This interview was originally recorded on January 27, 2023, as part of Leoni Consulting Group’s All Things Marketing and Education Podcast.
Access this episode's show notes, including links to the audio, a summary, and helpful resources.
Elana Leoni:
Hello and welcome to All Things Marketing and Education. My name is Elana Leoni, and I've devoted my career to helping education brands build their brand awareness and engagement. Each week I sit down with educators, EdTech entrepreneurs, and experts in educational marketing and community building. All of them will share their successes and failures using social media, inbound marketing or content marketing, and community building. I'm excited to guide you on your journey to transform your marketing efforts into something that provides consistent value and ultimately improves the lives of your audience.
Hi, everyone and welcome to another episode of All Things Marketing and Education. This week I am sitting down with Shelly Sanchez Terrell. She's an educator. She's a digital innovator. She's a speaker. She's an author of so many awesome EdTech books. I don't want to list them all. We're going to get into some of your books too, Shelly. But she is a mover and shaker in education. I am blessed to have known her for so long. Today, we will be talking about all things EdTech. We'll get into a little bit of AI and ChatGPT, which a lot of people are talking about now, general technology integration. She can talk about a lot of things, but I'm personally passionate about that.
That also applies to AI and ChatGPT. What I love is she talks a lot about teacher time saving tips with technology. We'll get into all of those things. We might mention some digital wellness. We might mention just general awesome EdTech stuff. Hold on, we're going to talk about a lot today. But before we get into those topics, let me give you a brief background about Shelly. I told you she's awesome. I told you that she's a digital innovator, but she's an award-winning digital innovator. She's an international speaker. She's an author of teacherrebootcamp.com, Hacking Digital Learning with EdTech Missions, The 30 Goals Challenge, which I suggest you check out because it is awesome, and so many more.
We'll put the bio in the show notes. She has trained teachers in over 20 countries as a guest expert, a consultant, an ambassador for the US Embassy. Oh my gosh! When I read this, I was like, what? I knew you were awesome, but this is cool. She was named Woman of the Year by the National Association of Professional Women. She received a Bammy Award as the founder of EdChat, and that's kind of how my journey with you, how I met you back in the day. She has been recognized by several entities as a leader in the movement of teacher driven professional development.
Usually when there's a movement starting, Shelly, you're in the mix of it, and I appreciate that. You're just in it. You're like, "I love it. Let's go." I was personally checking the Twitters to see how long you and I have known each other. I know our friendship goes beyond Twitter, but usually that's a hint of when we first started talking to each. Do you remember? I went back, and I have legit been learning from you on Twitter since 2010. And that wasn't when we actually knew each other face to face. It was like, "Hey, I really liked your article," and then you were retweeting something I said at EdChat or something. It was like back and forth, but mostly me fangirling you.
But every once in a while, you throw me a bone. Out of a lot of our guests, me and you have probably had the most consistent starting from 2010, you could tell it was just genuine curiosity and learning.
Shelly Terrell:
I know. You met my parents. You got to hang out with them.
Elana Leoni:
Yes. I would say ISTE San Antonio wasn't the first time we met in person, but it was one of my most memorable moments. I will never forget the way your parents, when they talked about you, how their eyes swelled up with pride. And that still gets me. And then you inviting us in to that whole... For those of you don't know, Shelly, her family is from San Antonio and ISTE was at San Antonio. ISTE is the biggest EdTech conference in the nation. You took it and your family took it to host us in this beautiful mariachi breakfast, just knowing your family a little more and your culture. I don't know. It was awesome.
Shelly Terrell:
We loved, my father passed away, as you know, and that was one of his most beautiful times, getting to meet my friends and just see making everything real, everything we were doing. He really loved you, my mom. You spent quite a few times with us even at Mi Tierra, which is a very popular restaurant. I think you went with us a couple of times there. My parents always loved you.
Elana Leoni:
I would send them Christmas cards for a long time until it started bouncing back or something and I'm like, darn it. Well, Shelly, thank you so much for being on the show. I really appreciate it. I was just saying right before the show, selfishly, I get a chance to reconnect with you because it has been a little bit. I get to learn with you on Twitter, but I don't really get to see where you're at in your education journey. You have done so much in K-12 education in particular. But I'm curious, where did it all start? I don't think I've ever heard the story. Were you raised in a family of educators, or was it a moment where you had a powerful teacher? What drew you to this world of education initially?
Shelly Terrell:
Well, a part of it is having powerful teachers. My father is very much about education. I have four sisters, and we grew up in one of the poorest districts. In fact, there was a Supreme Court case about it. It was the board of education of Edgewood District and they went about not having equal education. I grew up in a really poor neighborhood with my grandmother walking me to school and pretty much everybody spoke Spanish. A lot of the parents didn't even graduate from high school. None of the parents graduated from college. That wasn't even a thing. But my father knew very young, he didn't get to graduate, but he always knew, if we wanted to stop this cycle, you have to graduate from college.
He would tell us that every day. And now all five of us have our master's degree and doing really great things. My sister recently moved down here and got to even teach with me, and she's brilliant, amazing. But that's where it started for us. He's the kind of kid that I have in my classrooms today, working in middle school, where they work all the time. They cannot help their kids with homework. There's a lot of things they can't do, but my dad really relied on the teachers. He'd go and meet the teachers.
