After 20 years in automation and controls engineering, Danny Murphy received a call from a local community college that would bring his journey full circle—back to the kind of impact his own high school electronics teacher once had on him. Today, he’s a nationally recognized educator, named A3’s 2024 Educator of the Year, and he’s redefining what hands-on learning can look like in a modern mechatronics lab.
In this episode, Danny shares how early challenges in the classroom led him to move beyond textbook instruction and introduce student-designed projects with real-world relevance. From programming robots to serve cereal and slice cake to engineering capstone challenges with custom tooling, his students are learning by doing—and developing the kind of technical and creative skills that employers notice.
What began as a simple effort to share classroom activity on LinkedIn and Instagram has evolved into a powerful tool for student opportunity. With over 30,000 followers on Instagram and 11,000 on LinkedIn, Danny’s short, engaging videos have led to direct job offers for students, new partnerships with engineers and PhDs, and a growing network of industry engagement. The results are tangible: students getting hired, programs gaining visibility, and technical education reaching far beyond the classroom.
Listen to learn:
- How to transition from lecture-based teaching to hands-on, student-driven projects that boost engagement
- Why adding creative freedom to technical labs leads to better retention and real-world problem-solving
- A simple video strategy on LinkedIn or Instagram that can directly lead to student job offers
- What educators should consider before posting student work online
- How showcasing student work publicly can attract industry partners and grow your program’s reputation
3 Big Takeaways from this Episode:
1. Student-designed projects increase both engagement and retention. Danny’s students learn core concepts like user frames and loops by designing their own robotics challenges—whether it’s scooping cereal or slicing cake. This creative freedom forces them to problem-solve, adapt, and truly understand the material, rather than just following instructions.
2. Social media is a powerful tool for connecting students to real opportunities. By consistently posting short, authentic videos on LinkedIn and Instagram, Danny has helped at least six students get hired directly from what industry partners saw online. These platforms have become an extension of the classroom—offering visibility, credibility, and direct links to the workforce.
3. Giving students real-world skills—and a teacher who believes in them—can change their lives. From project-based labs to job-ready training, Danny’s classroom gives students more than technical knowledge; it gives them confidence, purpose, and a path forward. For many, it’s the first time they’ve been truly seen for what they can do—and that recognition can be life-changing.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Unknown (00:00):
Foreign
Matt Kirchner (00:08):
Welcome to this week's episode of The Tech Ed
podcast. Before we get startedthis week, I have some exciting
news to share with our audience.
We are launching a brand newsegment at The TechEd Podcast.
It is called Ask us anything.
You know, I get so manyquestions, whether it's on
social media, people emailingme, people asking questions. At
(00:29):
the many events that we arehonored to speak at, every
single month, there's such greatquestions, and we want to share
the answers, not just with theaudience members who ask them,
but with all of our audiencemembers. So every single
quarter, we will do an episodeof Ask us anything. The first
thing to know is that you cansubmit any question for The
TechEd Podcast at TechEdpodcast.com/ask us anything
(00:54):
that's TechEd podcast.com/ask usanything. Submit your question
in that format. We'll get it.
We'll make sure it finds its wayinto the next episode of Ask us
anything. By the way, this isgoing to be moderated by our
producer, who many of you know.
Our producer, Melissa Martin, isgoing to moderate those
discussions, and we willtogether answer the most
(01:14):
important questions in all oftechnical education. Be sure to
check it out. And now on to thisweek's episode. It's another
week of The TechEd Podcast. Myname is Matt Kirkner. Welcome
in. As you know, we are thenumber one podcast in all of
STEM and technical education. Weare on a mission to secure the
American Dream for the nextgeneration of STEM and workforce
(01:38):
talent, and as we do that work,we attract all kinds of amazing
guests. If you listen often, youknow that we've had several
senators on the podcast, numbersof members of Congress, five
governors, more than 25 fortune500 CEOs have joined us in the
studio of The TechEd Podcast,all on that mission, like we
said, to secure the AmericanDream for the next generation. I
(02:00):
will tell you, with all thoseincredible guests, some of the
best feedback that we get fromour audience is when we bring
someone who is working the magicof technical education in the
classroom, in the labs acrossthe United States of America and
beyond. When we bring thosefolks in to talk about their
work, those are some of ourabsolute most popular episodes.
(02:23):
We have that kind of episode foryou here this week, my guest is
Danny Murphy. Danny is amechatronics professor at
Central Virginia CommunityCollege. He's also, by the way,
the A three Educator of the Yearfor 2024 and that is some pretty
high standing. It's an honor forme to welcome to The TechEd
Podcast, Danny Murphy. Danny,thanks so much for coming on.
(02:46):
Really excited to be here. Thankyou. You've got this incredible
life story that I know is goingto resonate with our audience.
So how does the Danny Murphy ofthe last several decades come to
be the Danny Murphy of today?
Hopefully,
Danny Murphy (02:58):
most people that know me nowadays Think of me as
a pretty even tempered andhelpful type of guy, but I
wasn't always that way when Iwas a teenager. I was, I
suppose, the poorestrepresentation of any teenager
you could probably imagine,which led to my parents decided
to kick me out of the house whenI was 16 years old. For the
first couple of days of that, itwas sleeping on the friend's
(03:18):
couch or whatever, until thoseopportunities quickly
evaporated, and I found myselfin some pretty, pretty dire
straits. Slept in cars, slept instrangers, lawn mower sheds, and
eventually found myself in aabandoned building that I could
crawl into after high school. Ikept going to high school, and
as a matter of fact, that'simportant, because it was my
(03:39):
electronics teacher, SteveCosner, who noticed that I was
getting a little worse for wear,and I still remember the way
that he approached me and hesaid, Look, you look terrible.
