EPISODE 11: Device Advice from Jeff Bradbury

[00:00:21] KK: Welcome to Risky Business. I'm Kathy Kaehler.

[00:00:23] BL: And I'm Bliss Landon.

[00:00:25] KK: Welcome to this episode –

[00:00:27] BL: Of Risky Business.

[00:00:28] KK: Of Risky Business, with us risky gals. How are you?

[00:00:33] BL: I'm good. How are you?

[00:00:34] KK: Very good. Very, very good.

[00:00:35] BL: Excellent. Excellent. Well, we have a very exciting guest that I can't wait to pick his brain on all cast of things. I have a lot of questions for him.

[00:00:42] KK: And he also has a very interesting background.

[00:00:45] BL: Yes.

[00:00:45] KK: Been to a lot of places. And we'd like to learn about a performance.

[00:00:51] BL: Yes, a certain performance.

[00:00:54] KK: Yes. In a certain location that’s very famous.

[00:00:57] BL: Yes. Absolutely.

[00:00:58] KK: Well, we will get started. And we'd love to introduce who is right here with us on Zoom, Jeff Bradley – Bradbury. Sorry. So sorry about that, Jeff. But he is a lead in instructional and founder and CEO of TeachersCast, TeachersCast. He says it's something very, very cool, something that he's really started and created. So Jeff, tell us all about all of these things.

[00:01:31] JB: Well, hello, everybody. It is so nice to be here today. Thank you for having me on the show. How are you guys?

[00:01:37] KK: We’re good. We're good.

[00:01:38] BL: Fantastic.

[00:01:39] KK: And where are you at actually?

[00:01:41] JB: Well, I am in Connecticut. As you mentioned, I'm our lead instructional coach for digital learning at Norwalk Public Schools where we serve 13,000 students and about 2,000 employees or so. And on top of that, I'm also the creator and host of the TeacherCast Educational Network. So we got opportunities to work with a lot of great companies, a lot of great school districts and have the opportunity to share stories from educators from around the world. It’s been pretty awesome.

[00:02:11] BL: So your background was in music. You are a music director.

[00:02:16] JB: It is. I have two degrees in music. I started playing early age and undergrad in music education. So I was a music educator for about 18 years or so. And that took me from teaching K12 music, teaching K12 orchestra in the classroom. Outside of that, I was a conductor around New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York. Did operas, symphonies, and did a whole bunch of other stuff and got a chance to conduct in a couple different continents. So that was one life, and now my other life has all instructional.

[00:02:49] KK: Well, but you’re: missing one main thing. Where did you – You performed at Carnegie. Yes?

[00:02:54] JB: We did. I took my high school orchestra there. And it was an amazing experience. I have the poster over here hanging on the wall. And, yeah, we performed in the spot that they all perform in.

[00:03:06] BL: Wow! That's awesome.

[00:03:08] JB: You never forget watching your kids walk onto the stage for the first time and seeing their eyes light up. And I can picture that right now of just watching them just kind of take it all in because I was a kid on that stage too.

[00:03:22] BL: Wow! That's incredible. Wow. Wow. Okay, so then after that, you got into TeacherCast?

[00:03:31] KK: That coaching?

[00:03:32] JB: Yeah. I was conducting in Manhattan. I was conducting operas and stuff. I got my master's degree in orchestral conducting and did all of that wonderful stuff. And basically, as the story goes, my wife came to me and said, “Hey, it's time.” And when people say it's time, you can't be conducting in New York. So I decided, “Okay, if I can't be in an orchestra situation, time for me to create an orchestra of my own in my own house.” And so essentially the podium became a microphone and the audience became monitors. And I began what's now a 10-year career as an instructional podcaster and created the TeacherCast Educational Network. And like I said, we're coming up on 10 years now in July. It'll be our 10 year anniversary. And it's been an amazing –

[00:04:24] BL: Oh, congratulations. Wow! Yeah. That’s awesome.

[00:04:25] JB: Thank you. It's taken me all over the world, gotten me the opportunities that I would never have had before. And because of all of that stuff, I now have seven year old triplets. So it's pretty awesome.

[00:04:39] BL: Oh, wow!

[00:04:42] KK: I was saying you were busy before that. Now I know for sure you are busy.

