Ensuring the advancement of education takes committed educators, especially those who are open and unafraid to relearn what’s possible. From understanding new discoveries in science and history, adapting to and embracing emerging points of view, and of course, utilizing new methods of teaching, the field is always evolving. Staying on top of modern technologies, such as mixed reality and enhanced connectivity, is critical to advancing education, but doing so can be an education in itself.
In this episode of The Restless Ones, we had the opportunity to sit with Dr. Robbie Melton, Associate Vice President, SMART Global Technology Innovation Center, who has made it her mission to learn something new every day in an effort to help others. Her role puts her at the forefront of teaching methodologies, where she discovers, researches, pilots and implements new technologies across education. From bringing lesson plans from textbooks into immersive learning environments, to advancing the ways students and teachers can communicate with each other, Dr. Melton is committed to partnering with technology companies to deploy the tools and services needed to keep all of us advancing along the learning curve.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
So let's take video games. Our students serve on these
video games. You know, for my generation it was like
stay off the games, are you kidding? Get them on
the games. And we have academic e sports. We're able
to take that passion, that energy of playing and pathway
(00:25):
it into our stem STEAM program. When you look at
video gaming, you're talking about coding, you're talking about broadcasting,
business opportunities, innovation, and we want to empower our students
not just to play, but play to learn, play to create.
(00:46):
So we're now looking at those areas like video gaming,
gamification and helping students to learn a different way around academics.
Welcome to the restless Ones. I'm Jonathan Strickland. As you
may know, I've spent the last fifteen years covering technology
(01:09):
and learning how it works, demystifying everything from massive parallel
processing to advanced robotics and everything in between. Yet it's
the conversations with some of the most forward thinking leaders,
those at the intersection of technology and business that fascinated
me the most. Dr Robbie Melton is a pioneer when
(01:32):
it comes to applying technological solutions to enhance education. She's
been evaluating emerging technologies for more than two decades, meaning
she has seen incredible transformation in the tech space, from
the emergence of Web two point oh to the adoption
of the smartphone and beyond. And it became clear in
my conversation with her that whenever any development in tech
(01:55):
hits her radar, she's immediately evaluating it for its potential
role in education. Dr Robbie Melton is clearly a restless one.
She has endless amounts of energy and enthusiasm. She's also
the first E sports leader I've had on this show.
It's not often you get to sit down with an
educator and administrator who also has a certification in E sports.
(02:18):
I knew that our conversation was going to be lively
and cover a ton of material. There is a long
history of educators finding novel ways to leverage technology for
the purposes of teaching others, and Robbie didn't disappoint me.
But before we jumped into all of that, I wanted
to know how she got started with using tech and education.
(02:38):
I did not expect her answer to take me back
to my own childhood days in the arcade. I want
to welcome you to the show, Robbie Welcome to the
restless ones, and welcome to you too. This is exciting
for me for multiple reasons. I'm a huge lover of technology.
(02:59):
I'm also the son of two educators, including a college professor,
so this is a topic that is near and dear
to my heart. Oh, you're talking to the right person,
because I am what they used to say long time ago,
geeked out and ready to go because technology is amazing.
(03:19):
I agree, and I wanted to learn more about your journey.
What specifically drew you toward that particular field. In my journey,
I started out as a special education teacher and I
always tried to look for tools that will help students
(03:40):
to learn. So be Yon the internet way in the
yester years of the nineteen seventies, I kept searching for
tools and low and behole. There was a little game
called pac Man, and I said, I can use that
(04:00):
game to enhance teaching and learning. So are you all
know pac Man? It helped with eye hand coordination, It
helped with attention span, and it was fun. That started
my journey in technology, and I kept looking for those
(04:21):
tools that would help all of our students. That is
an incredible story and the amazing thing about the Internet
was giving so much access to information that otherwise you
would just never even know existed. What were some of
the things that when they happened you were thinking, this
is a sea change in the area of mobile education.
(04:44):
The fact that you could carry around that device that
would give you access to the entire world. I mean
you're carrying it in your pocket. That was a revolution
to me. The fact that you could just type in
a question your thoughts, what if, and you could now
(05:08):
get information back from all over the world. So with
that revolution of having access at any time, any place, anywhere,
that's a miracle for education. Moving forward, the next big
step is what I call connectivity. We know it as smart.
(05:31):
I mean, all of a sudden, I have smart shoes.
How about smart clothing, smart utensil. We now have artificial intelligence,
we have AI. We have the ability now to look
at whether it's teaching, learning, workforce and put it online
(05:52):
all over so we can grow and learn from each other.