I had amazing teachers, and I think somewhere along the line I did a lot of business and I even had a business degree to begin with, but it was the teachers that really inspired me, who got me to break that cycle and do great things that really made me want to give back. That just kind of was like, hey, if I want to make a difference in the world, I need to go around the world. I need to work with teachers. I need to work with kids. Because if I'm not working with kids, then I don't know what teachers really face in the classroom. That's where it started.
Elana Leoni:
I was just shocked when you said all five of your siblings all of master's degrees. That's amazing to be able to instill that. And then when you said just recently you had the opportunity to teach side by side with your sister, that's awesome.
Shelly Terrell:
Our kids, even today they... I recently had to leave the classroom, unfortunately, but I had parents who were like, "We love you." My sister too, she keeps running into kids, because now she works for the district and she goes to different schools, and they say, "Miss, we love you so much. You made such a difference in our lives." The parents wrote me and were like, "Hey, we love you so much. Can we write you a recommendation letter?"
I've never had parents, especially middle school parents, love me so much that they're like, "I want to write you. I want to be a speaker to you for wherever you go next." That really touched me in a lot of ways that there's so many parents out there and they appreciate what teachers do even if they don't say it all the time.
Elana Leoni:
I know there is no linear path in the world, but I feel like you've gone all over in different classrooms, in different locations, being from the author perspective to working at various parts within the education ecosystem. There's a lot of people that are listening and they work in education and sometimes they're trying to figure out their unique journey and their path. Do you want to just maybe talk about what guided your decisions as you started meandering through different aspects of education?
Shelly Terrell:
I talk to a lot of teachers. In every country, I try to stay with the teacher if they invite me because I want to be in the real place. I go to the schools. I teach with them as well. I see something great. I'll be in Croatia or another country and I'll say, "Wow! You're amazing. The way that you use mobile devices in the classroom and do storytelling, that's pretty amazing what you're doing at your kids." I usually get the response of, "Oh, everybody's doing that," because they live on Twitter and they see all these teachers doing great things. I can tell them, "No, that doesn't happen." My sister, she trains in different schools and she still sees a lot of teacher who are talking.
They're learning, and she helps them with that. But they're still in the front lecturing, having kids write notes, and they're not getting them to digital story tell with mobile devices or do animation, all the great things teachers do. Even pop into the classroom, just whatever that makes kids smile, feel engaged and want to go to school every day, like wake up and feel like that's their safe, great place. That's what I would say is to get that confidence. My dad always instilled that in us. I'm a yes girl. Whenever opportunities would come, it didn't matter. "Oh, Shelly, we need you in Paris next week." I said okay.
And then the week after that, I would get a message, "We need you in Tokyo." Okay, yes, even before I heard about how they were going to make that happen, and then they made it happen. But I was always a yes person. And because of that, I got to do really great things, and because I felt confident. I knew I'm a teacher, I'm helping others. Even if I feel like an idea is not new, they say that in life, even the great scientists and engineers and inventor always got ideas from... Everybody has a lot of the same ideas, even if they deliver it differently or comes out different. I'd say have confidence in yourself.
Know that this is a very giving place with education and someone's going to appreciate the help out there. And for them to say yes, especially at the beginning. Don't necessarily worry all the time, oh, am I making the right big, big, huge bucks, or anything like that. I know that's important, especially we have families, but if you really want to get into just consulting and helping others and writing and things like that, you really do got to be able to just say yes to opportunity.
Elana Leoni:
What you said about saying yes hit me hard because I was thinking, have I even been able to say yes as much. I have been embracing yes within boundaries. But in the beginning of my career and even now, if I'm being honest, I don't say yes enough because I only say yes when I'm overqualified to do so. I feel like that sometimes it can be more a female thing is that we say yes when we're overqualified and we never really say yes if we're not 100% qualified at times.
I'm reflecting on that, and I know a lot of educators are overly humble to a fault. And like you said, I'm not doing this, this isn't really exciting. I want you to pause and think about all the things you were doing in your classroom that could be transferable into anywhere you go. I know so many educators that have done so many things in EdTech and beyond, in business, if that is your path too.
Shelly Terrell:
I will say one thing, I love how you said the overqualified. What really taught me something was the US Embassy when I started working with them. And that was because the country needed me to go and they didn't have the funds. I found out the US Embassy, they send teachers, especially teachers who have master's degrees and who are willing to travel and help countries. When they send you to a country, you don't know what you're doing. When I was in Venezuela, there's three years on and off I was in Venezuela, and I literally went the whole country sometimes in the little truck. It was amazing. I loved it.
It was just such a beautiful experience, and each place was a different thing. It was setting up an online college. I definitely never set up an online college here, but there I was definitely able to help. There were so many things I was able to help. But sometimes there are other places that do not have the skillset we do that would really, really just benefit. I think you let it surprise you. That's a great thing about Twitter. You don't know you have a whole support system. They write books. They have information and everything, and they will help you through that. That's what I was able to find.
