This interview was originally recorded on September 27, 2024, 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:
Welcome everyone to our podcast, All Things Marketing and Education. I'm Elana Leoni, and I've devoted my entire career to helping education brands build their brand awareness, engagement, and ultimately grow their lead. Every week, my guests who range from educators to EdTech entrepreneurs to experts in the field, we'll all share tips, strategies and insight in either social media, content marketing, and community building. I'm so excited to be your guide to help transform your marketing efforts into something that's truly authentic and consistently provides value for your audience. Enjoy. Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of All Things Marketing and Education.
I'm your host Elana Leoni, and I'm so glad you took time out of your day to learn with me. In this episode, I was joined by Hall Davidson. He's a true legend in EdTech. I recently spent some time with Hall at our party at ISTE in Denver, and I remember walking into a fun conversation with him, Kathy Schrock and Steve Dumbo, and they were talking about their long journey with EdTech, which included yes, before computers, before internet and cell phones were even around.
Hall has held prominent roles at Discovery Education, Orange County Department of Education, and LA Unified School District where he taught as a math teacher for 12 years. Since the seventies, he's been at the forefront of integrating media and technology into classrooms, and you'll find out later, he literally was a TV host when TV wasn't really a big to-do, that helped teachers and students with their math homework.
In this episode, I love that we get to hear from Hall about his journey in education from his early days in teaching, which included the live TV I just mentioned to his influential work at Discovery Education. Hall also gets passionate about the importance of teacher of evangelists and his helped build one of the most powerful educator networks out there, the Discovery Educator Network, known to many as you as the den. And side note, many of you know our team member at LCG, our director of Joy Porter Palmer. She also comes from the Den.
Hall talks about the value of creating authentic teacher communities, how edtech companies can empower teachers to share their stories, and why starting small can lead to big successes, specifically as it relates to building authentic teacher communities. And of course, I could not resist asking Hall about his thoughts on AI and education, so stick around to the end to hear why he thinks it's a game-changing tool for both teachers and students. So let's get to it. I won't make you wait any longer. Let's bring on Hall.
Alright. Welcome to the show Hall. It is an honor and it's kind of one of those full circle moments for, I remember I started my career at Edge Utopia and heard your name and now you're on the show. So welcome. This is really exciting.
Hall Davidson:
It's great to be here. And I saw your roster of people that have been on the show before me, so it was kind of intimidating. So whoa.
Elana Leoni:
I think you especially have spent so much time in the industry that the people that surround you are so inspiring and impressive. And I always say it's not me. It's really the people around me and I'm lucky enough to elevate their voices.
Hall Davidson:
Yeah, no luck is a huge part of it. Luck, luck, luck. The right people. See you at the right time. You're in the right place at the right time, and then things just spin from there. So yes,
Elana Leoni:
Made
Hall Davidson:
Everybody be as lucky as we are.
Elana Leoni:
Well, let's talk a little bit to the audience who may not know you, and that probably would be a small few, but talk a little bit about your journey. How'd you get into education? Where did you meander the ebbs and flows of your career in EdTech?
Hall Davidson:
Well, it's an interesting and very long journey that almost begins in a long cabin, but not quite. I've been in education really since the seventies, which is a long time. And back in the seventies, I first started teaching in Nashville, Tennessee and then moved to Los Angeles and began teaching here. I was a math department chair in Los Angeles Unified back in the day. And we would at that time, remember this was the seventies, there was no internet there. Everything was pretty much linear in those days as math people. We also knew in Los Angeles there were a huge number of people that needed tutors in English and math and didn't have any. So we wrote a grant. LA Unified had its own PBS station license. There was a time when about 80% of the licenses and PBF stations around the country were for educational institutions.
So they wrote a grant and we had a chance to do live math tutoring after school. So they brought all the math people together and said, okay, who wants to do this? And I went, I'll do it, I'll do it. I'd done, I'd done some TV before and done some commercials, so it's again, right place, right time. So I thought, okay, what's this going to be? So it wasn't hard to make that adjustment. And I'd teach in the daytime and then after the last period would drive downtown to Los Angeles, I lived in Todd in Hollywood. We'd drive downtown and we would do live on the air math instruction. People would call in questions and we'd do it live. We also had a bank of 800 people, excuse me, a bank of people and an 800 number that would answer questions also. And we did math and alternated with English language arts.
And it's an interesting story that my daughter-in-Law now, we were out on their deck and we were chatting, chatting, and I was talking about something like this. And she said, oh my God, you're that Mr. Davidson. My father made me watch you all the time because she needed some math help. So we did that and then it was effective. We won an Emmy the first year, which was great. And then it was so effective that we then decided to do a full-time show. So I left the classroom and we shot 90 episodes for two days per year, 180 days, 90 days. So we did a linear thing because in those days there weren't a lot of credentialed math teachers were sort of having that problem again. So a lot of people around the country were teaching math and were not credentialed. And I've had more people than I can tell you compensate, oh, thank God for that show that we call it video mathematics.