You've touched on so much that we love to talk
about on the show, just in that statement, because so
many different technologies have to converge to make that example possible. Right,
we have the concept of mantorization with sensors and the
(06:13):
ability to pair those sensors with some form of transmitter
so that you have the connectivity. We have to have
the underlying infrastructure to enable that connectivity, and with the
advent of five G, we now have this amazing ability
to do that at a level that's faster with less latency,
which opens up incredible opportunities for the application of technologies
(06:35):
that in the past you would have to have massive
cables connecting the tech to whatever compute system, the edge
computing that's required in order to do that processing very
close to where you're doing the computing. All of these
elements had to come together, and I'm always fascinated by that.
And the thing that inspires me is not that technology,
(06:55):
but the possibilities that technology enables, particularly in the field
of education. How do you stay up to date with
what is going on in technology so that you are
educated yourself. Technology is about learning. Every day there's a
new innovation that can make a change with teaching and learning.
(07:19):
So Jonathan, I'm ready to hear, too, explore, and to
try new technology. Ten years ago, I saw some technology
where you can order a pizza a pizza without saying
anything without pointing, just using your eyes ten years ago. Well,
(07:43):
guess what, everyone Domino has that technology. So my job
is to go where no educator has gone before and
to look at the future and say, okay, how can
this help teaching and learning and workforce development? Every day.
(08:07):
I'm excited about the possibilities to come well to that end,
you know, saying that's your job in that you're valuing
technologies and you're looking at ways where they can be
leveraged into education. Can you talk a bit more specifically
about your role and how that manifests very good? So,
as you know, you have technology that's current, your traditional
(08:34):
technology the Internet. However, when I'm able to meet with
whether it's people, companies and see that there's something new
that will enhance teaching and learning, I'm able to do pilots.
(08:54):
I'm able to get a group of people from all
stakeholders to say, let's look at this new connected device
of and I'm gonna just give a teachable moment of
smart shoes. Smart shoes. What are we talking about? Well,
look at smart shoes where it is providing on time
(09:19):
data of how I'm walking when I'm walking, as well
as if you're in physical therapy, do I have to
make adjustments in those shoes. That means we have the
technology where I put on my shoes, and if I'm
in therapy, my therapist could be in Alaska and I'm
(09:44):
here in Nashville and she can make adjustments to say, hey, Robbie,
I noticed that you didn't walk today because my shoes
snitched on me. Can you imagine I used that as
a teacher but a moment to let people know how
technology can change so that they're not afraid of tele medicine.
(10:09):
Tell a heell and tell a learning On average, how
many of these sort of pilot programs are running throughout
a year. We have innovations coming in at all time.
We're able to look filter and say this might have potential,
and then have teams to then pilot, and then of
(10:31):
course we collaborate with universities organization across the globe. Amazing.
So another topic I definitely want to talk to you
about is mixed reality. I feel like technology is particularly
like five G connectivity, which enables the ability to have
an untethered experience with mixed reality so you're not trapped
(10:55):
to a PC. I feel like that opens up entirely
new opportunities, particularly in the world of immersive learning. Could
you talk to us a bit about the use of
mixed reality when it comes to education, That is the
civil billity in education. Immersive learning, for the first time
(11:17):
in the history of mankind, we can take education from
a passive level, moving not only to an active but
you are in the education. Instead of sitting and reading
a book, we can put you in the book, and
(11:38):
not only in the book. You can then manipulate, you
can create. You are there. And with immersive learning in
terms of learning retention, in terms of comprehension, in terms
of creativity. I mean, you're talking about a world where
(12:01):
you're studying history. You can go back, you can see,
you can hear, you can talk, And what we're seeing
right now is just the tip of the iceberg. Right now,
you're immersed in there. But what's coming you'll be able
to not only touch while you're in immersive technology. But
(12:24):
you're talking about the odors and all of that. Do
you know what that would do to education? If I
want to go to the Grand Canyon, guess what I
put on my goggles And by the way, you know,
they are going to change they're going to be as
simple as you're wearing glasses or contact lenses and you're
(12:45):
able to go into the Grand Canyon and you can
see all around you, you can touch, you can feel,
you can smell. This is an amazing revolution for education. SI.
I always go a little crazy when I start thinking
about those applications and think about how I would have
(13:07):
applied them back when I was in school, and I
think about things like being able to virtually visit locations
that are separated by distance in time and only that,
but with this ability to have an interconnected experience, so
it's not just one on one. I could be put
there with my fellow classmates, with the professor, and to
(13:29):
be able to have an interactive experience, you get away,
as you say, from that passive mode of education where
you're reading and you're going to lectures and you're trying
to associate these ideas with something more concrete. On top
of all that, it is potentially a way of giving
people who would otherwise have absolutely no ability to experience
(13:53):
these things that capability. Obviously, the digital divide is still
something we have to address, still an issue, but this
having the tools there is one step closer to being
able to address that disparity. Is the digital divide something
that you yourself focus on in your work. Of course,
we're talking about the world where Internet is still impossible.
