Episode 247 - Senate Hearing on Screen Time - K12 Tech Talk

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
On this week's episode of the K-12 Tech Talk podcast, we talk about some new free certifications

(00:06):
and features from Google and Microsoft before discussing last week's Senate hearing on screen
time as it relates to schools and ed tech. Thanks for listening.
Live from the NTP studios. This is the K-12 Tech Talk podcast. I am Josh, Tech Director

(00:54):
Oh, of course it is. Yeah, I know. 14 minutes. It would paralyze the, uh, the area. I mean,
I'm in a city, so like, there's not many places to put the snow. So you get about a foot of snow
and everybody just shovels it onto the neighbor's yard. There's nothing to do. I had a, a teacher
do a support ticket. It was a joke and I appreciated it. Um, she was asking if I could

(01:15):
send out a district wide email of the searches that have been done, uh, related to weather this
week because she thought that would be really interesting to let staff and students know how
often, you know, we were using our, our, our resources for weather research. It's, it's,
people are excited about this weather. That is a legitimate educational purpose for, for your

(01:39):
tools. Yeah, this is like, I wouldn't say once in a generation, but this is a very, very rare
event for Missouri. So we're excited. If, if we do get the full 14, again, insert your own joke,
we'll be out all week. There's, I don't think, I don't think we go, I don't think we go a day
next week. My wife, I mean, we did, we did the Walmart order, the Aldi order. Yeah,

(02:04):
we got a Walmart order today. We're doing make your own pizzas. I mean, we're doing a thing.
I mean, we're anticipating no school. We are a beef stew and some, I don't know what else
cookies I'm sure that, Oh, you know what? We might need to get cookie stuff. I've got plenty
of bourbon though. So it's been a week, Chris, you, you text us today that, uh, it sounded like

(02:30):
you were in a dire straits. I, so we're still down a person, right? We're still without a technician.
So all that regular stuff that you just need man hours for still don't have those hours.
Um, but I mentioned like that wifi issue. I think I mentioned that last time.
Um, we, we are having laptops disconnect randomly from wifi. Oh, you told me that the other day.

(02:53):
Yeah. Yeah. So sometimes, uh, every five minutes, sometimes every 30, sometimes it's a couple hours.
Uh, we thought it was just that one building again, like what, what the heck, um, thought
just one building. We did have a switch issue. Maybe it's related to something with that. Uh,
but then we had a PD day. Uh, so our laptops being moved, uh, to go attend the PD meeting was,

(03:19):
uh, on full display. And we realized that we had that same issue at a, at a second building.
So that's concerning. And we do laptops. So we mostly dock and do wired besides these people
that are complaining every five minutes about their wifi going down. So long story short,
we are way into it. Uh, and these two buildings are different generations of the same model

(03:40):
laptop, but they both have the same wireless card in them. And we are down to driver.
Uh, we go a couple of versions back on driver and things are better. Uh, and we're trying to,
we're debating between, we got provision data solutions, our consulting company involved.
Uh, we're either going to upgrade some access points and that kind of stuff and hope for the

(04:01):
best. Or we're going to be reverting a driver and like, we're like way. And like, we're,
that's like stupid. Yeah. That would be a pain in the butt. Yes. I mean, I've even felt like,
man, should I just buy a bunch of USB wifi cards that get us through for a while? Cause it's again,
I mean, most of the people are docking and they're cool. It's just when they need the
mobility and they're working fine at home. So like we, we, we know we're down to like,

(04:26):
we know problem is the wifi card on these laptops, but we got new wifi card from Lenovo
still has the issue. It's that card. So now we're down to driver. Uh, and then, you know, we, we're
even into the weeds of, is it driver plus another particular update or is it just driver is rebooting
all the access points in those buildings going to magically fix it? Do we have to update the

(04:49):
firmware and all those access points? Uh, is that going to magically fix it? It sucks.
Thanks for asking.
Uh, Chris, you want to talk about a sponsor that doesn't suck real quick?
Yeah, that's rise vision. Uh, and actually, uh, to plug in a couple of weeks, we're going to hang
out with rise vision. I did an interview with them, uh, to learn more about them. So they're

(05:12):
hanging out with us, uh, through these sponsor spots, uh, for this month into the next, uh,
check out rise vision for your cloud digital signage, uh, go to rise vision.com. But in a
couple of weeks, we're going to have an interview and unpack what they do. So they don't just do
like, uh, here's some slides on a TV, but they deliver content and templates and they can
interface with your, uh, emergency management systems. Your school goes on lockdown that can

(05:37):
be put on display. Uh, they can even do screen sharing, uh, and we'll unpack that during the
interview. You can give your teachers or your libraries access to rise vision to put stuff on
all the TVs at once and collaborate with kids kind of thing. So check out rise vision. You know,
I heard of a district using rise vision to do countdowns, uh, during passing time bells,
which I found interesting. Hey, speaking of interviews, we had talked last week about

(06:01):
interviewing Denver public schools this week, a little bit of a snafu with the schedule.
Uh, so that interview will be airing next week. Uh, but we're going to be interviewing
Dr. Richard Charles, the CIO about his recent shift in chat, GPT policy. I'm excited to,
to record that interview. Um, that's getting a little bit of scuttle in my district as well.
Something, I don't know if you guys know this, where's my search window. Um,

(06:27):
did you know TLS and SSL certificate lifetimes are changing? Do tell. So now you can do a maximum of
398 days expiry, roughly 13 days. I think when the last go daddy renewal I did last year was a
year and then they make you renew. Well now March of 26, that maximum day is going to go to 200