And we distributed that through the PBS network. And it meant that if you were a teacher teaching math and math was not your subject, you could stick a tape in A VCR and get really 15 minutes of that day that would then tell you what to teach, and then 15, 15 minutes for the next day. So that was pretty cool. All that was linear, all that was a VCR and the VCR was a huge breakthrough, and we sort of forget that, but I used to go around and train people in VCRs, California bought every school in the state A VCR back when they cost about $1,500 back in the day, which is about three grand now. So when you talk about G, should we get VR headsets, it's like they're a 10th. The price that VCRs were when they went into school. But people would use those and people would say to me, the pause button has changed my life.
Because before, if you're an elementary teacher and you're doing a lesson on drawing turkeys with your hand, that kind of stuff, Dan Mata had a show that he did that on and people could do it, but then they could pause and kids could do it. And it was amazing. Later I became a media director in Orange County, south of Los Angeles County, and we were early adopters of the internet because the internet was like, wow, you can get a video right away, just hit record. Because in the old days, we used to broadcast, for example, all the math shows between two and four in the morning. And if you had a VCR and the school library was there, you could get every videotape in the district library. And back in the day, if you wanted a tape on Martin Luther King, you filled out a form, it went in a truck, the truck went downtown, they found the tape, they put in the bag.
That's how you got video material. So the idea of going, wow, I can hit download and get this material right now on my machine and show it to a class projector. It was a huge breakthrough. And again, a lot of us saw this right away. A lot of people did not see it right away. So that's when we had Net Day when a bunch of us would show up with wires and wire a school. There were industries that said school should have the internet, so here's a bunch of ethernet cable, and we'd crawl through the attics and put a drop in every classroom. Anyway, a lot of interesting stuff. And then products came, and this is sort of how we get into the teacher evangelist part, but products came that began to vet material, put it online, you could buy those products, and I thought they were spectacular. And then you had to train teachers how to use 'em and show people what to do, just like you had to do with videotape. But once they did, obviously turns out the internet took off.
Elana Leoni:
Who'd have thought, right?
Hall Davidson:
Turns out digital material took off. So there you go.
Elana Leoni:
So started in teaching, had that really great opportunity to get TV forward again. And when you were thinking, I'm like, gosh, you were like the original Sal Khan out there doing math lessons and people learning from you in that revolutionary pods button, right? We take all of this for granted, but how did you meander from that into your career at Discovery Education?
Hall Davidson:
Well, it's interesting part of it. At the same time, it's always been a big advocate of content creation. Both. You'd see Dan Mata do his little drawings of the danta was great, did elementary art series, but there were a lot of really great teachers that also had the ability to do that, and a lot of really great students that could create content. So when I worked at the TV station, we began to show people how to put those giant camcorders, make their own instructional videos. So we had teachers do their own Bill ni show teachers are very creative and sometimes this kind of energizes them for the next school year and things like that can really be important and kids would do it. So we would collect kids materials and we began having what sort of became the Academy Awards of classroom work once a year we'd bring everybody down and show work and kids would make speeches and all.
It was wonderful. So the content creation part became a big part of it too. And when we were downloading, as you say, was United Streaming, which became Discovery Education, one of the things we insisted on was the ability to download and alter and create content with it. So a kid could download three videos on math and circumference, edit them together, do their own narration, do it in Spanish, do it in our media, and do whatever they wanted to do. And that was a very energizing thing, a project-based learning thing where at the same time, you are learning the math, but you're creating something. So you're not sitting down just for filling out the forms and doing all that. You're creating something which for some kids is central to who they are, that they are content creators. And when you put 'em in a chair and you make 'em do the stuff and fill out the forms and take the test, they are not as engaged as the other way would be.
So content creation was always a big part of it, and we made that part of the deal when we began to work with content providers. So at that time, even back in the day, I was speaking at conferences and I keynote at ISTE as I forget what it was, but Lily Tomlin did one day and I did the other day, and my friend said, oh, it's a lily Tomlin open for you. And what I showed was some of the products that my consortium, we had a consortium of about 500,000 kids, 27 districts in Orange County. And we again, were the early adopters of the internet. We bought material and I showed it to this, I said, you guys want to see what the future looks like? Here it is, and here's this product. And so if that was your product, you're kind of out in the audience going, oh, I guess they're going to be people at the booth now.
But I mean, they weren't paying me to do it, but it was great stuff, great stuff. And when you have teachers or I guess customers, I was a coordinator talking about products, it's so much more powerful than when somebody comes in and goes, lemme show you some really great stuff and here's what it does, and here's what it's like. That's great. And then somebody else comes in and goes, Hey, I'm from, and here's what Gregory. But when somebody stands up in front of a group of teachers, it can be 30 teachers, it can be five in a faculty meeting, it doesn't matter. And they say, okay, this is really cool and my kids really like this, and here's what we did. And then they'll show it and people go, okay, well how do we get it? You go, here's your login. And I mean all the nuts and bolts of doing that.
