April 2, 2026 • 65 mins
Josh, Chris, and Mark debrief last week’s Infinite Campus interview, explaining new findings about the leaked support data - what was in the release, how directory-level information and PII were involved, and what districts can do to check and respond. They discuss vendor ticket practices, district ticket practices, minimizing data in support requests, and how districts should approach vendor privacy agreements going forward.
The episode also covers recent news - the Navigate360 tip‑line breach, the White House AI legislative recommendations related to students, the Google/Meta social media liability case, and Waymo’s repeated failures to stop for school buses in Texas.
Finally, Chris interviews Brian Edwards from Swank. They discuss Swank's movie licensing and classroom streaming solution.
Judge grabs internet's attention after confrontation with IT technician
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
On this week's episode of the K-12 Tech Talk podcast, we debrief the Infinite Campus interview
(00:04):
from last week, and discuss some of the new developments with the incident, including
what was actually contained in the release data.
We also discuss the latest tech support requests from the Artist Bracket, and Waymo's challenges
with school buses in Texas.
Thanks for listening.
Live from the NTP studios, this is the K-12 Tech Talk podcast, this is episode 258.
(00:26):
I am Josh, Mid-Missouri Tech Director, K-12 School District.
Down the road from me is Chris.
What's up?
Who is on Christmas break, Easter break.
All week, baby.
Yeah.
Wait, what?
I haven't worked.
I mean, I did work.
I'm working all the time.
You're not.
Don't, don't even.
Don't, don't even.
(00:46):
Wait, wait, wait.
Does your school district break for the whole week, or just you?
All week and a day.
We've been off all this week, and we're off Monday as well.
Your whole district?
Entire district.
I did go in for one day.
I think I was the only person there.
We are not.
So we are about 30 minutes north of Chris.
(01:07):
We are, we had students today.
Our students are not here, are not in session tomorrow or Monday.
Classified staff is.
You don't have to go too far north.
My wife's district, they have students tomorrow, Good Friday, and they have parent-teacher
conferences and PD on Easter Monday.
Did you introduce Mark?
Oh, hi, Mark.
(01:28):
Hey.
And then you don't have to go too much further north than my wife's district, and those districts
are having school.
And there's Mark.
Well, no, he's.
He's east.
A little more east.
He's east.
He's.
I'm just trying to get Mark an introduction here.
I'm good.
I'm good.
I'm here.
He's in, he's in New England.
(01:48):
I'm in Boston.
Yes.
The school is off tomorrow for the, for the kids and teachers.
Oh, are they?
Yeah.
Interesting.
It's actually good.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
Sorry.
It's good.
It's a good Friday.
Good Friday.
So, last week.
Josh wipes the ash off his forehead from Wednesday.
Oh, that, no, that was 40 days ago, Chris.
I'm not Catholic.
(02:09):
I don't know the thing.
Okay.
I'm a regular, I'm a regular one.
You're the, you're the whatever one.
You're a heathen.
It's fine.
You're a Protestant.
You protest against the first church.
So, we really didn't unpack.
Dig us out.
Dig us out.
Here we go.
Yeah.
So, you guys know, we're, Chris and I, we're good friends.
(02:30):
None of this is real.
We really didn't get to unpack the episode last week.
We had Charlie on from Infinite Campus, the CEO, to talk about their Salesforce incident
that they had.
And we really, we thought he was super transparent, was very, at the time, we felt like he was
(02:52):
honest about what was going on, how quickly they were able to establish that they were
having an issue, how quickly they were able to respond and mitigate that issue, and then
go through that investigation process.
And according to him, we're notifying districts and assessing the damage, if you will.
(03:12):
Before we get into our thoughts and our commentary on that, Chris, do you want to hit a sponsor
or two?
For sure.
So, Powergistics, in the podcast description, I'm going to put their charging station solution
matrix.
They have a take-home model solution as well.
And they have some cool needs assessment for, if you're going to put a charging station
(03:33):
in a classroom, for teachers or for students, they have like some needs assessment surveys
that you can do to fill out, to figure out what your power needs are.
So check out Powergistics and check out that stuff in the podcast description.
And also for the month of April, Hayden's Hot Deal on Kato Tech Pro is some good discount
(03:54):
savings on Powergistics items.
So go to Kato Tech Pro and check out Hayden's Hot Deal there.
And we appreciate you supporting our sponsors because without them, we wouldn't be able
to afford Mark.
So unpacking this, and we've received quite a bit of feedback from school districts and
third-party companies, I guess, for a little bit of commentary on this.
(04:19):
Guys, what were your thoughts in the moment with the discussion with Charlie?
And then what are your thoughts a week later now that we have a little bit more clarity
into the situation?
And one of us, maybe more than one of us, has been contacted by a third-party, let's
just say security researcher to talk about data.
(04:40):
What do you guys think?
It's a very tough episode to listen to because you have both a very honest and transparent
description of the situation.
At the same time, some people, some viewers felt or listeners felt that there was a little
downplayed and there was a high level of confidence for an incident that for some people could
be very serious.
(05:01):
So I think I'm very mixed on it.
I definitely hear some concerns around the approach that Charlie took on that episode.
But at the same time, this was a very, very different incident from the PowerSchool breach
and from some of the other cyber incidents that we've talked about.
Yeah.
Chris, thoughts?
Yeah, I loved that he was willing to come on so early in the ongoing investigation.
(05:29):
And we didn't know it till he was talking about it, but the timeline of the data being
put out on the dark web was the morning of when we did the interview.
And he was still willing to come on.
So I give great kudos to Charlie for his willingness to still come on and still be transparent,
still give us some information, let us have our own thoughts then after that on what we're
(05:53):
going to do with the interview and that information.
But then after it settles a little bit, and then you see some stuff, and I think we're
going to unpack this, that came out after the interview, well, then it brings about
questions on, it's not like the interview happened and I just feel great about my district's
data and that I just completely dodged the bullet.
(06:16):
Or for all my neighbors and just all of our comrades across the country with Infinite
Campus that were all in the clear, I don't feel that way.
I think I probably had a slightly good feeling after the interview, and then I don't feel
that way so much, again, not to the PowerSchool breach level at all, but I just don't feel
(06:39):
so warm and fuzzy if I had a little bit of that after the interview as I did.
Yeah, and I would echo that.
So we did that interview with Charlie Thursday afternoon, evening, last week, Friday evening,
I think I was at dinner and the person who runs databreaches.net started contacting me
(07:05):
on a messaging app saying, hey, I just posted this article.
I was able to do a dig on the data.
I was able to download the data and started parsing through it, and I posted an article
with what I have found with the data that was downloaded.
She did a very good job at going through the files that were available and that a big
(07:29):
cache of it were these Salesforce tickets, and she highlighted a handful of tickets that
I felt like one in particular in her article highlighted a ticket that referenced juvenile
arrest record information that wasn't redacted, and if you recall our interview with Charlie,
(07:50):
he more or less claimed on more than one instance that campus's standard operating
procedure is to remove any sort of PII out of tickets that they find as a default standard
operating procedure, like they do that on the regular.
Well, this article on databreaches.net highlighted there was student name, district that she
(08:14):
redacted out of the article.
She didn't publish the name of the district, but it was referencing arrest information
of a student.
So you couple that, Chris, I know you and I are in a couple different forums for Missouri
for a user group.
There are a couple other districts in there that are saying very, very similar things
that we've got tickets that were in the breach that had student name and XYZ type of information.
(08:42):
So I think there's, Charlie was on here and very confident about saying that that was
their SOP, but then we have, we're hearing from districts firsthand that are saying that
that's not their experience with the tickets.
And now what we're seeing from databreaches.net as far as real data being released.
(09:03):
So I think that's a big X factor for me from that interview.
I don't know.
It's interesting to me.
Well, I think we'll come back to it later on in this episode.
We've got some more detailed information on what that breach contains, and then we'll
go into what lessons can we learn and take from this incident from the district perspective.
And yeah, we'll see if we can hopefully make some improvements for next time.
(09:27):
All right, Mark, what do you got any news for us?
We got lots of news.
Actually we're catching up.
We haven't had a news segment for a couple of weeks.
So we're going to go back to the Navigate360 article from last week.
So we talked about the Navigate360 is the global Intel tip line where schools can set
up a form for students to submit tips.
(09:48):
That was breached.
93 gigabytes of data was stolen and put out there.
This was actually, we talked about this as being a ransom incident.
This was actually an incident of political hacktivism.
The attacker, who goes by the name of InternetYiffMachine, had stated that parents...
What?
Say that again?
(10:09):
InternetYiffMachine is the hacker's name, had posted that parents shouldn't try to help
police by basically doing their job for them and allowing kids to submit tips.
So this was a political hacktivism incident rather than a ransomware or financially motivated
incident.
The data was made available to journalists and researchers.
(10:32):
It was not necessarily made publicly available, but I thought this was a very different kind
of breach that we're used to seeing.
Rather than trying to steal money from these companies, it was more around teaching the
community a lesson around supporting and working with police.
So very interesting to see that twist on it.
Hmm.
(10:52):
Interesting.
A couple of weeks ago, the White House released their AI Legislative Recommendations Framework.
So this is basically the Trump administration stating what they want to see Congress do
and push for AI legislation.
There was a lot in there around AI, but the first section was all around AI and students.
There's a lot of things in here that we can support.
This is all about parents' rights and giving parents tools for managing privacy and screen
(11:16):
time and content, parent consent for using AI by minors, features for mitigating self-harm
and health risks, and limiting data on children for model training.
So all of those things I can get behind.
The thing where I get a little bit concerned, though, is it also wants Congress to limit
(11:37):
what states can do.
So we've seen some pretty groundbreaking legislation out of California around AI and minors.
Trump administration wants all that to be done at the federal level.
So I do understand the need for that, but the reason I get concerned about that is I
don't see Congress doing much of anything right now.
And so while AI is rippling its way through the United States, if we're not going to allow
(12:02):
states to do anything about it and we're going to wait for Congress to do something, I think
we're going to be waiting quite a long time.
So I'm a little bit mixed on this one.
I think there's some good stuff and some stuff I'm a little bit concerned about, but that
is the White House legislative recommendation frameworks.
Yeah, I would agree with you on that, Mark.
I think we're going to see little to any action out of Congress this year.
(12:24):
That's an interesting flip with typical Trump stuff.
It's been a break down the feds and give it back to the state.
So this is an interesting flip of the thing.
That's interesting.
Yeah, for sure.
You mean he changes his mind?
Moving on, moving on, moving on.
(12:45):
No new wars.
Sorry, sorry, sorry.
Josh, what's your stance on data centers?
Yeah.
So inside joke, it's not fair to have inside jokes, Chris.
So my town is embroiled in a data center controversy.
There's a data center wanting to come in roughly 300 acres, $6 billion investment into our town.
(13:13):
And these two guys sat through two hours worth of public comment and got a true taste of
what my town has to offer.
To be clear, it was a remote live stream.
We weren't actually in the gymnasium watching people comment on the data center.
I felt like I was there, though.
I was very involved.
Josh did not watch his own town's debate on the data center, but Chris and I did.
(13:38):
I knew how it was going to go.
Yeah, no.
And I joined the comments section.
You did join the comments and they were hilarious.
I enjoyed talking with a small town in mid-Missouri about their thoughts on the data center.
And I shared my thoughts and that was Chris and I, that was our Wednesday evening.
(14:01):
Pretty great.
My favorite was Mark asks how far the noise would travel and they said something like
2.5 miles.
And Mark goes, good, I'm 2.6.
Man, that was good.
Anyway, dig us out.
Dig us out.
All right.
All right.
(14:22):
All right.
Another big case from last week.
Google and Meta have been in court.
They've been in court for a lot of different cases, but one of the big cases was settled.
This really is a landmark or a bellwether case, as they call it.
There's about 2,000 pending lawsuits on Google and Meta over social media addiction.
The first big case was settled, a plaintiff was issued a $6 million award for harms done
(14:47):
by Google and by Meta, specifically YouTube and Meta.
Meta was liable for 70% of the claim.
The juries had found that these two companies had done enough harm and they had acted with
malice.
This is being known as the big tobacco moment, that it's kind of opening the door up for
many, many other cases.
(15:07):
So this would be very interesting to see what happens over the next few years as I'm going
to guess hundreds, if not thousands of cases just start stacking up against these two companies
for harms done against kids, just as we saw in the 90s with big tobacco.
That'll be interesting.
I worked for a hospital in that timeframe of the big tobacco settlements and the amount
of money that flowed into hospitals due to the healthcare that had to be provided for
(15:31):
individuals that had lung cancer and heart disease that couldn't pay.
It was amazing at those tobacco settlements, the money that came in.
Yeah.
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(16:16):
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I got a question around this case though and it's related to YouTube.
One of the big debates in this case was around YouTube being a social media platform versus
a streaming platform.
(16:36):
As you can imagine, Google argued YouTube is just a streaming video platform but it
was found that the damages caused by the social media features of YouTube really contributed
to a lot of the damage to this young woman.
Does that change your perspective on YouTube in schools because we have talked about this
at length over the years around the pros and cons of YouTube in the classroom?
(17:01):
I still don't like it.
