Welcome to the forefront of educational transformation, where technologymeets tradition, and innovation creates inspiration. You're tuned into What the EdTech?, the go-to podcast for educators, tech enthusiasts, and change-makers. Today, we're thrilled to introduce a special guest, a visionary in the realm of educational technology. He's not just a coordinator; he's a catalyst for change in the classrooms of San Diego. Please welcome Chris Garcia, M.Ed., from the Innovation Division at the San Diego County Office of Education.
Podcast Highlights
Welcome to the forefront of educational transformation, where technologymeets tradition, and innovation creates inspiration. You're tuned into What the EdTech?, the go-to podcast for educators, tech enthusiasts, and change-makers. Today, we're thrilled to introduce a special guest, a visionary in the realm of educational technology. He's not just a coordinator; he's a catalyst for change in the classrooms of San Diego. Please welcome Chris Garcia, M.Ed., from the Innovation Division at the San Diego County Office of Education.
Podcast Highlights
Welcome everyone to what the EdTech with Smoke and Rob.
Speaker 2:This week we got some special friends Smoke- I am excited for this because you know everybody needs a super friend, and why not have super friends who are super cool when it comes to tech?
Speaker 1:So Smoke and I last year were out in San Diego and I happened to post something on social media and a buddy of mine chimed in and said, hey, would you like to come visit somewhere? And I said that would be amazing. And that person is Chris Garcia. Chris, you want to introduce yourself?
Speaker 3:Hey, good morning everyone. Thank you for wanting to be here. I just wanted to just thank you all for the opportunity just to connect. I just wanted to just thank you all for the opportunity just to connect and, yeah, it was really cool just to see the power of social media and being able to connect via social media and have you all visit us here at the Learning Linda Vista Innovation Center, here at the San Diego County Office of Education and, yeah, I'm just glad to be a part of this and share a little bit about my role with eSports and our ed tech department and the things that we're getting to do here.
Speaker 4:We also got another special friend with us, clint. Day of clan. Say hi to everyone. Hey everybody, I'm clint. They have head up the esports program here in wichita and we're having a blast with it. We got tournaments coming up this weekend and so, yeah, we're to talk some about all the esports we have going here in Wichita as well.
Speaker 1:So, chris man, you guys have such a great facility there in San Diego. Won't you tell us a little bit about what happens there? Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 3:We have the opportunity of really hosting over 500,000 students, that we have a chance of impacting across all of San Diego County interests and values through a theory known as the RIASEC and having them come through that experiences from fourth all the way through eighth grade, where students get to see their possible future selves and their different careers. They have a chance to dive into who they are as individuals. But a lot of it also includes tech and whatnot. So what we do is we partner with the San Diego Area Workforce Partnership here and look at the priority sectors and ironically, a lot of these high paying jobs that are within San Diego have a lot of tech infused within it in various ways, and we'll talk a bit more about how even AI is having an impact in that.
Speaker 3:But out of everything that we get to do, one of the main facets that I get a chance to impact is our Future Ready Hub, and we call it that because that's where we have our gaming computers. We have an opportunity to not only do a lot of esports just gaming in there with everything that's under the umbrella of esports and the competition of it, but in addition to that, we also have the opportunity of diving into podcasting, video creation, video editing, graphic design, the Adobe suite of programs and whatnot, but all in all, we just love giving every student an opportunity here in San Diego County, an opportunity to visit and really just explore their future selves and see what the possibilities be for their lives. That's amazing.
Speaker 2:Here's what's really cool about that is not only are students getting to see what's possible in their community, there's a partnership here with the Workforce Alliance, so it's the entire community is wrapping around its citizens to help students have futures. And, chris, what's really interesting about your location is this is a kind of a field trip experience for classes, and so the ed tech coaches work with the teachers in this experience correct, that is absolutely correct.
Speaker 3:And in addition to that, well, in addition to that, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:So not only do we have them come in, but one of the main focuses is, yes, they do have right now a one day experience, but the growth of this program is also giving us the opportunity to really dive into coaching the teachers and saying, hey, would you like to incorporate design thinking into your classroom? Would you like to incorporate this RISEC theory in more into your classroom? Would you like to incorporate this RISEC theory in more into your classroom? Would you like to dive a lot deeper into what's happening here? And we have several actually school districts across San Diego County that really actually want to even build facilities mimicking this one within their school district to say like, hey, we want not only to have this experience for our students and all of our K through eight students, but even within the classroom and the culture. So what we can really see is this is having an impact and this is it's really just impacting the districts and the individuals around to say like, hey, this is something we want to take across the entire county really.