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days. So you won't be able to have a SSL cert on your web servers that go more than 200 days.
A year later, March of 27, it's down to a hundred day life. And then March of 29,
and they're saying this is the final move, a 47 day lifespan of SSL certs.
So if you really enjoy the process of renewing SSL certs manually on your web servers,

(07:21):
this is great news for you. If you don't, if you're, if you're like me and you utterly hate it,
unlike you, you need to find, and I did this this week with the assistance of a friend of
ours, Chris, who I won't mention because he's a super private guy. I, I got a windows certificate
automation management tool that is, uh, automatically renewing my certificate for this

(07:46):
site through let's encrypt on a scheduled basis. I think right now it's at 55 days.
Uh, so, and that's a free utility that's doing that. You just run that on your, on whatever
web host you're running on. And it's got a, you know, different, different versions for different
OSs, whatever. It does the whole thing. It goes out to uses an API to hit let's encrypt and creates

(08:07):
a certificate and then creates a scheduled task to renew the certificate in X number of days.
There's a bunch of different command switches and stuff that you can do about, you know,
the life of the certificate and whether you want it to email you on success or on, on failure. So
if this is not on your radar, it should be because the next time you go to renew your SSL cert,

(08:29):
uh, you will likely notice that that maximum life is starting to shorten and you need to come up
with a plan for automating that. Those tools are called ACME tools, A C M E, uh, automation tools.
So, um, I hope they work because the, the couple SSL certs that I have to deal with the web servers
or whatever that I'm dealing with, like sometimes it, I mean, it, it does suck. Not even sometimes

(08:54):
like every time there's an issue in the GUI that you get into. So I hope those automated tools
will work well. This, I, I was actually shocked because reading, I, I YouTube searched it and
found a couple of different videos and they all made it look really, really easy. I'm thinking,
man, if this is really this easy, why haven't I been doing this? It was really that easy. It,

(09:15):
I had a few issues that I had to poke some holes in my firewall to make it work right
on the outbound side of things. But once I got that figured out it, it was crazy easy. So if
you should, if you should look into it, I'm just telling you, look up ACME, uh, SSL cert automation.
Yeah, it was rather easy. I hope it works better than ACME's

(09:38):
anvils because those are terrible, but their dynamite was great.
Never quite got that road runner, did it? Yeah, I will. But he was using, that wasn't the
dynamite's fault. Well, I'm glad to see Wiley Coyote who's moved on to SSL certs. Yeah. Good
for him. He went back to school, got certified. Yeah. Proof that at any point in your life,

(10:00):
you can choose to do something different. Yeah. Old dog, new trick.
Mark, do you want to hold, take our hand and lead us through the news?
Oh, this is a perfect segue for old dog, new trick. We've got good professional development
updates from, from, uh, no, not yet. We'll get there, but, uh, good professional development

(10:21):
updates from Google and from Microsoft. So this one, the first one from Google, it actually was
a few weeks ago. They announced that their educator certifications, level one and level two
are free for a limited time. Uh, level one is usually $10 and level two is 25. So go ahead
and get that done for free. And the, uh, Gemini cert as well is free right now too. Yes. And you're

(10:44):
right in the Gemini cert. So go ahead and get at least level one, definitely get level two. If
you're a Google admin in your district, uh, and the Gemini one and not to be outdone, Microsoft
has also announced the elevate for educators platform. This is a credentialing and skilling
platform. They have an AI skills navigator to help you learn new skills through the help of

(11:04):
artificial intelligence. Uh, this is available in more than 13 languages. Uh, and they're providing
educators with an all new AI for education course. Uh, this is available all at no cost
through the elevate for educators credentialing platform, uh, developed with ISTE and ASCD.
Okay. I dig it. I love a good free cert. Do you guys have any of those certifications yourself?

(11:30):
I have the, uh, Gemini cert and eons ago I was, I think level one cert and work, uh, admin console
cert. Um, I had, uh, actually a para, a library para email me, uh, the other day yesterday and
say that she went through all of them, level one, level two and Gemini and passed them. And she was

(11:54):
super excited. She's like, I, I learned a few things. She goes, but the level one stuff,
we should make every teacher go through that level one certification because it, it covers
so many basic things with classroom and drive and docs. She's like, everyone would get something out
of that. You know, we don't necessarily make them do level two, but that, that should be cursory

(12:19):
training for everyone. That's great. Yeah. I had my, uh, tech department. We got this certs and
like you just said, the level one, it was good to get because you're learning the Google way
and the Google words, uh, as a tech, you can more put yourself into, Oh, you know, I mean,
obviously we support drive and obviously we support docs. Uh, so to kind of get that and

(12:43):
see the teacher perspective a little bit better, uh, just to go with that, that we're not just
saying the technical way, uh, you're learning some Google terminology. I feel like through
that and Google philosophy through those things, dude, it was, it's, it's good. Very cool. Well,
speaking of Google and Microsoft, once again, they both also had big announcements on their
products. So we'll start with Microsoft, then go to Google. So Microsoft announced, uh, now

(13:09):
available in the, uh, three 65 co-pilot app is teach, which that helps to streamline your lesson
planning, customized, uh, materials, quizzes, rubrics, all those kinds of things. You can
quickly generate lesson plans to relevant standards. Uh, and all of these are available
at no cost to education customers. They also released the study and learn agent, which is

(13:31):
built on learning science principles. Uh, and it helps students. And then we'll specify this,
this is age 13 and above, uh, but to engage more deeply with different academic concepts and
develop critical thinking skills. So they're able to basically enter in a theme and say,
I want to learn about this and this study and learn agent will help them through the learning
process. Good. It's nice that we're talking about Microsoft because we get that feedback.