So when I showed that material at Isti and at a bunch of other conferences too, I mean really it is hard to imagine what's so obvious now being not so obvious then. And it was really Connie Reckner, who was one of the founders of United Learning, which became United Streaming, who said, this evangelist stuff works. There was a time, a book, and she talked to the authors and the teacher evangelist part was significant, particularly early days of tech, when people were scared of mice and they didn't know what to do, and kids are going to look at me and go, Hey, what am I? And I go, I don't know mean. It was one of those moments. So when you had teacher stand up and go, yeah, it was hard at first, but now here's what I do. Her idea was to create teacher evangelist for the thing I had talked about at iste, which is downloadable vetted content, searchable by curriculum standard in every state, stuff like that.
So she hired me and in the west and Scott Kenny in the east, and we were tough selves because we both had consortiums, we had a bunch of kids, we were doing great work, we thought, but she convinced us to do it. And we began building a teacher evangelist network. And lest you think it's a dead end, Scott became eventually CEO of that company. And by that time it was a much bigger company, a much bigger deal, and Scott became the CEO. So this is an idea that every other idea needs, organization needs a leader needs the ability to execute a plan. All those things are just as important. You can't just go over, we're doing teacher evangelist stuff, but even now we are empowering teachers to speak up and do what they say. And I was reading a publication, I can't remember what it was, it was Ed Verge, but it was a teacher evangelist. And she said, Hey, here are the three things that I use. I mean, one of them was a discovery education product based on curiosity, but she said, here's what I do. Here are three tools that really work for me. And they were three very different tools. But you read that and go, wow, as opposed to a setup piece that you often see in those magazines.
Elana Leoni:
Yeah. I love how you weaved in some of the things that we're going to be talking about too is as you go along, because when I think of your name and I think about other people's names that have helped make the Discovery Educator Network, the den Star educator program, so famous nationally recognized, I have the pleasure of working with Porter Palmer for six years at LCG, and she was one of the main people there too. So I know a lot of the nooks and crannies around what it takes. And we're going to get into a little bit of that. But I wanted to pause you at one point because you said, well, as soon as a teacher started doing it authentically and saying, this works for my kids, it is a completely different, it's you are no longer a vendor. You are someone that's just helping them, a collaborative partner. And I loved that. And when all of you listening are kind of turning your heads a little bit going, gosh, how do I get that? Maybe we'll talk a little bit about how to even start doing that, but doing it in a way that's authentic and structured. You can't just do this overnight. This took a lot of people and a lot of thought,
Hall Davidson:
And it takes some money, and that's what stops some people sometimes, but it does. But the impact is deep. I have people that come up and go, you know what? I remember back when we had those summer institutes and Discovery would pay for the housing and the hotels and all the food and everything was free, and we all got to share our ideas. And that's what it was, just connecting people and letting 'em all talk. And the resonance of that goes very deep in a community where often you feel unappreciated. Teachers often feel unappreciated. And those that have learned new things, Hey, the district bought program X. It's like, oh, I'll start to play with it. And there's no training, but they do it. And then people go, well, what are you not doing? It's like, oh man. So sometimes people don't feel appreciated and when they're with their peers from other schools or other states, it's just like, we're so into this because we're into the teaching and the learning and we're into the new tools and we just do it.
And there's a whole bunch of teachers like that everywhere. And if you can tap into that at a school or a district or at a company, I don't think it just helps move and keep products in place. I think it lifts the whole system. I think that moving forward, again, I started with VCRs moving forward in that way happens because teachers do it. And if you don't have that, it'll happen, but it'll happen five years slower. And what I used to tell people was, which five year class do you not want to have do this of your kids K 12 right now, if you have teachers do it, every kid's going to be doing it within two years. If not, it's going to be seven years. So which of the kids do you think they don't need this? I'll get it later. You've got to do it. Or you're not lifting everybody up anyway.
Elana Leoni:
Yeah, when you were talking the word, when I do see communities that really see and care for teachers and then inherently that magic is when they start connecting with each other and they care for each other. And that is the true definition of community Porter has taught me that, is that you can't call it a community. It's your members that get to call it a community. And it's truly only a community when they care about each other and notice that we're not talking about the product in any way, shape, or form.
Hall Davidson:
It's bringing people together. And then the things that happens when you get people together is they do care about each other and they care about their emotional state, and they care about all the things you're supposed to care about with the whole person. That's what a community can do. And teachers, of course, who deal with whole people hopefully every day at work can do the same thing with each other. It's a wonderful thing to see.
Elana Leoni:
So we know it works, but we also see a lot of in, sometimes I feel like we want that, and I talk with a lot of ed tech companies and they're like, we want what Discovery has. And then we kind of just say, well, to manage expectations, here's how much time it would take. Here's the budget it would take. But if you start small and you create a commitment going forward, you eventually can get there, but this is a bit of a long road. Sure, you will have those quick wins that you talked about at iste, but do you want to talk to the people listening and say, gosh, I want that. How do I start? And what are some expectations?