I think it is a far greater risk to be a time suck than it is valid content but don't misunderstand
that statement.
There is valid content on YouTube that can be used and embedded in the classroom but
when we look at traffic patterns and traffic history, the vast majority and I mean 90%
(17:28):
or more is music videos, game walkthroughs, just stupid, stupid, stupid content, not
valid educational content.
I like YouTube, you know.
The social media versus streaming stuff is another interesting bit that comes out with
(17:50):
that and I even think we've blocked comments and all that stuff within YouTube for years
and years.
For years, yeah.
And that makes me feel like it's not social media but Instagram can just be photos shared
back and forth and that is literally social media so why wouldn't YouTube be video format
social media?
It's easy to get there on that definition when you really just take a half a step back.
(18:14):
It's not really about the text and the comments so much as the content.
It is social media content.
Well this kind of settles that debate over if a state were to block or ban social media
in schools, YouTube now officially falls into that category based on this case or some
of the other cases that are going to come.
Yeah, but you don't have to listen to courts.
(18:37):
This is the no politics episode.
Take us out.
Take us out.
Take us out.
Get this devil back out, Mark, please.
I have a news story, Mark.
Can I interject?
Uh oh.
It's not on the agenda.
It's not on the agenda.
I'm nervous about this.
Go ahead.
It's fine.
Did you all see the video of the judge berate the IT guy?
Oh yeah.
(18:57):
It was great.
It's not great.
Great video.
Can't stand the judge.
Yeah, right.
So, yeah.
I was just making sure you guys saw it.
We'll put a link to that in the podcast description, too.
Yeah, definitely put a link to that in the description.
Typical tech guy.
Love that guy.
Yeah, like trying to make a joke, trying to get the guy to laugh, and he gets kicked
out of the courtroom, and the judge, get me his boss.
Okay.
Okay, buddy.
That was probably, that's probably the best news of the week.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(19:18):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
What's your favorite thing of the week?
Judge yells at that guy.
My last story, very similar to that one, I think, can beat the judge.
Oh, yeah.
I see it, too.
I see it.
Okay.
Next one, so we talked about Waymo a couple weeks ago.
I was excited to drive in a Waymo for the very first time.
Well, sure enough, right after I got out of that Waymo, this article pops up.
(19:39):
So, Austin Independent School District, in Austin, Texas, has reported at least 19 incidents
of Waymos driving past school buses while their lights are flashing.
Obviously, that's a huge, huge safety issue.
The district even held a half-day data collection event in a parking lot.
They brought in school buses, they brought in Waymo engineers in Waymo cars.
(20:02):
They were all excited to come together so they could train the Waymo cars to recognize
the stoplights and these arms.
It continued afterwards.
It didn't work.
So, Waymos have been having a major, major issue with these Waymo vehicles just driving
right past school bus violations.
There was a National Transportation Safety Advisory that was put out about this.
(20:26):
And school police even noticed that 98% of human drivers who get one violation never
get another one, whereas Waymo just kept racking up the violations.
So...
Yeah, kind of like Tiger Woods.
Oof.
Yeah.
Better figure that one out before Waymo hits Boston next month.
You know what EV autonomous car doesn't do that?
(20:49):
Pass up school buses?
Wow.
See, I was hoping you'd say Tesla.
I was going to say Rivian.
Are you just making this up?
Yeah.
Well, like, FSD will stop for a bus, right?
Like, I figured you guys would say Tesla because it's no secret.
(21:11):
But Josh, we try to give actual news here.
Oh, whatever.
Do we need to have, like, a sober check before each episode?
I am not sober.
He was making up facts.
Dick is out of here, Mark.
Okay, all right.
Get a bigger shovel.
Last one.
(21:31):
In the court case from Texas where the IT support went wrong, it has nothing compared
to the IT support that the Artemis II space shuttle launch needed yesterday.
Oh, man.
So, the three of us are space geeks.
We will text each other when there's a big launch and we'll all talk about it.
Well, the Artemis II is the biggest launch of the year.
(21:52):
That's the one that's going to be going to the moon and back.
Not landing on the moon, just circling it.
Further than we've ever gone before, Mark.
No politics, Josh.
I'm just saying, Mark.
I'm just saying, Mark.
All right, Commander Reid Wiseman had to call Houston with a problem.
I want to play this interaction for you here.
We suspect the issue with your PCD may be Optimus software.
(22:16):
We were able to connect to PCD1.
We can see it on the network.
So, with your go, we can remote in and take a look directly.
Yeah, go for it.
And then I also see that I have two Microsoft Outlooks and neither one of those are working.
If you want to remote in and check Optimus on those two Outlooks, that would be awesome.
All right, we will join in on your PCD and we'll let you know when we're done.
(22:39):
I love it.
If you have ever had a problem troubleshooting a laptop issue over the phone,
there is nothing like troubleshooting from tens of thousands of miles away
and then remoting into the astronaut's computer.
Well, I was just going to say that.
How amazing is that, that Houston is able to remote into a surface on a spaceship
(22:59):
moving how many thousands of miles an hour, how many thousands of miles away from Earth,
and I have difficulty remoting in with SCCM not even 300 yards away from my office.
It makes me feel like a winner.
Why are you remoting into a computer that's that close to your office?
You should just be walking down the hallway.
(23:19):
Walk, bro.
What a typical tech guy.
It's 300 yards, Mark.
You can see it with your eyes.
Just walk to the computer, man.
Oh, my God, Josh.
(23:41):
I bet you, like, did you put in a ticket?
You probably yell across the room.
Yes.
You hit refresh in the support system until the ticket's in?
I'm not remoting in until there's a ticket in here.
Well, I just wanted to point out that Houston did not ask Commander Reid Wiseman
to submit a ticket before they fixed his outlook issues.
(24:04):
Now, clearly, there's some training to be done there.
Clearly, they should be switching from Microsoft to Google, but I'm not going to do that.
Well, that, too.
Yeah, that, too.
That's it for the news.
Until next week.
Love it.
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(24:27):
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All right.
So, Mark has, I guess, really all three of us have spent quite a bit of time
(24:50):
talking about the debrief from Charlie.
And I think we're going to get into a couple different discussion points
that we've heard from listeners and maybe some third parties
about our interview last week.
Mark, do you want to take the intro on this and discussion?
Yeah.
So, I think it's worth starting that we need to do a little bit
(25:12):
of fact-checking of the last episode because after we did the interview
with Charlie, we did some more digging into the incident itself,
into the data that was released.
And there's three or four points that we want to kind of clarify
or correct from the last episode.
The first one being the definition of directory-level information.
(25:33):
And after we were able to actually look at the data or talk with people
who have looked at the data, the term directory kind of has
two definitions with this.
There were two files or two main files that were released
from the Infinite Campus leak.
One was a quote-unquote directory of all possible school district persons
(25:55):
who have worked with Infinite Campus or could work with Infinite Campus.
So, that would be information that a public staff directory might have
that would be kind of publicly available for all district employees.
The second, though, I think that Charlie was referring to
is the FERPA definition of directory-level information,
which is student directory information or student names,
(26:17):
basic information that might be published in a newspaper
for sports rosters or academic, you know, your honor roll type stuff.
So, I think there were those two definitions put in there.
And yes, there was directory information from staff that was in the file.
There was also some student information that was released
that would fall under the typical definition of directory-level information,
(26:42):
meaning names.
You can think about if you're submitting a ticket to a company,
you might put a student name into a ticket.
But that doesn't classify under the definition of directory-level information
under FERPA.
So, even though that was student name,
it does not meet FERPA's definition of directory-level information.
So, we can't assume that a student name is okay to be released publicly.
(27:06):
Well, and somebody brought up the point that with a release like that,
you don't know which one of those kids has opted out of those types
of directory-release information.
Right.
Parents have the right to opt out of directory sharing,
and Infinite Campus wouldn't know which of the students' names were opted out.
The second is the hardest one, and that is Charlie,
(27:29):
the CEO of Infinite Campus,
described a data deletion process where their staff would scrub tickets
of any sort of personally identifiable information in tickets.
As we saw on the databreaches.net article about the release,
and as we've talked to folks who have seen the actual files themselves,
that did not happen.
And so, either that process does not exist at Infinite Campus,
(27:52):
or it's just not followed consistently.
So, unfortunately, you have to assume that any sort of PII that you submitted
in a ticket to Infinite Campus would have been included in this breach.
Now, you guys know more about the ticketing process for Infinite Campus.
It appears that the tickets that were included in this breach
were the ones that were escalated to Infinite Campus.
(28:15):
Is that correct?
Yeah.
So, I chatted with support,
and it's the ones that got transferred to Infinite Campus
for typically a bug notice or a programming assistance
that either remained open or was closed with a status of in-release,
meaning that the problem was addressed in a release package.
(28:38):
Those are the tickets.
So, it's two subsets of tickets.
Of my I don't know how many hundreds of tickets,
I think we had 25 or 12 that were potential breached
or that were released in the data set.
So, it is not every ticket that was entered into the support portal.
(28:59):
It is a subset of tickets that only made it up to Infinite Campus for referral.
And then the last point of clarification was when Charlie said
what districts can do to find out what those tickets are.
Josh, you followed those instructions that Charlie gave us the very next day.
And can you describe what your outcome was?
Yeah.
(29:20):
So, I got a phone call from support because in my ticket,
I might have said that I was contacted by an outside security researcher
and put security researcher in quotes.
That, I think, caused a bit of a panic thinking that we were being extorted,
and we weren't.
(29:41):
Just to be clear, their worry was because the threat was that they were going
to start contacting people and asking for money, meaning individual districts.
So, they wanted to make sure that no one was trying to extort money from us.
And no one had.
It was not a nefarious contact.
It was friendly, if you will.
But I did get a call from support after I submitted my ticket.
(30:04):
But, Chris, you and I have heard from districts that have submitted tickets
of the same content asking, hey, can you help me figure out what tickets I have
that were in the breach?
What type of content was in them?
And they still have not heard back from support on that ticket, right?
Yeah.
I've heard from a couple that got some initial kind of to put the homework
(30:29):
back on the tech person of the district.
Like, hey, download your tickets and look at them,
then let us know what tickets you have questions about.
Yeah.
And that's an interesting circle of a thing, which I think is to this point.
Infinite campus identity.
So, Charlie said that they have process, procedure, whatever,
that they would have contacted the schools that had sensitive data exposed.
(30:56):
So then we assume that that contact took place with all those schools.
But then we also know that there are schools that are seeing what data was
put out there and they have question marks around if that data is alarming
to them or not.
And they didn't get contacted by infinite campus.
(31:17):
So there's a little bit of a pocket here where did infinite campus make a
decision for a school district when really the school district would make a
different decision if they were fully aware of what data was exposed?
Right.
Yeah.
Now, in their defense, in infant campuses defense,
the data that was released publicly really is a much,
(31:40):
much smaller risk footprint than we've seen from other breaches.
Like with power school, we are seeing tickets.
We are seeing, hey, I'm having a problem with the state report.
And then the name of a student, this record isn't going through.
I think the worst one that I have seen was actually the one that was published
on data breaches.net,
where it talked about some student names and some arrest records.
(32:01):
But that is really the extent of the data.
So in the grand scheme of things,
this is nowhere near the level of severity of something like power school.
But again,
this does have some PII and districts are rightfully so concerned about what
data was released for their students.
Yeah.
And if you're one of those districts that you feel like that is PII,
(32:23):
that has risen to a certain level,
it doesn't matter what anybody says on, you know,
oh, it's not that big of a deal.
It's a big deal to you.
Like it's going to impact your workflow.
It's going to impact your day.
You likely have to change how you are submitting tickets to campus going
forward.
You know, that type of discussion,
are you contacting a parent to say, hey,
(32:45):
this really isn't our fault,
but your kid's arrest record just got published on the dark web.
Like that's not a fun conversation I have to have now.
Well,
in every state is a patchwork of legislation and we don't quite know what
every district's responsibilities are.
Yeah.
I was talking to a school district south of us and he was wondering what to
(33:06):
do.
And again,
it's literally what we talked about download,
you know,
you can get into the support system,
you can download all your tickets,
you can look at your tickets,
you can analyze your tickets and then ask questions,
you know,
open up a ticket and push back on infinite campus and get information.
You can,
you can choose.
This is what we talked about.
You can choose to just take the statement of,
(33:29):
hey,
we would have contacted you if you were exposed.
You can choose to just take that sentence and assume the best.
And you're going to have to decide in your district decide,
is that a good steward of the data?
And are you being a proper protector of the data?
Or should you do some more work to download these tickets and to ask these
(33:51):
further questions?
I think that's kind of where schools are going to be at with this.
When you just don't,
you just don't know.
Yeah.
If you,
if you cross that line and you make the decision to,
to start notifying people,
it ends up being a PR issue.
Like it,
it's not a fun problem.
Well,
flipping this from problems to solutions,
(34:12):
we all have to submit tickets to companies.
We all have to,
to escalate problems.
And a lot of times that does require us to submit,
or to communicate specific student records or student information.
How do we handle this moving forward?
You're going to have to deal with companies.
You're going to have to submit support tickets,
actually SRA SIS to,
or to other companies.
What are you going to do moving forward after this incident?