(13:56):
I don't, I don't know how else to put that. We do get feedback that we don't talk about
Microsoft enough. Hey, do you know they had an auto just afternoon? Um, so it, I'm happy to say
that we are a little equal, equal time here tonight for Microsoft. Yeah. Uh, and then right
around the same time that Microsoft announced those items, Google also announced this week,

(14:17):
they released a slew of updates for their Gemini app. Uh, I can't go through every single one of
them. Gentlemen, if you have anything specifically favorite of yours, the thing that I'm looking
forward to the most is there is a specific SAT prep, uh, functionality where students can gain
experience practicing for the SAT through Gemini. Uh, there's some more teacher led, uh, insights

(14:40):
so they can start to see how students are using their teacher led gems and notebook LM. Uh, and
then there is a brand new Gemini image generation detector. So you can say, Hey, was this created
with Google AI or is this AI generated? And it will, you actually use the synth ID mark behind
the scenes to, uh, to give you some information about how it was generated. My understanding of

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this one is that it is only for Gemini created images, but if you are a district that has kind
of locked things down to that environment, that would help you out a little bit. Uh, and then
finally, which is not necessarily education, but they released a really, really cool ransomware
detection and file restoration tool and drive. So if you are using file sync and your computer

(15:25):
becomes encrypted with ransomware, Google drive will actually detect that, put up a big old flag
for the user and alert the admin. Now this is a education plus tool. So this is not available in
the free version. Um, but it does show that Google is also taking, uh, ransomware seriously. And
you're going to start to see more and more features around AI or AI detected ransomware.

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Yeah. I saw, um, that setting or that report has been in admin console for, I guess, a few weeks
now because I ran across it the other day. I think one of the things that I'm most excited
about this announcement was they are taking a good number of the features from the, from the
Gemini pro Chris, is that the real name of that license? It's a little bit longer, but yeah,

(16:11):
I think so. The Gemini add-on, right? Yeah. The Gemini add-on, uh, they're taking a number
of the features that were specific for that add-on or that license and just rolling them
down a level to education plus. I know they're going to a couple others as well, but the feature
that I'm, I was having a conversation today about was that right-hand panel of Gemini and the

(16:35):
features of Gemini and the suggestions being rolled into docs and sheets, um, that Gemini
interface into sheets to be able to help with, uh, calculations or formulas real time in the same
window has been a game changer with me with Google sheets in the last couple of months.

(16:56):
So now having that ability for everyone is fantastic. It's great. I admit I had
the plus, I had like a free year or something like that for, for the Google plus license,
whatever it was. And when it expired, I just let it go. And I, you know, we were talking before the
show too, why upgrade to the education or AI plus if all this stuff is rolling down to lower tiers.

(17:23):
So especially now, like what's going to be, I have to believe from a good business perspective,
Google's going to do some whiz bang feature with that Gemino Gemini pro license to keep people
subscribing to that. Otherwise, like, like you said, what's, what's the value of that license?
It's a, it's a hard sell. I, I, I, I actually this week I had my first principal, I guess,

(17:49):
first real beyond tech department employee reach out about, Hey, can I get a Gemini license?
Cause he was doing some pretty extensive stuff with notebook LLM and he was reaching his limit
in different things. And he had looked up, he had looked up what he can do. And he kind of
did a quick pleading of his case. And I talked about, Hey, like, and we had a license again,

(18:10):
cause we're down to tech or my new tech will not get a Gemini license to play with because
I gave it to a principal. But again, you're, you're like looking at that and you're like,
I mean, I can't buy this. I don't even want to buy it for all my principals,
let alone a group of teachers. It's just not affordable for what you get. So if you're going
to roll down a lot of that into the, uh, what you're already paying for it. Yeah. There has

(18:32):
to be some new feature or something come out. Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think it's a little bit
more of a reason for the free or fundamentals license districts to upgrade to plus yes. But
you're right. It does. It does remove that desire to buy the upgraded AI. Well, so let's rewind six
months or so that licensing change and fee structure was announced in July and it's really

(18:58):
starting to hit now districts that are going through renewal and budget process. Yeah. So
maybe that, maybe this is a reaction to some of that feedback. Yeah, I don't know. Could be
maybe Google listens to this podcast and took our feedback to heart Mark. I hope so. There's
been that interesting thing with Gemini and the tiers with people knowing what you get with what,

(19:22):
you know, you turn on Gemini, but that's just going to go in the Gemini, but that's not what
the Gemini license gets. And then there's the two tiers. And what's the difference again, for a,
a common person to look at that in education, what's the difference between those two, even
as we're bantering here, we're like, what do we get or what don't we get? I mean,
probably not getting sales because we don't know what we want to buy.