(14:19):
Just think, if you're able to access the Internet and
someone cannot, you are now light years ahead of that
person when it comes to education and the workforce. And
you know, our digital workforce today requires you to have
these basic digital literacies. When I travel around, I immediately
(14:46):
address that through my networks and with the educational global
networks of saying, we now have to provide WiFi internet
and now we already have the tools and the content.
(15:07):
Conventional thinking says you have to pay more to get more.
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CET mobile dot com Being able to level up everybody
is absolutely critical and we've seen it in person for
the last couple of years. The pandemic obviously shifted things
(15:52):
so dramatically where the need for remote access basic tools
for us to be able to continue education or to
continue our work, that became evident. And to see stories
about children having to go hang out in a parking
lot so that they could tap into the WiFi of
a nearby business just so that they could continue their education,
(16:14):
it really does illustrate how that connectivity is. That's like
the foundation that everything else is built upon. If you
don't have that piece, nothing else works. And not only that,
without that piece, you are now impacting your own career
and workforce. Again today you're talking about a digital workforce
(16:37):
all across the globe. And if you do not have
access to the network, and again I'm saying up to
date networks, that's where all of the connectivity comes in.
You can't have immersive learning without five G networks coming in.
(16:58):
But here's some good news. I'm a newsperson upon access.
We have open education globally where regardless of where you are,
you can access free information from pre K all the
way to lifelong learning and once let pieces in place,
so many other opportunities open up. I'm also curious, are
(17:21):
there any technologies that have emerged over your time and
working in this space that particularly surprised you or excited you,
Something that came along and just the lightbulb came on
over your head. Yes, okay, I love this. There's an
app called Sign for Me. Now, I'm a special educator
(17:43):
and I can sign, read, brail whatever with the app
Sign for Me. It allows you to speak and guess
what you see a person signing while you're speaking. Do
you know the impact of that? You mean to tell me,
(18:04):
I have my phone that I'm carrying all around and
I can now speak and you can see sign language.
You know, Jonathan, I cried. I cried because that opened
up a whole world for a group of people who
have been cut off. And so it's that type of technology,
(18:28):
that type of creativity innovation that you would never know
how it will change a life. You already invoked the
spirit of Star Trek earlier with educators where none have
gone before. And the signing app sounds an awful lot
(18:49):
like the promise of the Universal translator, which again is
something that we're starting to see emerge thanks to connectivity
to machine learning too, voice recognition and things that are
were just a few years ago incredibly incredibly hard, and
now we're starting to see apps that tap into that
amazing technology and capability and be able to do things
(19:12):
like provide real time translation between people who do not
share a common language. One thing that I definitely want
to talk to you about, Robbie, is that in this
process of evaluating technologies and determining how they might be
leveraged in the educational field, obviously a big part of
that is establishing relationships with tech companies, and I'm curious
(19:33):
about what your processes. So the process is this, we
look at our needs in terms of being prepared digitally.
We then outline a plan and we approach various companies
to see what support and that support can be in
terms of tools, devices, training and opportunities, whether it's internships,
(19:59):
a in a ship. So I'm gonna use a current
situation in which a collaborative of the historically black colleges
and universities known as hbc US went to Apple with
a proposal saying, as a collective, we need the tools
as well as the training to prepare us for the
(20:23):
digital workplace. On behalf of Apple, they were able to
support us with everyone can code and everyone can create,
because coding is now a skill that we all must have.
So with that support, we strategically laid out a five
(20:44):
year plan and each year we identify at least twenty
of our HBCUs that will go through intensive training. Today
we have forty four who have received the tools, the training,
and now designing mobile apps to help with college school
(21:06):
community challenges. Where they designed app when immersive learning first
started out, and remember they came out with the goggles
and where you can use your phone, Samsung was able
to give us the tools, train us and here's where
(21:26):
we have to invest and all educators listen up. We
then have to take our content and be ready to remix, reuse,
reinvent what we know and blended in and take advantage
of these new opportunities. So that's our process. We know
(21:49):
our problems, we go to the companies, We sit down
and say how can your product assist us and solving
We come up with a strategy, your plan, and then
we rock and roll. We're ready to research, pilot, give feedback,
help them to help us as we're both growing and
(22:10):
learning together. So it becomes the symbiotic relationship right where
you're getting the benefit where you're trying to apply it
to education. In return, it's almost like you're doing a
q A test for outlying applications of these technologies and
perhaps even provide information to these companies that they had
not thought about when they were developing the tools. We
(22:34):
have to have companies that's willing to say, you know what,
we didn't think of that, because remember we are the educators,
and again they can provide us with the knowledge and
let's go into the future. Okay, I'd like to shift
gears a little bit to a topic that I'm really
(22:56):
excited about, which is computer games and their potential role
in education. I saw that you're a certified E sports leader.