(34:36):
It definitely has led to some conversations between my SIS person and I,
about how we are going to identify issues,
like what interfaces and stuff where we need to give an example.
Like it's,
it's very hard to troubleshoot an issue with support without an example.
So,
you know,
his history has proven that we've all,
(34:57):
we've done student name and field.
That's an issue,
blah,
blah,
blah going forward.
You know,
I mentioned the idea of using the person ID out of infinite campus,
because it's not the name and it's not this Missouri state ID.
It's the infinite campus idea that only exists in campus.
So you have to,
you would have to have access to campus to be able to figure out who that person is.
(35:24):
It's not a name.
So the threat actor isn't going to be able to look up.
Susie that goes to Timbuktu high school.
Okay.
We can figure out who that is.
We can figure out who her parents are and try and extort,
I don't know,
thousand dollars out of her parents,
but if they just have a seven digit number,
it's going to be much more difficult to do that.
I don't know.
(35:45):
And Charlie pushed back on that.
I,
I'm not sure I agree with that pushback.
Yeah,
that was one point I disagree with him on.
And I think the idea is if you didn't listen to the segment of the,
of the interview from last week,
Josh had said,
should we put the campus ID number in there instead of the name?
And Charlie saying,
that's even more dangerous.
I think the context for that pushback from Charlie was if you have the
(36:08):
entire infinite campus database,
that's this ID can combine tables.
And I understand that that that's potentially very dangerous,
but in this example,
where you only have the support tickets,
or we only have one table of information,
that ID number really is useless.
So I would push back and say,
you know,
(36:29):
the least amount of information you can provide the better.
And if that information on its own is useless to an outside threat actor,
then that's the best way to do it.
But again,
the ultimate message is really just to minimize the amount of data that
you're putting into a ticket.
And in this case,
I think it would have been better if we had been using campus IDs.
(36:50):
And let's be real.
If it got to a scenario where they had the entire campus database structure
so that they could figure out what person ID is,
you can have a whole lot of problems and,
and being able to identify with a person ID is probably relatively small on
that list.
Yeah.
So,
(37:11):
I mean,
it's a world of hurt.
Yeah.
It's a hard spot because I,
I think Charlie on another point that I think touches this,
you,
you want the system to be usable.
So you're doing the whole security versus convenience or just usability.
I'm saying a kid's name and a ticket.
That's the quickest path to get support taken care of.
(37:33):
I imagine because you've cut a lot of steps to figure out the person ID,
but that can be a,
you know,
we're,
we're getting into what would be best practice and the high standard to
follow.
So I,
I easy get there too on the person ID.
But then I think about like my districts,
CIS folks,
and they would really not like,
(37:54):
if I made the call that we're for sure going to do that in every single
ticket.
Yeah.
And I think it would get really hard to troubleshoot some things where
you're putting in a,
you know,
we even put in files we put in,
we ran this extract and look,
it's doing this to every single kid,
you know,
usually try to do sample sets as opposed to the whole file.
(38:15):
It was talked about that.
Even uploading files is not proper protocol really with tickets that they
should get those things scrubbed,
but that's not really what happens for the folks that are in the trenches
working with support tickets.
It's so funny to me and Mark,
you talk about this.
I think it was the week before I did the interview with RT,
the CEO of incident IQ,
and he did some bigger picture philosophical stuff on what we put into
(38:39):
tickets.
And that was more for me just,
you know,
within my district teacher to,
to me,
the tech department,
I,
at that time,
I was not thinking about all the tickets that I do to a company.
That episode is really fitting for what RT was unpacking compared to this
on.
(39:00):
Right.
It is time.
We need,
we need to think of a support system,
every support system that we use as a,
a place that there's some significant data housed in there.
I'm your support system,
Chris.
It's also worth noting too.
The,
the person who did look at the data and talk to us about this noted that
(39:21):
not even 10% of tickets had any sort of PII in it.
And,
and 10% was a,
was a stretch.
So we're talking about a very small amount of tickets.
We're talking about a very small amount of data in those tickets.
And,
you know,
I think at the end of the day,
what we're trying to do is just say,
how do we minimize the amount of data that's flowing between organizations?
(39:42):
It flows,
it flows in emails,
all that kind of stuff.
And if you can get away with making a phone call to specify the examples,
that'd be great.
But for the most part,
I think people are,
are already doing that.
They're minimizing the amount of data that goes through email and goes
through tickets because of this exact kind of situation that can happen.
All right.
My last question for you,
(40:03):
does this change how you negotiate vendor data,
privacy agreements?
I I'm in the middle of a DPA fight right now.
With a 3d printer.
I yeah.
Over a 3d printer.
Yeah.
Oh my.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Do you tell.
(40:26):
Let's unpack this.
Bamboo labs.
Bamboo labs.
You are on my list right now.
Bamboo.
There's a,
it's a big list.
Don't worry about this.
There's a lot of people on Josh's list.
What kind of data is in,
in the 3d printer,
man?
Yeah.
Triangles.
Triangles.
Our kids writing their names in CAD files.
(40:49):
Student work is student work as student work,
as it was explained to me by TEC and the Missouri state data privacy.
With a smiley face on it.
Lady.
It shouldn't be going to China.
No,
like it's a big,
I've got major drama around bamboo labs right now because of a DPA.
They won't sign.
So you would say just keep fighting the fight.
(41:11):
I,
I think you have to,
I think you have to.
Hey,
a bamboo labs.
This is Mark here.
And,
and Chris is on my side.
We're we're on your side on this one.
Okay.
Yeah.
Just,
just ignore him.
He'll go away.
Whatever.
You better put MFA on that software before you hit print on that coffee cup.
(41:35):
You're going to give to your mom.
What kind of 3d printer doesn't have a network card.
It's only wifi.
I don't know.
Mark,
you got the shovel still.
Yeah.
Well,
that's our episode for night.
If you are also trying to get a 3d printer in your school district and cannot get bamboo labs to sign the data privacy agreement,
Josh's email is listed in the show notes,
(41:59):
but don't email Chris and I,
man.
Say it,
say it,
say,
I was going to say,
I hope bamboo is a bamboo labs.
Like,
if they get hacked,
I hope that your ticket gets leaked.
Cause I would love to read that whole transcript and just see the whole thing play out.
(42:20):
I would love to see the behind the scenes notes.
The,
the,
you know?
Yeah,
I guarantee.
Well,
so funny story.
We,
we,
we installed the software on one of our department machines.
Cause you know,
we're that we had a little demo and they're like,
oh,
if you,
if you install it in standalone mode,
it doesn't talk to the network.
It doesn't go out to the internet.
Yada,
(42:41):
yada,
yada.
So I,
one of my guys installed the bamboo lab software and,
uh,
guess what?
It goes out to maker world.
It goes out to all these different sites that curate 3d projects.
So I had one of my guys search for the term,
the term sexy.
And,
uh,
you can imagine it came back with all sorts of NSF W3D imaging products projects for,
(43:06):
um,
to use.
So,
uh,
yeah,
that,
that's the rabbit hole that we're going down guys.
Oh,
bamboo labs is not SIPA compliant either.
This is a travesty of an episode.
This is crazy.
What a way to end this,
Josh.
Yeah.
It's the life I live,
man.
We are,
(43:27):
you also have data privacy agreements on your document cameras.
No,
we have,
I thinking about that one for a second.
What kind of tech department you run and you don't have DPAs on your doc?
I feel like,
yeah,
I feel like,
I feel like Mark's making fun of me.
Yeah.
Mark,
do you need to wrap up anything in seriousness?
(43:48):
No,
I'm,
I'm good.
Um,
I would also,
it's Chris and I are,
are both laughing at you in,
in unison.
It's not just me.
I imagine Steve Smith is with me on this from SDPCA.
Oh,
I'm calling Steve Smith as soon as this episode is over.
I think we could do an exclusive episode just to this.
He's probably heard about it.
Cause I've been raising the heck with TEC about this.
(44:10):
Okay.
I got a couple more things as a,
I'll pick up the shovel.
I'll get us out of this thing.
Uh,
we are going to be at Kosen.
Uh,
that's like in a week and a half or something.
Uh,
and we're doing a K-12 Tech Talk Kosen happy hour.
Uh,
it's that Monday night,
April 13th,
six to 8 PM.
Uh,
if you email us info at K-12 tech talk podcast.com,
(44:32):
uh,
you can RSVP.
Uh,
we'd love to hang out with you at Kosen again,
April 13th,
uh,
six to 8 PM is our happy hour.
Uh,
sponsors,
uh,
for that are NTP and their partner checkpoint.
And then we're going to be at Kosen just in general with the table.
We'll be recording a stop by hangout,
uh,
say hi to us,
uh,
for that as well.
(44:53):
Uh,
another thanks to our sponsors.
You can email Fortinet,
uh,
at Fortinet podcast at Fortinet.com do their firewall,
all their good stuff for your security within your district.
And then check out managed methods at managed methods.com.
Uh,
they can keep a pulse,
uh,
on your,
uh,
Microsoft environment and your Google environment,
uh,
as well.
And now,
(45:14):
uh,
we're going to transition into an interview with swank.
Uh,
I got the hangout with Brian Edwards was swank.
So check out this interview with swank,
uh,
and learn more about movies and TV shows and streaming and all that good stuff.
All right.
I'm hanging out with Brian Edwards was swank.
Brian,
how's it going?
I'm doing well.
Thanks,
Chris.
(45:35):
How are you doing today,
Brian?
That's a lie.
Like you're lying to me right now.
So we,
we,
we of course talk before we hit the record button,
go ahead and tell the quick story.
What,
what has happened to you today?
Yeah,
I was,
I was trying to just stay a high level,
I guess there,
and maybe a single report.
Well,
but,
uh,
no,
I unfortunately hit a deer on my way into the office today.
So I've been messing with the assessment of some damage and,
(45:59):
and my assumption that my radiator is probably just leaking over the
parking lot here at the office at the moment that I got to go try and get
solved later on today.
So it's been a bit of a whirlwind morning for me.
Yeah.
I want to say,
I appreciate you still joining,
um,
because your head's probably going through those.
Yeah.
Like you're,
you're leaking out some radiator fluid.
(46:20):
Uh,
you just hit a deer.
Uh,
so you got a lot going on,
but you're still here to hang out with me for a few minutes.
So I appreciate that greatly.
The deer got back up and ran off.
So if she's going to tough it out,
I suppose I might as well.
That's a riot.
So where are you coming to me from?
I think I know the answer,
but you tell me.
Yeah,
we're based in St.
(46:41):
Louis,
Missouri.
And so I live about 30 minutes outside of St.
Louis,
uh,
out of the country a little bit,
but our office is here in St.
Louis.
Yeah.
So I'm just like an hour and a half hour,
45 minutes South of St.
Louis.
So we're used to the whole deer thing.
Yeah.
Um,
I guess you're not used to it enough.
Uh,
it feels like a very Midwest conversation at the moment.
Dodged a deer this morning,
(47:03):
hit a deer this morning.
It's just one of those things.
Okay.
So let's,
that's enough deer talk.
Uh,
let's talk about swank.
So I know what swank is,
but our listeners may not,
um,
tell us about just swank again,
that high level thing.
Uh,
what is swank?
What do you guys do?
Yeah.
So swank motion pictures has actually been around now since the 1930s.
(47:26):
And we partner with all of the major movie studios.
So think Disney and Sony paramount universal Warner brothers and a
hundred others,
uh,
for what's called non-theatrical public performance licensing.
So,
uh,
copyright law basically says that if you're going to show a movie in
public outside of a movie theater,
essentially that you have to have a license in order to do.
So if it's in a public setting and we've been doing that now for,
(47:51):
for going on close to 90 years,
specifically as it relates to schools,
we provide a couple of things.
One is that public performance license.
And then we also provide a streaming platform for instructional support.
And the public,
uh,
that license that's like your bread and butter thing you would say,
right?
Yeah,
it's certainly our legacy,
(48:12):
uh,
legacy,
I guess,
product or legacy offering for K through 12 schools.
Uh,
we've been working in K through 12 schools now for roughly 30 years.
And again,
this license basically gives the entire school,
the ability to show movies legally for any reason.
So common kind of use cases of that would be things like,
you know,
(48:33):
family movie nights or fundraising events.
Uh,
you get into classroom parties or celebrations,
uh,
rewards days,
extracurricular movie uses,
uh,
a lot of just kind of the day-to-day uses of movies that happen in school
typically require licensing.
And that license is basically,
uh,
works like an insurance policy that ensures the school itself is covered
(48:56):
for all uses,
whether it's from,
you know,
a parent group at the school,
whether it's from a teacher,
whether it's from an administrator,
it's covering everybody to make sure that the access is done legally.
Awesome.
And then the second part of this,
and I,
I think this is probably what we'll dig into.
Uh,
like I said,
we've hung out before and,
and,
and Swank has been a proud sponsor with K-12 Tech Pro.
(49:18):
Uh,
you guys have hung out with us at Midwest Tech Talk.
Uh,
most folks should know about the first thing we just talked about,
uh,
get that thing on file,
make sure you're,
you're being,
uh,
a good,
uh,
well,
your ethics are in order and you're being a good steward of,
of,
of what you're showing across your district.