Hall Davidson:
Well, part of it, and this may seem obvious is, but you've got to have a product that people will love. I mean, you've got to go and watch it being used and see somebody really like it. And a lot of times the whole modern process of cold calls and follow-ups and demos, and then you sell the, doesn't include sitting in a classroom and watching a teacher use it. And you have to find a way where you can find the teachers that love what you do and you can track usage. I mean, there's privacy issues, but you need to find the teachers that love what you do, which means you have to listen. You can't just go, congratulations, your whole district has X, Y, Z. Bye. See you next year. You have to listen and to the teachers and say, Hey, we'd like five teachers just as a pilot so we can get the feedback on what they do.
We'd like to do that. And then maybe you need 10 or maybe you need 15, but you have to make sure you've got something that's working in the classroom. And again, it seems obvious, but you can't force feed that stuff and you can't do it at just the tops. There are people that go, alright, we're going to get an advisory group and we'll have the head of it over here. We'll have so-and-so and they'll have an advisory group and they'll go to Cancun once a year, whatever they do. That's very different than visiting a classroom, which is, we can get started on that later. But some way to find out some kind of posting in your product where you see somebody's doing some really good work and you follow up and go, that was really remarkable. We never thought about using that song to teach metamorphosis.
That was really a cool thing. And then see what they say and then find those people. And maybe you get on a conference call or we used to in the early days, find teachers like that that really liked us and we'd send them gift certificates for donuts so that after school in a non-mandatory teacher meeting, they could have donuts and coffee for people that showed up and they'd be able to then share what they did. And maybe it's just two people to come. Maybe it's so faculty, but it's getting the word out and it's also letting your people practice sharing with other teachers, which again, maybe we think can do that. Now, certainly back in the day, there are people who were great teachers who seemed to forget that when they were standing in front of 36th grade teachers instead of 36th grade students
Elana Leoni:
And the nature of the profession. So closed door a lot of the times, and I remember so many conversations I had with educators in circa 2008 when Twitter was booming and educators were sharing with each other. But I remember doing dms and bringing educators on the calls and saying, Hey, we'd like you to share how you're using this type of technology. It's really great. And they said, well, I'm not doing anything that's really great. What I'm doing is just kind of normal. They didn't have the purview to really understand what they were doing was really great. And maybe they didn't have the behavior of sharing as much. And still every educators, every person needs that. Like, Hey, how can you share with others? Because when you share and teach others, you obviously learn more too. But people forget that the position itself is fairly siloed and they're not seen. It's not like they have people sign. Wow, great job all the time.
Hall Davidson:
No, that's good. And actually, you just nailed a really important point is we'd see people do magnificent stuff and they'd go, eh, this isn't so great. What are other people doing? I don't want to feel like I'm showing off. I don't want people to say, wait, what did you just cut out in order to do that? So you do have to say, this is great. And if you put 'em together with three other teachers on a call and people go, oh my God, that's so brilliant. It really does change things because teachers tend to be modest and they tend many times if they have something that works, not necessarily to share that because you might be told not to do it. Maybe it is changed, but you just nailed a thing. And I sort of forgot because I came into this really before a lot of sharing. You can look at TikTok and find great ways to have students line up for lunch and things like that. There's a lot of stuff in there. I'm not sure how much of that is product based. I think the product stuff, people still tend to go, skip, skip.
This is company. This is Acme putting it up. And I don't believe anything they say.
Elana Leoni:
Yeah. But then magic that we're talking about is that in between where an educator is really talking about five ways they engage their students and maybe it has to do with a couple pieces of technology or tips or things like that. So just like anything, when we feel like we're being pitched to and talked at, we're going to, in this case, we're TikTok, we're swiping right through. But where is that magic? Where we're authentically as brands uplifting and supporting educators in a way that they feel like they want to share, they love your product, it actually works, to your point, first of all, and that they're able to do it in an authentic way. And I think that that's that balance that we're always really looking for. And it doesn't have to be. And I would love you to talk more about this because The DEN is a formal program and it's been developed over time with lots of resources, but there are small ways that EdTech brands can jump in and start highlighting educator voices. And I love that you said get in the classroom and watch the product in action first and foremost. So what are those small ways that we can get started?
Hall Davidson:
Well, that's one. Let me say just before I forget that I think that ultimately, and again, I'm old school, you really want to bring people together. And if you identify 20 heavy users and you go, if your district will allow this, we have this place in Tempe, Arizona that's really cool and they have great technology and we want to just get there and share for four days. And if you can get away, it won't cost you anything. You have to get there, but it will do. So the in-person part is good. I sit in a lot of zooms and sometimes you have four really engaged people in a Zoom and it really, really works. And sometimes there are people in the corners that are not working. They zoom all the time, but you're not meeting at breakfast all the time and you're not hearing somebody show you a student project at lunch all the time.