What is an E sports leader and how does that
apply to what you do? Someone who can look at
gaming and understand you can game to learn or learn
to gain. So let's take video games. You know, our
(23:20):
students are on these video games, and you know, for
my generation, it was like stay off the games, are
you kidding? Get them on the games? And we have
academic E sports. We're able to take that passion, that
energy of playing and pathway it into our steam program.
(23:42):
When you look at video gaming, you're talking about coding,
you're talking about broadcasting, business opportunities, innovation, and we want
to empower our students not just to play, but play
to learn, play to create. So we're now looking at
(24:03):
those areas like video gaming, gamification and helping students to
learn a different way around academics. I could go on
for hours about the ven diagram between education and gaming,
because I think there's way more overlapp than what a
lot of people imagine. The game I always think of,
(24:25):
and I think it's even used as a symbol for
any sports leader is Minecraft. And for those of you
who aren't aware, Minecraft is a phenomenal game. You might
think of it as playing with virtual building blocks, but
you can actually code devices within the game itself. You
can build physical circuits in that game. The people who
(24:46):
are masters with Minecraft, they blow my mind with their creations.
And speaking of blowing one's mind, what's the technology that's
available today that you wish you had had access to
back and you were in school. How about the iPad?
The iPad is really an educational tool long time ago
(25:09):
that was called a communication board. The iPad and the
apps are built on solid education concept, going all the
way back to Dewey monastory. Have you ever noticed children
using the iPad and they're touching their thinking, they're touching,
and when they get bored or tired, they move on
(25:32):
to a higher level. It's a tool that allows creativity
and most importantly, how to think problem solving. So I
wished I had that tool. Ah, I hear you, and
it's always phenomenal to me. Apple did such an amazing
job at designing their user interface in such a way
that was intuitive, where you can hand one of those
(25:53):
devices off to a child with no no instruction, and
within moments they'll be doing things you didn't even know
that device could do. Before I let Dr Melton go,
I had to ask her one more thing, what advice
do you have for any educators who are listening, particularly
(26:14):
those who are uncertain or they don't feel confident about
evaluating tech and incorporating it into education. All right, here
we go. There are enough of us out there in
internet space to send back messages to other educators. Here
(26:35):
are some tools that can enhance teaching and learning. Immersive
learning is something that every educator must try out. And
when you try it, then I want you to think,
what if? What if I can design my math lessons
(26:55):
within immersive technology where my students are able to manipulate
problem solved in a virtual or augmented environment. What if
is what I want to leave all educators with. You
have in your hands the tools to reach not only
(27:18):
our planet, but another planet. What if you could take
your students to a place where they can actually be
there and enter act with your content. It's a dream
for me. When that has become commonplace, I'm going to
(27:38):
be enrolling in a lot more classes so that I
can experience it. I love learning and I love journeying
to new destinations that otherwise I can never visit the
beauty of learning something new, and I make it my
model every day. Every day I learned something new, not
(27:59):
just from the Internet, but from life, from people and
even discussion. You have enhanced my life today in this
conversation of just sharing the opportunities and the possibilities of
what technology can do for education. That motivates me. Dr
(28:23):
Robbie Belton, thank you so much for joining our show.
This was a real pleasure and life is good. I
find Robbie's work to be truly inspiring. I've known lots
of teachers, some of them my own teachers, who took
(28:44):
initiative in finding ways to incorporate technology into lessons. I'm
a bit too old to have benefited from the emergence
of the World Wide Web, and technologies like mixed reality
were in their infancy back in my school days. But
to see what is possible today and all the various
ways that we can use tech to tap into student
imaginations and understanding, that is beyond exciting to me. That's
(29:08):
something I think is amazing about tech in general, and
five G tech in particular. See, when I was in school,
it sometimes felt like there was a hurdle I had
to get over to really understand a lesson, and often
I felt that the only way over that hurdle was
to read and reread the same chapter of a textbook,
and if I were lucky, something would click. But technology
(29:32):
today opens up the possibility of immersing students into a
subject in a way that is much more intuitive. It
creates the opportunity for students to make connections to the material,
which is always going to be more powerful than memorizing
a date or learning your multiplication tables. Beyond education, However,
we can see these technologies are transforming everything around us,
(29:55):
including how we do business, and I feel that if
more leader would ask the questions that Dr Robbie Melton asks,
you know, the what ifs, then we would see even
more rapid innovation. What if this app could give me
real time analytics on my business, or what if I
could monitor autonomous heavy equipment from across the world with
(30:18):
low latency. These are questions that are becoming more common,
and we're seeing more technologies enabled by the incredible connectivity
of five G bring us those answers. Thanks again to
Robbie Melton for joining the show, and be sure to
check back for more conversations with leaders who are using
tech to bring the possible into reality. I'll see you then.