Elana Leoni:
That's awesome. Why don't we get into a very hot topic right now, artificial intelligence? AI in education and specifically ChatGPT. You've been talking about this for quite a while. I follow you on Twitter obviously, and just seeing all the great resources that you're sharing. I'm seeing the conversation evolve in a more thoughtful way. In the beginning, it was reactive, right? Because it's like, "Oh, this is new. Don't freak out."
That was the tone of a lot of the resources, and now it's like, "Here's how you can save time. Here's how you can reflect, all of the things around that. I'm wondering, since you have been following it very closely, what are you the most excited about from the implications, I guess, specifically of ChatGPT? But if you want to bring it higher up, AI is fine too.
Shelly Terrell:
AI in general, that's huge and that's so amazing. But even today, I work with a lot of different EdTech companies and Parlay, which is a free discussion, really wonderful tool, but they even sent me an email about how they're using. There's so many of these EdTech companies that are like, "Now we're using ChatGPT." It's just amazing, but it's going to impact every teacher. I feel like it's very important. It's going to be in all of our EdTech tools. One of the things I'm excited about is we're talking about time savers. It can save you so much time.
Some of the conversation, I still see it and see it even for my gurus who I adore, but there's some gurus and they're amazing, they give you all these diagrams and charts and show you how to really work with it and write a prompt because that's so important, just how to ask the right question to get what you want and constantly edit that question so you get the right input, more quality input. You can ask ChatGPT, "Write me a lesson about the 1920s of this or prohibition," and then it's going to give you a lesson. "Oh, add the Ts," it's going to add the Ts, and it does that within five minutes.
I guess I'm not sure, but we have evolved from I'm not going to take that lesson and copy and paste it if I don't like it. That's not going to be a lesson that I just go up and teach because I'm a seasoned teacher. I know that. I don't even think new teachers would do that, because they wouldn't feel very comfortable. But if you continue, it can help you that way. And that's what I'm excited about. Going back into teaching and even teaching in Texas particularly, you now have so many demands.
My lesson plan template at the three different schools that I was working with here took 10 hours, because you had to follow these very strict steps, and then you had to have an exemplar for each, and ChatGPT can help you do all of that. It can help you brainstorm ideas within minutes, so that way you're not spending hours and hours of your free time and your time with family on this. Things like paperwork. Am I making the objective? Am I tying this to objective, the assessment? You can get all of that with the help with ChatGPT. It can be your help. It can grade for you. You can put a rubric in it.
You can put the questions, and you can tell it, "These are the type of specific feedbacks." You can give it sentence stamps and it'll grade all your papers and everything for you and give specific feedback. Things that, I mean if we're going to be realistic, aren't very manageable, especially with all the demands right now in education eating our time. That's what I'm most excited about, is that when teachers really get to use it and know it and they know how to work with AI, it can be their helper. It can be their person that's free helping them.
Elana Leoni:
It almost it gives you the opportunity to prioritize what you do as an educator and say, "What are those high value adds that I personally that give me joy, that keep me going. And that can make a difference in a child's education," versus, "I got to grade this type of thing, or I've got to create this lesson plan." Or even if it doesn't even do it, like you said, 100% right, it gives you 50% of a skeleton, that's better than starting from scratch. What I'm hearing from you is there's lots of cool ways. If I'm a listener I'm like, okay, this sounds cool, but I don't know where to get started. Will you help work with me that we can put some resources in the show notes so people can look at the best resources to get started?
Because this feels a little intimidating. You're like, okay, I'm having a machine jump into my children's learning. What? But you got to start somewhere and just approach it with curiosity. We'll put some resources in our show notes, and we'll share the show note link at the end of the episode.
Shelly Terrell:
That sounds great. I will mention two people that I follow right now, LinkedIn and Twitter. They're amazing. Tom Barrett, he's in UK, he always does great at EdTech. He was one of the creators of TeachMeet. Really amazing person. He's done great things, so Tom Barrett. He has so much AI resources and visuals that make it easy. Dan Fritz tweets, and he's pretty amazing. He runs a Facebook AI group, which I think is pretty much one of the best ones. Today, in fact, with teacher goals, they have a webinar. I don't know, they have a lot of webinars coming up, so that's great.
Elana Leoni:
They're all great stuff to start with. It sounds like you are most excited about it's... Infiltration is not the word, maybe integration of using it to save time. Because you're right, we have so many demands on educators, they can't keep up. How do we expect them to? Maybe they can have this free assistant come in. Do you have any other examples that you'd like to share that pop out to you that you're like, oh, this was unique and interesting and I never thought of that before I thought about AI?
Shelly Terrell:
There are so many, but what I will say is one of the ones that would be easiest I guess to do that a lot of teachers are working with is a lot of teachers love using videos in the classroom. One thing that I saw that was really great, so you can put the YouTube link, it'll come up with a script. It'll translate it for you within minutes that you have for your students. It will make a gap fill, all of that for you. It'll come up with questions. One educator I saw actually take those questions and then say, "Can you do it to Bloom's?" It created questions in the form of Bloom's hierarchy and it made him really great questions.
I thought that was pretty amazing. And then you don't have to go into the whole trying to create your own questions and figure out, am I doing the right critical thinking questions? It did it for it. If you know what parameters to give it, if you're not just saying, "Give me a bunch of questions related to this video," but you're saying, "Okay, based on Bloom's taxonomy," it's going to give you some pretty good stuff. It's pretty amazing.