So that's very different. But the small things to get started is yes, look at however you track teacher use and find your heavy users. And then if you can go visit them, go visit their school. And then this is hard, go to a similar grade level or subject ledger teacher in the same school and sit in on that class when they try to use the product. Because sometimes that's so brutal, you don't even know what to do. They've had it for a year and a half and you got to teach across the hall who's soaring with it. Their kids have all learned every power of pie, whatever, not possible. And then you go in, you see somebody and you go, if you click this button, this assignment, and you're copying, pasting for every student, it goes to everybody all at once. You just click to send and look how much easier that is.
But if a school doesn't do the training or the buyers do the training, then how's it supposed to happen? And when I was a consortium customer, when we used to buy products, I always thought part of our obligation when we spent the consortium money was to do the trainings. I can't tell you how many schools I went to was Tuesday staff at 11 D, I can't remember, but every Tuesday, pack everything up in the car and you drive across town because you've got to show a faculty meeting. Those were the mandatory faculty meetings. You'd get there before whenever three 30 to five or whatever it was, and you'd show 'em how to do it. I was always amazed when people would buy stuff and then not train. It's like, do you think this stuff is so obvious that people will just pick it up and run with it?
I mean, do you have a YouTube channel where somebody says, oh, here's what you do. And by the way, if you click the red button that says click here, it ends the session. So don't click the red button. It says click here, stuff like that. And you go, oh, oh, that just saved me 45 minutes. So you've got to have a process where people can see it. And then you have to have a way to find your heavy users. And if you have your heavy users, you can send them an email or what can we do to support you? Is there anything else that you need? Is there a feature that you'd like that we don't have? You make them feel valuable because they are valuable. You recognize what they do is important because it is important. And then you go from there. But as you said, and as Porter said, you've got to coordinate this. And depending on the size of your company, you got to have a body to put on it at least half time. You got to have somebody that's going to, if I email you and say, you're a great user, are there any tips or anything you'd like us to fix? And then they get back right away and then I'll get back for two weeks. It's like goodbye. And I mean really, it's like you don't really care.
Elana Leoni:
And if you do solicit that feedback, so maybe you are a social media manager and you're on the pulse and you get to understand who the power users are and connect and build relationships. Maybe you're a content manager, maybe you're someone who's in charge of doing professional development, whatever it is, you have to show that you're not only responsive, but that you do something with it. Right? And there's so many cool ways now with all the technology we have to show, right? Hey, we got this product feedback, but why don't you do a webinar and lead it? And then because of this idea, we created this new feature. So there's lots of cool things that you can do to empower, but you have to dedicate people like you said, right?
Hall Davidson:
Yes. And again, what you just threw in there isn't always obvious. You said, Hey, let's do webinar. And you lead it. If you're going to do get people together and go, Hey, let's talk about Acme X, and then you just talk the whole time. It's like, why not say find a teacher and go, could you talk about the login? Hey, could you talk about student assignments? And then you just hand it off. You're there the whole time. You can jump in If somebody says, and then you do this and you go, well, you don't exactly do that, but again, you let them do it. And again, certainly in the days before social media, when people got to do that, they remembered it. They remembered it because you do feel important when you're talking to other teachers, you do feel like you've been selected, which is true, true, true.
Elana Leoni:
You are talking about too is kind of like, I was thinking about this because I feel like our industry, when they do do the sale, it is very hard, especially in a large district to deploy a technology across all the different schools and get them all trained up and say, you do accomplish that, right? You get them somewhat bare level trained up, which is a really big feat in itself. Just say you do that, the continuous professional development that you need to make sure that the district three, four years later say, wow, this is actually being used and potentially this is actually working. I want to keep it that that is needed, that continuous professional development. But not all ed tech companies have those resources, but they do have a cadre of teachers that are already their ambassadors. They just haven't leveraged that or they haven't empowered them to really speak their truth.
Hall Davidson:
And I think speaking their truth is really an important part of keeping products in schools and not just keeping products in schools, but really doing what those products can do for student learning. Really do what those products can do for students who learn a different way, really can elevate everything in that way. And if you do that, and if you find those teachers, that's when you can, for example, say, would you be interested in going to ISTE or FETC or TCA or our regional fall queue is coming up our educational group in Sacramento early in September and say, you have to be on top of it because the submission process is usually eight years before the actual conference or something like that. It's a lot which you going. And it's not as easy as it used to be because districts will say, oh, no, no, you can't.
Our district cannot accept airfare or hotels from a company for teachers, which kills me. Really? You won't send them and you won't let somebody else send them or cover the hotel or whatever. And again, some people want to do it on their own, but you say, Hey, the fall queue, our regional Northern California thing is coming up and it's in October and the deadline is in June. It's June now. Would you think about talking about X, Y, and Z, maybe showing some student work or things like, and again, people many times will go, yes, I love this and I would love to talk about it. So there are teacher evangelists out there that are untapped and we have to figure out as an industry some way to be able to let teachers share without having to take personal time off or do a sick day so they can go to the Friday of the Friday and Saturday part conferences have started to do stuff on weekends because there are no subs anymore.