(30:46):
T Mobile for Business knows companies want more than a
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(31:10):
customized for your success. That's unconventional thinking from T mobile
for business
So let's take video games. Our students serve on these
video games. You know, for my generation it was like
stay off the games, are you kidding? Get them on
the games. And we have academic e sports. We're able
to take that passion, that energy of playing and pathway
(00:25):
it into our stem STEAM program. When you look at
video gaming, you're talking about coding, you're talking about broadcasting,
business opportunities, innovation, and we want to empower our students
not just to play, but play to learn, play to create.
(00:46):
So we're now looking at those areas like video gaming,
gamification and helping students to learn a different way around academics.
Welcome to the restless Ones. I'm Jonathan Strickland. As you
may know, I've spent the last fifteen years covering technology
(01:09):
and learning how it works, demystifying everything from massive parallel
processing to advanced robotics and everything in between. Yet it's
the conversations with some of the most forward thinking leaders,
those at the intersection of technology and business that fascinated
me the most. Dr Robbie Melton is a pioneer when
(01:32):
it comes to applying technological solutions to enhance education. She's
been evaluating emerging technologies for more than two decades, meaning
she has seen incredible transformation in the tech space, from
the emergence of Web two point oh to the adoption
of the smartphone and beyond. And it became clear in
my conversation with her that whenever any development in tech
(01:55):
hits her radar, she's immediately evaluating it for its potential
role in education. Dr Robbie Melton is clearly a restless one.
She has endless amounts of energy and enthusiasm. She's also
the first E sports leader I've had on this show.
It's not often you get to sit down with an
educator and administrator who also has a certification in E sports.
(02:18):
I knew that our conversation was going to be lively
and cover a ton of material. There is a long
history of educators finding novel ways to leverage technology for
the purposes of teaching others, and Robbie didn't disappoint me.
But before we jumped into all of that, I wanted
to know how she got started with using tech and education.
(02:38):
I did not expect her answer to take me back
to my own childhood days in the arcade. I want
to welcome you to the show, Robbie Welcome to the
restless ones, and welcome to you too. This is exciting
for me for multiple reasons. I'm a huge lover of technology.
(02:59):
I'm also the son of two educators, including a college professor,
so this is a topic that is near and dear
to my heart. Oh, you're talking to the right person,
because I am what they used to say long time ago,
geeked out and ready to go because technology is amazing.
(03:19):
I agree, and I wanted to learn more about your journey.
What specifically drew you toward that particular field. In my journey,
I started out as a special education teacher and I
always tried to look for tools that will help students
(03:40):
to learn. So be Yon the internet way in the
yester years of the nineteen seventies, I kept searching for
tools and low and behole. There was a little game
called pac Man, and I said, I can use that
(04:00):
game to enhance teaching and learning. So are you all
know pac Man? It helped with eye hand coordination, It
helped with attention span, and it was fun. That started
my journey in technology, and I kept looking for those
(04:21):
tools that would help all of our students. That is
an incredible story and the amazing thing about the Internet
was giving so much access to information that otherwise you
would just never even know existed. What were some of
the things that when they happened you were thinking, this
is a sea change in the area of mobile education.
(04:44):
The fact that you could carry around that device that
would give you access to the entire world. I mean
you're carrying it in your pocket. That was a revolution
to me. The fact that you could just type in
a question your thoughts, what if, and you could now
(05:08):
get information back from all over the world. So with
that revolution of having access at any time, any place, anywhere,
that's a miracle for education. Moving forward, the next big
step is what I call connectivity. We know it as smart.
(05:31):
I mean, all of a sudden, I have smart shoes.
How about smart clothing, smart utensil. We now have artificial intelligence,
we have AI. We have the ability now to look
at whether it's teaching, learning, workforce and put it online
(05:52):
all over so we can grow and learn from each other.
You've touched on so much that we love to talk
about on the show, just in that statement, because so
many different technologies have to converge to make that example possible. Right,
we have the concept of mantorization with sensors and the
(06:13):
ability to pair those sensors with some form of transmitter
so that you have the connectivity. We have to have
the underlying infrastructure to enable that connectivity, and with the
advent of five G, we now have this amazing ability
to do that at a level that's faster with less latency,
which opens up incredible opportunities for the application of technologies
(06:35):
that in the past you would have to have massive
cables connecting the tech to whatever compute system, the edge
computing that's required in order to do that processing very
close to where you're doing the computing. All of these
elements had to come together, and I'm always fascinated by that.
