Integrating Technology to Elevate Literacy Instruction: A CIO's Perspective
I definitely feel that in the k 12 space, there's so much more public scrutiny that we have. You know, we're under the public eye. Obviously, people are we're a big district, so the community's invested in us.
Narrator:This is the Literacy Mindset Podcast, where education leaders discuss identifying and removing phonological barriers with MindPlay CEO, Jeff Pendleton.
Jeff:Alright, everyone. Welcome back. I am very excited today for, my guest, Mr. Eric Satterley, who is the chief information officer at Jefferson County Public Schools in Louisville, Kentucky. Welcome to the show, Eric.
Eric:Thank you. Thanks for having me, Jeff.
Jeff:Yeah, no, really excited to kind of dive into a number of different topics. Obviously literacy is a big thing that we talk about, but there's many forms that we can talk about when we think about technology and the digital space. And so we'll dive into those today. And I think really let's start up by just setting the table, giving some folks some context. How does an electrical engineer by initial study become a chief information officer at a K-twelve, at a very large K-twelve school district?
Jeff:Maybe give us a little bit of background there.
Eric:Yeah, sure. I think I ask myself that almost every day as well. But yeah, so I started out as an electrical engineer back in the days before, computers were as ubiquitous as they are today, before the internet was a thing. You know, I was excited about making lights turn on and off, you know, leveraging computers to do that. Controlling things, it was always very exciting.
Eric:So kind of building circuits to, to do that work. And then somewhere during the nineties, really like this, this internet started to come on the scene, on the worldwide web. It became really fascinating seeing like the connection of systems and having them talk to each other. And so I had an opportunity to kind of jump in the late nineties to go work for a group that was building an internet bank. And this is back in a time when there weren't really internet banks.
Eric:So it was, it was pretty invigorating to be with a small group, try to figure out a very novel problem. Think about, you know, what, what does, what does internet software look like? And we're actually building it. We're building in Louisville, Kentucky, which was cool. We're building data centers to run what we're creating.
Eric:And so it was very exciting, very kind of startup entrepreneurial feel, a lot of really long days and sleeping on floors, but, but great times. And we sort of marched along this path back when, you know, the internet was exploding in the late nineties and really thinking like, well, we're going to march this thing to an IPO and that was going to be the golden ticket. And that's when the .com bubble burst. And so that IPO clearly wasn't going to happen, but I still worked for a small group that had an internet bank that was fantastic at doing the job of raising deposits across The United States. Not as great at lending money because we were still wrestling with like, what's identity look like in fraud, you know, even early on.
Eric:But we were bought by a group of community banks. So a holding company that had six community banks throughout the state of Kentucky brought in this internet wing and merged us all into one big bank. And the internet piece raised deposits from across the country and lended money throughout the state. That model really exploded. So it was a good model.
Eric:It helped really drive the bank. And we blew up to a $2,000,000,000 bank in pretty short order. We're, we're a decent sized regional bank. And I ended up being the guy that was able to explain kind of to the board why we cost so much money and what we were doing. You know, I started to learn how to allocate resources.
Eric:I started to learn what does the business side think and expect of technology. And so that just grew and grew and grew. Our operation grew, and I was the CIO of that for, you know, well over a decade. And then that stopped being as much fun when we started to have the trouble in 2009 banking and, and, all the real estate problems then. And I had an opportunity to jump to a university here in town, Bellarmine University, and be the CIO there, which I did for over twelve years.
Eric:And that was really interesting to kind of come from the corporate side into this, this higher ed. And I will say like the, the thing that was mind blowing to me, making that corporate to, to educational switch was the amount of collaboration between schools. So when I worked at a bank, like we did not talk to other banks about what we were doing. I mean, we kept our mouths shut. Was everything very was a secret.
Eric:We didn't share. I get into higher education and go to, like, my first group meeting of schools in the state, and everybody's talking about their problems. And it was crazy. Like the first meeting, I was shaking. Like, why are you, how are you saying this?
Eric:Like, you've got Why this would you say this out loud? But it changed me because all of a sudden I thought, wait, mean, I know we're competing for students, sure, but we're really not competing. Like we're thinking about a greater good, we're thinking about education, and we just built this kind of, you know, camaraderie. It was fantastic. So I've thoroughly enjoyed that.