And it's a big problem. But we've got to find a way to create a path where teachers can do it, and maybe we need to work with the feds or work with the state departments of education and go, you should have a fund so that teachers can go share. And a teacher shouldn't have to pay their own way and their own hotel if they're sharing something that can elevate every student in the dang state. And why make them have to do that? Now, back in the day when things were cheaper, it was fun for me to do that. I would do that just because, Hey, I like doing this stuff. But if you are a little reluctant anyway, and then you have to fill out the paperwork and you have to do all this kind of stuff, and now you say, well, am I really special?
Or is this really important or is this, you have to kind of help people along the way to do that. And I do think really as an industry, we have to be able to let teachers who are teacher leaders, teacher evangelists and products or just teacher evangelists for the whole child. I mean, the things that you go to conferences and you see people doing that make you really think, I mean it's really good. Can we not in some way do that? Because there are conferences even now that if you found a way to teach second language learners mathematics, I don't know. And you apply, you're accepted at a conference and you have to pay $300 registration fee to get there because not every conference allows primary speakers free registration. Who's going to do that? How do we share what teachers know with other teachers? And I know we've got social media and if there's communities that work out there, that's great.
I haven't seen one like stumbled into one on Facebook or anything like that, but I haven't really looked. But maybe there are groups out there that support each other in that way. But there is something about standing up in front of people at a conference and 30 people come in 1560, who knows? Because they want to hear what you have to say. And what you have to say is for the neurodivergent, this is the way to teach the great gadsby or something. But there's something about that, and I think that once you've done that, the whole rest of the year, you're taking notes in your head the whole rest of the year, you're going, oh, I got to remember this one. This is great, Carlos, can I have that paper? It's really good, whatever. And I think that that's this skeletal system that we need for teachers to share. And we put so much on 'em in the last few years of getting better. But it used to be there was no time to do anything.
Elana Leoni:
So I want to get to a couple of other questions around technology, but I want to wrap up this juicy conversation around teacher evangelists and just recap. What I thought I heard you say is, listen, listen, listen. Go into the classroom. Make sure that you have people that are dedicated to this and get to know your power users. There's so many tech companies that I have worked with and I said, well, who are your power users? And if I'm lucky, sometimes they'll say, oh, okay, they'll list off a couple people. But then when I start talking to 'em, if you don't really know them, get to know them. Porter says you don't really know them until their spouse's name and their children's name and where they're from. So really know your power users and you all, even just small things can accomplish a lot if you have that authentic voice really working together and collaborating.
But start small because sometimes a big discovery education network, you're like, wow, that's intimidating. But you started small too. We all started somewhere. If you do it right, it really can help with retention because people are using it and they're using it in the most authentic way where they're teaching each other, and it can help with sales because they are now talking to other people about this great tool and you're not paying them to. So there's so many benefits, but we cut it short because we don't trust the process and we try to overly transact it. Right?
Hall Davidson:
And the biggest beneficiaries are the students. There are students who would benefit from a tool that's being used across the hall that they don't have access to. And that's what we can never really forget. This is about students and student learning and elevating everybody. So anyway, yeah.
Elana Leoni:
Yes. Well, there is no transition to what I want to talk about. I want to talk about AI from teacher evangelist. I mean, speaking of a technology that needs a lot of training, there's a lot of excitement about it. There's a lot of studies coming out that teachers are saying, yes, we want the training. And districts are saying, well, yes, but hold on. We don't have guidelines in place and they're trying to catch up as fast as possible. But there's a huge demand of teachers wanting to know about the power of AI to harness it. Their students are already using it. They're using it maybe in a limited capacity or a bigger capacity, but the sharing can really help there. So I want to throw you just a question around AI in general. Talk to me about what excites you about it and maybe how we can wrap in teacher sharing around it to help the industry.
Hall Davidson:
Well, it is a big question. And if we had more time, we could talk about how you got to do this. You got to start at, the district has to have a vision. They've got to have guidelines for the teachers. They got to have the parents sign off on these guidelines. They got to have guidelines for the students. And if you try to create guidelines, you're going to find out there's a lot of people that are really polar opposites on this issue. But we're not talking, just talking about AI in general. To me, it is so exciting. I mean, this is to me the pause button. I mean, when we had the ability to show students everything through their own eyeballs, the biggest nerve in their body, their optic nerve, and going in and bringing 'em different places and showing 'em how ary and perimeter are different.