But the second part of this is the streaming service.
(49:41):
Uh,
and we won't dig into all the weeds of if a school uses Disney plus or
Netflix or yada,
yada,
yada,
because Swank has a solution,
uh,
to help schools,
to help,
uh,
K-12 Tech's battle through,
Hey,
we got to let this teacher get the Amazon prime.
Yes,
no,
maybe,
uh,
can you tell us about your streaming service?
Yeah,
(50:02):
that's exactly.
And,
and,
and we've,
we,
you know,
we've been,
uh,
we rolled this out to K through 12 schools back in 2019 and kind of the
foundation behind it is within all of the copyright law of what you can and
cannot do with,
uh,
movies in a public setting.
One of the exceptions to a license being required is actually the face to
(50:25):
face instruction.
It's coming out of section one,
10 and copyright law that basically says that if I am a teacher in a
classroom with enrolled students and I'm using a,
a film or,
or whatever it may be to,
uh,
teach as a part of my curriculum,
uh,
with,
with dedicated learning objectives behind it,
a license is not necessarily required,
but these days you alluded to it,
(50:46):
that access has become a challenge for a lot of teachers.
And,
and despite movies being never,
uh,
never more readily available to us as consumers from a teaching perspective,
that gets a little bit complicated,
but then teachers also use movies differently than we do when we're just
sitting on the couch.
Uh,
you know,
watching the newest release from Disney or somebody else.
(51:07):
And so the streaming library is meant to solve for not only those access
challenges,
it's meant to provide teachers an aggregate resource with thousands and
thousands of movies and documentaries and educational series to choose from.
It's meant to offer tools to teachers that align with,
uh,
how they use movies as a part of instruction,
right?
(51:28):
It's,
you know,
things like the ability to create what we call it bookmarks or segments of
films,
the ability to extend the classroom by assigning movies out to students,
uh,
the ability to connect movies to standards or curriculum accordingly.
Uh,
and then again,
the,
the high level piece of overcoming any access challenges,
overcoming any,
uh,
(51:49):
issues with either accessing DVDs or personal streaming sites or whatever
that may be,
and giving teachers an actual tool they can leverage that is built
specifically for the classroom.
Yeah.
I mean,
it looks like because it is,
uh,
it looks like the video streaming service library because it is,
um,
very nice looking.
(52:10):
Uh,
you can easily find what you're looking for.
Uh,
I know it does some levels too,
or it can,
if a teacher wants to watch something that you can get some principal
approval or administrative approval,
can you unpack that?
Yeah.
So,
so we build in,
we build in a lot of tools that,
that really try and span across all levels of education from students to
teachers to administration.
(52:31):
And,
and one point of feedback that we hear oftentimes from school districts
says that the administration wants some level of control over the movie
library itself.
I've had various districts across the country have different,
either policies related to their movie use,
or they have various films or resources that they allow or don't allow.
And they want to make sure that they're able to essentially consolidate
(52:55):
where teachers are accessing their film or their video resources in a way
that can be controlled.
And so on top of giving these teachers the ability to kind of use film in a
more dynamic way,
we give administrators oversight,
uh,
on the curation of the film library itself.
So teachers are able to identify the exact movies,
the exact documentaries that they need as a part of their instruction.
(53:16):
Uh,
and then they're able to curate that library through a request process,
which basically says to their administration,
I need this film or this documentary as a part of my class coming up.
And the administration has that chance to mediate or review that to ensure
alignment with whatever it is,
various policies or if they require parental permission slips for the showing
(53:37):
of a film or something like that.
Yeah.
ensuring that that the administration is comfortable with the addition,
but also ensuring that the teachers are really empowered, uh,
by their intentional use of film.
And there's always kind of been this, uh,
behind the scenes aspect of movie use that,
that we've really developed a way to bring that to the forefront to make sure
that everybody's comfortable.
Uh, and well-intentioned, uh,
(53:58):
with the use of film as a part of instruction.
Yeah, I can think of.
A couple scenarios where we had an elementary teacher that showed a movie,
uh, that was at a higher, uh,
rating than she should have shown.
Uh, and that wasn't, um,
there could have been something in place like swank, uh,
(54:21):
that would have identified that before that movie was shown.
Um, that was kind of like a bummer situation.
And then even at our high school, you know,
we have like a movie class, uh,
and there were some films that were in there that are, uh,
and that teacher does a different kind of permission slip, uh,
cause they might show some, some, some different,
different films with different content.
Uh, but there was a couple films that were listed, uh, that I,
(54:46):
I felt like maybe there was some, uh,
Uh, it wasn't fully known in the loop, uh,
that those films were being shown in that class. So, uh,
swank with the approval process and then the reporting that you could pull,
um, that could be seen a whole lot easier.
And I guess let's really touch on that, the reporting part.
So we can see what's being watched, how much it's being watched,
(55:09):
that kind of stuff. Right.
Yeah. We, we provide aggregate data, uh, as a part of our,
our agreement renewal process, which will,
which will help schools understand which films are being used,
how frequently they're being used,
what has kind of the highest amount of usage, uh,
from a data privacy perspective, we stay pretty conservative.
So we don't actually break down usage by individual, um,
(55:30):
because we try and remain a higher level to make it, uh,
something that's more comfortable for districts through the data privacy
approval process. Yeah. But we do provide aggregate information on what
resources are being used, what films teachers have requested,
or how the, how the library has been curated throughout the year.
And then ultimately what that usage looks like accordingly.
(55:51):
Cool. Would you, um, give some advice to a school?
So I can remember when we went from, uh,
VCR to DVD, um,
and then even when we were trying to transition away from DVD,
we get a lot of, uh, pushback and feedback, um,
(56:12):
to, to get rid of that physical stuff. Uh,
so if I'm a school and I'm wanting to choose Swank as my solution, um,
but I have a superintendent that says, well, Hey,
I'm just cool with turning a blind eye to our folks using Netflix or
whatever, whatever, why should we pay money for a streaming service? Uh,
can't we just keep using the DVDs? Uh, what kind of advice would you give?
(56:34):
What should schools be saying or looking at if, if,
if we were at K-12 techs up, up in that, that position?
Yeah, I think there's, I think there's probably a lot there. One from,
from a physical media perspective, uh,
while it's still absolutely gets used at schools, uh, in certain instances,
it's just really limiting in certain cases, right?
The flexibility of what you can do with it,
despite having a DVD player in the classroom or DVD library on the shelves,
(56:58):
uh, these days, the, the, the,
the way streaming offers a more dynamic user experience,
the way that we can build it and customize it to align with how teachers use
this as part of instruction really changes the way in which teachers can teach
with film, right? That there is, uh,
even if you don't have the physical limitations of a,
of a DVD player not being in every classroom,
(57:20):
or a teacher having to check out an external DVD drive from a library, uh,
because laptops don't have them, you know,
Chromebooks don't play well with them. Uh,
even if you don't have those challenges, you know, a, a, a DVD, uh,
is just more limiting than streaming offers, right? Again,
I go back to some of the tools that we're able to provide within the platform,
(57:42):
uh, things like the ability to assign a movie out.
And oftentimes when we talk about the assignment of a film,
people immediately think, well, absenteeism, right?
And, and even if you just look at it from that perspective, a,
a student who's out sick on any given day, the,
they miss whatever assignments happened that day and the need to then check out
(58:03):
a DVD and assume that a DVD player is available at home is really interesting.
But then also with class time being so,
so limited and curriculum being so tight these days, you know, the, the,
the time and setup of a DVD or a DVD player, uh,
you're not showing full length films anyway.
So the amount of dynamic kind of access you can provide via streaming in a more
(58:25):
streamlined way with a larger library,
something that can be used in a more kind of on-demand setting,
especially for things like current events. Teachers can be more intentioned by,
by setting up a playlist.
They can essentially create these various bookmarks or segments to navigate
between multiple points of videos to bring in multiple perspectives.
You just can't do those things with physical media. Uh,
(58:47):
and there's a reason that,
that even us as consumers and our personal lives have transitioned typically
away from DVDs.
A lot of places don't sell DVDs anymore because of those limitations,
but it's obviously the experience and the expectation of kids and teachers
these days to have streaming access because it's to a certain extent all they
know because of how flexible and dynamic it can be.
(59:11):
Cool. And I, I guess, so you, so you see, I mean,
obviously you take like a film class. That's, that's easy, easy stuff, uh,
used for documentaries quite a bit. Um,
I'm sure that it, it is used sometimes for a movie day for awards.
Um, are there any other use cases that I'm quick for, for getting here?
(59:34):
Yeah. I mean, it's, it, there's a, you mentioned it for film classes,
but actually the,
the most common uses that we see from a subject perspective and K through 12
schools is actually typically in the social studies in the LA realm. Yeah.
But it bronze out past that as well, you know, from a,
from a science or a STEM perspective, we've got a lot of great films.
(59:55):
We've got a lot of great documentaries.
We've recently added things like discovery channel into our library, which,
which brings in a really strong dynamic of STEM related content.
We're continuously adding on what we call our educational series type content.
So even breaking free from traditional film or documentaries discovery being
that, but it's things like Bill Nye, the science guy,
(01:00:16):
things like Smithsonian channel. I love me some Bill Nye.
There is a, everybody does.
I feel like everybody in middle school watched a number of episodes.
So it really spans a lot of the subject areas,
but exactly as you mentioned tying back into the license,
when we provide schools or districts with access to streaming,
they're also getting that public performance license.
So what it does for them is it actually eliminates a lot of the guesswork.
(01:00:39):
It eliminates a lot of the evaluation of gray area on if a license is
required or if it's not required, because, you know,
simply that a movie is being shown in a classroom does not determine
whether a license is necessary or not. So the license removes that.
And then it gives teachers the ability to use it,
not only for their instruction and a more kind of dynamic and creative way,
but it also then allows for those kinds of licensed moments,
(01:01:02):
which would be classroom parties and celebrations.
It would be a rainy day recess. It would be a family movie night,
but it also, it would extend into things like aftercare programs.
Extended care programs that extend into like cafeteria time.
We'll see teachers that use the movies as a, with the license.
In April is coming up a big testing month for a lot of schools and,
and a lot of schools and educators like to give students a bit of a brain
(01:01:24):
break after those take place. All of that requires licensing,
but it also just requires a movie library to kind of be flexible with when
the day is.
And what the schedule is is accordingly.
And that's where we kind of bring all of that together.
So it's not only that access. It's not only the instructional tools,
but it's the licensing accordingly to make sure that it's just a
comprehensive outlet for all things video within a school.
(01:01:47):
And it's done. So at, from an ease of access perspective,
it's done. So from a legal perspective, it's done.
So done so from a copyright perspective,
and then it's done so with educational resources.
So it's a comprehensive outlet for all things video within a school.
So it's not only that access.
It's not only in the instructional tools,
but it's done. So from a copyright perspective,
and then it's done. So with educators in mind.
(01:02:08):
Yeah. Yeah.
My perfect scenario is swank and then block everything else,
block Disney plus net Netflix, all the other things.
Let's pick a district supported platform.
If a teacher is having an issue with swank,
that teacher can do a support ticket with us and we can, you know,
(01:02:30):
we can help them figure out what's going on as opposed to whatever other
streaming sites that they have that we can't, we can't support.
What am I supposed to do?
It's one of the most common calls that we get is that, is that from a,
from a district IT director,
who's looking at blocking access to all of these various sites out there,
(01:02:53):
but doesn't necessarily want to cause the disruption of their teachers
without having them in place first,
because they know how often movies are used as a part of instruction.
They know how important it is to the day to day of teaching. And so, you know,
there's,
everybody's trying to not be disruptive to that process until they find an
outlet. And that's, that's really, like I said,
the number one call that we get oftentimes it has to do with wanting to,
(01:03:16):
to kind of consolidate this down to block access to what some of these other
platforms are. But we also, you know, there's,
we've started to get an uptick in,
in kind of the setup requests related simply to aside from just access to
there's a lot of district IT folks that we're talking to these days that are
just trying to consolidate the number of disparate logins that are happening
(01:03:39):
on their network from a security perspective. And exactly, as you mentioned,
having kind of a single access point that single sign on through your district
network,
where it can consolidate or reconcile all of this into a single location
simplifies things for a lot of districts. And again,
in alignment with what teachers are looking to use in the first place.
(01:04:01):
For sure. All right. Well, thank you so much, Brian. So check out swank,
swank.com slash K-12 schools is the spot to check out. They can do your easy,
safe, legal streaming movie access for your school district.
So swank.com slash K-12 schools. Thanks again, Brian.
Thanks Chris. Really appreciate it.
Good luck with that car and that deer.
(01:04:23):
I am anxiously awaiting what the, what my fate is, I must say.
The views and opinions expressed in the K-12 Tech Talk podcast are for the
(01:04:45):
personal opinions of Josh, Chris, and Mark,
and do not represent the views or opinions of our sponsors or other
organizations that we're affiliated with.
The material information presented here is for general information and
entertainment purposes only. Thanks for listening. And we'll see you next week.
On this week's episode of the K-12 Tech Talk podcast, we debrief the Infinite Campus interview
(00:04):
from last week, and discuss some of the new developments with the incident, including
what was actually contained in the release data.