Elana Leoni:
Wow, I'm impressed. I mean, I think just when we first started getting to know Google searches and we said okay. Now we generally don't search with one word. We know how to search for different things, do image searches. It's just going to take us some time to get familiar with it. Like you said, you're like, oh, that result isn't good. Let me add this. It's playing with it as well.
Shelly Terrell:
Absolutely. Playing.
Elana Leoni:
Speaking of playing, sometimes we always think of misuse sometimes or playing to the point of unintended consequences. Do you have any concerns? Do you follow any of the naysayers in AI?
Shelly Terrell:
Absolutely. I wouldn't say that it's naysaying, but it is something very practical. I don't buy into this whole... I see a lot of tweets and it's like, look, ChatGPT gave me this lesson plan. I went over it with my child, and they said, "Oh mom or dad, that's terrible." I'm like, no teacher would do that. You always revise. You put your own spin and everything. But the things that I am concerned with most is, and I've seen some great things about... 11 or 12 year old actually used ChatGPT to write an entire game, like code a game. It's an amazing game, wonderful. You can read about it, I think it was in The Guardian.
I follow on LinkedIn a lot of data people and people that work with coding. They use it to translate to other coded languages. And that's pretty amazing. But I saw some comments and I thought that was a question that I have and it was, "Oh, well, I don't know if I would necessarily put my code in there because that's proprietary. That's your code. That's a company's code. They can take that data." That is something that is a question and a concern. Even me, I put in some of my writing, doing a lot of fiction and nonfiction writing. But then those comments made me think about it because that's my work, but I don't know what's going to happen with the ones that I've had revised and edited and things like that.
I mean, I just trusted it. But data and privacy, we know that's a big issue in all technologies now. That is a big concern. I'm glad that education companies are starting to have it as part of the platforms, but I also am very interested in how they're protecting our students' data when our students are doing things with AI and also how they're going to make sure that they protect our data.
Elana Leoni:
Yes, that's a really good point because that field alone is evolving all the time. But now with AI and especially if whether they use it in their technology or not, it may influence the users and how they're using it, right? How did they interweave that into their privacy? That's a big thing and I'm curious to see how that evolves. I didn't even think of that.
Shelly Terrell:
Yeah, I didn't even, until a bunch of coders started asking this guy saying, "Wow, that's really exciting, but..."
Elana Leoni:
I thought of a code, because code is their stamp. They all have different style and sometimes they follow different company guidelines. It's not always GitHub and open source. Interesting. Anybody who wants to learn more about AI, ChatGPT, we will put some resources in the show notes as well. We could talk about this forever. We also will put in another episode in the show notes that we talked to Tony Wan from Reach Capital, and Tony has some really cool implications on if you're a writer or if you're an English teacher, how you can use it for reflection and brainstorming and things like that.
You talked a little bit about time saving stuff and ChatGPT in particular, but I know it is something that you are passionate about. I love your 30 Goals stuff. I love you trying to inspire so many educators across the country and the world of just how do I get better. And not better like we have to be these crazy efficiency machines, but maybe we're getting better so we can spend time on things that bring us the most joy too. I don't know where you want to start because you have so many tips, but maybe your most popular times saving tips for teachers that usually teachers go, "Amazing." Let's start there.
Shelly Terrell:
One of them is definitely templates. I collect a lot of templates on Wakelet. There are people that they follow that have so many templates, and really on Twitter is where I find them. The template is so many people share. There's a lot of Google gurus. There's Mrs. Howell, she's one of my favorites. Mrshowell24 I think is her handle. She shares where you basically just copy it and it's already designed beautifully. It looks like it's with Google or Canva, and they're beautiful. The font grade, it's really beautiful color selected. People spent time designing this. All you have to do is you edit it to what you need, or you could use the template free the way you want.
And so many teachers do that on Twitter. It's just you copying it and looking at it and tweaking it the way you want using it with students. The students love those activities. They're very engaging. I've seen Choice Menus where it's like a board game and they go through a path. And at the end, they get a digital badge or a sticker, an animation that comes up. All of that is created for you. Or there's Choice Menus that they have, you can from them, that have... It's like a menu, a dinner menu, and your students have to choose an appetizer activity. They choose the dessert. They choose the entree. So many great wonderful things that are wonderful and they're digital and blended learning.
Nearpod has some lessons already in there. Take what's already there that's rich and wonderful and then just tweak it the way you need to. But I think that saves so much time because when I'm designing something, it takes me hours just to decide what's the font? Oh, that's not the right font, or the colors. That takes so much time. That will sometimes take me two or three hours for a presentation. But if I see something I like and can adapt it, then that saves all that time and energy and it looks great, and and then I can focus on... I'm making a parent newsletter, so I have the time to actually put the information and things that are needed in that parent newsletter.
I can make a couple of phone calls now that I've saved literally hours. I can actually call some parents that I need to. I think that's important, just using templates or lessons and things that are already there and wonderful. If you follow these people on Twitter, other educators that make it, then you know what their quality of work is, you know what kind of awesome stuff they produce.