I mean, all those things were very exciting. AI, I is that, and it's huge, and we have to get there through policy and understanding. But it isn't, and I think this may be because I talked to schools about AI a lot, although I've stopped because AI is this bottomless pit. You have a great deck and a great talk, and then two days later it's all changed. It's like, oh, thank you chat GPT. So I've sort of stopped. But to me the analogy is like roofers and you got roofers and I have a job, and there's guys that are great with hammers and then there's nail guns. And do you really want your roofing crew to not have the nail guns? I mean, you want 'em to have the nail guns. I mean, it's important to learn how to use a hammer for many different reasons.
It's something we don't want to forget. We don't want to forget that when we do an ai, you have to be able to check it, which means you have to have a basic understanding of what you're looking for. I taught math, and when I have to do some computations on a computer, I mean on a calculator, I'll go, wait, which number do I divide? How? And so then you have a general idea of what the numbers should look like. So you do it. So with ai, it's a nail gun, but you do want to have, you can't forget the basic understanding. So should teachers be using it like yes. Should kids be using it? Janet Roberts, she early on was saying, I know kids are going to be using ai. So I took last year's writing assignment and I gave it to an AI and it gave me three different ones. So I show it to the kids and go, which one of these is an ai? And they're pretty good about nailing them, you know what I mean? And they say, okay, start here and then write an essay about whatever the essay was. It's like we're not going to pretend it's not there.
And again, for me, AI really makes its discussion important. And I know we have to do the policies and we have to do the trainings, we have to. But what do we want kids to learn? What do we want them to have when they leave our K 12 system? And I thought the analogy I was thinking about this podcast is you're the king of France in the year, whatever it was, and you've got unlimited resources. You've got a boy and a girl. What do you want to teach 'em? What should they know? Should they know math? Should they know literature? They're going to have house astronomer? Should they know a little bit about astronomy? What if you had unlimited resources? Would you want kids to have, you'd want 'em to be happy, you'd want 'em to be able to relate to each other. I mean, if you think about it that way, you think, oh, so what do we want AI to be able to do?
What do we want kids to have when they leave? Do we care that they can write a great essay about the great gadsby? Maybe. But what we want 'em to understand is that there are themes and structures, whatever it is that we want them to know, we can then think, okay. And again, it's like calculators. We want to be able to do these problems. Can they use calculators like, yes, please. So you still have to have a basic understanding of math or the calculators can lead you astray. You'll have to have a basic understanding of history of World War II of economics, or it can lead you astray. Artificial intelligence is getting better at itself every day. Used to be you really had to write prompts, and now it suggests prompts for you. If you write the wrong prompts. I mean, it's getting better all the time, which means we don't have to just focus on the tool.
We can focus on what do we want kids to leave our high schools? We've had 'em from elementary all the way. What do we want 'em to leave with? What skills? What wholeness, what wellness? All those things. If we had unlimited resources, what would we want them to walk out the door with when they throw up their mortar board? And I think AI is going to make us think that, make us rethink that because it's such a powerful tool in so many different ways. We're going to have to rethink language arts and composition. We're have to rethink mathematics. We're going to have to rethink history and art and drawing and all those things. But again, what do we want kids to leave with a love of drawing or the ability to draw a cap? You know what I mean? If we want 'em to have a love of drawing, then we can use AI for that.
If we just want do a DaVinci for me, because some classes do that, my daughter's done that, it's like great. It's like I put it on the wall. It's like, look how good this is. We have to decide. And once we, again, anything that makes that conversation, that reflection happen is good. And AI is going to make that happen because do we use it for composition and in what ways? And what do we want kids to really know? I mean, all those things we have to think about and then we have to do the hard work of policy and teacher training and everything else, but big picture is going to be huge because the product keeps changing. Damnit. You know what I mean? It's like, wait, I can upload pictures? Oh, now I can't. Oh, now I can again. So all that's going to, but we have to start with it and we have to keep it under control.
I used to think about they're banning cell phones now and cell phones are a dependent tool till you let the people have access to it. That said, are you fat? You want whiter teeth? It's like once you start that with students, you're doomed. And we let those into those phones. I mean as a culture, that's what we did. And that was too bad. We have to make sure that we understand what AI is supposed to be doing so we don't let it drift. I haven't seen any drift in AI and that way people say, oh, it's going to take over the world and kill us all. That's maybe three years away. I hope not three years. Okay, maybe fine. But I haven't seen the negativity that can come from social media and kids and stuff. I haven't seen that yet. And an AI tells you you need to lose weight because the average for years is like, you're not going to believe that. It's like, what do you know? You're Chat GPT.
You don't know my picture. You don't know me. I mean, I think, I wouldn't believe you when you said that. It's like looking it up on Google, but social media is a different case. So we want to get out there and we want to think about what we want kids to do and think we have this stupendous tool that we can do. Do we still want 'em to do pushups? Yes. Do we still want be able to run around the block? Yes. I mean all those other things too. But that's what we have to decide. Anyway, that's my overall thinking on artificial intelligence.
Elana Leoni:
So speaking of ai, it is in early stages, but we are seeing lots of varied usage in schools and districts in students personally. What specific applications are you the most excited about when it comes to the AI applications maybe with student learning?