We also discuss the latest tech support requests from the Artist Bracket, and Waymo's challenges
with school buses in Texas.
Thanks for listening.
Live from the NTP studios, this is the K-12 Tech Talk podcast, this is episode 258.
(00:26):
I am Josh, Mid-Missouri Tech Director, K-12 School District.
Down the road from me is Chris.
What's up?
Who is on Christmas break, Easter break.
All week, baby.
Yeah.
Wait, what?
I haven't worked.
I mean, I did work.
I'm working all the time.
You're not.
Don't, don't even.
Don't, don't even.
(00:46):
Wait, wait, wait.
Does your school district break for the whole week, or just you?
All week and a day.
We've been off all this week, and we're off Monday as well.
Your whole district?
Entire district.
I did go in for one day.
I think I was the only person there.
We are not.
So we are about 30 minutes north of Chris.
(01:07):
We are, we had students today.
Our students are not here, are not in session tomorrow or Monday.
Classified staff is.
You don't have to go too far north.
My wife's district, they have students tomorrow, Good Friday, and they have parent-teacher
conferences and PD on Easter Monday.
Did you introduce Mark?
Oh, hi, Mark.
(01:28):
Hey.
And then you don't have to go too much further north than my wife's district, and those districts
are having school.
And there's Mark.
Well, no, he's.
He's east.
A little more east.
He's east.
He's.
I'm just trying to get Mark an introduction here.
I'm good.
I'm good.
I'm here.
He's in, he's in New England.
(01:48):
I'm in Boston.
Yes.
The school is off tomorrow for the, for the kids and teachers.
Oh, are they?
Yeah.
Interesting.
It's actually good.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
Sorry.
It's good.
It's a good Friday.
Good Friday.
So, last week.
Josh wipes the ash off his forehead from Wednesday.
Oh, that, no, that was 40 days ago, Chris.
I'm not Catholic.
(02:09):
I don't know the thing.
Okay.
I'm a regular, I'm a regular one.
You're the, you're the whatever one.
You're a heathen.
It's fine.
You're a Protestant.
You protest against the first church.
So, we really didn't unpack.
Dig us out.
Dig us out.
Here we go.
Yeah.
So, you guys know, we're, Chris and I, we're good friends.
(02:30):
None of this is real.
We really didn't get to unpack the episode last week.
We had Charlie on from Infinite Campus, the CEO, to talk about their Salesforce incident
that they had.
And we really, we thought he was super transparent, was very, at the time, we felt like he was
(02:52):
honest about what was going on, how quickly they were able to establish that they were
having an issue, how quickly they were able to respond and mitigate that issue, and then
go through that investigation process.
And according to him, we're notifying districts and assessing the damage, if you will.
(03:12):
Before we get into our thoughts and our commentary on that, Chris, do you want to hit a sponsor
or two?
For sure.
So, Powergistics, in the podcast description, I'm going to put their charging station solution
matrix.
They have a take-home model solution as well.
And they have some cool needs assessment for, if you're going to put a charging station
(03:33):
in a classroom, for teachers or for students, they have like some needs assessment surveys
that you can do to fill out, to figure out what your power needs are.
So check out Powergistics and check out that stuff in the podcast description.
And also for the month of April, Hayden's Hot Deal on Kato Tech Pro is some good discount
(03:54):
savings on Powergistics items.
So go to Kato Tech Pro and check out Hayden's Hot Deal there.
And we appreciate you supporting our sponsors because without them, we wouldn't be able
to afford Mark.
So unpacking this, and we've received quite a bit of feedback from school districts and
third-party companies, I guess, for a little bit of commentary on this.
(04:19):
Guys, what were your thoughts in the moment with the discussion with Charlie?
And then what are your thoughts a week later now that we have a little bit more clarity
into the situation?
And one of us, maybe more than one of us, has been contacted by a third-party, let's
just say security researcher to talk about data.
(04:40):
What do you guys think?
It's a very tough episode to listen to because you have both a very honest and transparent
description of the situation.
At the same time, some people, some viewers felt or listeners felt that there was a little
downplayed and there was a high level of confidence for an incident that for some people could
be very serious.
(05:01):
So I think I'm very mixed on it.
I definitely hear some concerns around the approach that Charlie took on that episode.
But at the same time, this was a very, very different incident from the PowerSchool breach
and from some of the other cyber incidents that we've talked about.
Yeah.
Chris, thoughts?
Yeah, I loved that he was willing to come on so early in the ongoing investigation.
(05:29):
And we didn't know it till he was talking about it, but the timeline of the data being
put out on the dark web was the morning of when we did the interview.
And he was still willing to come on.
So I give great kudos to Charlie for his willingness to still come on and still be transparent,
still give us some information, let us have our own thoughts then after that on what we're
(05:53):
going to do with the interview and that information.
But then after it settles a little bit, and then you see some stuff, and I think we're
going to unpack this, that came out after the interview, well, then it brings about
questions on, it's not like the interview happened and I just feel great about my district's
data and that I just completely dodged the bullet.
(06:16):
Or for all my neighbors and just all of our comrades across the country with Infinite
Campus that were all in the clear, I don't feel that way.
I think I probably had a slightly good feeling after the interview, and then I don't feel
that way so much, again, not to the PowerSchool breach level at all, but I just don't feel
(06:39):
so warm and fuzzy if I had a little bit of that after the interview as I did.
Yeah, and I would echo that.
So we did that interview with Charlie Thursday afternoon, evening, last week, Friday evening,
I think I was at dinner and the person who runs databreaches.net started contacting me
(07:05):
on a messaging app saying, hey, I just posted this article.
I was able to do a dig on the data.
I was able to download the data and started parsing through it, and I posted an article
with what I have found with the data that was downloaded.
She did a very good job at going through the files that were available and that a big
(07:29):
cache of it were these Salesforce tickets, and she highlighted a handful of tickets that
I felt like one in particular in her article highlighted a ticket that referenced juvenile
arrest record information that wasn't redacted, and if you recall our interview with Charlie,
(07:50):
he more or less claimed on more than one instance that campus's standard operating
procedure is to remove any sort of PII out of tickets that they find as a default standard
operating procedure, like they do that on the regular.
Well, this article on databreaches.net highlighted there was student name, district that she
(08:14):
redacted out of the article.
She didn't publish the name of the district, but it was referencing arrest information
of a student.
So you couple that, Chris, I know you and I are in a couple different forums for Missouri
for a user group.
There are a couple other districts in there that are saying very, very similar things
that we've got tickets that were in the breach that had student name and XYZ type of information.
(08:42):
So I think there's, Charlie was on here and very confident about saying that that was
their SOP, but then we have, we're hearing from districts firsthand that are saying that
that's not their experience with the tickets.
And now what we're seeing from databreaches.net as far as real data being released.
(09:03):
So I think that's a big X factor for me from that interview.
I don't know.
It's interesting to me.
Well, I think we'll come back to it later on in this episode.
We've got some more detailed information on what that breach contains, and then we'll
go into what lessons can we learn and take from this incident from the district perspective.
And yeah, we'll see if we can hopefully make some improvements for next time.
(09:27):
All right, Mark, what do you got any news for us?
We got lots of news.
Actually we're catching up.
We haven't had a news segment for a couple of weeks.
So we're going to go back to the Navigate360 article from last week.
So we talked about the Navigate360 is the global Intel tip line where schools can set
up a form for students to submit tips.
(09:48):
That was breached.
93 gigabytes of data was stolen and put out there.
This was actually, we talked about this as being a ransom incident.
This was actually an incident of political hacktivism.
The attacker, who goes by the name of InternetYiffMachine, had stated that parents...
What?
Say that again?
(10:09):
InternetYiffMachine is the hacker's name, had posted that parents shouldn't try to help
police by basically doing their job for them and allowing kids to submit tips.
So this was a political hacktivism incident rather than a ransomware or financially motivated
incident.
The data was made available to journalists and researchers.
(10:32):
It was not necessarily made publicly available, but I thought this was a very different kind
of breach that we're used to seeing.
Rather than trying to steal money from these companies, it was more around teaching the
community a lesson around supporting and working with police.
So very interesting to see that twist on it.
Hmm.
(10:52):
Interesting.
A couple of weeks ago, the White House released their AI Legislative Recommendations Framework.
So this is basically the Trump administration stating what they want to see Congress do
and push for AI legislation.
There was a lot in there around AI, but the first section was all around AI and students.
There's a lot of things in here that we can support.
This is all about parents' rights and giving parents tools for managing privacy and screen
(11:16):
time and content, parent consent for using AI by minors, features for mitigating self-harm
and health risks, and limiting data on children for model training.
So all of those things I can get behind.
The thing where I get a little bit concerned, though, is it also wants Congress to limit
(11:37):
what states can do.
So we've seen some pretty groundbreaking legislation out of California around AI and minors.
Trump administration wants all that to be done at the federal level.
So I do understand the need for that, but the reason I get concerned about that is I
don't see Congress doing much of anything right now.
And so while AI is rippling its way through the United States, if we're not going to allow
(12:02):
states to do anything about it and we're going to wait for Congress to do something, I think
we're going to be waiting quite a long time.
So I'm a little bit mixed on this one.
I think there's some good stuff and some stuff I'm a little bit concerned about, but that
is the White House legislative recommendation frameworks.
Yeah, I would agree with you on that, Mark.
I think we're going to see little to any action out of Congress this year.
(12:24):
That's an interesting flip with typical Trump stuff.
It's been a break down the feds and give it back to the state.
So this is an interesting flip of the thing.
That's interesting.
Yeah, for sure.
You mean he changes his mind?
Moving on, moving on, moving on.
(12:45):
No new wars.
Sorry, sorry, sorry.
Josh, what's your stance on data centers?
Yeah.
So inside joke, it's not fair to have inside jokes, Chris.
So my town is embroiled in a data center controversy.
There's a data center wanting to come in roughly 300 acres, $6 billion investment into our town.
(13:13):
And these two guys sat through two hours worth of public comment and got a true taste of
what my town has to offer.
To be clear, it was a remote live stream.
We weren't actually in the gymnasium watching people comment on the data center.
I felt like I was there, though.
I was very involved.
Josh did not watch his own town's debate on the data center, but Chris and I did.
(13:38):
I knew how it was going to go.
Yeah, no.
And I joined the comments section.
You did join the comments and they were hilarious.
I enjoyed talking with a small town in mid-Missouri about their thoughts on the data center.
And I shared my thoughts and that was Chris and I, that was our Wednesday evening.
(14:01):
Pretty great.
My favorite was Mark asks how far the noise would travel and they said something like
2.5 miles.
And Mark goes, good, I'm 2.6.
Man, that was good.
Anyway, dig us out.
Dig us out.
All right.
All right.
(14:22):
All right.
Another big case from last week.
Google and Meta have been in court.
They've been in court for a lot of different cases, but one of the big cases was settled.
This really is a landmark or a bellwether case, as they call it.
There's about 2,000 pending lawsuits on Google and Meta over social media addiction.
The first big case was settled, a plaintiff was issued a $6 million award for harms done
(14:47):
by Google and by Meta, specifically YouTube and Meta.
Meta was liable for 70% of the claim.
The juries had found that these two companies had done enough harm and they had acted with
malice.
This is being known as the big tobacco moment, that it's kind of opening the door up for
many, many other cases.
(15:07):
So this would be very interesting to see what happens over the next few years as I'm going
to guess hundreds, if not thousands of cases just start stacking up against these two companies
for harms done against kids, just as we saw in the 90s with big tobacco.
That'll be interesting.
I worked for a hospital in that timeframe of the big tobacco settlements and the amount
of money that flowed into hospitals due to the healthcare that had to be provided for
(15:31):
individuals that had lung cancer and heart disease that couldn't pay.
It was amazing at those tobacco settlements, the money that came in.
Yeah.
Hey, by the way, check out chromebookparts.com for all of your Chromebook parts, all your
needs and they actually do this $5 credit.
(15:52):
If you have a used, a damaged, a defective motherboard, no catch, you can give that to
them and they'll give you a $5 credit for any of their parts, devices, accessories and
repairs, their services.
I have used chromebookparts.com for a long time.
It's easy to get a hold of them, get the parts very quickly.
If we've ever had any parts with issues, they're quick to swap those things around and they
(16:16):
actually do special K12 Tech Pro pricing as well.
Check out chromebookparts.com or if you're just wanting to see what they're all about,
throw them some damaged motherboards and get $5 out of them.
I got a question around this case though and it's related to YouTube.
One of the big debates in this case was around YouTube being a social media platform versus
a streaming platform.
(16:36):
As you can imagine, Google argued YouTube is just a streaming video platform but it
was found that the damages caused by the social media features of YouTube really contributed
to a lot of the damage to this young woman.
Does that change your perspective on YouTube in schools because we have talked about this
at length over the years around the pros and cons of YouTube in the classroom?
(17:01):
I still don't like it.
I think it is a far greater risk to be a time suck than it is valid content but don't misunderstand
that statement.
There is valid content on YouTube that can be used and embedded in the classroom but
when we look at traffic patterns and traffic history, the vast majority and I mean 90%
(17:28):
or more is music videos, game walkthroughs, just stupid, stupid, stupid content, not
valid educational content.
