What do you think that's going to look like when folks are literate and able to use it to the right ends?

09:55.81

Annalies Corbin

Well, let me tell you what I hope it looks like.

09:59.04

Eric Stano

Sure.

09:59.83

Annalies Corbin

You know, I will say that with any new thing that gets humans all a flutter, and I'm a bit biased, right, because I'm an anthropologist, right? And so I'm always going to come back to, you know, the human sort of in the middle of all this. But once the humans get their feathers unruffled over this idea of AI being heavily involved in education, what I hope is going to happen is that our students are going to be some of the best question askers ever. Right? Because the AI is only as good as the questions we ask of it. It's not going to just randomly give you something. You can suggest, you know, additional extensions, which it does, and it does really, really well. But ultimately, I'm hoping that our students will learn to be so complete and specific in terms of the way that they understand how you get information out of something. So that's one element. Because right now, I think there's a level of vagueness in the way that kids know how to access information and the data associated with information.

11:04.62

Eric Stano

Right. 

11:15.30

Annalies Corbin

And then the other thing that I'm really hoping from a literacy standpoint, is that our students are so great at vetting information, they're great at vetting data, they understand that there's a difference between fact and an opinion. And we need and we have both. And we can have both even in the same response. But for them to be able to discern the differences and then form opinions of their own based on the data and the reflective opportunities that they can and should have with that data, that's what I'm hoping for.

11:57.25

Eric Stano

And actually that's a really interesting framing because there's been this issue of longstanding desire that you know students in any school setting, but certainly in a liberal arts setting, will emerge as critical thinkers.

12:12.76

Eric Stano

And people always sort of question, where is that skill being taught? It's one of those soft skills that always seems to be lacking when people emerge from their academic careers into their actual careers. And this sounds like it could be really a catalyst to develop critical thinkers. And also something that I think, if I could go out on a limb here, an information literacy element to this, where you know we are awash in so much information. You know it's long been a desire of many that you know we become better critical consumers of the information we're seeing. So if the use of AI is going to harness and refine those skills, I think that there is a material good in that. I have to say that you know, comparing it to the advent of the internet keeps bringing that Mark Twain quote to mind for me. History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes. And this is, yeah, this is invoking that particular quote for me quite a bit. So, how do you think practically, how can educators move from their sort of reflexive fear response to fluency when it comes to AI? How do you think educators do that?

13:38.00

Annalies Corbin

Yeah, that's a really interesting question. And I think that one of the pieces for educators, right, is, you know, if you're wearing that hat, right, walking that particular path as an educator, the bombardment, if you will, of all of these inputs that educators have to deal with today that they didn't have to 10, 20, 50 years ago, certainly, right? It's a lot. And I think that one of the first things that if we can get our collective sets of educators to recognize is in the same way that we want our students to be literate and understand how these tools can be of great benefit to their learning. We want our educators to recognize and understand that AI can be a great tool that can actually lessen the burden as an educator. All of those process pieces, and we understand that AI can automate lots of things that we do. We're seeing it across all industries. But I think that there's a sweet spot for our educators, first and foremost, to embrace this tool as a helpmate. And I think that is a piece of what has to happen. The second piece of that then is to, once that happens and we can get educators comfortable in how they can use the tool to make their jobs and their experience easier, better, more fulfilling, take your pick of which phrase you want to add to that. The next piece of it is an opportunity to free themselves from the constraints of a sort of rote process-driven sort of feeling of the work that I'm supposed to be doing, and will allow them to shift back to the thing that took most people into education in the first place, right? Is that love of learning or that love of helping others find a love of learning and knowledge, right? And so, if we can get our educators to shift and understand that AI gives us the opportunity to teach our students a whole set of skills that we have an obligation to teach them anyway. This is not even a new standard, right? It's an amplification of a standard that we've traditionally struggled to figure out how to help our students attain. And the reality of it is that if we don't help our students be great, brilliant users, understanders, coders, writers, deliverers, right, of AI, when they graduate and move on to be those fully functional humans we want, in our communities and society, that we are doing them a huge disservice because they're all going to have to be able to do it in their jobs.