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So maybe they're starting to identify that too. I will say this. I had an interesting conversation.
I was with a group of high school kids this week, and we still block AI stuff for all of our
students. But the kids are talking about notebook LM. The kids are talking about Google lens. The
kids are talking about Google AI mode search, and they're doing that personally. And they were

(20:08):
hitting me up because they're asking when, when our school is going to get that stuff going again,
this stuff is coming and our kids are using it. And it, it, it was a kind of a little, we were
running an AI committee and we're moving. I feel like it's just as quick as we can to try to get
stuff ready for students to use whatever AI we're going to land on. But the kids are moving faster

(20:32):
than us right now. I feel like, well, so that's a good segue real quick. I think we mentioned last
week that we were turning on Gemini for a pilot group of our students at my district recap. It's
about a hundred kids, just under a hundred kids. And it's a wide array of kids. They're kids in
our AP US history. And then there's some kids that are in a transitions class. So we sent out a survey

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to those kids asking about current comfort level with Gemini and kind of AI in general.
And then what are they, what do they see the valid uses for? How much do they trust it?
What do they think? And I, this to me is the most interesting question is what do they see
as being the big concerns or pitfalls of open access to students using Gemini? And the, the

(21:24):
question, the answers have been pretty interesting. Don't want to share too much, but
they are very comfortable. They, they feel they are very comfortable prompting AI just out of the
box because they're using it. Like just because we have it turned off at school, that is not
preventing them from using ChatGPT or Grok or Gemini and other modalities. So they, they feel

(21:51):
they are very comfortable. There has been a good response about the ability and the want to kind
of fact check the responses that it's getting out of that, that Gemini is spitting back at them.
And I think the, the overwhelming largest concern on this, because the last question is just a free

(22:12):
text box. The, the concern with the most hits that comes up most frequently has been without guidance,
without proper training, their fear, their largest fear is that students will use this predominantly
to cheat and be lazy. To me as, as an adult, as an administrator in the district,

(22:36):
I like seeing that, that these kids, they're not self-reporting, but they, they are aware enough
of themselves and of their cohort to know that unless they are trained properly, that will be
the pitfall. And that's the overwhelming response. I'm, I am, I'm excited to see that. I'm, I'm happy
to see that. That's cool. That's coming directly from students saying that it's coming directly

(23:00):
from students. Don't just turn this on, give us training and support. That's really cool to hear.
That's awesome. Yep. Oh, I was, I'm pretty surprised. Can we have one of your students
come on the podcast? I don't know if we should do that.
We can disguise the voice. I mean, we, or like, don't tell him he's going to be on
like, wait after school, push him into the back of your trunk, put it like,

(23:25):
put him, like disguise his voice. No, no, no. That's a hard no. I mean, I was ready to say I
could have a conversation, but no, that's a hard no. Okay. So our goal, our thought with this,
the AI committee's thought with this is we're sending this out to them now. Cause it's,
it's been on less than a week or so. The goal is to then follow up at the end of the quarter

(23:49):
and see if that, cause we do have some kids that are answering honestly that say,
I am not comfortable. I haven't used this. I don't know what a good prompt is.
So our goal is to see with these couple of teachers, these couple of teachers that are
using it, does that comfort level increase? Does their normal usage or what they use it for change

(24:10):
over this quarter? I was, I met with a teacher today quickly who has a large number of
students that don't speak English as their primary language. And she is seeing amazing
activity from those kids with just translation and helping them understand different things.

(24:30):
It it's, it's been cool. The valid use has been really, really cool. And I think Mark,
you and I talked about, you know, you can see their prompts in Gemini in vault,
cause all of those prompts get recorded in vault. And I was a little disheartened that
when we turned it on, a lot of it was clearly copying a question from a worksheet or an

(24:51):
assignment and pasting and getting the answer. But Mark, you kind of reeled me back in and said,
you're not seeing this. They're, they're doing this anyway in Google, like they're doing that
in the Google search box anyway. It's just now you're able to see it because they're doing it
in Gemini. This is not a new thing. Cheating is not new. They can hand their, they can hand,

(25:12):
if it's on paper, they can hand that paper worksheet to a friend and have that friend do it.
Cheating is not new. So yeah. It's funny to say that my, I do a lot of
professional development on Gemini and, and AI tools for teachers. And the very first tip I say
is this is not a Google search. You're not supposed to use this as a Google search. You're
supposed to use it as there's going to sound awkward and weird, but this is a chat. You need

(25:36):
to have a conversation with this rather than just, you know, type in a statement or a question.
And I think from a student perspective, if you set that framework of this is a tutor,
you use this, have a conversation with this tool as a tutor, pretend it is, it is your teacher
that you've come to for help to read, to explain that this, how to do differential equations.

(25:59):
I think if you frame it in that perspective and start that framework early, that addresses
a lot of those concerns. Josh, on that survey, did, did you, did you click their name? Like,
or was it anonymous? Nope. It'd be fun to like little Johnny's like,
teach us how to not cheat. And you look involved and like, he's just been cheating all day.

(26:27):
Yeah. There was one kid that was like, I'm an expert prompter. I don't have to check it
because I know the answers are, I'm like, I wish I could tell who that kid was.
That's good. It's the kid asking Gemini. Hey, chat GPT. What's the answer to this question?
Right. Yeah. Hey, by the way another sponsor of the K-12 Tech Talk podcast is Meter.