Hall Davidson:
Oh boy. Well, first of all, it's such a great teacher tool. We're not talking about that. It's a great teacher tool, I think for learning. I think about the kids that struggled with math so much and the ability for either a chat bot or for the basic AI to help work out some of the problems that you might otherwise have. I think there are kids who didn't get into colleges where they should have attended because their essays were terrible. It isn't that they didn't have good stories, they just couldn't write an essay. And that's a bad thing that we've let those two abilities, the ability to demonstrate math and the ability to do an essay get in the kid's way. It's terrible. Let me just say one more thing about math and language arts is we test them and it's a timed test. You know what I mean at its absolutely insane anyway on the side.
So if I have AI and I can quickly get to some of the solutions that have, and I think that's why Saul Kahn's so excited about it. For math, I'm not sure that's entirely the right path, but I think the ability for it to lift kids, to me it's really a leveler. And when I used to talk about it, I'd show a Stanley level and it goes like this because a lot of kids are starting out with it at an angle. A lot of kids are starting out. Maybe it was the family they came from, maybe they didn't talk a lot, maybe they never written their own books in their house, whatever it was, it's not level, but we can level it. We can use AI to recommend and help write and do the things that we wanted to be able to do. And I think that that's really maybe the best way to think about it. But we're still going to have stars. We're still going to have great artists. We're still going to have really brilliant math people, but in the meantime, for the middle, it's a leveler. So that to me is why we want to do it.
Elana Leoni:
Great. We could talk about this for literally hours and hours, so maybe we'll have you on and we can have a whole deep dive into ai. I loved what you shared about teacher evangelists and the network and how to really start small, but really no one's really talked about make sure your product is solid first and foremost. Let's not square pick round hole a crappy product to start. But then listen, start small and empower. And I loved all the practical tips at the end of our shows. We always ask one really fun question because you're not just hall the teacher evangelist, you're hall the human as well. And I want to know, as a human, you put your heart and soul into your job and sometimes it can be a little bit stressful, sometimes it can be really amazing. But what are the things you do to really fill your cup and reenergize? Maybe it's something that you've or watched recently that you're inspired about, but are there other ways you kind of recharge in life?
Hall Davidson:
I just watch good teachers. My son is a teacher, he's a middle school teacher, and I was a middle school teacher. He's so much better than I was. I go look what he does and go, oh my God, why didn't I do any of that? For example, I found this totally energizing. There's a teacher, it's an elementary teacher. You see the teacher holding a watermelon in front of an aquarium, right? It's pretty good size. And you don't see your clutch. Yes, in the class. Okay, what's going to happen when I put this in the water? Is it going to sink or is it going to float here? Feel it. It's heavy. Okay, it's heavy. Is it going to sink or is it going to float? And they talk about it and she goes over and drops it and the aquarium is like splash and splosh and it floats. And it's like, what? And I see stuff like that and she's having a great time and the kids are having a great time. And I think, yes, this is how you get that stuff going and you see teachers doing great stuff like that all the time. And if you want to know what energizes me and stuff like that,
Elana Leoni:
And that feels perfectly aligned too. If we are in education, it is amazing to be able to get that energy from so many educators that are passionate and exciting, all of these minds out there and potentially even with your product. So that is so beautiful. So thank you for sharing that story.
Hall Davidson:
Alright,
Elana Leoni:
Well, thank you all. There is not enough millions of minutes to talk about all the things that in your career, but I appreciate the 45 minutes or so talking with our audience. We will have show notes where people will be able to reach out to you and if you have any specific resources, we can put them on the show notes as well.
Hall Davidson:
Okay, that's great.
Elana Leoni:
Coming on the show.
Hall Davidson:
It's my pleasure. And we'll debrief at the next party at ISTE.
Elana Leoni:
Yes. Take care. Thanks everyone for listening.
Hall Davidson:
Alright, bye.
Elana Leoni:
Thanks again for listening to all things marketing and education. If you like what you heard and want to dive deeper, you can find more episodes at leoniconsultinggroup.com/podcast. You can also continue the conversation with us on Twitter at Leoni Group or on LinkedIn. And don't forget, if you enjoy today's show, make sure to subscribe to our podcast in Lie a Review. We're so appreciative of every single subscriber and review we get and it helps us reach even more people that need help. So we'll see you next time on all things marketing and education. Take care.
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.
Hall Davidson, Guest
Hall Davidson is a legendary ed tech expert, visionary, and speaker, both nationally and internationally. He has keynoted a wide variety of events and virtually every ed tech conference, including FETC in 2023. He left the math classroom to teach math on television on an Emmy-winning program. He spent 30 years in California as a consortium director, professor and serial early adopter, leading staff development on emerging technologies, including a TEDx talk. He served on the ISTE Board, the California task force for technology, and currently serves on several educational media foundation boards. His talks blend humor, the real world, and the coming one.
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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