16:24.26

Eric Stano

Right. And actually, this is not to put you on the spot with this question, but, you know, I hear you as to the goal. And I've actually written about the possibility that AI can alleviate some of the pressures on teachers, maybe even alleviate some of the teacher shortages that we experience, you know, through deploying AI in certain discrete places. But how do you think we catalyze that epiphany among educators? How do you think we get them to that point? Do you have any advice for those like you who might have that perspective and understand that the future can look brighter and better for teachers if we're able to harness AI in the right way? But is there any practical advice that you would have to get educators from point A to point B on that front?

17:18.39

Annalies Corbin

I think the first one that I would put out there is, you know, there's this interesting dichotomy when it comes to new technologies. And, you know, I have no doubt you've seen it across many different industries.

17:28.43

Eric Stano

Sure. Mm-hmm.

17:30.53

Annalies Corbin

And that's this fear that whatever this thing is, that it is going to take my job or modify my job in such a way it's not the thing that I know or that I'm doing. And I think that for educators, one of the elements is that, you know, as they embrace this new technology, it should free them up to have a different set of relationships with their students, right? So the other thing that's really interesting, we haven't really touched on, but I think gets to the heart of the question that you're asking, is that

18:05.23

Eric Stano

Yeah.

18:06.32

Annalies Corbin

In education, traditionally, we have had a very, very longstanding history, and for very good reasons that we have to be an expert in something, especially as we get into the higher grades, right?

18:20.23

Eric Stano

Right. Right.

18:20.49

Annalies Corbin

That we have to be the expert in math or we have to be the expert in social studies, that's our content, right?

18:20.69

Eric Stano

Right

18:27.52

Annalies Corbin

That's our expertise that we were hired to be, the XYZ teacher.

18:31.93

Eric Stano

Right, right. The oracle of sorts that people.

18:32.67

Annalies Corbin

Exactly. But we also now know, and most teachers, even those that are staunch about their content, that this is the thing, but that's not what students want or need. And it's certainly not the way that our students in the modern era that we live in right now relate to the world, right? They do not see the disconnect between, you know, mathematics and science, for example, right?

19:04.15

Annalies Corbin

Because one does not exist without the other.

19:04.15

Eric Stano

Right, right.

19:07.35

Annalies Corbin

And so the fact that we're still so rigidly content-driven, I think, is one of the other things that for educators to truly be that mentor or that facilitator of learning and less that, you know, that singular sage on that stage with a spotlight.

19:20.07

Eric Stano

Right.

19:25.96

Annalies Corbin

When we make that shift, that's what I see with the educators that we work with. That’s, as soon as they realize, oh my gosh, I can partner with my other fellow teachers or I can, you know, bring in folks from the community and not in the old show and tell ways, but literally to design projects and programs, if you will, that our students can engage in and learn the things they need to do. Our kids will, A, love it, but more importantly, it frees me up to also bring to the table my own superpowers or passions, which in a traditional setting, I do not get to show up, but I have to leave them at home.

20:03.40

Eric Stano

Right

20:05.44

Annalies Corbin

And that's freeing to the human soul, right?

20:08.80

Eric Stano

Absolutely, and an inspiring potential future where, as you said, the relationship between the instructor and the student changes and the nature of the competencies that we're developing in students changes. So that's, yeah, a potentially bright future for all able to you know mute our fear instinct and really try and embrace the change that's, again, not going away.

20:33.99

Annalies Corbin

Right.

20:34.98

Eric Stano

Yeah. One of the only constants is change. Well, let's shift gears a little bit, if we could. And I'd love to talk a little bit about your 2024 book, Hacking School. I noted that Kirkus Reviews has called it an impressively thoughtful and thoroughly practical guide for educational reform, which is, again, sort of very, very much in keeping with what we've already begun discussing here. But what inspired you to write Hacking School?

21:07.54

Annalies Corbin

That's a great question. So, you know, I've been in this space of thinking about transformative education for more than two decades. And in that work, you know, I sometimes felt like I was beating my head against a brick wall.

21:24.25

Annalies Corbin

Right. In all honesty. Again, these federal band-aids that we already talked about, these innovations, they were showing up. We were running just full bore as teachers or schools, or districts towards this thing. And then the wheels would fall off. And at the end of the day, it wasn't changing anything for our students. And as practitioners, it was just frustrating us to no end, almost to the point that I can't tell you how many conversations I've had with an educator of this new thing was coming in. A district had heavily invested. We're going to do all this PD, all this training.