[00:04:46] BL: Wow!

[00:04:47] JB: They're amazing to have.

[00:04:49] BL: Oh, I bet triplets. She has twins. Yeah, that's a whole another story.

[00:04:53] JB: It's just one more shower every night. That's all it is.

[00:04:58] BL: Wow! That's incredible.

[00:05:00] KK: So can you kind of unpack a little bit about TeachersCast? Like what does it look like? What do you do with it? What are people do with it?

[00:05:08] JB: Sure. TeacherCast, singular, started as basically as a single show. I wanted to help out the students and teachers in the district I was working with, and I didn't have all the answers. So I figured, “Let me find the people that do.” And I'll have a conversation while I'm learning things. I just happened to be recording it. Go back, this was 10 years. There wasn't a lot of stuff out there in the world of podcasting, especially educational podcasting. One show turned into a rather healthy guest blog. Actually, at one point in time early in the tenure there, I had about 25, 30 or so different educators all guest posting on the website.

Somewhere in the middle there, I became Microsoft's first educational podcaster on record. I started the New Jersey Educators Podcast. We’re now on their second show. And so much has come out of that meeting. Amazing people, and getting to work with, amazing people, amazing educators, things like that. Because of the kids, being 25-week preemies and getting to live literally in two NICUs, in two different states, that afforded me the opportunity to share that story as a TED Talk. And because I'm kind of also in that medical community from being in the NICU, I've now started my fifth NICU-based podcast series for nonprofits all helping families and stuff cope with being in the NICU, working with doctors, helping them out. I actually started a chiropractic podcast along the way in there, and I just launched one – You know what? If you look in the top of TeacherCast, it always says it's a place for teachers to help other teachers. And that's the way that I have always take my presentations, my shows. It is the place where we're going to come together and just say, “What can we do to help out whoever happens to be listening?” And I’m so fortunate – 1

[00:07:08] BL: Oh, that’s so cool. So it’s not educational teachers. It’s not just that. It’s any teacher who can teach anything to anybody.

[00:07:15] JB: We're all educators.

[00:07:17] BL: Exactly. Yeah, we all know something about something that we can help somebody else with, right?

[00:07:21] JB: So I think if you look under iTunes, I probably on up to 15 different shows that I've done over the last little bit. So you name the topic, I can talk about it. I'm having fun with it.

[00:07:32] KK: That's awesome. That's really great.

[00:07:35] BL: Well, I have I have a question for you, because you are also an instructional coach for digital learning. So the reason why we really had you on here was to talk about how you help school districts decide what learning device they should use. I mean, what are the questions? You have listed that there're five things a director of technology should look for when choosing a device for coverage for that device, or N-coverage for that device? So what are the things that you recommend a school district look for when choosing their learning device?

[00:08:12] JB: Over the last 10 years, I've had the opportunity to help out dozens of school districts not only in the classroom, but on the classroom. And generally we start with our students. What do you want? What do they want to be? What are their goals? And usually these conversations happen after the school district has already created their strategic operating plan. They're coming up with what they want, where they're going, what their vision is. And this is usually when we start talking not at the superintendent level, but we start talking at the tech director level, which is, “Okay, you want to go somewhere. You know you want to be one-to-one. You know you want to be a Google, Microsoft, Apple, whatever you want to be.” The next step is what are you going to do it with?

And I think every tech director out there is always going to say, “I need to find something that I can get great customer support on.” Because you could have the best devices, but if no one's going to pick up the phone and answer the questions, or if the website doesn't have the answers that I need, I can't do anything with it. You can have the best widget, but if I can't talk to the widget creator, it doesn't work. And I say the same thing on the coaching side when I work with the edtech vendors. If you're not able to pick up a phone or have a live chat, especially nowadays, those 24/7 chats are wonderful, I can't recommend purchasing your application, your hardware, whatever.

I mean, I work with school districts that have hundreds and sometimes 300,000 students. They need to have vendors out there that are quick on the phone, able to give tech support, and be able to troubleshoot, help out on call both with the hardware and the software connections. It's the most important thing anybody can have as a friend in this world. And so that's why, number one, I always say customer service is number one.

[00:09:55] BL: Okay. And what's number two?