And the thing that inspires me is not that technology,
(06:55):
but the possibilities that technology enables, particularly in the field
of education. How do you stay up to date with
what is going on in technology so that you are
educated yourself. Technology is about learning. Every day there's a
new innovation that can make a change with teaching and learning.
(07:19):
So Jonathan, I'm ready to hear, too, explore, and to
try new technology. Ten years ago, I saw some technology
where you can order a pizza a pizza without saying
anything without pointing, just using your eyes ten years ago. Well,
(07:43):
guess what, everyone Domino has that technology. So my job
is to go where no educator has gone before and
to look at the future and say, okay, how can
this help teaching and learning and workforce development? Every day.
(08:07):
I'm excited about the possibilities to come well to that end,
you know, saying that's your job in that you're valuing
technologies and you're looking at ways where they can be
leveraged into education. Can you talk a bit more specifically
about your role and how that manifests very good? So,
as you know, you have technology that's current, your traditional
(08:34):
technology the Internet. However, when I'm able to meet with
whether it's people, companies and see that there's something new
that will enhance teaching and learning, I'm able to do pilots.
(08:54):
I'm able to get a group of people from all
stakeholders to say, let's look at this new connected device
of and I'm gonna just give a teachable moment of
smart shoes. Smart shoes. What are we talking about? Well,
look at smart shoes where it is providing on time
(09:19):
data of how I'm walking when I'm walking, as well
as if you're in physical therapy, do I have to
make adjustments in those shoes. That means we have the
technology where I put on my shoes, and if I'm
in therapy, my therapist could be in Alaska and I'm
(09:44):
here in Nashville and she can make adjustments to say, hey, Robbie,
I noticed that you didn't walk today because my shoes
snitched on me. Can you imagine I used that as
a teacher but a moment to let people know how
technology can change so that they're not afraid of tele medicine.
(10:09):
Tell a heell and tell a learning On average, how
many of these sort of pilot programs are running throughout
a year. We have innovations coming in at all time.
We're able to look filter and say this might have potential,
and then have teams to then pilot, and then of
(10:31):
course we collaborate with universities organization across the globe. Amazing.
So another topic I definitely want to talk to you
about is mixed reality. I feel like technology is particularly
like five G connectivity, which enables the ability to have
an untethered experience with mixed reality so you're not trapped
(10:55):
to a PC. I feel like that opens up entirely
new opportunities, particularly in the world of immersive learning. Could
you talk to us a bit about the use of
mixed reality when it comes to education, That is the
civil billity in education. Immersive learning, for the first time
(11:17):
in the history of mankind, we can take education from
a passive level, moving not only to an active but
you are in the education. Instead of sitting and reading
a book, we can put you in the book, and
(11:38):
not only in the book. You can then manipulate, you
can create. You are there. And with immersive learning in
terms of learning retention, in terms of comprehension, in terms
of creativity. I mean, you're talking about a world where
(12:01):
you're studying history. You can go back, you can see,
you can hear, you can talk, And what we're seeing
right now is just the tip of the iceberg. Right now,
you're immersed in there. But what's coming you'll be able
to not only touch while you're in immersive technology. But
(12:24):
you're talking about the odors and all of that. Do
you know what that would do to education? If I
want to go to the Grand Canyon, guess what I
put on my goggles And by the way, you know,
they are going to change they're going to be as
simple as you're wearing glasses or contact lenses and you're
(12:45):
able to go into the Grand Canyon and you can
see all around you, you can touch, you can feel,
you can smell. This is an amazing revolution for education. SI.
I always go a little crazy when I start thinking
about those applications and think about how I would have
(13:07):
applied them back when I was in school, and I
think about things like being able to virtually visit locations
that are separated by distance in time and only that,
but with this ability to have an interconnected experience, so
it's not just one on one. I could be put
there with my fellow classmates, with the professor, and to
(13:29):
be able to have an interactive experience, you get away,
as you say, from that passive mode of education where
you're reading and you're going to lectures and you're trying
to associate these ideas with something more concrete. On top
of all that, it is potentially a way of giving
people who would otherwise have absolutely no ability to experience
(13:53):
these things that capability. Obviously, the digital divide is still
something we have to address, still an issue, but this
having the tools there is one step closer to being
able to address that disparity. Is the digital divide something
that you yourself focus on in your work. Of course,
we're talking about the world where Internet is still impossible.
(14:19):
Just think, if you're able to access the Internet and
someone cannot, you are now light years ahead of that
person when it comes to education and the workforce. And
you know, our digital workforce today requires you to have
these basic digital literacies. When I travel around, I immediately
(14:46):
address that through my networks and with the educational global
networks of saying, we now have to provide WiFi internet
and now we already have the tools and the content.
(15:07):
Conventional thinking says you have to pay more to get more.