Speaker 1:Making great examples, I think, chris, one of the things there's just some magic happening there. I was able to walk through several of the 3D printing labs where kids are learning by doing, and one of the areas that we looked at that's a focus today is e-sports, so I love that e-sports lab that you have there. Tell us a little bit about what esports it looks like there at San Diego County.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so the inception of the esports lab and we also call it the Future Ready Lab it has it's inception really started a year ago and it was brought by our edtech director, dr Alicia Gallegos-Butters, and she was pretty much the brainchild of putting it together and saying like, okay, I want to build this facility, I want to build this room for students with video gaming. And during the pandemic, our local CIF, the California Interscholastic Federation, adopted esports to be an official, just sport, just like any other athletic sport. And so she saw the potential in that and said, like I want to create a hub where students can come and train and learn, where teachers can come also have clinics and whatnot. And then the opportunity came for me to join the team, last summer as well, or last fall more or less, and during that opportunity I was able to bring in just not only my passion for pop culture but my passion for video games and gaming in general and even some administrative feels to it. And so what takes place here within our Future Ready Lab?
Speaker 3:First and foremost, we have coaching clinics. So we've already had um two coaching clinics, um, where we have teachers come in, um and we show them how to not only, of course, a lot of them are avid gamers, but this time we connect it with um castle standards, so the social emotional learning standards. We connect it with CASEL standards, so the social emotional learning standards. We connect it with ISTE standards, computer science standards and even next generation science standards, common core standards, math and science. And, more importantly also, when it comes to the questioning of funding, I show the teachers how to look at the local, the LCAP, whether it be from their district or their school side or their charter, and I align the possibilities of building an esports club with that specifically focused LCAP, which is the local accountability plan that a lot of schools and districts utilize to provide funding and just show like, hey, this is how esports can boost up attendance, this is how esports can influence positive behavior intervention. This is how we can help social emotional standards. This is how you can use it before, after school or even as an elective. So it's really a spot where we also we train a lot of teachers that come in here and it's utilized also during the time when they come for their field trip experiences here for the labs, an esports club at one of our schools here in San Diego called Monarch School and it's the school for the unhoused and it's a school that a lot of local San Diegans look after Specifically.
Speaker 3:I'm a big Padre fan and I have a big heart for just my team and knowing that they're a big sponsor for the school as well, like on the days off you can find Padre players there tutoring the kids and whatnot.
Speaker 3:So it's kind of cool to like walk in and be able to support them. But I have an opportunity of bringing about seven to 10 students on a weekly basis to our Future Ready Lab and my focus with them also is just really diving into those social emotional standards from Castle where students have the opportunity of dialoguing and leaving with the opportunity of saying like, hey, not only did I play a Rocket League game or Super Smash Brothers or or mario kart or valor and overwatch, but I'm also leaving with a better understanding of myself. I'm leaving with a better understanding of managing myself, understanding others and then even working well with others and even making good choices, so that it all is kind of what happens at the future ready hub. There's a lot of things that take place, but it's it's really fun and it's really exciting I heard some games there that that sound familiar, huh clap.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, we play a lot of those here, we uh. So this weekend, friday night, we have all our middle schools. We have 18 middle schools. They're all coming in for a rocket league tournament on friday night. Families show up. We make a community event. Um, seeing a lot of partnership with the military, so at this particular event we'll have the Air National Guard esports team with us and I mean you hit on a lot of those things that we're seeing here Better attendance rates, getting kids more interested in STEM type of careers, but a huge thing that we see here in Wichita because we're in our fifth year of esports here and just that sense of belonging that's happening with our teams.
Speaker 4:We have paid coaches at each of our high schools. So if you look at the national rankings, in most of the big three or four games, you'll find our high schools, um, up there in the top five or ten in the nation. Um, and but just that, that, creating that team. So we have labs that we built at every one of our secondary schools here. So every middle school, every high school and every alternative school, and we're seeing some super positive results with our alternative schools this year. You know, as rewards, some behavior management things. We've just tried some different things that had some really good success with, but all in all, just the opportunity for careers too has been huge. We have at least 40 to 50 kids on scholarship right now as we speak. We have partnerships with Wichita State University, our local university. Here we took a group to Kansas State University so we're seeing it just balloon in our state and in the Midwest, so we want to be right at the front of that.