[00:09:57] JB: Number two is always having the right features, right? Does my vision for my school district match up with this? We're working right now on a school district that I'm working with. And they've got a vision for creating that classroom for tomorrow. What are they looking for? Do they want a camera that has a base that swivels on its own? Or do they want a camera that you put a phone on, because the teacher is going to bring their own device in?

Well, depending on what direction you want your school district to go to, that's going to help me make the decision between what hardware I want. The other thing is the accessibility. So it's kind of two A and two B here, is I need the features, but I also need to make sure that whatever I have is available.

Give you a good example. Many school districts right now are Google schools. And Google is a wonderful product. I’m a Google trainer. I drink the Google Kool Aid. But they're also got a lot of students who have multiple languages, and they have to support a population that is running in multiple languages, sometimes five or six multiple languages. Well, did you know that PowerPoint can actually take a presentation that you're doing? Get your voice and live translate to 106 languages on the spot while the teachers giving the presentation?

[00:11:14] KK: Did not know that.

[00:11:15] BL: I had no idea. No idea.

[00:11:17] JB: Pick one. Right? So if you're in a in a district that has a diverse population, it's not, “I like this better.” It's the, “Okay, my population needs to be able to,” because I can do one of two things. I can pay for translators to walk into every classroom. Or I could use PowerPoint versus Google Slides. Now, one's not saying one's better than the next, but my goodness, feature sets like that, better making it easy for teachers to do their job and also are accessible are the next big thing, right? So how do you use that? That's where your customer service comes in. And so everything just kind of goes in there together.

[00:11:59] BL: Wow! Interesting. Okay, is there number three?

[00:12:02] JB: Sure. Kind of going within the same thing here, making sure that it's student and safe, right? We all talk about COPPA, we all talk about FERPA. Over the last year, I've had an opportunity to work with an amazing educational video company. And the first thing that we started talking about when they brought me on and we were redesigning their website is, “Are you COPPA and FERPA compliant?” And they said, “I think so.” And I said, “That's not the right answer.” You need to either say yes or no. And then they looked into it. And they said, “Yes, we are COPPA and FERPA –” And I said, “Okay, that's going to be the top thing on the masthead right underneath of your name. Because you need to say, “We are the number one COPPA and FERPA video thing for –” I don't care whatever else you're selling. I'm interested in you now. But if I have to look for that, I don't have time.

So you want to make sure student safety, student security. Going back to the two biggies, the one that starts with a G and the one that starts with an M, there're a lot of questions in there about those things. What applications, for instance, are a part of the Google for education suite, versus just a general Google product? And recently, there was a couple of issues with a mapping application, because anybody can open up a mapping application and have it say, “Here I am.” Well, you're no longer COPPA compliant if I can track down every student in your school district.

[00:13:31] BL: Oh, yeah. You’re right. You’re right. We’re just talking about that. Yeah.

[00:13:34] JB: So these are all things that go back to how do I find the answers? Well, I need number one, which is customer service.

[00:13:41] BL: Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:13:43] JB: So everything kind of goes together there. And then the last thing here is the integrations. If I'm going to be buying a hardware solution, a software solution, anything, does it work with the environment that I currently have available? Is it going into class link? Is it going into one of those other – My learning management system? Is it Google Classroom compliant? Does it work with teams? Many groups have worked with me over the last little bit. And that’s the second question I always ask. The first one is COPPA, FERPA. The second one is, “Does it work with my school?” Because if it doesn't, again, I can't sell it to my district, I can't sell it to my teachers. And if it's 2022, and you're not connecting into Google Classroom, or teams, or some kind of learning management system, you got more work to do. And so these are all the little things here of making sure that it's safe, making sure that it's accessible, making sure that you've got the right feature sets, making sure that I can sell it, right? Because, really, that number five thing is how well can I sell this to my teachers?

We've all heard of the stories where this – I hear this one constantly. It's the end of the year. A district has a bunch of money to spend, and then they go out and they buy five Jamboards, which if you don't know, are like $3,000 to $5,000 things? Well, now you have to sell this $20,000 purchase to your teachers. And all they're looking at is, “Dude, you spent 20 grand when we need books,” and those kind of conversations.

[00:15:18] BL: That’s what I was going to ask you about, was budget really plays into these decisions too, right? Because they may want all these features and for things to be compatible with what they already have. But if their budget doesn't warrant that device, then you got to go to plan B, right? Because budget plays a big part of it. they have to be able to pay for that.

