Exploring the Future of Technology in Education with John Sowash

0:00 Good pedagogy. Good teaching is relatively timeless. I just try to focus my time and energy on helping teachers do the things we already know that work. They're not always the sexiest, but you gotta do the good, quality work. Welcome to the Leader of Learning podcast. I'm your host, doctor Dan Krinis, and this is where I help educators grow their impact as instructional leaders because my research and leadership experiences have led me to understand that someone like you, regardless of your role or your title, can have a tremendous impact on your organization. I chat with inspiring guests who are truly making an impact as instructional leaders. Whether this is your first time listening or you come back for more, I hope you've subscribed to this show on your preferred podcast app so you don't miss any of the great episodes, topics, or guests. Anyway, I'm so glad you've tuned in. Now let's get started. Hey, they're Leader of Learning. Welcome into episode one sixty five of the Leader of Learning podcast. I know it's been a little while since we last published an episode, but I did just want to remind you that in order to keep in touch and keep up to date with everything that's going on with me and with Leader of Learning. You can always subscribe to my email newsletter by heading

1:30 to Dancrinis dot com slash news. You'll be able to keep up with the latest happenings with Leader of Learning as well as be on the inside track to some really great resources that are shared here. Anyway, again, in order to subscribe, head to Dancrinis dot com slash news. This episode is going to feature a really great guest and someone who I've gotten to know quite a bit over the past several years. John Sowash is a leading expert in the areas of Google for education as well as using Chromebooks for education. His brand, The Chromebook Classroom and his podcast of the same name are really inspirational to myself who works in a school in a district that uses almost exclusively Chromebooks, but to many educators and educational leaders when it comes to educational technology in general, but more specifically using Chromebooks and really tapping into the vast array of products, services, and resources that are coming out all the time and being updated all the time by Google. I was recently able to attend the FETC Conference in Orlando, Florida. If you've never been there. FETC stands for Future of Education Technology Conference. It was an amazing time. I learned so much.

2:57 I left very much inspired to continue the work to try and innovate in education, especially through the use of technology and preparing our teachers, but especially our students to be more future ready. And that was where I got a chance to connect with John finally in person after speaking just virtually for many years now, and to record this interview with John. So without further ado, we will get right to it after these messages. Is my interview with John Sowash. All right, welcome back, Leader of Learning. I'm here at the FETC conference in Orlando, Florida with good friend, although we just met in person for the first time, John Sowash. John is an expert in all things chromebooks and Google and Google apps and Google what do we call it now, Google work, Google Workspace, Education rolls right off exactly, So John, welcome. It's been a pleasure meeting you in person. And I guess for the audience who may not know you yet, if you could just introduce yourself, who you are, where you are, and what you do.

4:04 Yeah, my name is John Slash, and I help teachers and students use Google products in the classroom. That's the most discinct way to put it. I do courses, written a book, webinars, person pd conferences, blogging, podcasting, everything related to Google. I know a lot about a very small part of the Internet. So we're at the Future of Education Technology Conference, and I think I'd be remiss if I didn't first ask you first and foremost, where are we going in the near future with technology and education?

4:46 And then of course, specific to kind of your expertise as it relates to Google and chromebooks, what's next, like what's on the horizon, and then maybe even beyond the horizon, what's really in the future. Well, I mean, it doesn't take a rock scientist to notice that AI is, you know, just taking over everything. I don't know that you could attend a single session here at fetc. Without hearing AI mentioned in some fashion. Google is certainly on that bandwagon as well. And A that's cool. I'm going to keep my eye on it, using it, trying to figure out where it fits into the classroom. But I mean, to be completely honest with you, you know, it's always great to check out the newest, the latest and greatest things, but ultimately, good pedagogy, good teaching is relatively timeless. You could always add in a little bit of AI to good teaching, but I just try to focus my time and energy on helping teachers do the things we already know that work. They're not always the sexiest, but you gotta do the good, quality work, and that I mean that takes up more than more time than anybody has to check out. So I try not to chase all the shiny things and focus on, you know, things that are tried and true. But like I said, AI is absolutely going to impact every aspect of life, not just education. One of the things that I appreciate when I listen to your podcast and consume your content is