Elana Leoni:
Great. I see that. I know for people that say, "I'm not on Twitter. How do I get started," what we'll do is we'll throw in a couple of Twitter lists for you to start following some people. You might not hit the jackpot all the time, but you just check in every once in a while and start looking. There are so many free resources out there that people do. That's why I fell in love with this space is that it's just so selfless and collaborative. It's not like, "Oh, Shelly created this copyright," blah blah. It's, "No, I did this. I want to help others, and please let me know how I can make it better so we can collaborate." Right?
Shelly Terrell:
Absolutely. I will throw out SlidesMania. SlidesMania has a lot of free of these choice boards and weekly agendas for every month. You need one for Valentine's, here's one for the month of Valentine's with a calendar and a countdown and everything. SlidesMania is one of those resources they can go to as well.
Elana Leoni:
Yes. As you get more familiar with Twitter, you can start looking with hashtag. We were just talking about ChatGPT, the same thing we had to learn with Twitter. If you want Google templates and Google everything, you can put in specific hashtags and the people that do those free templates for Google and whatnot will be there. You can get better and refine your searches the more you do different things too.
Shelly Terrell:
Absolutely.
Elana Leoni:
Templates, I heard Wakelet. I heard Nearpod. I heard specific people, and we will throw some people to follow on Twitter and LinkedIn in the show notes as well. Any other time saving tips that come to mind that you're like, okay, we talked about templates, which is a big thing because the lesson planning is a thing. Are there other things that you wouldn't think take a long time but maybe do? The font is a really great example, by the way.
Shelly Terrell:
I think also making it to where it's a very active student voice classroom, and that means letting go of a lot of control and letting your students run things. My classrooms, I have tons of jobs for students to do. Students, especially younger ones, love jobs, but even the middle school will help you and high school. They want to help. Students will grade and give themselves grades for me. I wouldn't sweat that. Also, just having a tool where students give themselves feedback, and I think that's very important. This is something that I'm very mindful of and I think is so important that's really missing in education is deliberate practice.
And that is something that I've come across from a lot of UK educators that I've been following that do amazing work. It's having students every day do something, like give feedback, because they're not going to get better unless they practice it. But also I've realized, especially working with middle school students the past year, is unless they do it, they're not going to get into routine. Getting my students to read at middle school level is very, very difficult and hard if they were never allowed to read in the classroom in elementary. Elementary was easier. I got my kids to do everything because they're so motivated.
They want to please the teacher. If they have deliberate practice every day, do not sweat. Okay, I'm giving, as long as you have permission, 10 minutes of my classroom is dedicated, or 15, to them just grabbing a book and reading. That saves me time. During that 10, 15 minutes, I can be doing a lot of different things, and my students are doing something really good because they are not, I can guarantee in middle school, high school, they're not going to pick up a book and read if that didn't happen and it's not happening at home. That's just one example, but giving feedback or working in pairs and groups.
It was very difficult to get my students not work in a very challenging school. It didn't have a lot of rich education. It was a very poor area, lot of high crime, even gangs, things like I had not encountered. We had school shooting app. It's kind of scary stuff. But those kids I realized, and I gave a lot of love and everything, and the other teachers too. They wouldn't get that. They would tell me, "Oh, when I was... My teacher would just say get on the program and do things." They are not going to learn how to give feedback. They're not going to get in a routine of it because their brains are growing.
They don't have deliberate practice, constantly doing certain things, like giving feedback to each other, looking at their work, giving it a grade based on a checklist or rubric, and that saves teachers time. Letting go of the control, letting your kids... I had a whole entire... I had to teach seven subjects once in high school. One of them is called World Religions. I said, "You know what? You guys get the book. Each of you works in a group. You decide which chapter you're taking. You are going to study." I gave them a checklist and I said, "You're teaching the class." They taught the class the whole year, because I didn't have a master's or anything in World Religions.
I maybe had a class, I'd been to a different country, but I didn't know anything. I let them teach it. And that was an amazing class. We did amazing things. We took lessons outside. We did little ceremonies. I mean, we had great discussions, but things like that, just not getting too much into, oh, I have to control the grading. What's going to happen if I don't give the feedback? The whole system's going to collapse. No, it's not. The kids are going to be more empowered because they're going to have deliberate practice doing that and it's going to be a routine.
Their brain's going to understand how to go through that process and get better at it because they had that practice. Letting go and let the kids do things and you can just facilitate, walk around, and then do other stuff too I think is important.
Elana Leoni:
As you were talking, I was reflecting. I'm like, isn't it ironic that the more you hold on to control, the less ownership the students have and the more you're fighting against the battle of really getting them engaged and you probably have a higher chance of burnout because you just have too much of a workload to sustain in a long time period too. It just felt ironic is once you lose a little bit of control, such beauty happens. And not only habits, like you said, but ownership and engagement, right?
Shelly Terrell:
Absolutely.
Elana Leoni:
I love those examples. All right, I know we can talk about that one for quite a bit, but I hope that those couple of tips are really helpful for folks as you're starting to navigate, okay, time is the most precious commodity. How can I make the most sense of it? Prioritize what means the most to me.