[00:15:39] JB: You do. And one application that does many things is not always as good as many applications that does one thing. You always have to figure out where it is. It really does come down to the customer service. Microsoft as an example is very amazing to work with because their education department is one of the five pillars of Microsoft. And Microsoft's motto I think is something like empower every educator to do awesome stuff every single day or something like that.

When a school district reaches out and says, “We need these things,” Microsoft listens, and Google does too. But these companies are there sitting and they’re going, “Okay, what features do we need? How quickly can we roll them out? Why do they need them? And ultimately, is this something that's going to be a minimal viable product? Or do we really want to invest in creating something here?” And we're very fortunate enough in the last year, these companies have been listening. And now it's a year since everyone's kind of gone through this major educational transformation. You're seeing a ton of stuff popping out all because of the pain that we were going through last year, which was, “Hey, we're at home, we're on hybrid, we’re remote. We need teams that have –” Right. We need a device. We need something that has teams on it. We need an attendance tracker. And you can see, it took a year. But now these companies are catching up to our needs. And I can't say it enough, customer service. Can we build what the school districts are asking for, all of that stuff? I can then, as a coach, take into my teachers and go, “These are the questions that you have. These are the solutions that we've chosen based off of what you're saying that we need.” And that's what's going to help us buy a device.

If you're a Windows school district, are you looking for a device with a pen? Maybe? Maybe not? Are you looking for a device that is a clamshell? Are you looking for a device that has – All these different things, right? Dell computer versus Surface Book. These are all different ideas, but they're all running the same software.

[00:17:46] BL: But what about a school district that says, “Well, I need this kind of device for these grades. And I need this kind of device for these grades.” And what if you can't go to one manufacturer for all of their needs? I mean, doesn't that really kind of complicate things? I feel, like from my side of it, it really complicates things.

[00:18:05] JB: It does. And I remember when I was being interviewed for a position, they asked me that question. They said, “Pretend that we've got an unlimited budget. What would you buy?” And this was a few years ago, but my response, and I think kind of still now, iPads K to two, Chromebooks three to six, depending on where your middle school is. And then by the time you get into it, you have rugged Dell laptops. And then finally surface tablets, surface books and stuff that you can run like full Adobe Suites.

In my perfect world, you do have a variety of things. Not saying one graduates into the next. But that's even more that you have to manage. That's more that you have to handle. That's more that your text needs to be prepared for. I don't think there is one solution that you can say, “Give everybody a Surface Book. Or give everybody a Chrome –” It just doesn't work.

[00:18:55] BL: Well, and then and then for the younger grades, I know that you don't want to give them a touchscreen probably product, because it's going to break, and it's going to be very expensive possibly.

[00:19:06] JB: Ever school district is going to run something a little different. My seven year olds are on iPads, I don't say constantly, but they're learning how to do all these things based off of this. They have to see. They have to move. But every school district makes those decisions. I know school districts that get Chromebooks for their kindergarteners. But then they can't type their name. So what are they going to do with a Chromebook?

[00:19:36] BL: So maybe a touchscreen is better for the younger ones.

[00:19:39] JB: So the iPad that has facial recognition, cool, because you don’t have to have a password. But every school district is looking at things a little bit differently. Some school districts choose their devices, again, based off the management system. I worked with a school district who just wouldn't buy Apple products, because it was harder to manage as opposed to a Chromebook, which you can manage 50 billion of them all from one single admin console. Every school district and every tech director has a different set of needs. And I find that, budget aside, it's based off of how many tech supports do they have. I worked in a school district where there were three for the entire district. And I'm fortunate enough to be in an amazing school district where we have like 15 or something like that. But we have 25 buildings. So you need to have a lot of people running around.

[00:20:30] BL: Right, right. Right. Yeah.

[00:20:31] JB: But it's all about what are the goals of the district and how do you want to get there?

[00:20:39] KK: I have a question for you, Jeff, that kind of goes a little bit into your background of being an orchestra leader and what you did with your classes, obviously, in class. We had a guest on, and she was sharing about how the challenge was with her son who's in band and trying to practice in the basement. What have you seen in that particular instance with kids who are in music, whether it's choir, band or orchestra? How is that learning going to take place if we continue to stay at home and online? Are there new ways of teaching? Or what do you think?