Speaker 1:We teach a class called gaming concepts and of all of our secondary schools uh, over 2,800 kids this year have taken gaming concepts. It's a pretty fascinating to me to think about strategy and all those other things, and I really think there's some kind of lightning in a bottle there whenever you think about problem solving and the ability for a kid to fail over and over and over again until they succeed and I think there's something to that I mean Spoke. What do you think about when kids are able to fail over and over in a way that's nonjudgmental? What do you think that does to a learning concept?
Speaker 2:Actually, I love it when we have celebrations of failure. There takes a lot of emotional risk, academic risk and just social risk, like, is it okay for me to put myself out there and try something and be okay if it doesn't work? If we can embrace that and, as teachers, are creating learning experiences where we're celebrating that, we're setting them up for STEM careers, engineers fail and try every single day. We need to encourage that to happen with our students and when they feel like it's okay to do that, they're more willing to take those emotional and social risks to say, hey, I'm not alone in this, let's do it together and succeed as a group.
Speaker 1:Chris, as I think about your space, one of the most interesting things is you have esports with this workforce alliance kind of thing. So are you seeing kids expanding the abilities to fail over and over until they iterate correctly in your space?
Speaker 3:Oh, absolutely. That is a 100% correct statement, and the reason why I say that is because the moments of failing with video games I mean, one of the big terms within esports is rage, quitting and really being able to walk through students and being able to say like, hey, let's take ownership and reflect on what happened, let's communicate and let's talk about it. Even last week, I was playing Rocket League with two of my club members there and we were playing online and we were playing three random people online as well, and the first game, we ended up taking that first round and we communicated and whatnot. The second round, we finally met our match and, uh, we played some other three allied individuals and but we I could see the tension building up with even even just my teammates and even myself. I'm like I'm over here missing some shots. I could have taken some and I'm learning, like even as a coach hey, how do we process that? How do we communicate that? So then we took. After that, we played the third round and we ended up winning that series. So we brought two out of three rounds.
Speaker 3:But it was one of those opportunities like, hey, let's talk about these moments where we're failing, let's address rage quitting, let's address what could we do better, and even just knowing our roles and and and and reflecting on them.
Speaker 3:So, absolutely, with the opportunity to fail forward. And I just want to even finish with this as you were saying that it reminded me of even when I was in first grade. I was playing a super mario world game um, on the game boy and I I clearly remember just being at an IHOP late night with my parents on a Sunday night and they were with some friends and whatnot, but I got extremely excited because there was this one level that I finally passed and I just remember just being so excited about it and I can vividly remember but the moments that I had to fail and learn and to build from that. So, again, that's something that's that's wrapped within the DNA of our students and that is being able to like, build up that confidence after failing, specifically in a video game. So if we can harness those characteristics and apply it and transfer them to other things, I think we pretty much like you just said, we just found that lightning in a bottle.
Speaker 1:I think you know we just talked about a technology that was adopted right. Esports is a technology that we've adopted into education. It's been around for a long time, you know. I remember gaming with a Nintendo. Today we have a technology that has arrived. It's a technology that bypassed planning, assessment, policymaking and professional learning, and that's generative AI. And I think today, when you look at school districts across the country, everyone's having to adjust to this arrival of this technology. And, chris, what does that look like in your area area?
Speaker 3:That's a great question and we just met with about 40 plus superintendents, assistant superintendents, ed tech directors, teachers on special assignments and IT directors as well this past Friday to have these conversations of what AI policy looks like.
Speaker 3:And I would have to say that, while it is a little it's information overload, as some of these our directors were sharing with us and it's a little overwhelming, I'm approaching it with and we're trying to really guide our IT and our ed tech departments across the county with really asking questions and setting up these meeting spaces where they have just the interested parties that are invested within it and bringing families and bringing students and bringing teachers and bringing classified staff and bringing community members and just talk about okay, what does AI look like in our everyday lives, how do we want to use it, what are the common concerns?
Speaker 3:And I'm going even off of just the concept from Erno Rubik, from the Rubik's Cube and the idea of where he states that questions are probably more better than answers and leading that cause in the aspect of how are we creating AI policy.