Eric:And then about two years ago, so I'm a Louisville native and the large school district in my city, the CIO job came open and I thought, you know, I've reached a point in life where I really want to be a part of solving big problems. I mean, I don't think any city is successful without public education being strong. And I wanted to be a part of like helping that happen. And also knowing, like, I, I feel like I, I don't know that I ever want to get out of education at this point, just because of that heavy collaborative feeling. The fact that I know I've got great colleagues within my school system, but I've already got fantastic colleagues kind of across the K-twelve ecosystem.
Eric:So I enjoy that very much. That's, yeah, that's in a nutshell, how I got here.
Jeff:That's great. Are there things that you feel like that you take from the banking time that really manifest themselves in how you operate in your role today?
Eric:I think risk and acknowledgement of risk. How you, you know, when you think about like data governance, data privacy, those things from a banking standpoint are pounded into you. Right? That's that's just at your core. And I definitely see on the education side, it's, it's a little more lousy fair as a general approach.
Eric:You know, I know in the university setting, I got met with a lot of like, you know, well, we have academic freedom to do whatever we want. And I'm like, yeah, but not with this data. So you start to balance that, but I feel like maybe that gave me a lot more of the chops to speak to why it's bad, why we need to have better governance practices, but also recognizing that the more tightly that you hold and control things, the bigger chance you have of like just breaking it all, you know? So it's like, how do you find that balance? How do you let creativity happen in some organic spaces, but yet provide, you know, some, some kind of super structured governance?
Eric:I think the banking side really helped ground me in that. And then like this education side also helped me think through like, well, we need to be effective.
Jeff:Right? Yeah. And it's interesting going from higher ed to the K 12 space, there's probably a number of differences that you're experiencing there. Can you talk through what some
Eric:Yeah. Of those differences I think the, and I'm sure this is, you know, in any public institution you would see this, but I definitely feel that in the K 12 space, there's so much more public scrutiny that we have. You know, we're under the public eye. Obviously people are, we're a big district, so the community's invested in us, but you get a lot of feedback. And so there's a lot of people that are like, just fix it.
Eric:But these, a lot of these things are hard problems to fix, or there are a lot of challenges about funding and things like that. That's a piece. A university is interesting because you, you, you have a different governance dynamic there. Faculty is a very strong voice on a campus and in some ways they sort of like oversee the president. So, you know, you don't really have that.
Eric:I mean, obviously you have unions and different voices, but you have a board. I mean, every state may have a different structure, but for us, we have a board of education that's elected. So that is a governing body that's different than like the faculty that sit. The governance piece is a little different. I definitely think the scrutiny
Jeff:is different
Eric:in our space. Then also, you know, we talked before a little bit about like the funding models, you know, where you have the ability to access things like E rate at the K 12 level that you don't have at higher ed. Right. And so that is a little different too.
Jeff:No, that's good. That's good table setting for us. Let's talk a little bit about just your role today at Jefferson County CIO. Sometimes people probably might even think that the I refers to innovation or other things like what is it that you oversee in your role as the CIO in Jefferson County?
Eric:Yeah, it's funny. Like when you have the CIO job, you just assume like everybody knows what that means, but nobody knows what that means. And definitely in K 12 like chief technology officer is a more prevalent, I think, term that gets used. But if you get out an industry, then that means something different. So it's messy.
Eric:But for us we're really broken down into kind of four sectors. Okay. We have an ed tech and media services team. So we support library media within our unit. And then we have educational technology specialists that help really drive, how do we teach with technology and then how do we like bring technology to bear to improve the educational experience and outcomes.
Eric:Right. So we're trying to think about how, you know, to me, kind of the tip of the spear, how does what we do matter? That's what that team does for us. And then we have a support and delivery team that takes care of everything from, you know, telephone support, walk up support with things that are broken, supporting teachers. You know, the business side too, you have issues call in, we help you over to a logistics team that's really like warehousing, central receiving, device prep, and, you know, getting that stuff shipped out into schools to a field services team that is out in schools every day with the focus of just trying to like please teachers.
Eric:We kind of see the world as there's two role groups in our district teachers and those that support them. So you're in one of those two groups and if you're supporting teachers, you need to make them happy. And so that, that team tries to do that in the schools, but again, scale is tough. And then what we call our digital enablement office sits over there. So you might think of that as project management, but it's just our framework for how we help with digital transformation and move projects through the district.