(26:52):
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(27:13):
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Should we jump into the main event? I think so.
All right. So last year we, or last week we teased that there would be a Senate hearing
on screen time. That hearing aired on Thursday led by Ted Cruz. And so we thought we would break

(27:34):
down some of the main points and talking points from that hearing.
Josh, are you excited about this? I think you're a big Ted Cruz fan.
No, I've already listened to it. So no.
Ooh, big storm coming. You think he's going to stay in Texas?
Unlikely.
Okay. So the hearing went without a hitch and I would say I spent most of that time saying yes,

(27:57):
yes, yes, no. Because there were certain times where the conversation would go in a very,
very great direction talking about the dangers of screen time and social media and big text
influence on, on kids. And all of a sudden it always took a turn towards putting the
blame on schools. So we thought tonight we would share a couple of clips and kind of debrief this

(28:21):
one. I've got, you know, four or five different audio clips from here that I was going to play
for Josh and Chris, get their kind of raw response. Cause they're hearing this for the first
time. And if there's anything that you'd like to fact check or correct the record for, please do
so. I'm going to start it with how this entire hearing actually started. So this is how Ted

(28:41):
Cruz opened up the hearing. Good morning. Senate commerce committee will come to order.
It's incredibly hard to be a kid right now. Okay. That's the first clip. I did verify a
few things on here and Ted Cruz is actually not a kid. He is 50 years old. Later on in that opening

(29:07):
though, Ted Cruz did talk about the challenges of technology and the screen time. So here he is
later on in the opening speech. Parents face further challenges in monitoring and limiting
their children's screen time in part because our education system fueled by federal subsidies and
incentives has increasingly required the use of internet connected devices in schools.

(29:31):
Most students are now assigned laptops or tablets often without guardrails or parental controls
in order to complete their schoolwork. There aren't many parents who think it has become
easier to help with school work or to cut down on screen time when schools send their kids home

(29:52):
with a personal tablet. There's a role to be sure for technology in the classroom,
but we should discuss whether assigning personal devices to children
is actually improving academic outcomes or doing more harm than good. Response? There's so much

(30:14):
fueled by federal subsidies and dollars. I don't know if this is like this everywhere,
but at least in my district we receive very few federal dollars. And of those dollars they're not
going towards the device. Absolutely not. Like even if you're like, yeah, even if I'm a school,
it's like, yeah, we get fed money all over the place. It's not, I don't know if schools,

(30:36):
they're really getting it for the device. Right. I mean, free introduced lunch program,
maybe some transportation dollars, but not devices, uh, title money, not devices.
So the statement of what was it? What I was so distracted with the federal dollar statement.

(30:56):
There was a statement right after that about no guardrails, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Often with
no guardrails, clearly out of touch. He doesn't know what he's talking about. Yeah. The, the
acronym SIPA came to my mind super quick, which isn't, I would consider that a guardrail. Yeah.

(31:16):
A big one. I could banter a little bit. He said something about no parent stuff. Okay. I, you
know, I, I'm not a school that gives my parent, like, I don't have like the parent notifications
about usage that go home and yada yada. So yeah, we could banter about that, but I absolutely have
guardrails in place. Right. Right. Now I hear that comment about, you know, parental controls

(31:37):
and you know, there's, there's different tools and systems out there. Some of them that provide
parents with information on how their child is using technology, others that give them
parental controls. I've always found those to be complicated because when you've got a teacher
who's controlling the device, you have it departments who are controlling the device.
And then you add in a parent who's also controlling the device. You have different people

(31:58):
blocking websites when it is needed and causing more chaos in the classroom. So I hear what he's
trying to say. And I hear the struggle that parents have logistically speaking. I don't think
we can disseminate control to parents for a device that's in the school building, but Chris, you're
right. Schools have controls. Yeah. We got the guardrails all day. Again, I could disagree on

(32:20):
guardrails because we got those and I don't know a single school that doesn't, I, it doesn't exist.
If you're a public school, you have, and you're, and you have a device assigned to a kid
or a computer lab, there are guardrails in place, even go extreme of like the school absolutely
sucks at content filtering. The guardrail in place would be that the kid is still observed by a

(32:42):
teacher walking around the room at the, you know, the worst case of what content filtering and
monitoring even is, uh, the one school, like the one room school building with, uh, Mrs. Smith,
the old lady, she's still walking around and watching what the kids are doing. That's still
a guardrail. I struggled with that comment. I, I know where it's coming from, but I did struggle

(33:03):
with that specific comment. Yeah. Going back to your comments, Josh around E-rate, you thought
Josh was going to talk tonight, but he's just going to put his head down in frustration.
Josh. Yeah. To, to, to describe Josh. He just kept shaking his head. He's just shaking his head. No,
he didn't say anything coming back, Josh, to your comments around E-rate. Cruz did provide

(33:25):
some additional commentary on that one. So here he is. Oh, can I guess before you hit play? Can I
guess? Go ahead. E-rate's horrible and it's the devil and they should have repealed it, right?
Not only did congressional Democrats give billions of dollars to the FCC to buy personal
internet devices for children, but the Biden FCC sought to bankroll kids, unsupervised internet

(33:49):
access and undermine parental rights by expanding the E-rate program to install Wi-Fi hotspots off
campus, including in school buses, public transportation, and public transportation.
Including in school buses and students homes. I was proud that the Senate passed my legislation

(34:11):
to repeal this program. That comment was later rejected by Senator Edward Markey from Massachusetts,
who is one of the original founders of the E-rate modernization bill, where he stated,
you're referring to the E-rate subsidies or the E-rate programs that were put in place during
COVID to provide hotspots for buses, for homes, and some of that money was used for devices. So

(34:36):
a clarification that these programs that he was referring to, that was part of COVID. I do get
what he's saying though, that, hey, this may be fueling the fire here, but this is not a normal
program. And as you mentioned, we're not used to using federal dollars for devices and hotspots.
And districts were not paying for internet to be installed in parents' homes without parent consent.