22:01.23

Eric Stano

Mm-hmm

22:01.43

Annalies Corbin

And I will tell you that they would say to me, I'm just not going to do this. If I just wait, you know, two years from now, we'll be doing something else anyway. I don't need to invest in this.

22:09.53

Eric Stano

The instinct to wait it out. I get that.

22:11.64

Annalies Corbin

Correct.

22:12.53

Eric Stano

Yeah.

22:12.65

Annalies Corbin

And you see you I was seeing a lot of that, right? And so Hacking School is really around this idea of examining the innovations in education that were showing up and lasting. I mean, that was my research question, if you will, right? So I was, I really wanted to understand the really true innovative programs that 10 years after some amazing teacher or a group of educators came together and said, we're going to do this thing, we're going to do it with full fidelity, and we're going to run full on. And 10 years later, it's still happening. And I wanted to know, was there some magic to those? Because most of them fail. They're not sustained.

22:54.10

Eric Stano

Right. Yeah.

22:55.52

Annalies Corbin

And what I found was, yes, there is some magic in the fact that those that lasted 10 years or more had these five consistent things. They all have other things too, right? Because that's sort of how innovation works. But I wrote the book because I wanted to be able, A, to tell the story of these innovations that really work, but more importantly, the practitioners who were living these five elements that I was finding because I also found that many educators were doing pieces and parts of these things, like the words, these concepts were not new when I would talk to the individual educators. And what I found was they couldn't figure out how to catalyze these things into their own practice or pedagogical sort of approaches in their own classrooms or their own schools. And so I wrote it, honestly, to celebrate these people that were doing amazing things because we hear an awful lot about what's not working, and we don't spend enough time celebrating the things that are.

23:57.20

Eric Stano

Nice, nice. Well, let's talk, you mentioned the five elements that are important for lasting change. And if I've got these right, those are student agency, cultural relevancy, mastery-based learning, transdisciplinary approaches, and problem-based learning. Do you want to kind of just walk us through those five elements and just say a little bit more about how you think they contribute to lasting change?

24:26.29

Annalies Corbin

Sure, absolutely. Thank you for that. And I would also like to say that we see these, I'll preface this, as we see this across all of these sorts of innovations that are touching on education today. So that's going to be anything that has to do with technology innovations, that's practical innovations or pedagogical shifts and changes, research, you name it. I've seen these play out in all of these elements in education, which is why I felt it was really, really important to put this work out there. So student agency is all about recognizing that students need to learn how to advocate for themselves, that voice and choice, which is literally what you often hear associated with the idea of student agency. But it's more than that, right?

25:12.03

Eric Stano

Sure. 

25:13.49

Annalies Corbin

What student agency in this case really means is that students co-design, they have ownership over their learning journey. Whatever that journey is going to be, the students have an active role in determining or making choices along that journey. Critically important. Students are engaged with us, they're gonna opt in. And no matter what that thing happens to be, even if they're like, well, this is not really for me, but because you gave me the option, or you gave me options within it, so you know it's gonna be an easier game to play.

25:47.52

Eric Stano

Right.

25:47.57

Annalies Corbin

The next one is around cultural relevancy or resiliency. There are lots of words that get thrown out with this. And what this really means at its heart is whatever the thing is that we're doing, if the participants can't relate to it, right? So, you know, I'm using this term in its broadest sense. I'm not honing in on a particular thing that policymakers may or may not be arguing over. That's not what this is about. This is about recognizing who your learners are and making sure that, whatever these program elements, the content you're teaching, you name it, that they can see themselves in it.

26:16.03

Eric Stano

Right.

26:27.01

Annalies Corbin

Because if they can't see themselves in it, they're just going to turn you off, especially, you know, as kids get older.

26:33.84

Eric Stano

So, pairing really student empowerment over their own learning journey with some sense of meaning and relevance to them that those two make a lot of sense together. How about mastery-based learning?

26:51.41

Annalies Corbin

Sure, so mastery-based learning or competency-based learning is this idea, and I get to use time again here, so see how we bring this all back together.

26:58.84

Annalies Corbin

And so this is based on the idea that we have to give our students sort of time and space to dig into the stuff we want them to know, right? 

27:08.23

Eric Stano

Right.