Eric:Another sector for us is engineering and operations comprised of three groups, platforms and systems. So that team oversees like all the SAS cloud applications. They take care of identity for us. All the big like, work collaboration platforms, your Google, Microsoft that, that gets housed there. We have a network and infrastructure unit that's in there that takes care of our network.
Eric:We have 170 schools we connect. And so we have to manage all that network. I mean, we're, you know, 12,000 wireless access points across our district. So that team takes care of those massive, bits of infrastructure. And then we have a software development and data team.
Eric:So all of our backend databases, developed applications, we have a lot, and then a lot of heavy support on ERP and SIS on that team. And then our final group is our cyber group. So we call it information security and cyber GRC. We have a small team that's a security operations team. So small SOC, they are doing active threat hunting for us, and remediation as we find things.
Eric:And then another group that focuses heavily on like the data governance piece and really trying to mature, like what, what do the data governance risk models look like for us?
Jeff:Okay. Excellent. Well, I think that that gives us a lot of context for us to be able to kind of talk through some different, things and we'll, we'll see where we go and what we get to. But for me, an interesting thread to think about is you mentioned earlier in your days from the banking side of things that you have a lot of experience with audits and are very comfortable in an audit, but at some point in time, like individual departments could maybe do well in an audit, but the greater organization may still have suffered or it's like, so what kind of thing. So as you think about your role in technology and how much of a influence that has on all of the day to day buildings, there's another sort of separate group.
Jeff:If you would think about it this way in the instructional side or the curriculum side of the world. And COVID sort of threw us into this, like everything has to come together, technology and instruction. And then now post COVID it's like, well, we bought too many things. And so now we have to separate some of those things out. Talk a little bit about the state of play right now relative to technology and instruction, because this is something that our audience thinks a lot about, right?
Jeff:Instruction curriculum. How do we make decisions? How do we think about stuff? And how do you guys go about it? Because you're such large school district.
Eric:Yeah. I mean, and I think, you know, the other piece of that is like, what is technology? So, because I, you know, there's sort of like two pieces of this, which is one, it's this thing you touch and hold, whether it's some robotics device that you've got. So now you're teaching technology in a classroom and I'm teaching robotics, or it's a drone, or you know, whatever it is, but it's these things that you touch and feel and hold versus this technology that is delivered to me through a browser. Like I didn't know that in 2025, if I had gone in my way back machine and made predictions that so much of our life, so much of everything is like browser delivery.
Jeff:Would be on a flat screen right in front of us.
Eric:It's a flat screen and it's coming through a browser. And so it's this model that, that's the model. And so how do we embrace that? And especially recognizing that I think people have a natural, just, I don't know if it's tolerance or acceptance for the fact that, you you come in with 15 drones and you put them on a table, and if I told you that cost X, you rationalize that pretty easily. Because you see it, you touch you feel it, you think there's a production value to that.
Eric:But now I come tell you, Hey, you just spent, I'm making up numbers, a million dollars, and you got this software. What? They're like, Why is that cost? That's name. What is that?
Eric:And it's this tech, and I'm gonna come back and I'm gonna tell you stuff like, Well, look at this, I got this great licensing deal, or It can do these things. I think it's not real to people because it's this kind of disconnected space. And so you're right, then we come into COVID and well, now you're teaching not with technology, but on technology. The technology is the medium and the vehicle, but what's it really doing for you? And so I think the first part was us just stepping infrastructure up to this new concept that we now have, but now it's like all of these different vendors were able to come up with ideas or things in some incredible, extremely effective ways that we can layer like advantageous technology into this fabric of this browser based world that we live in.
Eric:And then there are some that are not as good, but it really comes down to the ability to connect with somebody and make them think that this is the thing and that you have to have this. We're in this massive school district, so I might have one classroom teacher that thinks a very sterile room with a browser is the only thing I need to spark imagination and transform kids. Whereas you may have others that are like, No, it has to be only things that you touch and feel. How do you
Jeff:start turning the pages of a book, but that doesn't count.
Eric:That's exactly it. And then, you know, and then you'll have some that I think, I know I grew up in an era where we did not have anything delivered over the internet. No instruction was coming over browser. Like I remember innovation being, we were going to broadcast a TV channel into schools where somebody was going to teach math, you know, a certain way, and you could go and you could watch the television broadcast of that person teaching math. And that was That was crazy.