I like YouTube, you know.
The social media versus streaming stuff is another interesting bit that comes out with
(17:50):
that and I even think we've blocked comments and all that stuff within YouTube for years
and years.
For years, yeah.
And that makes me feel like it's not social media but Instagram can just be photos shared
back and forth and that is literally social media so why wouldn't YouTube be video format
social media?
It's easy to get there on that definition when you really just take a half a step back.
(18:14):
It's not really about the text and the comments so much as the content.
It is social media content.
Well this kind of settles that debate over if a state were to block or ban social media
in schools, YouTube now officially falls into that category based on this case or some
of the other cases that are going to come.
Yeah, but you don't have to listen to courts.
(18:37):
This is the no politics episode.
Take us out.
Take us out.
Take us out.
Get this devil back out, Mark, please.
I have a news story, Mark.
Can I interject?
Uh oh.
It's not on the agenda.
It's not on the agenda.
I'm nervous about this.
Go ahead.
It's fine.
Did you all see the video of the judge berate the IT guy?
Oh yeah.
(18:57):
It was great.
It's not great.
Great video.
Can't stand the judge.
Yeah, right.
So, yeah.
I was just making sure you guys saw it.
We'll put a link to that in the podcast description, too.
Yeah, definitely put a link to that in the description.
Typical tech guy.
Love that guy.
Yeah, like trying to make a joke, trying to get the guy to laugh, and he gets kicked
out of the courtroom, and the judge, get me his boss.
Okay.
Okay, buddy.
That was probably, that's probably the best news of the week.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(19:18):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
What's your favorite thing of the week?
Judge yells at that guy.
My last story, very similar to that one, I think, can beat the judge.
Oh, yeah.
I see it, too.
I see it.
Okay.
Next one, so we talked about Waymo a couple weeks ago.
I was excited to drive in a Waymo for the very first time.
Well, sure enough, right after I got out of that Waymo, this article pops up.
(19:39):
So, Austin Independent School District, in Austin, Texas, has reported at least 19 incidents
of Waymos driving past school buses while their lights are flashing.
Obviously, that's a huge, huge safety issue.
The district even held a half-day data collection event in a parking lot.
They brought in school buses, they brought in Waymo engineers in Waymo cars.
(20:02):
They were all excited to come together so they could train the Waymo cars to recognize
the stoplights and these arms.
It continued afterwards.
It didn't work.
So, Waymos have been having a major, major issue with these Waymo vehicles just driving
right past school bus violations.
There was a National Transportation Safety Advisory that was put out about this.
(20:26):
And school police even noticed that 98% of human drivers who get one violation never
get another one, whereas Waymo just kept racking up the violations.
So...
Yeah, kind of like Tiger Woods.
Oof.
Yeah.
Better figure that one out before Waymo hits Boston next month.
You know what EV autonomous car doesn't do that?
(20:49):
Pass up school buses?
Wow.
See, I was hoping you'd say Tesla.
I was going to say Rivian.
Are you just making this up?
Yeah.
Well, like, FSD will stop for a bus, right?
Like, I figured you guys would say Tesla because it's no secret.
(21:11):
But Josh, we try to give actual news here.
Oh, whatever.
Do we need to have, like, a sober check before each episode?
I am not sober.
He was making up facts.
Dick is out of here, Mark.
Okay, all right.
Get a bigger shovel.
Last one.
(21:31):
In the court case from Texas where the IT support went wrong, it has nothing compared
to the IT support that the Artemis II space shuttle launch needed yesterday.
Oh, man.
So, the three of us are space geeks.
We will text each other when there's a big launch and we'll all talk about it.
Well, the Artemis II is the biggest launch of the year.
(21:52):
That's the one that's going to be going to the moon and back.
Not landing on the moon, just circling it.
Further than we've ever gone before, Mark.
No politics, Josh.
I'm just saying, Mark.
I'm just saying, Mark.
All right, Commander Reid Wiseman had to call Houston with a problem.
I want to play this interaction for you here.
We suspect the issue with your PCD may be Optimus software.
(22:16):
We were able to connect to PCD1.
We can see it on the network.
So, with your go, we can remote in and take a look directly.
Yeah, go for it.
And then I also see that I have two Microsoft Outlooks and neither one of those are working.
If you want to remote in and check Optimus on those two Outlooks, that would be awesome.
All right, we will join in on your PCD and we'll let you know when we're done.
(22:39):
I love it.
If you have ever had a problem troubleshooting a laptop issue over the phone,
there is nothing like troubleshooting from tens of thousands of miles away
and then remoting into the astronaut's computer.
Well, I was just going to say that.
How amazing is that, that Houston is able to remote into a surface on a spaceship
(22:59):
moving how many thousands of miles an hour, how many thousands of miles away from Earth,
and I have difficulty remoting in with SCCM not even 300 yards away from my office.
It makes me feel like a winner.
Why are you remoting into a computer that's that close to your office?
You should just be walking down the hallway.
(23:19):
Walk, bro.
What a typical tech guy.
It's 300 yards, Mark.
You can see it with your eyes.
Just walk to the computer, man.
Oh, my God, Josh.
(23:41):
I bet you, like, did you put in a ticket?
You probably yell across the room.
Yes.
You hit refresh in the support system until the ticket's in?
I'm not remoting in until there's a ticket in here.
Well, I just wanted to point out that Houston did not ask Commander Reid Wiseman
to submit a ticket before they fixed his outlook issues.
(24:04):
Now, clearly, there's some training to be done there.
Clearly, they should be switching from Microsoft to Google, but I'm not going to do that.
Well, that, too.
Yeah, that, too.
That's it for the news.
Until next week.
Love it.
By the way, check out Vizor.
Vizor.cloud slash k12techtalk.
They have a new release of over 70 features, and one of the biggest updates
is a redesigned barcode check-in, check-out interface.
(24:27):
It's faster.
It's more intuitive.
It cuts out a lot of the clicks.
And they have real-time validation stops when you're checking out devices
that are lost or in repair so that your inventory is always accurate.
Check out Vizor.cloud slash k12techtalk.
All right.
So, Mark has, I guess, really all three of us have spent quite a bit of time
(24:50):
talking about the debrief from Charlie.
And I think we're going to get into a couple different discussion points
that we've heard from listeners and maybe some third parties
about our interview last week.
Mark, do you want to take the intro on this and discussion?
Yeah.
So, I think it's worth starting that we need to do a little bit
(25:12):
of fact-checking of the last episode because after we did the interview
with Charlie, we did some more digging into the incident itself,
into the data that was released.
And there's three or four points that we want to kind of clarify
or correct from the last episode.
The first one being the definition of directory-level information.
(25:33):
And after we were able to actually look at the data or talk with people
who have looked at the data, the term directory kind of has
two definitions with this.
There were two files or two main files that were released
from the Infinite Campus leak.
One was a quote-unquote directory of all possible school district persons
(25:55):
who have worked with Infinite Campus or could work with Infinite Campus.
So, that would be information that a public staff directory might have
that would be kind of publicly available for all district employees.
The second, though, I think that Charlie was referring to
is the FERPA definition of directory-level information,
which is student directory information or student names,
(26:17):
basic information that might be published in a newspaper
for sports rosters or academic, you know, your honor roll type stuff.
So, I think there were those two definitions put in there.
And yes, there was directory information from staff that was in the file.
There was also some student information that was released
that would fall under the typical definition of directory-level information,
(26:42):
meaning names.
You can think about if you're submitting a ticket to a company,
you might put a student name into a ticket.
But that doesn't classify under the definition of directory-level information
under FERPA.
So, even though that was student name,
it does not meet FERPA's definition of directory-level information.
So, we can't assume that a student name is okay to be released publicly.
(27:06):
Well, and somebody brought up the point that with a release like that,
you don't know which one of those kids has opted out of those types
of directory-release information.
Right.
Parents have the right to opt out of directory sharing,
and Infinite Campus wouldn't know which of the students' names were opted out.
The second is the hardest one, and that is Charlie,
(27:29):
the CEO of Infinite Campus,
described a data deletion process where their staff would scrub tickets
of any sort of personally identifiable information in tickets.
As we saw on the databreaches.net article about the release,
and as we've talked to folks who have seen the actual files themselves,
that did not happen.
And so, either that process does not exist at Infinite Campus,
(27:52):
or it's just not followed consistently.
So, unfortunately, you have to assume that any sort of PII that you submitted
in a ticket to Infinite Campus would have been included in this breach.
Now, you guys know more about the ticketing process for Infinite Campus.
It appears that the tickets that were included in this breach
were the ones that were escalated to Infinite Campus.
(28:15):
Is that correct?
Yeah.
So, I chatted with support,
and it's the ones that got transferred to Infinite Campus
for typically a bug notice or a programming assistance
that either remained open or was closed with a status of in-release,
meaning that the problem was addressed in a release package.
(28:38):
Those are the tickets.
So, it's two subsets of tickets.
Of my I don't know how many hundreds of tickets,
I think we had 25 or 12 that were potential breached
or that were released in the data set.
So, it is not every ticket that was entered into the support portal.
(28:59):
It is a subset of tickets that only made it up to Infinite Campus for referral.
And then the last point of clarification was when Charlie said
what districts can do to find out what those tickets are.
Josh, you followed those instructions that Charlie gave us the very next day.
And can you describe what your outcome was?
Yeah.
(29:20):
So, I got a phone call from support because in my ticket,
I might have said that I was contacted by an outside security researcher
and put security researcher in quotes.
That, I think, caused a bit of a panic thinking that we were being extorted,
and we weren't.
(29:41):
Just to be clear, their worry was because the threat was that they were going
to start contacting people and asking for money, meaning individual districts.
So, they wanted to make sure that no one was trying to extort money from us.
And no one had.
It was not a nefarious contact.
It was friendly, if you will.
But I did get a call from support after I submitted my ticket.
(30:04):
But, Chris, you and I have heard from districts that have submitted tickets
of the same content asking, hey, can you help me figure out what tickets I have
that were in the breach?
What type of content was in them?
And they still have not heard back from support on that ticket, right?
Yeah.
I've heard from a couple that got some initial kind of to put the homework
(30:29):
back on the tech person of the district.
Like, hey, download your tickets and look at them,
then let us know what tickets you have questions about.
Yeah.
And that's an interesting circle of a thing, which I think is to this point.
Infinite campus identity.
So, Charlie said that they have process, procedure, whatever,
that they would have contacted the schools that had sensitive data exposed.
(30:56):
So then we assume that that contact took place with all those schools.
But then we also know that there are schools that are seeing what data was
put out there and they have question marks around if that data is alarming
to them or not.
And they didn't get contacted by infinite campus.
(31:17):
So there's a little bit of a pocket here where did infinite campus make a
decision for a school district when really the school district would make a
different decision if they were fully aware of what data was exposed?
Right.
Yeah.
Now, in their defense, in infant campuses defense,
the data that was released publicly really is a much,
(31:40):
much smaller risk footprint than we've seen from other breaches.
Like with power school, we are seeing tickets.
We are seeing, hey, I'm having a problem with the state report.
And then the name of a student, this record isn't going through.
I think the worst one that I have seen was actually the one that was published
on data breaches.net,
where it talked about some student names and some arrest records.
(32:01):
But that is really the extent of the data.
So in the grand scheme of things,
this is nowhere near the level of severity of something like power school.
But again,
this does have some PII and districts are rightfully so concerned about what
data was released for their students.
Yeah.
And if you're one of those districts that you feel like that is PII,
(32:23):
that has risen to a certain level,
it doesn't matter what anybody says on, you know,
oh, it's not that big of a deal.
It's a big deal to you.
Like it's going to impact your workflow.
It's going to impact your day.
You likely have to change how you are submitting tickets to campus going
forward.
You know, that type of discussion,
are you contacting a parent to say, hey,
(32:45):
this really isn't our fault,
but your kid's arrest record just got published on the dark web.
Like that's not a fun conversation I have to have now.
Well,
in every state is a patchwork of legislation and we don't quite know what
every district's responsibilities are.
Yeah.
I was talking to a school district south of us and he was wondering what to
(33:06):
do.
And again,
it's literally what we talked about download,
you know,
you can get into the support system,
you can download all your tickets,
you can look at your tickets,
you can analyze your tickets and then ask questions,
you know,
open up a ticket and push back on infinite campus and get information.
You can,
you can choose.
This is what we talked about.
You can choose to just take the statement of,
(33:29):
hey,
we would have contacted you if you were exposed.
You can choose to just take that sentence and assume the best.
And you're going to have to decide in your district decide,
is that a good steward of the data?
And are you being a proper protector of the data?
Or should you do some more work to download these tickets and to ask these
(33:51):
further questions?
I think that's kind of where schools are going to be at with this.
When you just don't,
you just don't know.
Yeah.
If you,
if you cross that line and you make the decision to,
to start notifying people,
it ends up being a PR issue.
Like it,
it's not a fun problem.
Well,
flipping this from problems to solutions,
(34:12):
we all have to submit tickets to companies.
We all have to,
to escalate problems.
And a lot of times that does require us to submit,
or to communicate specific student records or student information.
How do we handle this moving forward?