We have a bunch of education technology professionals listening as well, and it's a beautiful audience because we have innovative educators like yourself, but we also have people that are running EdTech companies or running the marketing or the sales in EdTech and really trying to bridge the gap of how can I interact with educators, how can I learn how to speak their language and talk to them and sell my product in a way that really provides value?
There's a ton we could ask and talk about. You have worked and still work with EdTech companies, and you've been in the classroom, so you've seen it both ways. I'm sure EdTech companies have stalked you in the past and said, "Hey, buy my stuff." I'm wondering just a generic question about advice for them, but I know that's a super big question. What do you think are the most important features in EdTech products, maybe we start there, to hone you in? When you think about the EdTech products that you've really liked and have resonated with you, is there a commonality in features or characteristics?
Shelly Terrell:
I think definitely they have to have a resource. I've worked recently with a lot of STEM companies. The ones that I use the most are the ones that actually have very easy one-pagers. One-pagers are amazing. EdTech companies give one-pagers to teachers. They don't have enough time to play with the product and necessarily figure out how to use it, figure out a lesson plan. They don't have time. Getting a one-pager, having lessons and ideas, getting teachers, even the teachers that work with it that are able to have that time that they did get in the focus group to come up with lessons and ideas, having that data bank of ideas to be able to remix into it I think is just amazing.
One of my favorite tools, and I mention it again and again because it saves teachers time every time I introduce it to teachers. I do not work for them, I've never been, but I love them. It's Nearpod. Nearpod, one of the great things is you can look it up, and every lesson they have is amazing. It has objectives. It has essential questions. It has great graphics. It has videos. It has a virtual field trip, and then you can edit it out. But I love that it has so many ways. If you're looking at verbs or active verbs, or we're teaching conditionals or some kind of math, they have so many lessons in age groups. They're great.
They're amazing. It's just picking and choosing and editing as you like. I think in data bank for teachers. If you have a product like a STEM tool or some kind of technology, having that one-pager or something that's real quick that says, "Look, this is the way you use it. This is how kids will love this feature," not just getting a whole pamphlet and stuff or just giving so much information, a whole PDF of it, that's great to have. But I think really just having that. And then the most important thing, and I saw this in ST Math that I really, really liked, and I got to work with ST Math for a while, was having that parent version, like parent talks with it. I loved it.
ST Math has where they have a parent talk where they just send it to parents. Things you can send to parents like that. That's really helpful because honestly, the thing that's going to get students, we talk a lot about student learning loss, the only thing that's going to get all of that back is parent engagement. I don't see that enough. I don't. Having a resource where here's a parent letter on this, and then you get the child working with that at home, and then talking with the parent about it. That's rich learning. I think that that's great. Things that have the parent engagement component and then also those one-pagers, something, and a data bank of lesson plans and resources.
Elana Leoni:
Yeah, I love that. I think that sometimes tech products, especially Nearpod and other things, can be very robust and it can be overwhelming. But I just start with what do you think your target audiences main challenges is right now? Prioritize that and maybe put that on that one-pager and say, "Here's how you can do X, Y, Z." Dangle the carrot. They're not going to know how to do advanced PDL lessons or even want to search for that, right?
Shelly Terrell:
No. They're going to want to know, okay, how do I use this to teach my lesson tomorrow on this question, this topic?
Elana Leoni:
How do I engage student with quick wins too? Those are really helpful. When you think about things that you've seen in the industry, and I don't want to paint a bad picture because I really do love our industry of EdTech, and I think in general we do a decent job of respecting the educator and trying to work alongside all the stakeholders, but we can learn from mistakes. If you were giving advice to an EdTech company and saying, "Oh, please never do this," in their top couple, what do you think those would be that maybe have happened to you and have been like, oh gosh?
Shelly Terrell:
I think I'll say something they should do that a lot don't do already, which is... Well, some do it very well, and I've seen people on Twitter say, "Oh, hi, @flip," whatever the company is, "I would love this feature." Ignoring it, ignoring the teachers that are on social media, not having someone on social media that can respond to that and say, "Actually..." Google does this quite a few times. Educators using Google will say, "Google, I really love if you had this," and then they come back and they say, "Actually, this is how you do it. We do have that feature." Not making them sound like they asked a dumb question, but it's really responding.
I don't think enough have social media people that make it that easy where you can tag them and say, "Hey, I would love if you have that feature," and then jumping and then responding, and not responding in a way that's like, "Oh, well, we don't have that capacity." But something like, "Okay, we'll look into that, or that's a really great idea," and then feeding that into whatever the product is. I think just having someone there to listen and respond and say, "Oh, or yes, I think this might be the feature you're talking about. Here, just used this." And then guess what?
Those are the people that are going to be the ones that get certified in your product because you responded to them or are using your product in the classroom. That is definitely the audience you want. Those are the teachers that are working in the schools that are going to keep deciding whether they have your product in the school. Definitely just have someone on social media, make it super simple to tag you and say, "Hey, I would love if you have this."
Elana Leoni:
I just actually came across a stat, I was doing something, and it said 70% of people... If you had a positive interaction on social media such as, "Oh, we do have that feature. Oh no, great idea. We're putting it in the product queue," if they have a good experience with you on social media, they're 70% more likely to recommend the brand or product, and not even based on if they used it or not sometimes too. It's like, oh, I don't even use Nearpod or Remind or whatever and they responded to me.