Eric:And what we were building for that infrastructure and now to think, well, that stuff's gone, but we still have, I think, this mindset that you've got some, you know, maybe people driving curriculum or instructors that think the only thing that really changed is that that television's not a television, it's now a browser. When in reality, what has changed is that whole delivery could be specific to Jeff or specific to Eric. Right? And so it's a very different thing, but like, how do people, when you can see it and feel it, I think there is a tolerance, there is an acceptance, there is a belief that the cost is justified. When you can't see it and feel it, there's like this, maybe it's just an inherent distrust that we have or a confusion over how do you really derive and show value for those things.
Eric:So, I dunno, I know that was really long winded to say, like, that's what I wrestle with all the time. How do you stuff up the things that are like supremely valuable because there are some, and in this world that's changing, it's happening versus the things that are like just complete snake oil, Right. Because that's out there too.
Jeff:Because that is also out there too. And that becomes a very challenging thing. I often say, you know, the iPad became somewhat revolutionary for just an ability to touch a screen and utilize things. Apple created the experience so personalized that it was hard to manage at an enterprise level for a long time in school. So that became a little bit problematic, but such an interesting way of doing it.
Jeff:But it also created the proliferation of free applications or free apps that you're like, oh my goodness, there's a million free apps. And how do you, how does one even begin to decide how I want to roll out enterprise curriculum? And so there are a lot of challenges with that. What how do you guys think about it in our world? We we tend to deliver the software on a on a browser version of intervention.
Jeff:So it's it's pretty specific. Right? It is students that can't meet reading expectations at the moment, and we're gonna go in and help them figure that out. But it's it's niche. Right?
Jeff:It's it's within a context of intervention. So you at a 100,000 student district have to say, that's great, but how does that fit into a broader whole? Do you do you establish frameworks for decision making? Do you centralize everything? No.
Jeff:We we have a review board that does like, how how do you guys make decisions when it comes to critical pieces of sort of the instructional fabric?
Eric:Well, I think that's evolving because the world's evolved. Right? And so I think historically maybe it was every school had a lot of autonomy in what they did curricular wise. But I think a challenge for a district on scale for us is to say, how do you, how do we deliver equitable outcomes for kids? If every school, like, they have the same framework and resources to make the decision for their school?
Eric:And then layer on top of that, the fact that we have these massive explosions in multilingual learners that come into large urban districts like us. So how do you, if you made the school have to figure it all out themselves, like they just, they can't. It's not that they're not smart enough, it's that there's not capacity to do that. And so, how do you then pull back and say, how can I make a district decision that can benefit everybody, realizing that any decision you make for something that's as big as us is gonna take time? I can't snap my fingers and fix it.
Eric:Because even if a vendor comes to me and it's like, Well, just cut the PO when I turn this on tomorrow. No, now I have to get that through. I have to activate said service, even if we all agree, this is the thing that we have to have. So we try to think about it as a framework for, and it's, I know we talked about this, but I call it our five eights, which is like these five ways that we process digital transformation. And so they're all words that end in a t e.
Eric:So that's our five eight, but it's collaborate, investigate, create, activate, and operate. And the idea is let's back up and I'll agree on the problem we're solving. And that may be a simple agreement or it could be really hard because I tend to find, I call it the state, the obvious moment, like get everybody in the room. And I just ask, like, what are we here to solve? I get different answers.
Eric:So, you just, just like recalibrate on that every time. That is the most powerful statement. Like, I could sum my whole career up into one thing, like state the obvious. I mean, that's just Say it out loud. That's, that's the powerful statement because it is so good.
Eric:And then everybody's like, well, I'm here to do this. Well, that's not what I'm here to do. But once you align on what you're here to do, it's a whole like to find the problem is a lot easier to then figure out how you're going to go about solving it. So I say all that, that's like a framework that we have to move through. And then there's also this piece of recognizing like there isn't, there isn't a perfect answer.
Eric:Because if there was, if it was the one thing that you needed and it was the right thing and it fixed all the stuff, everybody would have it. You'd figure out what it cost, you'd get it. But it's not because every district is a little different. There's some universal truths, right? But there's nuance.