27:10.79

Annalies Corbin

If we only teach it on Tuesday at 2 o'clock, and we're on pages 3,4, and then on Wednesday, we move on to a completely different concept, and it doesn't really make any difference whether our kids get it or not. We are never going to have students that master something or they have enough knowledge of whatever that thing is to either apply it or synthesize it down the road.

27:28.17

Eric Stano

Right.

27:27.94

Annalies Corbin

And that's what happens in a lot of really prescriptive learning environments.

27:32.76

Annalies Corbin

So this idea around mastery-based says, you know what, we're going to throw some of those constraints to the wind, not all of them, let's be real, but we're going to give our students time to dig. And if they go down a rabbit hole, that's okay, because there's so much opportunity to learn through the rabbit hole itself. And so that's what mastery is about, just really recognizing that, you know, sometimes you don't get it the first time.

27:59.65

Eric Stano

And I can see how that is resonant and in keeping with, again, the first couple of elements that we've talked about, student agency.

28:06.94

Annalies Corbin

Mm-hmm.

28:08.75

Eric Stano

It seems to, again, further that sense of empowerment and really letting the student, you know, take some or have some sense of ownership of their own learning journey. What about transdisciplinary approaches?

28:24.65

Annalies Corbin

Yeah, this is my favorite one. So transdisciplinary gets us to breaking down those silos. Once again, it comes back to that content. And this is where we give context to what we want our learners to experience and to really sort of take in. This is that opportunity for us not just to co-teach or to be multidisciplinary, but to truly recognize that to solve really big, hairy, audacious, wicked problems out in the world, right, that we have to bring everything to bear. We have to understand all sides of the problem. to be able to actually come up with solutions or potential solutions. And we cannot do that if we continue to put content or understanding into very, very discrete buckets. So transdisciplinary just says that we're gonna give context to everything that we teach and recognize it doesn't matter that I'm the social studies teacher, but now we gotta talk about math for five minutes.

29:29.07

Eric Stano

Right, right. I can see how even that and correct me if I'm making two to create a leap here, but your earlier element of cultural relevancy and creating some meaning, a transdisciplinary approach sort of that recognizes the meaning again, just recognizing the world in which we exist, you're not going to encounter, you know, a math problem on the corner of 22nd and 7th and then a history problem when you're driving to work or, you know, and an English problem you know over in this neighborhood. They're all going to be blended together in just the way that the world works and the way we live within it. So I can get the sense that that itself creates some meaning for the student, where they can see themselves in it because they recognize the world in which they exist.

30:22.12

Annalies Corbin

Correct.

30:26.06

Eric Stano

So, problem-based learning, the last of the five elements. Do you want to say something about that?

30:30.92

Annalies Corbin

Yeah, and problem-based learning is anything on that continuum that's really hands-on or inquiry. So we know that students sitting in a row with, you know, some old white guy in many cases or someone who's completely unrelated to the students sitting in the room lecturing to them is not getting our students engaged in their learning. But if we can utilize hands-on, very applied opportunities for students just to really, really dig in, you know, that's where a lot of the magic can happen for our students. And problem-based, as opposed to inquiry or project-based, those are all part of the continuum. I use the umbrella of problem-based because it's the most complex, the highest order along that continuum. And it's very, very, very difficult to do and be a true problem-based learning environment or ecosystem, if you will. But it's the thing that, as educators, if we can aspire to that for our students, and we recognize in a problem-based environment, that there's not a singular answer to solving a problem. There's many possible solutions, and that there can be elements of possible solutions, right, that are going to have meaning and relevance for whatever it is that we're tackling. So it gets us to the point where, as educators, we think about the way that we want to structure our learning environment so that students have the greatest opportunity for, you know, one through four to happen.

32:06.85

Eric Stano

Right. what I like about all of these, even speaking as one of those old white guys who's like unlikely to motivate learning, what I love about the these five elements, the student agency, the cultural relevancy, the mastery-based learning, the transdisciplinary approaches, the problem-based learning is they all together seem to pull learning out of the ivory tower and situate it in the world in which the students live. It puts it in the students' hands, it gives them agency, and they're operating again in the world in which we all exist. So it all just together suggests a lot more meaning than I think maybe our traditional approaches to learning might have suggested. And correct me if I got any of that wrong or mischaracterized any of that.