(35:00):
Come on. The parent stuff banter, I can banter about that. I've had, so our school district
does the, we say it's tech yes or tech no. We don't do, we'll have a parent request that's like,
hey, my kids get on YouTube too much, turn it off. We don't do that. We say you can go to

(35:21):
alternative school and it's all locked down and you get to like five websites, that's it.
Or you're in public school, like you're in regular ed stuff, like, and we're teaching you how to use,
it's the same banter about you can drive your kid to school in the van and drop them off,
or you can let them ride the school bus and they might learn some new language on the school bus.

(35:42):
You're doing it. So I can banter about the parent stuff, but again, easy E-rate stuff,
that's for rural schools all day. Great impact.
Okay. Chris, you've got children in your own school district. So are you, you have an extra
layer of security that you can provide over your kids. Are you finding your role as IT director

(36:04):
and parent in the same school district? Is there overlap there?
Right, right, right. My wife, Stephanie, she'll give banter about what kids can and can't do and
actually that same group I was talking to about the AI stuff, they started bantering with me about
what websites they can and can't have access to. I, we take that input as a parent, we take all

(36:26):
input. When that parent calls about the YouTube thing, we take that input. I don't know. Again,
you could banter about it a lot. The parent has input, the parent has a voice, but yeah,
we could go back and forth to what degree do they need all those rights or whatever.
Josh, same question, because I know that your, your child was in your school,
they just graduated last year, but have you ever blocked a website

(36:49):
that you know your son was going to in school?
Do you have to ask that? Yeah, I mean, yes.
So math games, math games.
Oh, well, that's, that's a universal one. Everybody's blocked that.
Again, that, that, that, that, that same group of kids I was talking to,

(37:10):
it's funny that you just said that. So Chase, my son, who's a senior,
was in that conversation and he told the kids that when he was in elementary school,
like he was a snitch, he would tell his dad the sites everybody was going to. And then he was
like, and then I learned how not cool that was and how my dad's not cool and he doesn't snitch
anymore. Now my youngest, she still tells me, she tells me the little games.

(37:38):
She, she, she still knows like what the, what the, the light looks like.
All right. Well, this theme of talking about the impacts of social media and screen time,
I mean, you can listen to, they have a bunch of experts on here. You can listen to every single
one of them and agree with everything. The thing where I got a little bit concerned

(38:00):
is the attention just kept being drawn towards schools. So this is Dr. Jean Twingy. She's a
psychologist, professor, psychology professor at San Diego university. I'll play a clip from her
now. I'm even more concerned about the AI companion apps than I am about social media. It is
terrifying to think that our kids are having their first relationships with these psychophantic

(38:23):
chatbots. She raises a really good point that we're seeing a lot of this stuff that we're
concerned about at home suddenly coming into the classroom. AI chatbots are things that Josh,
you just talked about all the benefits and usefulness of it. But from a psychology professor,
hearing the dangers that a student could be having a in-depth relationship or conversation and not

(38:44):
realize they're talking to a computer, that's a real threat or concern that parents have both
at school and at home. I think we do too. Yep. Yeah. That's the same. Ted said something about
we should discuss if devices have been good or not. Yes, we should. I don't think you would
really talk to anyone that works in a school that we shouldn't continue discussion or, hey,

(39:06):
there's a thing called AI coming and kids are using it at home and what should the school do
to it? Yes, we will discuss like we do every single week when we record an episode here.
We are all deeply concerned about what students are being exposed to and what is the best tool
to use to help kids learn. Yes, I agree. I will leave you with a quote from Dr. Horvath who kind

(39:32):
of continued this conversation and I'm going to pause it halfway through and see if you can finish
his thought. First generation in modern history to underperform us on basically every cognitive
measure we have, from basic attention to memory, to literacy, to numeracy, to executive functioning,
to even general IQ, even though they go to more school than we did. So why? What happened? What

(39:55):
happened around 2010 that decoupled schooling from cognitive development? It can't be school.
Schools basically look the same. It can't be biology. This hasn't had enough time to change.
What was it? Social media. The answer appears to be the tools we are using within schools to drive
that learning. That's not what I thought I was going to say. I was going to say screen time

(40:19):
because I thought that's what the thing was about. Yeah, not the actual tools. I thought it was going
to be social media. I didn't think that we're going to go straight to the tools that we're
using. I don't know. 2010 would seem awful early to me for those tools to be as a stronghold that

(40:44):
would need to be for that executive function to start taking a decline in 2010. I got to my
district in 2014. We made our first Chromebook purchase and it was one cart per grade level
in 2015. So I don't know if that timeline works out. Now it absolutely works out for social media

(41:06):
and Instagram and Snapchat and kids getting those accounts regardless of terms of service,
rules of age. To me that's the bigger push there than the electronic tools schools are using. But
I'm not a doctor. Well, a lot of the doctors commented about the specific features of
smartphones, the infinite scroll feature where you just never stop. You just keep scrolling. I

(41:31):
mean, these are specific features that were designed into social media to make them addictive.
I don't necessarily see these same features in the tools we're using in the classroom. I think
that's where I'm struggling is that the personal phone is designed to addict the person using it.
You know, I was a teacher in 2010 and I remember that phones were starting to hit. Kids were

(41:54):
starting to hide a cell phone and use it in class. Those same features that we see addicting that the
experts are talking about, I don't see the same prevalence in laptops, Chromebooks, and EdTech
tools. They are there though. I will say that there are some of these addictive features
within EdTech tools meant to capitalize on students' love of social media and say why not bring that

(42:18):
same function to EdTech. That's where I get a little bit nervous. But I think overall I feel
like educators are trying to teach kids how to use technology as a productive tool through
education technology and we're conflating the screen time and social media challenges with EdTech.
Yes, there is some overlap and there are some things. I don't know about you guys. I

(42:41):
just cringe when I see how much YouTube is watched during the school day and I know that that's not
all instructional. So we're trying to limit that stuff. We're trying to get rid of those kinds of
things. But it's like how do you not throw the baby out with the bathwater? That's where I'm
struggling with this whole hearing. Yeah. YouTube, that's one of the things that gets me riled up
more than anything is looking at the amount of... Every day it is top three sites in use in my

(43:09):
district and I know the majority of that is music videos or game walkthroughs or something just
utterly ridiculous. It's not educational content. Yeah. Which is helped by the introduction of
screen time limitations, which is what this thing was about, correct? Did that get talked about?