Eric:And so how does a group of people apply the things that are available to the nuance of the district for the outcomes that that community wants, right? So defining the expectations is a big deal, because I think we're all chasing different windmills. And then a lot of times the goalposts move, right? So, you know, it's like, well, we're doing this. Well, is it graduation rates?
Eric:Is it post secondary outcomes? Is it test scores? Is it like, what do we think success is for our school district? And so I think being able to kind of figure out and map all that stuff back is really powerful and a challenge. So, you know, I know for us as a district, it's been a journey that we've been on.
Eric:It really predates me of saying, you know, maybe a way that we're more successful as an entire school district is to standardize things like curriculum where Because we have 100 and nearly 70 schools, and we have a lot of transition between our schools. So we may have upwards of a couple 100 kids that transfer schools every day. Right. Every day, right? How does that third grader at school A have a consistent experience at school B if school B has a completely different curriculum and does it in a different way?
Eric:So, do you do that? So, we really are struggling through how do you build that standardization, but I would say technology can now come and let us say, It doesn't matter as much, because if we could figure out the portability piece, if we could figure out individualization of the student, that transferability is a lot easier, right? Because it sort of moves with the kid rather than being at the place. And that's what technology can do for us as we think through this, You know, that's sounds easiest Yeah, to say
Jeff:we're sitting here talking as two technologists, right? That would likely advocate that technology has a large degree of ability to help this. Well, let's talk about a specific problem then that I think is interesting that exists, and I'm interested on your take on it. So you mentioned the uniqueness of what software can do today in creating individualized or personalized or differentiated might be another way that we think about those of the three terms that get thrown out relative to how we do it. And each teacher is kind of working on differentiation and doing things, but that software today can be so honed in its instructional operation that it can meet students pretty much regularly where they're at.
Jeff:So if you put individualized curriculum to one side, then you have what is sort of traditional core curriculum that sits over here, which is beholden to a hundred and eighty day schedule and is designed to bring a cohort of students along at a scope and sequence that delivers third grade from day one to day 108. If the personalized nature of that says, well, I have to do it a little bit different for Jeff than I do for Eric. Well, then the core curriculum scope and sequence says, hang on. I can't do that because we gotta be here next Thursday. How do you guys, how do you reconcile sort of the traditional scope and sequence of core curriculum and adoption cycles or how we think about those to what the promise of, and we'll get into maybe AI and other other values of that.
Jeff:But even without AI, just personalized curriculum that's available today. How do guys think about that?
Eric:Well, I guess I don't know how we could think about it without what AI can do for us right now. And to that end, I mean, we do have very standard sets of curriculum that we work on. You know, we say implementing fidelity across our district, like how do we do that so that we have this consistency that we can deliver teachers the resources to do things consistently, which is great, but now it's on that teacher to figure out like the stratification of kids in my classroom. I've got to look at this lesson. I've got to think about it.
Eric:I've got to figure out where my kids are based on like the markers I can see and articulate and consume as a teacher, which isn't everything, right? I mean, they're amazing, but nobody's got that much capacity to understand all of the nuance. Like there's nobody. So, is there a way? And so then they have to do it.
Eric:And that's why teachers don't sleep. They just, they spend all their time, like trying to figure out how to tweak and turn and deal with lesson plans. And that's why they're so thrilled when like this, whatever app pops up that makes, they just, they're just trying to get parts of their life back. And I just think about it when we have like these systemic changes in systems that could really upend things. Now we can take, you know, we call them our HQIRs, right?
Eric:Our high quality instructional resources. We can take those and run those through. So we've got some pretty deep roots with like what we can do with Gemini and things. We can leverage some of those classroom tools to start to differentiate the standards that we have already spent time really understanding, cultivating, differentiate that based on the specific students that I have in my class, the makeup, gifted and talented ML students, whatever. And I can start to now take a lesson plan that was just the canned one plan and turn it into 15 lesson plans.
Eric:Right. Right. And I can give that teacher back so much time that they could then use to spend with those kids. So it's not like the flipped classroom concept that we would talk about, like in higher ed, but in some ways it's like that. It's the teacher being able to utilize their time, like in direct contact with the students, like fully and not having to spend so much time doing the paperwork piece.
Jeff:Yeah. The the paperwork or the, I'm gonna teach this. Now I'm gonna teach it again. Now I'm gonna teach it again to the to the group and realizing that you're doing that because there are there are some that that need the uniqueness of it. So are you talking about, like, NotebookLM and and you're kind of creating a a backbone there and letting teachers sort of individualize through that?