I want the world. But T Mobile for Business uses
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CET mobile dot com Being able to level up everybody
is absolutely critical and we've seen it in person for
the last couple of years. The pandemic obviously shifted things
(15:52):
so dramatically where the need for remote access basic tools
for us to be able to continue education or to
continue our work, that became evident. And to see stories
about children having to go hang out in a parking
lot so that they could tap into the WiFi of
a nearby business just so that they could continue their education,
(16:14):
it really does illustrate how that connectivity is. That's like
the foundation that everything else is built upon. If you
don't have that piece, nothing else works. And not only that,
without that piece, you are now impacting your own career
and workforce. Again today you're talking about a digital workforce
(16:37):
all across the globe. And if you do not have
access to the network, and again I'm saying up to
date networks, that's where all of the connectivity comes in.
You can't have immersive learning without five G networks coming in.
(16:58):
But here's some good news. I'm a newsperson upon access.
We have open education globally where regardless of where you are,
you can access free information from pre K all the
way to lifelong learning and once let pieces in place,
so many other opportunities open up. I'm also curious, are
(17:21):
there any technologies that have emerged over your time and
working in this space that particularly surprised you or excited you,
Something that came along and just the lightbulb came on
over your head. Yes, okay, I love this. There's an
app called Sign for Me. Now, I'm a special educator
(17:43):
and I can sign, read, brail whatever with the app
Sign for Me. It allows you to speak and guess
what you see a person signing while you're speaking. Do
you know the impact of that? You mean to tell me,
(18:04):
I have my phone that I'm carrying all around and
I can now speak and you can see sign language.
You know, Jonathan, I cried. I cried because that opened
up a whole world for a group of people who
have been cut off. And so it's that type of technology,
(18:28):
that type of creativity innovation that you would never know
how it will change a life. You already invoked the
spirit of Star Trek earlier with educators where none have
gone before. And the signing app sounds an awful lot
(18:49):
like the promise of the Universal translator, which again is
something that we're starting to see emerge thanks to connectivity
to machine learning too, voice recognition and things that are
were just a few years ago incredibly incredibly hard, and
now we're starting to see apps that tap into that
amazing technology and capability and be able to do things
(19:12):
like provide real time translation between people who do not
share a common language. One thing that I definitely want
to talk to you about, Robbie, is that in this
process of evaluating technologies and determining how they might be
leveraged in the educational field, obviously a big part of
that is establishing relationships with tech companies, and I'm curious
(19:33):
about what your processes. So the process is this, we
look at our needs in terms of being prepared digitally.
We then outline a plan and we approach various companies
to see what support and that support can be in
terms of tools, devices, training and opportunities, whether it's internships,
(19:59):
a in a ship. So I'm gonna use a current
situation in which a collaborative of the historically black colleges
and universities known as hbc US went to Apple with
a proposal saying, as a collective, we need the tools
as well as the training to prepare us for the
(20:23):
digital workplace. On behalf of Apple, they were able to
support us with everyone can code and everyone can create,
because coding is now a skill that we all must have.
So with that support, we strategically laid out a five
(20:44):
year plan and each year we identify at least twenty
of our HBCUs that will go through intensive training. Today
we have forty four who have received the tools, the training,
and now designing mobile apps to help with college school
(21:06):
community challenges. Where they designed app when immersive learning first
started out, and remember they came out with the goggles
and where you can use your phone, Samsung was able
to give us the tools, train us and here's where
(21:26):
we have to invest and all educators listen up. We
then have to take our content and be ready to remix, reuse,
reinvent what we know and blended in and take advantage
of these new opportunities. So that's our process. We know
(21:49):
our problems, we go to the companies, We sit down
and say how can your product assist us and solving
We come up with a strategy, your plan, and then
we rock and roll. We're ready to research, pilot, give feedback,
help them to help us as we're both growing and
(22:10):
learning together. So it becomes the symbiotic relationship right where
you're getting the benefit where you're trying to apply it
to education. In return, it's almost like you're doing a
q A test for outlying applications of these technologies and
perhaps even provide information to these companies that they had
not thought about when they were developing the tools. We
(22:34):
have to have companies that's willing to say, you know what,
we didn't think of that, because remember we are the educators,
and again they can provide us with the knowledge and
let's go into the future. Okay, I'd like to shift
gears a little bit to a topic that I'm really
(22:56):
excited about, which is computer games and their potential role
in education. I saw that you're a certified E sports leader.
What is an E sports leader and how does that
apply to what you do? Someone who can look at
gaming and understand you can game to learn or learn
to gain. So let's take video games. You know, our
(23:20):
students are on these video games, and you know, for
my generation, it was like stay off the games, are
you kidding? Get them on the games? And we have
academic E sports. We're able to take that passion, that
energy of playing and pathway it into our steam program.