6:20 that you tend to kind of hit all angles when it comes to teach. You with chromebooks and using Google tools. You talk about it from how to use it with and how it impacts students, obviously teachers in the classroom, but even leaders, whether they be building leaders or IT leaders and technology leaders in the district. So I'm wondering when it comes to AI, or just in general, some of these new trending technologies like what does it look like at each of those levels, considering how are we using these tools with students? What should teachers be doing right now to prepare themselves for the next challenges, let's say, the next risks that they should be taking in the classroom instructionally, and then how do our leaders support all that? Absolutely now, Dan, the first thing I'm going to say is that anybody who ever comes on your show and tells you how AI is going to impact everything and what everybody should do about it is lying because nobody has a clue. Everybody is just guessing. We really don't know and do not understand how we are going to effectively implement AI at the student level. There are so many privacy issues, There's just a lot of technical issues that have to be worked out.

7:42 I don't have a great sense of that. I mean, every AI tool that I'm seeing so far is, you know, thirteen plus is the best I've seen eighteen. I mean Google's tools are mostly eighteen plus right now. Nobody's really pushing AI at the student level. So what I would say in terms of leadership is you cannot have an opinion about AI if you have not used it. You have got to get in there and you've got to play around with it. Form your own opinion. Maybe you think it's the worst thing ever, that's fine, but you've got to actually use it. You've got to use chat, GPT, you got to use Google Bard, you've got to use Adobe's products, Microsoft's you know, co pilot, use them all. Form your own opinion. Read what others are saying, which you have to use it yourself. Every use case is so unique. That's why AI so fascinating, is I mean, I've talked to Principles, math teachers, English teachers, kindergarten teachers, school nurses, psychologists. Everybody has a unique and interesting way to use AI. So I can't possibly tell everybody how it's gonna work. You just got to try it out. Same thing with Principles. Leaders need to give the freedom in the space for their teachers to try it. I do have a pretty hard time when schools are you know, blocking it, restricting it can't use it. I don't think that's widespread.

9:03 It certainly makes the news when it happens, but giving you your staff time and space to explore I think is important. This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better Podcast Network, Better Today, Better Tomorrow, and the podcast to get you there. Explore more podcasts at www dot Teach Better Podcastnetwork dot com. Now let's get back to the episode. What about teachers, especially or leaders themselves, who might say, oh, that's easier said than done, that I don't know how to get in there and start playing with the tools and learning the tools, or I don't have time or I don't have the time to give over to teachers to do it. Do you have any suggestions for just where to start? Yeah, I mean, I really don't think there's any excuse for anybody saying I just don't know how to get started. I mean, YouTube is an amazing thing. There are so many resources, free resources to learn about anything you want, so there's ample opportunity, no cost, easy to get started. Time is always a factor.

10:15 The reality is we make time for the things we feel are important. So yeah, something might have to get cut, but that's that's always true. The value proposition for AI and I have personally found this is you do save time. Like, depending on what you're doing, you are saving time, and so you may have to invest a little bit to get started, but long term, I think you'll come out ahead. I mean it is cool. That is, it's still such an exciting time in education and exploring new tools, new trends, new topics. This may be a timely conversation too that we're having. It sounds like seems like there were some announcements that you are part of, not part of, but att of kind of breaking that Google just the oh yeah, Google School is always announcing something that we're at fetc. Everybody else is at the BET conference that's the British Educational Technology Conference really bad, like is the size over in London and Google's there.

11:18 They made a bunch of announcements today. You've got some typical kind of just regular updates to Chromebooks and Google Classroom, just a little new features. They did talk about duet ai for Google Workspace. They announced it today. The reality is has been out for months, but they've never really promoted it for education districts. It's they've been promoting it for business. So they've kind of announced it like schools can sign up for it as well. I've been using it for two three months. It's fine. Hasn't blown me away, and you know, the the challenge and this is not really Google's problem it's going to be a challenge for everybody. Is the cost. So duet AI for Google Workspace is thirty dollars per user per month. That's a hefty press.