(43:32):
What was the title of the hearing, Mark? Hearing on the impact of screen time on kids.
Yeah. So it was a general screen time conversation. I just, when I read or when I listen
through the experts, I hear them pull out a lot of features that are social media based
and I agree that's the horrible thing. Right. But it does get conflated. It does spread

(43:54):
quickly into schools when you talk about screen time because, yeah, that is a big part of the
amount of screen time that kids get every day. Well, we used to banter. I was just looking up.
I came to my district now, it was like 2014. So it was 2014 when my district went one-to-one
at the high school and that was our first one-to-one. So the 2010 thing, that kind of

(44:16):
maybe lines up when like nationally we started to see schools do one-to-one. But, you know,
back then it was like a tablet or a computer, like the calculator app was really important.
You know, and that was back with YouTube before shorts and you could, you know, do like the screen
shader easy to block out the ads and stuff. So to just say that that's the time that

(44:37):
everything went wacky, I can't get there. I remember back then we used to have a lot of
banter about chalkboard and then it went to dry erase board and then interactive board and you
can clearly see advancement in technology and that's good and you don't have to have a study

(44:58):
that backs up that an interactive board or a dry erase board is better than a chalkboard.
It's easy to know that a device that has a calculator app on it is better than calculator
in the world that we live in. So again, to just start blaming device and tools,

(45:18):
it's not that. We know it's an enhancement, but we can talk all day about the trash of YouTube
with the trash of the stuff that has guardrails in place that we need to tighten down. But we're
missing the mark if we're just talking about the whole premise of giving a kid a device with
technology on it. That's crazy stuff to me. I think if one of our collective goals as high

(45:43):
schools is to truly prepare kids for life after high school, be that higher ed, be that workforce,
be that military, whatever, you cannot say we have to get rid of the devices. Like,
they're they are not going to do anything post high school that doesn't have a device,

(46:04):
even if they go into plumbers or electricians, they are going to use devices. So the idea of
cutting a device out of the high school is that you're not going to get there.
Did they talk about limiting screen time that or they just talk about yanking all the devices out
is or the how did how did the thing end, Mark? It's a great question. I think there were a lot

(46:29):
of very good points brought up by the experts and the politicians. And I think there was a
general consensus that we cannot sit back and do nothing. And I think all of us in education would
agree with that. Or the main purpose of this hearing really was to advertise the
Kids Off Social Media Act, which I'm a huge supporter of. And I think it's a great thing.

(46:51):
I just think that we need to have a careful conversation about technology in schools and
rather than think about schools as part of the problem. And I admit that there are parts of
the problem that are related to schools and behaviors that we need to change in schools.
But I just want to I just I guess my ultimate point is that it's complicated when it comes to
ed tech and screen time. Yeah, completely agree. And using that platform to villainize

(47:18):
E-rate or to villainize technology in schools to me is inappropriate. That does nothing
positive whatsoever. Yeah, I agree. I think it hurts the cause. So I am all about I am all about
let's talk screen time and I am all about let's cut out the fat, the junk that is on the device

(47:44):
that we can banter about. But you want to get me easily riled up, bring up E-rate like it's a bad
thing. That's going to get me riled up. So what's the there's a proverb about you hang out with wise
people, you get wise, you hang out with fools, you're going to get in trouble, whatever. That's
a really foolish sentence. So like, what else are you offering me in this conversation? It doesn't

(48:08):
hit me as well. You might have some great points about screen time, but you start talking about
E-rate being trash. It doesn't help the good of the cause. And especially with the whole the
politics of it to get both sides together. You're not doing you're not doing the thing if you're
trashing on on E-rate. No, because E-rate isn't putting in devices in kids hands. Yes, it's

(48:30):
internet connections and providing broadband to classrooms, but it is not putting devices
in kids hands. I will say out of this hearing, Mark, I know you've do you have any clips from
Markey or was it only Ted? I didn't pull any clips from from Ed Markey, but essentially he
did debunk the whole E-rate thing or clarified the E-rate statement that Ted Cruz had made.

(48:51):
It was very cool to hear Markey talk and and kind of defend E-rate. So yeah, that that was great.
And if we could ever have him on here to interview as far from it from a historical standpoint of
that process of starting E-rate and then the rest of this story and where the future

(49:15):
go, where do we go in the future? That would be super cool. But I think the three of us,
the answer is the three of us testify like we need to testify in front of Congress.
It would be I would volunteer. I would pay my own way. I would do that. I'll wear a blazer.
I'll wear a hat. I'll buy a new. I'll I have this hat obsession now. I will buy a hat and a full suit.