(23:42):
When you look at video gaming, you're talking about coding,
you're talking about broadcasting, business opportunities, innovation, and we want
to empower our students not just to play, but play
to learn, play to create. So we're now looking at
(24:03):
those areas like video gaming, gamification and helping students to
learn a different way around academics. I could go on
for hours about the ven diagram between education and gaming,
because I think there's way more overlapp than what a
lot of people imagine. The game I always think of,
(24:25):
and I think it's even used as a symbol for
any sports leader is Minecraft. And for those of you
who aren't aware, Minecraft is a phenomenal game. You might
think of it as playing with virtual building blocks, but
you can actually code devices within the game itself. You
can build physical circuits in that game. The people who
(24:46):
are masters with Minecraft, they blow my mind with their creations.
And speaking of blowing one's mind, what's the technology that's
available today that you wish you had had access to
back and you were in school. How about the iPad?
The iPad is really an educational tool long time ago
(25:09):
that was called a communication board. The iPad and the
apps are built on solid education concept, going all the
way back to Dewey monastory. Have you ever noticed children
using the iPad and they're touching their thinking, they're touching,
and when they get bored or tired, they move on
(25:32):
to a higher level. It's a tool that allows creativity
and most importantly, how to think problem solving. So I
wished I had that tool. Ah, I hear you, and
it's always phenomenal to me. Apple did such an amazing
job at designing their user interface in such a way
that was intuitive, where you can hand one of those
(25:53):
devices off to a child with no no instruction, and
within moments they'll be doing things you didn't even know
that device could do. Before I let Dr Melton go,
I had to ask her one more thing, what advice
do you have for any educators who are listening, particularly
(26:14):
those who are uncertain or they don't feel confident about
evaluating tech and incorporating it into education. All right, here
we go. There are enough of us out there in
internet space to send back messages to other educators. Here
(26:35):
are some tools that can enhance teaching and learning. Immersive
learning is something that every educator must try out. And
when you try it, then I want you to think,
what if? What if I can design my math lessons
(26:55):
within immersive technology where my students are able to manipulate
problem solved in a virtual or augmented environment. What if
is what I want to leave all educators with. You
have in your hands the tools to reach not only
(27:18):
our planet, but another planet. What if you could take
your students to a place where they can actually be
there and enter act with your content. It's a dream
for me. When that has become commonplace, I'm going to
(27:38):
be enrolling in a lot more classes so that I
can experience it. I love learning and I love journeying
to new destinations that otherwise I can never visit the
beauty of learning something new, and I make it my
model every day. Every day I learned something new, not
(27:59):
just from the Internet, but from life, from people and
even discussion. You have enhanced my life today in this
conversation of just sharing the opportunities and the possibilities of
what technology can do for education. That motivates me. Dr
(28:23):
Robbie Belton, thank you so much for joining our show.
This was a real pleasure and life is good. I
find Robbie's work to be truly inspiring. I've known lots
of teachers, some of them my own teachers, who took
(28:44):
initiative in finding ways to incorporate technology into lessons. I'm
a bit too old to have benefited from the emergence
of the World Wide Web, and technologies like mixed reality
were in their infancy back in my school days. But
to see what is possible today and all the various
ways that we can use tech to tap into student
imaginations and understanding, that is beyond exciting to me. That's
(29:08):
something I think is amazing about tech in general, and
five G tech in particular. See, when I was in school,
it sometimes felt like there was a hurdle I had
to get over to really understand a lesson, and often
I felt that the only way over that hurdle was
to read and reread the same chapter of a textbook,
and if I were lucky, something would click. But technology
(29:32):
today opens up the possibility of immersing students into a
subject in a way that is much more intuitive. It
creates the opportunity for students to make connections to the material,
which is always going to be more powerful than memorizing
a date or learning your multiplication tables. Beyond education, However,
we can see these technologies are transforming everything around us,
(29:55):
including how we do business, and I feel that if
more leader would ask the questions that Dr Robbie Melton asks,
you know, the what ifs, then we would see even
more rapid innovation. What if this app could give me
real time analytics on my business, or what if I
could monitor autonomous heavy equipment from across the world with
(30:18):
low latency. These are questions that are becoming more common,
and we're seeing more technologies enabled by the incredible connectivity
of five G bring us those answers. Thanks again to
Robbie Melton for joining the show, and be sure to
check back for more conversations with leaders who are using
tech to bring the possible into reality. I'll see you then.
(30:46):
T Mobile for Business knows companies want more than a
one size fits all approach to support. I want the world,
so we provide three sixty support customized to your business.
From discovery through post deployment. You'll get a dedicated account
team and expertise from solutions engineers and industry advisors. Already
right now, I want it now. Three sixties support that's
(31:10):
customized for your success. That's unconventional thinking from T mobile
for business
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