It was a really good experience. I think a lot of the times as EdTech brands, we get caught up in this very linear ROI thing and they don't understand that relationships are really what make everything sing in terms of purchasing, and just being a good human in the industry of good humans, educators that are putting your heart and soul every day. I love that.
Shelly Terrell:
And also I found that some don't want to invest the money to have someone that's for that. I've seen that. If you're head of your company and you're running your Twitter or your LinkedIn, Facebook page, whatever, it's not going to work. Hire somebody. It's worth it. It's so much worth it, even if it's an in...
Elana Leoni:
Don't say the I word. Don't say the I word.
Shelly Terrell:
Intern. It's a great investment. Invest.
Elana Leoni:
Yes, invest is better than intern for social media, I would say. I think that when you are starting to talk about listening too, the first step I would say is listen and acknowledge and try to put it into action, but there are so many ways you can collaborate with social media within your company. I work with companies to move them on that spectrum. Maybe every Friday we just do a random poll, would you like this feature or this feature, or it's product Friday feedback. You can really use it to crowdsource great ideas and engage your audience if that's what you want in terms of feedback too.
Shelly Terrell:
Absolutely.
Elana Leoni:
Any other things come to mind? Maybe I'm a new EdTech company on the scene and I might come from education, I might not, but this world's foreign. I got a weird purchasing cycle. I've got people that make decisions that might not use the product. It's a wonky world. How do I navigate without pissing people off?
Shelly Terrell:
One of the ways to navigate is definitely get the product tested in places. There's integration specialists, and that's another thing to understand how schools work. So many times a company would come and ask me as a STEM teacher, when I was a STEM teacher, and I don't make the big decisions. Yeah, I can kind of influence those. Luckily, I was a trainer and super. They love me, my district, because we had like 26 schools, and so I could help make influences, but ultimately I wasn't the one. There was some where they just said no, and I loved the companies and I fought for them.
Really getting that relationship with the person in charge making those decisions, which is good because teachers like me fighting for products that we love, I can't. I can't. But if you're the salesperson, that's your expertise or you love your product and you know it's great for kids, get with the right people, the ones in charge. Take whatever phone calls or steps to be able to know who's that person who's going to make that decision. It's not necessarily the principal. Sometimes it is the principal, but there's usually tech specialists are the ones who get to make that. The STEM specialist, whoever the integration specialist, usually they have that term in it, is the one.
Make a relationship with them, really get to know their product. A lot of times, like me, mine used to ask me all the time, "Hey, I need you to hop on a call, show our district leaders how to use this Schoology," whatever we were using at the time. I would do that, but really the company needed to have been on board to be able. There's so many tools I showed my district and I loved them and it was great, but I was a teacher. I wasn't getting paid for that or anything, and I didn't mind because I love those tools. But if a company is making that relationship and says, "Anytime. Here's my number. I'm on board.
I will show that product or that game or whatever I'm doing," then that's going to be what's going to stick in and be long-term and go in many schools. And that's going to help teachers like me because a lot of companies will go to a teacher and then the teacher has that pressure of, how am going to get... I love this tool, and then it's like a heartbreak when my budget person is going to tell me no. And why? Because I'm just a teacher. I have all these things to do. I don't have time to sell the product like I should, or maybe I don't know how to sell that as a teacher.
I think companies really getting with the right person and just investing a few more phone calls to figure out who's making that decision. Even asking the teacher, "Hey, who's the one who gets to approve whether you get this product or not," I think it is a big step.
Elana Leoni:
What you said was also knowing the ins and outs of the product, being readily available to do trainings, pop-ups, those things. It is really clear what districts are looking for at times. They have privacy concerns. They've got a criteria you need to meet, so you should be familiar with that and be able to answer questions. Because we have had people on our show say, "Hey, just make sure your sales team is fully trained and ready to go on the top concerns that they make publicly available." Right?
Shelly Terrell:
Absolutely.
Elana Leoni:
Well, geez, I think it's 45 minutes plus already, so I think we have to say goodbye, unfortunately. But before we do, I want to ask you one question that we ask all of our guests, and it's around inspiration. Because in education, in EdTech, it's full of highs, but it's definitely full of lows. When you have those low days of just low energy, how do you personally refuel yourself and get inspired to get going the next day? Lots of guests have talked about physical things, intellectual things. What gets you going that comes to mind that might inspire some of our guests to keep going in tough times?
Shelly Terrell:
Podcast playlist constantly. I listen to the Think Podcast with Krys Boyd all the time. Always gives me wonderful inspiration. Also, I listen to the lofi playlists and also different types of music that comes on. I forgot which one it is, I'm trying to find it, but there's this song right now, it is the Ayn Rand. It's an Anthem, and it's so beautiful. It's like this beautiful song and it keeps going. I think I got just from YouTube putting it, but it's called... The Translation is because of, and it says because of people wanting to dance and why they're fighting. It's so beautiful. It's just a beautiful song, but those things really just inspire me, things that are outside.