You're going to have to deal with companies.
You're going to have to submit support tickets,
actually SRA SIS to,
or to other companies.
What are you going to do moving forward after this incident?
(34:36):
It definitely has led to some conversations between my SIS person and I,
about how we are going to identify issues,
like what interfaces and stuff where we need to give an example.
Like it's,
it's very hard to troubleshoot an issue with support without an example.
So,
you know,
his history has proven that we've all,
(34:57):
we've done student name and field.
That's an issue,
blah,
blah,
blah going forward.
You know,
I mentioned the idea of using the person ID out of infinite campus,
because it's not the name and it's not this Missouri state ID.
It's the infinite campus idea that only exists in campus.
So you have to,
you would have to have access to campus to be able to figure out who that person is.
(35:24):
It's not a name.
So the threat actor isn't going to be able to look up.
Susie that goes to Timbuktu high school.
Okay.
We can figure out who that is.
We can figure out who her parents are and try and extort,
I don't know,
thousand dollars out of her parents,
but if they just have a seven digit number,
it's going to be much more difficult to do that.
I don't know.
(35:45):
And Charlie pushed back on that.
I,
I'm not sure I agree with that pushback.
Yeah,
that was one point I disagree with him on.
And I think the idea is if you didn't listen to the segment of the,
of the interview from last week,
Josh had said,
should we put the campus ID number in there instead of the name?
And Charlie saying,
that's even more dangerous.
I think the context for that pushback from Charlie was if you have the
(36:08):
entire infinite campus database,
that's this ID can combine tables.
And I understand that that that's potentially very dangerous,
but in this example,
where you only have the support tickets,
or we only have one table of information,
that ID number really is useless.
So I would push back and say,
you know,
(36:29):
the least amount of information you can provide the better.
And if that information on its own is useless to an outside threat actor,
then that's the best way to do it.
But again,
the ultimate message is really just to minimize the amount of data that
you're putting into a ticket.
And in this case,
I think it would have been better if we had been using campus IDs.
(36:50):
And let's be real.
If it got to a scenario where they had the entire campus database structure
so that they could figure out what person ID is,
you can have a whole lot of problems and,
and being able to identify with a person ID is probably relatively small on
that list.
Yeah.
So,
(37:11):
I mean,
it's a world of hurt.
Yeah.
It's a hard spot because I,
I think Charlie on another point that I think touches this,
you,
you want the system to be usable.
So you're doing the whole security versus convenience or just usability.
I'm saying a kid's name and a ticket.
That's the quickest path to get support taken care of.
(37:33):
I imagine because you've cut a lot of steps to figure out the person ID,
but that can be a,
you know,
we're,
we're getting into what would be best practice and the high standard to
follow.
So I,
I easy get there too on the person ID.
But then I think about like my districts,
CIS folks,
and they would really not like,
(37:54):
if I made the call that we're for sure going to do that in every single
ticket.
Yeah.
And I think it would get really hard to troubleshoot some things where
you're putting in a,
you know,
we even put in files we put in,
we ran this extract and look,
it's doing this to every single kid,
you know,
usually try to do sample sets as opposed to the whole file.
(38:15):
It was talked about that.
Even uploading files is not proper protocol really with tickets that they
should get those things scrubbed,
but that's not really what happens for the folks that are in the trenches
working with support tickets.
It's so funny to me and Mark,
you talk about this.
I think it was the week before I did the interview with RT,
the CEO of incident IQ,
and he did some bigger picture philosophical stuff on what we put into
(38:39):
tickets.
And that was more for me just,
you know,
within my district teacher to,
to me,
the tech department,
I,
at that time,
I was not thinking about all the tickets that I do to a company.
That episode is really fitting for what RT was unpacking compared to this
on.
(39:00):
Right.
It is time.
We need,
we need to think of a support system,
every support system that we use as a,
a place that there's some significant data housed in there.
I'm your support system,
Chris.
It's also worth noting too.
The,
the person who did look at the data and talk to us about this noted that
(39:21):
not even 10% of tickets had any sort of PII in it.
And,
and 10% was a,
was a stretch.
So we're talking about a very small amount of tickets.
We're talking about a very small amount of data in those tickets.
And,
you know,
I think at the end of the day,
what we're trying to do is just say,
how do we minimize the amount of data that's flowing between organizations?
(39:42):
It flows,
it flows in emails,
all that kind of stuff.
And if you can get away with making a phone call to specify the examples,
that'd be great.
But for the most part,
I think people are,
are already doing that.
They're minimizing the amount of data that goes through email and goes
through tickets because of this exact kind of situation that can happen.
All right.
My last question for you,
(40:03):
does this change how you negotiate vendor data,
privacy agreements?
I I'm in the middle of a DPA fight right now.
With a 3d printer.
I yeah.
Over a 3d printer.
Yeah.
Oh my.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Do you tell.
(40:26):
Let's unpack this.
Bamboo labs.
Bamboo labs.
You are on my list right now.
Bamboo.
There's a,
it's a big list.
Don't worry about this.
There's a lot of people on Josh's list.
What kind of data is in,
in the 3d printer,
man?
Yeah.
Triangles.
Triangles.
Our kids writing their names in CAD files.
(40:49):
Student work is student work as student work,
as it was explained to me by TEC and the Missouri state data privacy.
With a smiley face on it.
Lady.
It shouldn't be going to China.
No,
like it's a big,
I've got major drama around bamboo labs right now because of a DPA.
They won't sign.
So you would say just keep fighting the fight.
(41:11):
I,
I think you have to,
I think you have to.
Hey,
a bamboo labs.
This is Mark here.
And,
and Chris is on my side.
We're we're on your side on this one.
Okay.
Yeah.
Just,
just ignore him.
He'll go away.
Whatever.
You better put MFA on that software before you hit print on that coffee cup.
(41:35):
You're going to give to your mom.
What kind of 3d printer doesn't have a network card.
It's only wifi.
I don't know.
Mark,
you got the shovel still.
Yeah.
Well,
that's our episode for night.
If you are also trying to get a 3d printer in your school district and cannot get bamboo labs to sign the data privacy agreement,
Josh's email is listed in the show notes,
(41:59):
but don't email Chris and I,
man.
Say it,
say it,
say,
I was going to say,
I hope bamboo is a bamboo labs.
Like,
if they get hacked,
I hope that your ticket gets leaked.
Cause I would love to read that whole transcript and just see the whole thing play out.
(42:20):
I would love to see the behind the scenes notes.
The,
the,
you know?
Yeah,
I guarantee.
Well,
so funny story.
We,
we,
we installed the software on one of our department machines.
Cause you know,
we're that we had a little demo and they're like,
oh,
if you,
if you install it in standalone mode,
it doesn't talk to the network.
It doesn't go out to the internet.
Yada,
(42:41):
yada,
yada.
So I,
one of my guys installed the bamboo lab software and,
uh,
guess what?
It goes out to maker world.
It goes out to all these different sites that curate 3d projects.
So I had one of my guys search for the term,
the term sexy.
And,
uh,
you can imagine it came back with all sorts of NSF W3D imaging products projects for,
(43:06):
um,
to use.
So,
uh,
yeah,
that,
that's the rabbit hole that we're going down guys.
Oh,
bamboo labs is not SIPA compliant either.
This is a travesty of an episode.
This is crazy.
What a way to end this,
Josh.
Yeah.
It's the life I live,
man.
We are,
(43:27):
you also have data privacy agreements on your document cameras.
No,
we have,
I thinking about that one for a second.
What kind of tech department you run and you don't have DPAs on your doc?
I feel like,
yeah,
I feel like,
I feel like Mark's making fun of me.
Yeah.
Mark,
do you need to wrap up anything in seriousness?
(43:48):
No,
I'm,
I'm good.
Um,
I would also,
it's Chris and I are,
are both laughing at you in,
in unison.
It's not just me.
I imagine Steve Smith is with me on this from SDPCA.
Oh,
I'm calling Steve Smith as soon as this episode is over.
I think we could do an exclusive episode just to this.
He's probably heard about it.
Cause I've been raising the heck with TEC about this.
(44:10):
Okay.
I got a couple more things as a,
I'll pick up the shovel.
I'll get us out of this thing.
Uh,
we are going to be at Kosen.
Uh,
that's like in a week and a half or something.
Uh,
and we're doing a K-12 Tech Talk Kosen happy hour.
Uh,
it's that Monday night,
April 13th,
six to 8 PM.
Uh,
if you email us info at K-12 tech talk podcast.com,
(44:32):
uh,
you can RSVP.
Uh,
we'd love to hang out with you at Kosen again,
April 13th,
uh,
six to 8 PM is our happy hour.
Uh,
sponsors,
uh,
for that are NTP and their partner checkpoint.
And then we're going to be at Kosen just in general with the table.
We'll be recording a stop by hangout,
uh,
say hi to us,
uh,
for that as well.
(44:53):
Uh,
another thanks to our sponsors.
You can email Fortinet,
uh,
at Fortinet podcast at Fortinet.com do their firewall,
all their good stuff for your security within your district.
And then check out managed methods at managed methods.com.
Uh,
they can keep a pulse,
uh,
on your,
uh,
Microsoft environment and your Google environment,
uh,
as well.
And now,
(45:14):
uh,
we're going to transition into an interview with swank.
Uh,
I got the hangout with Brian Edwards was swank.
So check out this interview with swank,
uh,
and learn more about movies and TV shows and streaming and all that good stuff.
All right.
I'm hanging out with Brian Edwards was swank.
Brian,
how's it going?
I'm doing well.
Thanks,
Chris.
(45:35):
How are you doing today,
Brian?
That's a lie.
Like you're lying to me right now.
So we,
we,
we of course talk before we hit the record button,
go ahead and tell the quick story.
What,
what has happened to you today?
Yeah,
I was,
I was trying to just stay a high level,
I guess there,
and maybe a single report.
Well,
but,
uh,
no,
I unfortunately hit a deer on my way into the office today.
So I've been messing with the assessment of some damage and,
(45:59):
and my assumption that my radiator is probably just leaking over the
parking lot here at the office at the moment that I got to go try and get
solved later on today.
So it's been a bit of a whirlwind morning for me.
Yeah.
I want to say,
I appreciate you still joining,
um,
because your head's probably going through those.
Yeah.
Like you're,
you're leaking out some radiator fluid.
(46:20):
Uh,
you just hit a deer.
Uh,
so you got a lot going on,
but you're still here to hang out with me for a few minutes.
So I appreciate that greatly.
The deer got back up and ran off.
So if she's going to tough it out,
I suppose I might as well.
That's a riot.
So where are you coming to me from?
I think I know the answer,
but you tell me.
Yeah,
we're based in St.
(46:41):
Louis,
Missouri.
And so I live about 30 minutes outside of St.
Louis,
uh,
out of the country a little bit,
but our office is here in St.
Louis.
Yeah.
So I'm just like an hour and a half hour,
45 minutes South of St.
Louis.
So we're used to the whole deer thing.
Yeah.
Um,
I guess you're not used to it enough.
Uh,
it feels like a very Midwest conversation at the moment.
Dodged a deer this morning,
(47:03):
hit a deer this morning.
It's just one of those things.
Okay.
So let's,
that's enough deer talk.
Uh,
let's talk about swank.
So I know what swank is,
but our listeners may not,
um,
tell us about just swank again,
that high level thing.
Uh,
what is swank?
What do you guys do?
Yeah.
So swank motion pictures has actually been around now since the 1930s.
(47:26):
And we partner with all of the major movie studios.
So think Disney and Sony paramount universal Warner brothers and a
hundred others,
uh,
for what's called non-theatrical public performance licensing.
So,
uh,
copyright law basically says that if you're going to show a movie in
public outside of a movie theater,
essentially that you have to have a license in order to do.
So if it's in a public setting and we've been doing that now for,
(47:51):
for going on close to 90 years,
specifically as it relates to schools,
we provide a couple of things.
One is that public performance license.
And then we also provide a streaming platform for instructional support.
And the public,
uh,
that license that's like your bread and butter thing you would say,
right?
Yeah,
it's certainly our legacy,
(48:12):
uh,
legacy,
I guess,
product or legacy offering for K through 12 schools.
Uh,
we've been working in K through 12 schools now for roughly 30 years.
And again,
this license basically gives the entire school,
the ability to show movies legally for any reason.
So common kind of use cases of that would be things like,
you know,
(48:33):
family movie nights or fundraising events.
Uh,
you get into classroom parties or celebrations,
uh,
rewards days,
extracurricular movie uses,
uh,
a lot of just kind of the day-to-day uses of movies that happen in school
typically require licensing.
And that license is basically,
uh,
works like an insurance policy that ensures the school itself is covered
(48:56):
for all uses,
whether it's from,
you know,
a parent group at the school,
whether it's from a teacher,
whether it's from an administrator,
it's covering everybody to make sure that the access is done legally.
Awesome.
And then the second part of this,
and I,
I think this is probably what we'll dig into.
Uh,
like I said,
we've hung out before and,
and,
and Swank has been a proud sponsor with K-12 Tech Pro.
(49:18):
Uh,
you guys have hung out with us at Midwest Tech Talk.