[00:21:25] BL: It's a good question.

[00:21:26] JB: My wife is one of our district's elementary orchestra teachers. She's in two amazing elementary schools, and I see her doing the best job that she can to teach violin in front of her and teach violin virtually. And even with all of my music backgrounds and stuff like that, I wouldn't want to be there. It’s not easy.

[00:21:54] BL: Does she hate it or is it okay?

[00:21:55] JB: No. No. She loves it. It’s a challenge. It is the challenge. And we work together. Of course, we have the music background. And we help each other out with that stuff. But it's not easy. You've got a third grader who doesn't know anything that's been virtual the entire time, and their strings are horribly out of tune. But mom doesn't want to bring the violin to the music store or into the teacher to tune. So what do you do? There're a lot of conversations and that, obviously, if you're a high school teacher, you have to put on a concert. Well, how do you put on a concert when you've got – Everybody in the band is here, except for half the bands at home, and you've got signal delays, because you're sending messages to space? It doesn't work.

I am fortunate enough to work with our visual performing arts department as basically one of their video editors. So one of my jobs is to take all of these different videos that the kids have made, and I'm the guy that Brady Bunches the whole thing and puts it out there.

[00:23:06] BL: No way. That’s awesome.

[00:23:07] JB: Way. And even right now, to kind of flip that thing, I kid you not, spend all day – I don't have it in front of me, but spend all day videotaping third, fourth and fifth graders doing Annie, the musical, that my job now is to take all that and make it into this visually stunning presentation that mom's going to love. And we did it all in front of a green screen. And we've got canned music. And they're not playing off of each other. They're saying the line after the teacher says it. So they're doing the best job that they can, given the situation. The theater teachers are of course in the same position. The chorus teachers are – You can't sing more than 10 feet apart. That means that your choir has to go out to the literally the size of a football field.

[00:24:04] KK: Let’s hope this is over.

[00:24:05] BL: I know. Oh, that part. So for that for the creative arts, it this is a big challenge and a big shift and how to teach and how to learn and the whole.

[00:24:15] JB: Yeah, it is. And I'm always hopefully optimistic about things. But I'm just nervous of what the future of this is going to do. Take your high school band program right now. Well, your elementary band program is suffering. And if you're starting with a small group of kids and you're whittling that down because they don't have the support, they don't feel like they can play, they're not – What's the high school program going to look like in 6, 10 years? Well, if the high school program isn't good, well, what's the marching bands going to look like? And if the marching bands aren't good, what are the musicals going to look like? Because you're not going to have the kids to be able to play Broadway style music because they don't have seven years of playing. So this is where I am with all of this. And that's 20 years of music teacher talking. But I'm just nervous about what the future of all this is going to be because it's not one year, right? Like you're losing kids from every year in a program, and you're whittling down the middle school programs, because why would I take orchestra? I can go play STEM, or I can go play Minecraft, or I can go play – Why would I do this at home, right? It's hard enough to get a kid to play the cello.

It's going to have a long lasting effect with – Now, let's just take your colleges in 10 years are going to be whittled down. Your professionals in 15, 20 years are going to be whittled down all because of, let's just call it, this last 18 months. Something that I think about a lot.

[00:25:54] KK: It's the effect, the effect.

[00:25:56] JB: Yeah, it’s 100% the effect.

[00:25:59] KK: Wow!

[00:26:01] BL: Well, that’s a lot to think about. It's depressing. I mean, it's sad for the creative arts. Really, it's kind of tragic, because I like to dabble in that. My son's a singer, and he's had a hard time getting back into it. Live music has really come to a halt. But it's starting to open up a little bit. But it's affecting every age, every profession.

[00:26:26] KK: Well, and as with artists and musicians, it's something that it's hard to like take these breaks to step back.  You have this creativity that's inside of you that keeps evolving. And as kids – Like my kids took orchestra and band from sixth grade to high school. And now my one son is a musician, and an artist. If he didn't have that consistency, he would have dropped that. He would have dropped it in a heartbeat.