When I do read, it's like Nature, Neil deGrasse Tyson. There's some Antarctica Explorers. A lot of times we'll tweet. Sometimes people see a tech stuff and then they see random things about an octopus that changes colors and the video of it. It's because knowing this beautiful stuff around the world that's happening in animals and the great things they do really puts in perspective. To me, there's such a big world out there you have to explore, but the world is bigger than you. It's greater. Yes, it's important what you're doing, but so is the rest of everything in the world. Don't be afraid to step out of that.
Your microcosm, your little world isn't going to break or your students or all of that because you're not constantly overwhelming yourself with all of that. You've got to throw it away and remind yourself that there's a big world out there. For me, it's a bigger being, something greater. That inspires me every day, just seeing nature and the wonderful things that are just not necessarily part of teaching, but just exploring. It's just beautiful.
Elana Leoni:
No, no. Like you said, it puts it in perspective, right? I was watching, it's old now, but Will Smith was with David Letterman. Will Smith said, "I did a lot of soul-searching and I realized that 90% of my thoughts were about worries. Those worries, a high majority of them, never came true." I know he comes from over a privileged background, but in general, we all tend to worry or get stuck in our own myopic view. What I love about what you said is if you just explore the beauty of nature, sometimes you can get out of your own little hole where we get into some negative thought patterns, right?
Shelly Terrell:
I will say something. One thing that I love, a quote from Will Smith is, and I share that with my students even this past year, even when he did crazy things, but he always said the secret to life and success is running and reading. And that's because when you run, your mind just does that, it takes your worries away. But also when it's very tough, he said, you have a little voice that develops in your head and says, "Don't quit. Go the extra feet. Go the extra mile." You're constantly with that voice, and that voice will carry through everything else when you want to quit.
I really love that. And reading, he's like, nobody has experienced a problem or you don't have a problem that nobody's written about and has gone through, and you can read how they tackled it. It made so much sense. I've read lots and lots, but I always took that to heart, the running and the reading, it really does help, I mean, just inspire you.
Elana Leoni:
That's beautiful. Well, Shelly, if people want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to learn alongside you? I'm sure on Twitter, right?
Shelly Terrell:
@ShellTerrell. On LinkedIn, I'm pretty active now. A lot of people have migrated from Twitter. LinkedIn seems to be a really powerful, engaging commentary, and I learn a lot from people on LinkedIn. I'm Shelly Terrell on LinkedIn. Facebook, I've been a lot more active. That's been really growing too. People are more interactive there. And that's Shelly Terrell as well. And then Twitter and then just tweeting me is basically the fastest, quickest way to get ahold of me.
Elana Leoni:
Yes. For those of you that aren't going to go to the show notes, I will say it's S-H-E-L-L-T-E-R-R-E-L-L. There's double L and two Rs in there when people are like, "How does she spell that?" Well, thank you so much, Shelly. I really appreciate you joining us, sharing your wisdom and inspiration. Just as I say to most of our guests too, when you jump on, I'd love for you as a listener to think about one thing you can do, whether it be a mind shift or a practical thing, or I'm going to go check out this tech company that Shelly mentioned, or I'm not going to be so afraid of ChatGPT. I challenge yourself to think of one thing that you want to take away from this episode.
We talked about the show notes. You can access the show notes at leoniconsultinggroup.com. That's two Gs, consultinggroup.com/46. It's the number four-six. We will put in all the AI resources that we can find, maybe some Twitter folks to follow, and all of the things that Shelly loved for inspiration too and the playlist too. Thank you all very much. We will see you next time on All Things Marketing and Education.
Thanks so much for listening to this week's episode. If you liked what you heard and want to dive deeper, you can visit leoniconsultinggroup.com/podcast for all show notes, links, and freebies mentioned in each episode. We always love friends, so please connect with us on Twitter @leonigroup. If you enjoyed today's show, go ahead and click the subscribe button to be the first one notified when our next episode is released. We'll see you next week on All Things Marketing and Education.
Elana Leoni, Host
Elana Leoni has dedicated the majority of her career to improving K-12 education. Prior to founding LCG, she spent eight years leading the marketing and community strategy for the George Lucas Educational Foundation, where she grew Edutopia’s social media presence exponentially to reach over 20 million education change-makers every month.
Shelly Sanchez Terrell, Guest
Shelly Sanchez Terrell (@ShellTerrell) is an award-winning digital innovator, international speaker, and author of various education technology books. She has trained teachers in over 20 countries as a guest expert, consultant, and ambassador for the U.S. Embassy. She was named Woman of the Year by the National Association of Professional Women and received a Bammy Award as the founder of #EdChat. She has been recognized by several entities as a leader in the movement of teacher-driven professional development as the founder and organizer of various online conferences, Twitter chats, and webinars. She is the author of TeacherRebootcamp.com, Hacking Digital Learning with Edtech Missions, The 30 Goals Challenge for Teachers, and Learning to Go: Integrating Mobile Learning in the Classroom.
About All Things Marketing and Education
What if marketing was judged solely by the level of value it brings to its audience? Welcome to All Things Marketing and Education, a podcast that lives at the intersection of marketing and you guessed it, education. Each week, Elana Leoni, CEO of Leoni Consulting Group, highlights innovative social media marketing, community-building, and content marketing strategies that can significantly increase brand awareness, engagement, and revenue.
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