Uh,
most folks should know about the first thing we just talked about,
uh,
get that thing on file,
make sure you're,
you're being,
uh,
a good,
uh,
well,
your ethics are in order and you're being a good steward of,
of,
of what you're showing across your district.
But the second part of this is the streaming service.
(49:41):
Uh,
and we won't dig into all the weeds of if a school uses Disney plus or
Netflix or yada,
yada,
yada,
because Swank has a solution,
uh,
to help schools,
to help,
uh,
K-12 Tech's battle through,
Hey,
we got to let this teacher get the Amazon prime.
Yes,
no,
maybe,
uh,
can you tell us about your streaming service?
Yeah,
(50:02):
that's exactly.
And,
and,
and we've,
we,
you know,
we've been,
uh,
we rolled this out to K through 12 schools back in 2019 and kind of the
foundation behind it is within all of the copyright law of what you can and
cannot do with,
uh,
movies in a public setting.
One of the exceptions to a license being required is actually the face to
(50:25):
face instruction.
It's coming out of section one,
10 and copyright law that basically says that if I am a teacher in a
classroom with enrolled students and I'm using a,
a film or,
or whatever it may be to,
uh,
teach as a part of my curriculum,
uh,
with,
with dedicated learning objectives behind it,
a license is not necessarily required,
but these days you alluded to it,
(50:46):
that access has become a challenge for a lot of teachers.
And,
and despite movies being never,
uh,
never more readily available to us as consumers from a teaching perspective,
that gets a little bit complicated,
but then teachers also use movies differently than we do when we're just
sitting on the couch.
Uh,
you know,
watching the newest release from Disney or somebody else.
(51:07):
And so the streaming library is meant to solve for not only those access
challenges,
it's meant to provide teachers an aggregate resource with thousands and
thousands of movies and documentaries and educational series to choose from.
It's meant to offer tools to teachers that align with,
uh,
how they use movies as a part of instruction,
right?
(51:28):
It's,
you know,
things like the ability to create what we call it bookmarks or segments of
films,
the ability to extend the classroom by assigning movies out to students,
uh,
the ability to connect movies to standards or curriculum accordingly.
Uh,
and then again,
the,
the high level piece of overcoming any access challenges,
overcoming any,
uh,
(51:49):
issues with either accessing DVDs or personal streaming sites or whatever
that may be,
and giving teachers an actual tool they can leverage that is built
specifically for the classroom.
Yeah.
I mean,
it looks like because it is,
uh,
it looks like the video streaming service library because it is,
um,
very nice looking.
(52:10):
Uh,
you can easily find what you're looking for.
Uh,
I know it does some levels too,
or it can,
if a teacher wants to watch something that you can get some principal
approval or administrative approval,
can you unpack that?
Yeah.
So,
so we build in,
we build in a lot of tools that,
that really try and span across all levels of education from students to
teachers to administration.
(52:31):
And,
and one point of feedback that we hear oftentimes from school districts
says that the administration wants some level of control over the movie
library itself.
I've had various districts across the country have different,
either policies related to their movie use,
or they have various films or resources that they allow or don't allow.
And they want to make sure that they're able to essentially consolidate
(52:55):
where teachers are accessing their film or their video resources in a way
that can be controlled.
And so on top of giving these teachers the ability to kind of use film in a
more dynamic way,
we give administrators oversight,
uh,
on the curation of the film library itself.
So teachers are able to identify the exact movies,
the exact documentaries that they need as a part of their instruction.
(53:16):
Uh,
and then they're able to curate that library through a request process,
which basically says to their administration,
I need this film or this documentary as a part of my class coming up.
And the administration has that chance to mediate or review that to ensure
alignment with whatever it is,
various policies or if they require parental permission slips for the showing
(53:37):
of a film or something like that.
Yeah.
ensuring that that the administration is comfortable with the addition,
but also ensuring that the teachers are really empowered, uh,
by their intentional use of film.
And there's always kind of been this, uh,
behind the scenes aspect of movie use that,
that we've really developed a way to bring that to the forefront to make sure
that everybody's comfortable.
Uh, and well-intentioned, uh,
(53:58):
with the use of film as a part of instruction.
Yeah, I can think of.
A couple scenarios where we had an elementary teacher that showed a movie,
uh, that was at a higher, uh,
rating than she should have shown.
Uh, and that wasn't, um,
there could have been something in place like swank, uh,
(54:21):
that would have identified that before that movie was shown.
Um, that was kind of like a bummer situation.
And then even at our high school, you know,
we have like a movie class, uh,
and there were some films that were in there that are, uh,
and that teacher does a different kind of permission slip, uh,
cause they might show some, some, some different,
different films with different content.
Uh, but there was a couple films that were listed, uh, that I,
(54:46):
I felt like maybe there was some, uh,
Uh, it wasn't fully known in the loop, uh,
that those films were being shown in that class. So, uh,
swank with the approval process and then the reporting that you could pull,
um, that could be seen a whole lot easier.
And I guess let's really touch on that, the reporting part.
So we can see what's being watched, how much it's being watched,
(55:09):
that kind of stuff. Right.
Yeah. We, we provide aggregate data, uh, as a part of our,
our agreement renewal process, which will,
which will help schools understand which films are being used,
how frequently they're being used,
what has kind of the highest amount of usage, uh,
from a data privacy perspective, we stay pretty conservative.
So we don't actually break down usage by individual, um,
(55:30):
because we try and remain a higher level to make it, uh,
something that's more comfortable for districts through the data privacy
approval process. Yeah. But we do provide aggregate information on what
resources are being used, what films teachers have requested,
or how the, how the library has been curated throughout the year.
And then ultimately what that usage looks like accordingly.
(55:51):
Cool. Would you, um, give some advice to a school?
So I can remember when we went from, uh,
VCR to DVD, um,
and then even when we were trying to transition away from DVD,
we get a lot of, uh, pushback and feedback, um,
(56:12):
to, to get rid of that physical stuff. Uh,
so if I'm a school and I'm wanting to choose Swank as my solution, um,
but I have a superintendent that says, well, Hey,
I'm just cool with turning a blind eye to our folks using Netflix or
whatever, whatever, why should we pay money for a streaming service? Uh,
can't we just keep using the DVDs? Uh, what kind of advice would you give?
(56:34):
What should schools be saying or looking at if, if,
if we were at K-12 techs up, up in that, that position?
Yeah, I think there's, I think there's probably a lot there. One from,
from a physical media perspective, uh,
while it's still absolutely gets used at schools, uh, in certain instances,
it's just really limiting in certain cases, right?
The flexibility of what you can do with it,
despite having a DVD player in the classroom or DVD library on the shelves,
(56:58):
uh, these days, the, the, the,
the way streaming offers a more dynamic user experience,
the way that we can build it and customize it to align with how teachers use
this as part of instruction really changes the way in which teachers can teach
with film, right? That there is, uh,
even if you don't have the physical limitations of a,
of a DVD player not being in every classroom,
(57:20):
or a teacher having to check out an external DVD drive from a library, uh,
because laptops don't have them, you know,
Chromebooks don't play well with them. Uh,
even if you don't have those challenges, you know, a, a, a DVD, uh,
is just more limiting than streaming offers, right? Again,
I go back to some of the tools that we're able to provide within the platform,
(57:42):
uh, things like the ability to assign a movie out.
And oftentimes when we talk about the assignment of a film,
people immediately think, well, absenteeism, right?
And, and even if you just look at it from that perspective, a,
a student who's out sick on any given day, the,
they miss whatever assignments happened that day and the need to then check out
(58:03):
a DVD and assume that a DVD player is available at home is really interesting.
But then also with class time being so,
so limited and curriculum being so tight these days, you know, the, the,
the time and setup of a DVD or a DVD player, uh,
you're not showing full length films anyway.
So the amount of dynamic kind of access you can provide via streaming in a more
(58:25):
streamlined way with a larger library,
something that can be used in a more kind of on-demand setting,
especially for things like current events. Teachers can be more intentioned by,
by setting up a playlist.
They can essentially create these various bookmarks or segments to navigate
between multiple points of videos to bring in multiple perspectives.
You just can't do those things with physical media. Uh,
(58:47):
and there's a reason that,
that even us as consumers and our personal lives have transitioned typically
away from DVDs.
A lot of places don't sell DVDs anymore because of those limitations,
but it's obviously the experience and the expectation of kids and teachers
these days to have streaming access because it's to a certain extent all they
know because of how flexible and dynamic it can be.
(59:11):
Cool. And I, I guess, so you, so you see, I mean,
obviously you take like a film class. That's, that's easy, easy stuff, uh,
used for documentaries quite a bit. Um,
I'm sure that it, it is used sometimes for a movie day for awards.
Um, are there any other use cases that I'm quick for, for getting here?
(59:34):
Yeah. I mean, it's, it, there's a, you mentioned it for film classes,
but actually the,
the most common uses that we see from a subject perspective and K through 12
schools is actually typically in the social studies in the LA realm. Yeah.
But it bronze out past that as well, you know, from a,
from a science or a STEM perspective, we've got a lot of great films.
(59:55):
We've got a lot of great documentaries.
We've recently added things like discovery channel into our library, which,
which brings in a really strong dynamic of STEM related content.
We're continuously adding on what we call our educational series type content.
So even breaking free from traditional film or documentaries discovery being
that, but it's things like Bill Nye, the science guy,
(01:00:16):
things like Smithsonian channel. I love me some Bill Nye.
There is a, everybody does.
I feel like everybody in middle school watched a number of episodes.
So it really spans a lot of the subject areas,
but exactly as you mentioned tying back into the license,
when we provide schools or districts with access to streaming,
they're also getting that public performance license.
So what it does for them is it actually eliminates a lot of the guesswork.
(01:00:39):
It eliminates a lot of the evaluation of gray area on if a license is
required or if it's not required, because, you know,
simply that a movie is being shown in a classroom does not determine
whether a license is necessary or not. So the license removes that.
And then it gives teachers the ability to use it,
not only for their instruction and a more kind of dynamic and creative way,
but it also then allows for those kinds of licensed moments,
(01:01:02):
which would be classroom parties and celebrations.
It would be a rainy day recess. It would be a family movie night,
but it also, it would extend into things like aftercare programs.
Extended care programs that extend into like cafeteria time.
We'll see teachers that use the movies as a, with the license.
In April is coming up a big testing month for a lot of schools and,
and a lot of schools and educators like to give students a bit of a brain
(01:01:24):
break after those take place. All of that requires licensing,
but it also just requires a movie library to kind of be flexible with when
the day is.
And what the schedule is is accordingly.
And that's where we kind of bring all of that together.
So it's not only that access. It's not only the instructional tools,
but it's the licensing accordingly to make sure that it's just a
comprehensive outlet for all things video within a school.
(01:01:47):
And it's done. So at, from an ease of access perspective,
it's done. So from a legal perspective, it's done.
So done so from a copyright perspective,
and then it's done so with educational resources.
So it's a comprehensive outlet for all things video within a school.
So it's not only that access.
It's not only in the instructional tools,
but it's done. So from a copyright perspective,
and then it's done. So with educators in mind.
(01:02:08):
Yeah. Yeah.
My perfect scenario is swank and then block everything else,
block Disney plus net Netflix, all the other things.
Let's pick a district supported platform.
If a teacher is having an issue with swank,
that teacher can do a support ticket with us and we can, you know,
(01:02:30):
we can help them figure out what's going on as opposed to whatever other
streaming sites that they have that we can't, we can't support.
What am I supposed to do?
It's one of the most common calls that we get is that, is that from a,
from a district IT director,
who's looking at blocking access to all of these various sites out there,
(01:02:53):
but doesn't necessarily want to cause the disruption of their teachers
without having them in place first,
because they know how often movies are used as a part of instruction.
They know how important it is to the day to day of teaching. And so, you know,
there's,
everybody's trying to not be disruptive to that process until they find an
outlet. And that's, that's really, like I said,
the number one call that we get oftentimes it has to do with wanting to,
(01:03:16):
to kind of consolidate this down to block access to what some of these other
platforms are. But we also, you know, there's,
we've started to get an uptick in,
in kind of the setup requests related simply to aside from just access to
there's a lot of district IT folks that we're talking to these days that are
just trying to consolidate the number of disparate logins that are happening
(01:03:39):
on their network from a security perspective. And exactly, as you mentioned,
having kind of a single access point that single sign on through your district
network,
where it can consolidate or reconcile all of this into a single location
simplifies things for a lot of districts. And again,
in alignment with what teachers are looking to use in the first place.
(01:04:01):
For sure. All right. Well, thank you so much, Brian. So check out swank,
swank.com slash K-12 schools is the spot to check out. They can do your easy,
safe, legal streaming movie access for your school district.
So swank.com slash K-12 schools. Thanks again, Brian.
Thanks Chris. Really appreciate it.
Good luck with that car and that deer.
(01:04:23):
I am anxiously awaiting what the, what my fate is, I must say.
The views and opinions expressed in the K-12 Tech Talk podcast are for the
(01:04:45):
personal opinions of Josh, Chris, and Mark,
and do not represent the views or opinions of our sponsors or other
organizations that we're affiliated with.
The material information presented here is for general information and
entertainment purposes only. Thanks for listening. And we'll see you next week.
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