[00:26:57] JB: On the other hand, if you take a look at the world of professional music, they're trying everything they can to put themselves in front of you. So all of these major orchestras right now are popping out with virtual concerts and virtual this and that. And all the bands are now moving into Spotify and Amazon and putting out more content because they're just sitting in their garages having fun and so –

[00:27:21] BL: Yeah, doing concerts out of their living room. Yeah.

[00:27:23] JB: They’re doing acoustic conscious out of their living room. So I'm still going to go on the side of it's going to hurt for a while. It's just going to hurt for a while.

[00:27:33] BL: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right.

[00:27:35] KK: But we’ll be optimistic.

[00:27:37] KK: It will turn around eventually. Very soon. Very soon. Hopefully.

[00:27:42] KK: How can people find you? Or do you want people to find you?

[00:27:46] JB: Of course I want people to find me.

[00:27:47] BL: But you have a wealth of knowledge to share with a lot of people. And we'd like to be able to call on you too, because I think we're going to get questions about – Well, we don't we don't know what to get. We're getting relationships with some school districts that, over time, they're trusting us as kind of an advisor for everything that goes with these devices. And we'd love to be able to call on you and say, “Hey, we have a perfect guy for you to bounce some ideas off of and figure out what the best route is for you.” And some of their devices are timing out. They're getting rid of them because they're old, and they need new ones. So you would be a great guy to call for that. Correct?

[00:28:22] JB: Well, thank you. And I'm always happy to talk to people and talk to teachers and educators and tech directors and stuff. I do it all the time on our podcast. And you can always go to teachercast.net. You can find all the stuff. Or on my website, my personal site is Jeffreybrabury.com. And you can check out all the great stuff that's over there.

[00:28:43] BL: Okay, great. Yeah, we deal with a lot of tech directors. That's who we deal with for the insurance side. And so we love to be a one stop shop solution and give our customers as much information as we can. And we’ll add you to the list. So thank you. We appreciate you being on this show.

[00:29:00] JB: Absolutely. Thanks for having me.

[00:29:02] KK: Yes.

[00:29:02] BL: Of course. And good luck to you and all those babies you got, seven-year-olds.

[00:29:08] JB: That’s so amazing. Wait. Are they all boys, girls, mix?

[00:29:11] KK: I have two boys and one opinion.

[00:29:13] BL: And one opinion. I love. It's perfect. That's great. Thank you so much. It was so nice talking to you.

[00:29:20] JB: You too.

[00:29:21] KK: Bye.

[00:29:21] BL: All right. Bye. Bye.

[00:29:23] KK: Wow! Well, first, wow. Seven-year-old triplets. And wow with so much that he does. That’s amazing.

[00:29:30] BL: I know it’s a lot of energy. I can tell, great positive energy. And that's why he can do so many things.

[00:29:36] KK: Well, and we've been learning more about how schools have these ed tech – They're specialists or they're directors. And what was interesting is for him, it was like how many do you have, looking at how the need is right for that. Depending on the size of your school or your district.

[00:29:57] BL: Well, and because a lot of the schools are turning – Or districts are going to one-to-one, the technical directors are overwhelmed. I mean, they really are because they are –

[00:30:06] KK: Yeah. To now all those answers to the questions he has.

[00:30:09] BL: Yeah. More resources, more people to turn to to get answers is really helpful for them because some – Like he was saying, they could have three, they could have 15. But the schools with three and they have thousands, tens of thousands of students, they're completely overwhelmed. And they need answers to questions so they can make good decisions for their districts. And it gives them power to do a great job for their school district. So I'm so glad that we got to meet him.

[00:30:33] KK: Very cool.

[00:30:34] BL: Yeah.

[00:30:33] KK: Very, very, very cool. Well, we hope you guys enjoyed learning about all of the ins and outs of what schools are looking at with their online learning and their devices. If you've got questions or just a comment or just maybe want to know more information, we can direct you to Jeffrey Bradbury's website, it's Jeffreybrabury.com, and then also for his TeachersCast podcast. Definitely tune into that. It's teachercast.net. So take a listen on there. And as always, come back and listen to another episode right here with Risky Business. I'm Kathy Kaehler.

[00:31:24] BL: And I'm Bliss Landon. Thank you so much.

[00:31:25] KK: We'll see you next time.

[00:31:26] BL: Bye bye.

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