Jeff:Is that are you leveraging Notebook?
Eric:We we are. Notebook LM's a big piece, and then, I mean, obviously, like some of the the new, iterations that Google's rolling out, the the the, you know, the learn about pieces that are starting to sit on top of notebook LM that really would give us, like, fresh looks at how we do that. And inside of Google Classroom, there's a lot of capability with, the ability to build lesson plans, differentiate text. So some of these just super helpful little like widget tools that if we can bring into the space where we already have our students, you know, and then they're doing a lot of work that really helps ground that inside of Kentucky state academic standards. Important to us, obviously.
Eric:So we're blessed to be a state where we're trying to bring this together, but we're in there and triangulating this where we could start to look at these specific lessons. Now it's so easy. So where before a teacher would have to take a lesson and say, you know, whatever their expectations were from school leadership or academic leadership to say, well, how does this lesson meet our HQI hours with fidelity? And they're having to go through and think through everything and figure it out and spend sleepless nights, you know, grinding through all this work, where now they can come and they can work and ask Gemini to say, Hey, show me how this maps to the Danielson framework. Now, does it hit it 100%?
Eric:Maybe, maybe not, but they don't have to spend their time thinking about all those little pieces. They can spend their time reviewing, saying, Yep, you got it right here. You didn't get it right there. I mean, everything that we're thinking with AI is like, How do we put the human in the center? You know, and think about that.
Eric:Like we wanted to supplement, to augment, to help you to be an aid. It doesn't replace us, but we're hoping maybe it gives us more time back to focus on the parts of being human. Like what are the things that are the valuable parts of life rather than just spending all this time to do a bunch of perfunctory tasks that we could let the machines do.
Jeff:Right. No, I love that. And I think we have a similar worldview in that for so long, the idea of curriculum was a teacher instructing, right? Like I have to teach all of those things, but then you can start to break that down a little bit and say like, okay, if I can have the computer teach you some of these things, because it's rote and it's basic and it doesn't need a lot of higher level thinking, then that frees me up to do, frees the teacher up to really start to be in the high order thinking. And in the stuff that the critical thinking pieces that sometimes lacks inside of a classroom, because you're having to review the basic stuff that were letters or phonemes or other things, Where it's like, Hey, maybe we can separate some of that out.
Jeff:I like that. I like, I like hearing you talking about it that way. Yeah. Do you So what does that look like though? Instructing or training teachers?
Jeff:Like, we we've we've rolled out Notebook LM. We use it quite a bit on our company, but there's still a lot of employees that are like, I'm still kinda nervous on how to do this. How how do you how do you guys instruct so many teachers on that?
Eric:I mean, it's getting that buy in, managing change, it's massive, and it's hard, especially to your point, there's this fear and reluctance of, well, AI's coming for me or whatever. I mean, one of the like my approach is it's, it's a very, guerilla approach, very grassroots. So, I mean, I'm walking around with my laptop. I'll walk around like our main central office and I see like colleagues that I have. I will stop them in the hall.
Eric:I will pull out the laptop. I'm like, Hey, I wanna show you something. And I will start showing them like capabilities that we have, things we can do with lesson plans. And so if you see me coming, I mean, sometimes people are like, Oh, I'm gonna go the other way. Because he's gonna show me something
Jeff:Eric's gonna open his laptop and show me something
Eric:I'm about like, Look at this. We could be doing this. We could do this. This is here. This isn't next year.
Eric:This is today. We can do this today. We, why can't we do this? Let's, and so I push and push and push. I do the same thing with teachers whenever have the opportunity.
Eric:So like actually over the summer I was at one of the lakes here in Kentucky and there was a, you know, kind of a big event we had. There were several teachers there. And so we were talking about AI and they were from our school district and they're like, you know, very reluctant. They didn't like it, all this thing. I was like, let me show you something.
Eric:So I had my laptop because it's never not with me and I pull it out and we go through things. By the end of it, Jeff, they all hugged me. They're like, thank you. You just gave me so much life back, like reinvigorated. And it's like, you can do this.
Eric:And so I think it's demystifying that, but it's tough, right? Because it's hard to scale. Like I can't scale that across 7,000 So square it's how do you have ways, but it's just, it's getting everybody bought in. It's having them feel safe. It's knowing that I think people at the top are bought in and interested and, you know, and that we're, it's not going to be taken away from you.