33:03.89

Annalies Corbin

No, I mean, 100%, right? And that's really, at the end of the day, you know what we're really hoping for. And what's interesting with those five things is, like I said, the innovations that stuck around, these great programs, right? These amazing experiences that students remember and talk about for years and years and years later they all have elements of these five things. And the ones that don't make it, they tend to be missing. At least one or two of them, if not three of them in particular, right? And so it's really important to recognize that as these innovative programs sort of progress and new educators come to them, they bring their own innovations. And so the innovation actually grows somewhat exponentially when the solid foundation exists for it to do so.

34:01.68

Eric Stano

Right, right. Of the five elements here, is there one that you think schools tend to struggle with the most? What's sort of the low-hanging fruit on the problem with adopting some of these approaches or perspectives?

34:18.13

Annalies Corbin

Sure. So the one that a district will struggle with the most. So there's two pieces to this answer. So that one's going to be mastery or competency-based, right? Because oftentimes they perceive, whether it's true or not, that you have to have policy change for that to even be possible, right?

34:37.84

Annalies Corbin

We're going to give up giving A, B, C, D, or F grades. And instead, we're going to give everybody the chance to earn a minimum of 85%. I'm just making something up, right?

34:48.78

Annalies Corbin

Because we see mastery in different formats, different places.

34:48.97

Eric Stano

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

34:52.44

Annalies Corbin

So the perception is we have to have a policy shift to make that happen. That's not, it's a bit on the false side, right? Because we could bring mastery into an individual classroom and still assign grades, but we struggle with being able to separate those things out. So that's one half of the answer. The other half of my answer to you, but in the practical sense, what's the one that is absolutely the hardest as an educator and as a learner and as a community to embrace and really run with, that's going to be problem-based. And the reason for that is because we feel like that when we shift into either an inquiry project or problem-based sort of environment, that we're led, that it's more fun. And therefore we're not doing the rigorous things that we're testing or we think, right? And so our learners might be missing something. So from a truly, truly practical standpoint, I would say it's the problem-based space that folks struggle with the most. The irony, of course, is once your students learn how to function in that type of environment or architecture of learning, the students will excel. They will outperform students doing the traditional classroom every single time. But there's going to be a down dip first as they learn how to adjust to it. I'm not memorizing, I'm not doing homework the same way, I'm not doing all of these elements.

36:17.80

Eric Stano

Right, right. And you know, and it may be a little far afield at this point, but as you've been talking and, you know, as I've been sitting here getting quietly inspired about the potential that these five elements hold, it keeps bringing to mind my own, you know, college experience. And there was a philosophy professor who asked us one day and Kurt Vonnegut had recently been on campus and gave a lecture which I attended and of course loved and learned a great deal from and the next class period this philosophy class the instructor asked who had gone to to see and listen to to Kurt Vonnegut and a handful of us raised our hands and he looked, you know, a little unhappy at that level of response and went around the room and was asking the question like, well, why didn't you go? Why didn't you go? And people were coming up with, well, I had to study. I had the X class here. I had X class there. I had whatever it was. And he just stood back and then gave us a piece of wisdom that I have not forgotten. He said, never, never let your school get in the way of your learning. And I think that what you're flashing forward to is a time and a place when schools will, in a much more effective fashion, really catalyze and fuel that learning in a way that they're probably laboring toward these days, but haven't quite gotten there yet.  Okay, let's shift. We could do a little bit of a lightning round here. So, I'm going to ask you a couple of questions here, and off the top of your head, give me your answer.

38:14.49

Eric Stano

First is, what is one edtech trend you are cautiously optimistic about?

38:21.57

Annalies Corbin

Digital portfolios.

38:24.12

Eric Stano

Oh, say more about that.

38:25.59

Annalies Corbin

So they've been around for a long time. This is not a new concept, right? But this idea that learners can go out into the world, right? In my perfect world, you know, school is no longer in the box with a roof on top. School is everywhere.

38:39.31

Eric Stano

Mm-hmm.

38:40.21

Annalies Corbin

And in every experience that I have can somehow be captured and cataloged for me, owned by me, and I can get credit for it for the things I have to do to get through to the next stage. So I am super, super excited about the possibility of a world in which I own my data, but more importantly, I own how my data is being utilized and interpreted by the outside world for my benefit.