12:11 It's a lot of money. Now it doesn't matter any AI tool. We are quickly exiting the initial phase of AI, which is help us figure out how to do this, and we're getting into paid phase. I mean, you look at Magic, School, brisk any of the popular they're all charging now. AI is so computationally expensive it costs them a ton of money. So there's just no way around that. I just saw Sam Altman, the CEO of chat GPT or open Ai, said that really for AI to take the next step forward, there has to be a huge breakthrough in energy, Like they have to figure out how to make processors run faster on less energy to lower the cost overall. I just saw I don't know if you saw this headline. Microsoft just hired a bunch of nuclear physicists because they're working on some crazy like energy thing, who knows. But we have the AI technology.

13:15 We just have to lessen the price and not help everybody. Wow. So it's exciting, but it's also getting expensive. Did I see that? There were some Google Classrooms. Oh yeah, got some updates. I mean the one that I think teachers will be most excited about is custom persistent groups project groups. So Google Classroom has always had a huge problem where you can easily sign stuff to everybody, but if you want to create a group and then use that group, you know, for an entire quarter or something, it just was no great way to do that. So that'll be a really nice update. I don't have a date on that, just coming soon. I remember when they first launched the feature to where you can assign a certain students, and I thought that in and of itself was kind of a game changer. That's halfway there. Yeah, like when it comes to differentiation for students, being able to assign different things to different kids like they would be in groups. But it was a little wonky and I hate using that word, but that's the best. It's an app description. Yeah, uh, you know again the challenge. You know, that feature and all of the other Google Classroom related features that were announced today are all tied to Google workspaceed for Education plus that's their premium edition, and a lot of schools have you know, become a little frustrated by that. The reality is even as big as Google is, they do not have unlimited resources, especially in education.

14:46 I mean, all their money is made by search. The education team does not make any money, and so they have to recoup that somehow, and so most of the education specific features moving forward are going to require a premium premium account. Yeah, that makes sense. As we wrap up, I caught some of your session yesterday afternoon on all this stuff, chromebooks especially, and I always get a kick out of when you say that you do everything on a chromebook and you moved away from MacBook. But I guess specifically, you know, my entire district, and I'm in a pretty large district minus the kindergarten students are all on Chromebooks, and starting next school year, our entire six through twelve, all the middle schools and high schools will be part of the Verizon Innovative Learning School Program, which helps provide Chromebooks to districts and students for consistent access and equity. So I'm kind of curious on a personal level too, like where are we going with chromebooks, because I know that one of the things you share was how far they have come and how they keep upgrading and updating and just getting better and better, not just for students but for everyone. So I kind of wanted to give you the floor and ask you about chromebooks specifically. Yeah, so two things have happened. Certainly, chromos has matured as a platform. It's not just a web browser anymore.

16:22 So that has happened, and that will continue to happen. You know, I don't really think there's any glaring missing pieces for Chromo ass They'll just keep making a little bit better every time. But really, the thing that has changed when I started using chromebook full time, there were some rough spots. The most difficult thing for me to figure out how to do in Chromebork was podcasting, recording and editing audio. There just weren't a lot of great tools. The second thing that's really improved is just the web has matured. I mean, there are very few things you cannot do in a browser today, seven, eight, ten years ago. That was not always the case. You know, I was teaching during the app craze of you know, the iPad launch of what twenty nine, ten eleven, where everything had to have an app. I feel that that's worn off and people are like, you know, what. The Web's great. I don't have to update it.