Eric:Right. So also part of it is, I believe we have too much stuff. So we have a stuff problem. There's too many things and it's too confusing. And so how do you help simplify, tell a story and people have built things over time.
Eric:They don't want it to change or move. And so how do you, how do you let people know like this is going to be here and you can simplify your life and just bring those things over and put them here? And I think when people feel hurt on that, it matters too.
Jeff:Yeah. And I think to your point earlier, the fact that so much of this happens on a flat screen in front of us with like software or magic inside of the computer. If you're not showing that it's not obvious. Like it's not like someone has to construct an idea in their mind of what they think it's like. And when you show you pull up the laptop, oh, let me show you.
Jeff:They're like, wait, that's it. That's that's what I need to do. And it's shocking how powerful it can be to just let the visual sense absorb what software is. I love that. Well, my goodness, we could talk for, days about this.
Jeff:This has been, fantastic for me going through all this. Let me just ask a final question as I wrap up here. What, what are you most nervous about as you think about the next five, five to seven years or whatever horizon that you think is appropriate because, you know, with the AI conversations going on, there's a lot of higher ed conversations going on right now about what's going to happen to higher ed. Like just in general, what are you, what are you nervous about? Whether it's a misunderstanding or something else, And then follow it up with a, what are you most excited about?
Eric:So, I mean, certainly, yeah, the changes in like the perception of what do even people care about higher ed, and it's a seismic shift and that is unnerving. But I think the thing that I'm the most nervous about, and I don't know that I've ever thought about it and tried to put it in these terms, but when you think about, you build a building, right, or you build a house, and that house is a 100 years old, and it's got all these things that are falling apart or breaking in it. And, you know, we would call that this deferred maintenance. Like we decided we didn't want to fix that, or we didn't fix the HVAC or whatever. You're at a point where it's like, boy, just keeping this house fixed is really hard and very expensive.
Eric:And I think we're in kind of the same thing with software. Like we've been layering things on, we've been adding so much, and we kind of depend on this, or we depend on that, and these things are just and built and stacked and built. And we're at a point where we've got so much technical debt that I don't know, like, how do you extricate yourself from that? How do we, you know, is it a place where you can kind of fix what we have or does it take like a massive reset? And I do worry about that.
Eric:I do worry about these, you know, these, these massive systems that we've built on other systems and other systems. And I don't know, like, I feel like that can't go on forever without something shifting.
Jeff:Like a Jenga being built. Okay.
Eric:And then as far as excitement, like, you know, I do, I am excited about what AI can bring in generative AI, because I do see it as maybe it's the thing, like I've always struggled with, how do you tell a story with tech? How do you, you know, I think everybody thinks, just have an index of things, and these are the things, and you need something, you go find your index or your table of contents, and boom, you find the stuff, But like nobody does that. And it does it where we can't find information and everything's too scattered. And maybe the model is wrong. Maybe we do need to just be in a place where we ask things that are this, you know, this is top of mind.
Eric:I need this now. And so I go to, you know, my AI and I'm building this thing that I need in the moment. And that's, I think, purpose built for us to have that kind of a future. You know, I think of like the value of a professor at a university. I don't know, I'm rambling a bit, but like we have all the knowledge in the world, right?
Eric:What good is a professor? But I feel like their value is they are curating that knowledge. They are telling you how it makes sense. We're building a value stream of that knowledge together.
Jeff:Right.
Eric:And I think we're just entering into a future now with AI where, yeah, we can start to have it help us with more of the value creation as opposed to just like the rudimentary things. I don't know if I made that make sense. I just, it feels like of all the tech, like this isn't a very optimistic time to think this is different. This is different.
Jeff:So I love that. And that's a, that's a good way of looking at it. I think that there are there are downsides, but the upside is if we can find a way to interact and create sort of a critical thinking capacity, That improves our ability to actually process the world in front of us. That AI can, can really be helpful and beneficial. Well, I've, I've loved our time.
Jeff:I can't wait to see all of the great things that you continue to do in Jefferson County. And I hope that we, have the opportunity to do this again sometime in the future.
Narrator:If you enjoyed this episode, we'd love to hear from you. Learn how we help students by identifying and removing phonological barriers at mindplay.com.