Speaker 3:So I would have to say, right now it's hitting a wave and the comparison that I'm hearing a lot of is these are the same feelings that a lot of teachers felt when the TI-89 calculators came out. And this is the same type of feeling that came out when the internet first came out. And here we are with the Encyclopedia Britannica into the classroom and like whoa, what does this look like? What does Netscape look like in the classroom? And now it's revisiting these conversations and these feelings again. But again, I think it's important to address the elephant in the room, and that is AI is not going anywhere and what are we going to do about it? How do we feel about it, what are we concerned about it and what can we do as a community, as a school, as a district, to harness these concerns and answer these questions?
Speaker 2:What I really think is interesting at this time is we have an opportunity as educators in this space to really discuss how do we set the culture for AI in our schools. Once policies are created, it's very difficult to change them, but we're at a point right now where there's a chance for us to sit down together. I love that you're having entire county community people coming together and having the conversation around AI. As we do that, we're setting the culture for. Yes, we want exploration in these tools. We want our students to have a chance to investigate, explore, play, discover, fail with it. But also let's put the guardrails in so that it protects students as they jump into these spaces and focus, as you have with your sports esports, the SEL focus how do we align AI with the CASEL standards? If we set that culture together, then we're setting our kids up for success standards.
Speaker 1:If we set that culture together, then we're setting our kids up for success. Yeah, I think one of the things that's most interesting to me is I look at social media as an arrival technology as well, right, like it was something that infiltrated our entire society and we didn't have time to put the guardrails in. And you look at AI this is another one. I feel like we're at a time where we need to create new theories of educational technology that account for arrival technologies. When we do curriculum adoptions, there's a whole process for that, right.
Speaker 1:But yet whenever we think about arrival technologies, it's not something you can predict. You have very little time before you know what's going to come, and it requires a whole subset of different thoughts, policy procedures, adoption functions, functions, and I I just think as uh as education, we're not great with large amounts of change happening in the process, right, I think we've uh many times. Whenever you look into a classroom today, it there's a lot of variance that can happen in the amount of digital literacy that a teacher has to how they incorporate content to their students. And whenever you look at all those functions and add in classroom management, like it, it should be very different than it was 50 years ago and I really think it has become much different. But whenever you think about these arrival technologies, these have happened within 20 years. Think about these arrival technologies.
Speaker 3:These have happened within 20 years and I think it's going to be something that continues to happen and maybe at a higher rate than it has before no, I, I agree, and I believe that it's going to be our adaptability, our flexibility to be able to really harness these um focuses in and and smoke. You really hit on a really crucial point. If we can lead with utilizing the social emotional standards, if we could lead with utilizing all right, how are we going to create a safe space? But in addition to that, even as we create these policies, I find it very important where the policies at the bottom, say, last modified and seeing that these policies are continuing and having those archives, keeping those receipts of like all right, how have we evolved from this? And I think this is extremely important because, rob, you brought up a very powerful point.
Speaker 3:With the internet, I mean that, right, there was an impact.
Speaker 3:And then I remember, even with social media, it was very exclusive.
Speaker 3:Even when it first came out like to have a facebook back in 2007 and 8, you had to have a dot edu account and now it's like you have almost what like seven out of ten people in the entire world that have a social media account for the most part. So it's to the point now where we do have to respond in a way where we can't just hide under a rock and be like, okay, what are we doing? We have to have that approach of like all right, let's ask the right questions, even if we feel uncomfortable for a moment. And again it goes back to that whole failing forward part Like all right, we might not even ask the right questions, but let's work together as a collaborative group and find a solution to create these safe environments where we're not being exploited, where our data and our privacy is still being respected. And I think, at the end of the day, that's the main concern that a lot of people have is will my privacy and my data be exploited and how can I protect it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's a constant tug of war that we'll always have right. So, Chris, this has been amazing, A great conversation. Clint, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me Smoke any last words.
Speaker 2:My last words would just be a great deal of gratitude to Chris today, when we had a chance to take that field trip and explore his center last year. First off, I do love a teacher field trip I'm just going to say that out loud. But secondly, I was beyond inspired as the community was having conversations around engaging students, around futures and technology. You deserve a cyber high five for that in a big way and you've inspired us to maybe consider similar activities.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Thank you. Well, it was an honor to be here, to communicate with both of you and to get a chance to meet you, a fellow esports enthusiast. And yeah, feel free to make your way to San Diego at any time. I mean to make my way to Wichita, whether that be during baseball season or football season, because I love, I love any ballpark, any football stadium, so I will definitely have to visit you all sometime soon.
Speaker 4:Come on, man, great meeting you, chris. Thanks so much, thanks everyone.