17:11 It just works when I go there. Everything's in the cloud. Internet connections have gotten a lot more stable, faster, and so it's just an expectation. So yeah, today, I mean, there's really nothing you can't do in the browser. There are certainly some things that I would, you know, love to see improved. I mean, even the Adobe Creative Suite, they're not there yet, but they're moving in a web direction, having web versions of Photoshop, for example. It's kind of they're not quite but you know five years ago that wasn't even you couldn't even contemplate that. So yeah, it's good, Dan. What's it going to take to get you to switch to Team Chrome? You know, it's funny because I was thinking, as you were talking about some tools that I like to use that aren't web based, but I could probably find substitutes that are. And I'll give you example. When I edit for video and for YouTube, I like using tools like Cantasia and Da Vinci Resolve. Da Vinci Resolve is I mean that's like a full feature professional platform. However, one that is really trending and up and coming, and you know, it's a it's kind of a tiktoky thing is cap cut and they have an amazing web version of their platform, and I've dabbled in it a little bit. I don't use it a lot, but yeah, like you said, there's there are a lot of opportunities

18:45 for doing what you need to do on the web. At one point I got around using Audacity on a chromebook by installing Linux and the Linux version. But yeah, so I think da Vinci has a Linux version too. That could be I haven't explored that, but yeah I could. I could probably switch to being ach chrobook guy. You can do everything you need to do on the web. It definitely would potentially require a workflow change. Now, since this this is the Leader of Learning podcast, you know your district is all in on chromebooks. The biggest mistake that I see schools making with chromebook deployments is teachers and leadership not using chromebooks. Now, I'm not you don't have to use a chromebook full time, but there is there are differences between chromebooks, Mac and PC, and so if you want to set an example as a leader, it would mean so much if the principal walked into the next staff meeting using a Chromebook. You need to set the example if you expect your students to use it, and you can fully believe that platform is one that's good for learning, it should be good enough for you. It's gonna take a little work, not easy, but it can be done.

20:00 No, I agree with that one hundred percent. As you were talking, though, I feel kind of proud that I don't know about all the leaders, but the teachers prefer a lot of times to use the Verizon issued chromebooks we have for a couple of reasons. One they're touchscreen. Two, we have Verizon data plans on each of the devices, So essentially they operate like a cell phone where if you're not on Wi Fi, you're somewhere where there's not Internet, but there's data, there's Verizon cell service, you can still use your Chromebook. But also, and probably most importantly, we've found ways we have across the district ViewSonic screens as opposed to like smartboards or Prometheans.

20:47 We have ViewSonic and view Sonic has an app called Vcast and you can send or cast your Chromebook screen. So it used to be a couple of years ago when we first got these oh, I'm sorry. There's really there's no HDMI oh on the device, so I'm sorry you can't share your screen on the view Sonic. But now we can cast wirelessly and it works amazingly. The teacher can actually carry the device around the classroom if they need to. It's touch screen. It's really great. And to your point too, I still see them even not in the classroom but carrying them to staff meetings and professional development. So it is pretty cool. As we go, I would be remiss if I didn't ask also for you to tell us where we can find you and access your content and your Chromebook Classroom brand and everything that you're doing. Yeah, if you just search for my name or Chromebook classroom should pull up pretty easily, have the Chromo Classroom blog, podcast, YouTube channel, and yeah, chat about all things Chroma can web based things, so anything that's web based we would jump in talk about, like we've been chat about AI is hot right now, so we've been talking a lot about that and whatever the latest updates are. I try to break it down and tell you what's important. All right, Well, it's been great meeting up in person. Thanks for your time, Dan, You've been an Internet friend for a long time. A right, and it's great to meet you in person.

22:15 That's why conferences like this are so awesome, so much better than the virtual ones, because you get to chat with people in the whole way, see people from all of the country. Definitely, all right, my friend, Thanks, thanks for your time. Well that's it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. If you haven't done so yet, don't forget to subscribe to this show on your favorite podcast app. If you enjoy the content covered on this show, I want to ask you to do this one thing for me, Please share it. The biggest favor you could ever do for me is to please let others know about what I'm doing and how I'm helping educators grow their impact as instructional leaders. I hope you can share this podcast with other educators, leaders, friends, or anyone you think would love listening and learning. If you're interested in leaving a positive rating and review of this show, links to do so are always in the show notes for every episode. For more information about me or this show, and to access the great content that I share, please visit my website at Leader of Learning dot com. That's where you can find my online courses, YouTube channel, blog, how to connect with me on social media, and even ways that you can support the show like donating or purchasing Leader of Learning merchandise. Thanks again, and remember, no matter who you are or where you are, you are a Leader of Learning.