(49:44):
Shoot, bro. Thanks to Lightspeed. Check out LightspeedSystems.com. They can hook you up
with your filter, guardrail. They can give you insight into app usage, guardrail, alerts on
student safety monitoring. Some might call that a guardrail. They can let you report concerns that
you have going on about student safety, different things. I don't know, guardrail, screen monitoring

(50:09):
and control. They have classroom. That's a guardrail, I think. They can even check on the
device and make sure that the kid has a good device and signal health. You would say that we
care about what the tool is being used. Maybe not a guardrail, but I would still put it in there.
And then they can help you out with your MDM. So we don't just care about the Chromebook,

(50:30):
but the Apple product as well. Guardrail. Yeah, but I don't know. I don't know.
Some schools use Lightspeed, guardrail. You know where Lightspeed's headquarters are, right?
No, do you tell? Texas. Guardrail.
Well, I will close with just replaying a snippet of Ted Cruz's laptop tirade in the beginning,

(50:54):
but with the snippet that I can, I think we can all agree on.
There's a role to be sure for technology in the classroom,
but we should discuss whether assigning personal devices to children
is actually improving academic outcomes or doing more harm than good.
I think regardless of where you sit on this issue, that's a statement that we can all say

(51:17):
100%. We're putting a huge amount of money and time and effort into this.
Oh, yeah. And is it improving outcomes or is it harming our kids?
I agree with that. From a huge money perspective, if you haven't priced Chromebooks yet for next
year in your budget cycle, get ready, buddy. You're going to have some sticker shock

(51:40):
between memory prices and Intel processor shortages. Get ready.
We're going to need some federal subsidies.
So I do take issue with something he said in that clip, Mark. I do not consider
the devices that districts hand students as personal devices.

(52:02):
Yeah. I brought that up last week. Yes.
I absolutely do not think they are personal devices.
Agree.
No, I know. It's a complicated conversation. But I think what he's referring to is that
a student is taking a device, they're walking from class to class and bringing it home.
That's fine.
But you raise a very good point that, hey, part of our challenge is convincing kids,

(52:25):
this isn't your device. This is a tool that belongs to the school,
has been issued for a specific purpose.
Don't put stickers on it. Don't draw on it. This isn't your... It might be assigned to you,
but it is not a personal device.
I was going to say, again, we have banter about that on... Well, we have a no sticker policy,
but we will allow wallpaper change in middle school, high school.

(52:50):
And we talk about that because we want...
Good Lord, what is wrong with you?
Listen to me, because we want the kid to feel like he has some ownership,
but it's not his device. But I would rather the kids spend... I would rather the kids at my school
spend their time on the district assigned Chromebook than to have their phone out at

(53:12):
home that doesn't have any guardrails. I'd rather them be on the Chromebook that has guardrails in
place. So our stance has been, if we can let them do a stupid wallpaper and they're going to spend
a little more time on Chromebook with guardrails than on the phone that doesn't, I'm going to go
that route.
That's our next sticker, Chris. Just the word guardrails and guardrail. That'd be a great

(53:35):
sticker. Send it to Mr. Cruz.
That was a lot, gentlemen.
That was a lot.
I feel okay.
Good episode. Next week, we'll likely be coming to you from the frozen tundra.
Mark, are you guys supposed to get snow out of this storm that's coming?
Yeah, yeah. I think it's at anywhere from 6 to 20.

(53:57):
So cool.
Wow.
Who knows?
That's a spread.
If anything resonated with you tonight, shoot us an email. Chris, what's our email address?
Info at katoltechtalkpodcast.com.
If you have a story you would like to share, like, I don't remember the gentleman's name

(54:18):
from Idaho a couple weeks ago. Was it Lawrence?
Lawrence.
From Idaho a couple weeks ago. We'll anonymize you. Send us your story. You got a crazy teacher
story? Send us your crazy teacher story.
If you're in Josh's student AI program, shoot us an email.
I might bring that up to some powers that be and see what we can do.

(54:44):
I don't know that we can.
Yeah, because that could go off the rails in so many different ways.
Also, we're going to be on the road.
So let me plug a couple sponsors here that are very important to us.
NTP, email our friend David D. Wren at ntp-inc.com for your cybersecurity, for your SOC stuff.
Also, Fortinet, fortinetpodcast at fortinet.com.

(55:06):
All kinds of Forta products that are guardrails that help keep staff and students safe, network
safe.
Extreme Networks, dmayor at extremenetworks.com.
I won't get into the nitty gritty on a network switch and how routing works and VLANs and all
that stuff, but some could put that to the definition of a guardrail, by the way.
But we're proud to have them as sponsors and they're helping us get on the roads with the

(55:30):
cybersecurity symposium coming up in March.
Next week, I think it's the 27th or 28th, we're doing the virtual conference with Secure
Ed Schools in Illinois.
Mark, you got a keynote in Colorado coming up in February.
Check that out.
And then in February, towards the end of the month, we will be in Albuquerque at the K-126

(55:51):
conference.
In a way, look ahead in April, we're going to COSEN in Chicago.
So if you're going to any of those events, or if you have an event that you want us to
attend, we'd love to set up the podcast table at your event.
So again, shoot us an email at info at k12techtalkpodcast.com.
And extra points if there is a custom cowboy hat shop within, you know, 15 minutes.

(56:17):
Picks the hat mold and stuff.
Thanks for listening.
Share us with your friends.
Send us an email.
We love reading your email.
We'll share your story if you want us to.
We will see you next week.

(56:50):
The material and information presented here is for general information and entertainment
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Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week.

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Episode 247 - Senate Hearing on Screen Time

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Episode 247 - Senate Hearing on Screen Time