39:15.91

Eric Stano

That is aspirational, but I agree with your optimism around that, or at least I'm hopeful that your optimism pays off in this particular case.

39:27.53

Annalies Corbin

Yeah.

39:29.77

Eric Stano

All right, continuing with the lightning round, what's one thing you wish every school leader would stop doing?

39:37.30

Annalies Corbin

Ringing bells.

39:40.20

Eric Stano

And why is that?

39:43.40

Annalies Corbin

We're humans, right? You know, I mean, seriously, why are we ringing bells to tell us when to suddenly leap out of a chair and move to something else? It's so artificial. There's nothing real about it. There's nothing else in our lives that works this way. What the heck?

40:04.75

Eric Stano

You know actually, I find that funny for a variety of reasons. One of them is in my own product development background. You know I've designed products for years and the people asking for them or thinking about them will often ask for what they call bells and whistles.

40:22.72

Annalies Corbin

Mm-hmm.

40:22.90

Eric Stano

And I found myself pursuing those for many years, but then finally had this epiphany some years ago where I said, you know you know what a synonym for bells and whistles is? Noise.

40:35.02

Eric Stano

It's just noise.

40:36.60

Eric Stano

We want this product to be a signal through it. But I appreciate your note on metals just being artificial and frankly noisy.

40:48.05

Annalies Corbin

Well, and if we want our kids to learn time management, what are we doing?

40:54.57

Annalies Corbin

Right?

40:54.76

Eric Stano

Yeah. Yeah. Treating them like cattle is probably not the best way to go about that. You're absolutely right. Okay. Last question. If you had 10 minutes in a room full of district tech directors, what would you say to them?

41:12.05

Annalies Corbin

I would tell them stop with district wide deployments of anything. Just don't do that. You're setting yourself up to fail.

41:22.88

Annalies Corbin

You know, you're always going to have these people that if given the opportunity to try and do something new and different, they're going to raise their hand. They're going to be your early adopters every single time. Make use of them.

41:35.28

Annalies Corbin

These are the people that you want to try a thing, give you feedback, because they will give you feedback, not because they don't want to do it, but because they actually are super interested and they believe you want to hear from them.

41:47.32

Annalies Corbin

And they will then help you chart the course to bigger and broader implementation.

41:53.35

Eric Stano

Well, that's fantastic. I appreciate that perspective. And I hope even though they didn't get 10 minutes of that, the listeners here will nevertheless take you up on that directive.

42:05.13

Annalies Corbin

Mm-hmm.

42:06.48

Eric Stano

Well, listen, Dr. Corbin, I really appreciate you joining me today. This has been a fabulous conversation. And, before we part ways, if you could let listeners know where they can learn a little bit more about PAST Foundation and where they could find Hacking School.

42:26.91

Annalies Corbin

Sure. Past Foundation, you can definitely get information on our website, just pastfoundation.org. And it's P-A-S-T. I get asked that question all the time, pastfoundation.org. And the book, you can get it anywhere that you like to order books online or whatnot, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, all of those places. You can find Hacking School: 5 Strategies to Link Learning to Life.

42:50.11

Eric Stano

Fabulous. And before again we go, any final thoughts? What would give you hope about the future of EdTech? Any final thoughts around that?

43:02.08

Annalies Corbin

I think the future of ed tech is wide freaking open, if you will, right?

43:07.83

Annalies Corbin

Because the rate and pace of change, as we know with technology, is unlike anything we've seen in a really long time. And I think that's really exciting if you're not afraid of technology and you recognize that technology is a tool.

43:24.64

Annalies Corbin

And so figure out quickly, you know, what to do with that tool. But that makes me really excited, right? Because if the solution that's out there right now doesn't actually work for us, you know, literally wait five minutes, there's going to be something else that pops up that might be just what you're looking for.

43:38.81

Annalies Corbin

That's exciting.

43:39.13

Eric Stano

Right. Just like the weather in Florida, just wait five minutes and it'll change completely.

43:42.12

Annalies Corbin

That's true.

43:46.33

Eric Stano

Well, Dr. Corbin, again, thank you so much for joining me today. Thanks to all the listeners. Again, this has been Tech in EdTech. I'm Eric Stano, and thank you for listening.

44:00.43

Annalies Corbin

Thank you.