You smell bad. I don't want toreally get involved with
whatever's going on, but let'sget your grades up to make sure
that you can eventually makesomething out of your life. And
he did with that sternlymasculine way that only certain
(04:02):
types of mentors can gentlybeach into shape, and I owe my
life to that man. He found me ascholarship to DeVry University.
I'm sure I would never have goneto college were it not for his
intervention. In fact, I wouldmost likely be dead in a ditch
somewhere, such was mysituation, anyway, so I was able
(04:23):
to go to college, get a greateducation, get out of that and
start a deeply meaningful careerin engineering. And after about
20 or so years of that, I wasapproached by Marci Gale, who's
the head of my department atCVCC now. And after a short
conversation, she said, Wouldyou like to be one of our
electronics teachers? It wasweird. I can't really describe
(04:44):
the feeling I had during thatmoment. It was like, the whole
universe went full circle. Andit's like, oh, an electronics
teacher like Steve Cosner, theguy that put me on the path I am
today. And I remember thinking,I wonder if I do this, if I
could ever possibly. To find away to be as impactful to
anybody's life as that man wasto mine. And it turns out that
(05:08):
people give teachers thatopportunity about three times a
semester. It's incredible thepermission that our culture
gives people in this role to beimpactful towards other people's
lives,
Matt Kirchner (05:21):
absolutely. You know, I talk a lot of times
Danny about the whole idea thatthe real magic of a teacher and
it doesn't matter what your paththrough education, whether it's
formal or informal, whether itends at high school or goes on
to post secondary and beyond.
Every one of us has three peoplein our lives that just took a
chance on us showed us that wewere capable of doing something
that we didn't know we ourselveswere able to do, put us on a
(05:43):
career path that we never wouldhave been on if it hadn't been
for that individual. I love itwhen people name individuals
specifically. So somebody likeSteve Cosner that had such a
huge impact in a pivotal and Imean that not just figuratively,
but like pivoting from thatchallenge that you were facing
and showing you a differentpathway. It really, really
underscores the value and theincredible change and impact
(06:05):
that teachers, I think,sometimes in ways they know, and
a lot of times in ways they willnever know have on individuals.
Have you stayed in touch withSteve?
Danny Murphy (06:14):
I know when a three reached out to me last
year and told me that I'd wonEducator of the Year, I had lost
track of Steve Cosner along theway, and I believe one of my
high school friends is a retiredteacher in that area, was able
to look him up, and he's retirednow, and I got his number, and I
called him and I let him know,hey, guess what's going on? This
(06:35):
is some pretty big news, and itall directly translates back to
the role that you played in mylife, like so many people who
were responsible for that typeof influence, he just completely
laughed it off. Was like, no,no, that's everything you're
doing as a result of who youare. And I didn't do much, and
we both knew that was and thatwas a little bit of a lie, and
(06:56):
we kind of let it ride likethat.
Matt Kirchner (06:58):
Yeah, well, Humility is a virtue without
question, but what an incrediblestory that have, and what an
incredible individual to haveimpact your life in that
particular way. And I am glad,by the way, that you had an
opportunity to go back and andlet him know that, and whether I
would just tell you, and I'msure you recognize this, and you
already alluded to it, whetherhe acknowledged it or not, that
gentleman hung up the phone andprobably was on cloud nine for
(07:20):
the next week knowing that hehad that he had that kind of an
impact on you and maybe evenbeyond. So you mentioned some of
the challenges as a teenager. Ifyou don't mind me asking, Did
you patch things up with yourfamily? I mean, how did that go?
Danny Murphy (07:32):
I've thought about that a lot. I know that both of
my parents, I learned myindependent streak from them.
There's often friction thatcomes with the participation in
the dominance hierarchy thatdisappears once you're out of
that situation. They often didtheir best to try to get me to
come back home, and I want tomake that clear that they were
diligent in trying to take careof me at that age. But I wanted
(07:55):
to see if I could do it. Iwanted to see if I could make it
without being anyone underanyone's roof, and it's only in
retrospect that I can realizehow difficult I made it for
myself when it didn't have to bebut at the same time, I'm
delighted to have had thatexperience, because it really
does turn the volume down on alot of other conditions. The
(08:16):
gratitude you have for justhaving a suitable temperature
home to live in and some waterand some food, it makes the rest
of life a lot easier.
Matt Kirchner (08:23):
Absolutely, there's no question about that,
and gives us a level ofappreciation both ways, scarcity
certainly gives us a level ofappreciation for that. You know,
when we do have those things inour lives, to recognize how
important they are. So youbetter than anybody can tell a
story like that, Danny. Tell mea little bit about Marcy. So
this is the individual who said,Hey, again, a pivotal moment in
(08:44):
your life. Somebody that said,hey, maybe you should try your
hand at teaching how did thatrelationship come about? And
tell me about that person. Marcyis
Danny Murphy (08:51):
a brilliant woman, and I'm delighted to be able to
work in the same building asher. She's been incredibly
influential. I'd reached out toMarcy at a company that I was
working with because we needed ayoung engineering student or
young technical worker. And wedid what every company does to
every school, is they call themand they say, We want your best
student. That's always what youhear. Everyone wants your best
(09:12):
student, and they all think thatthey deserve it. And then I
called Marcy, and I said, I wantyour best student. She hooked me
up with a young man by the nameof Jesse Scott who was truly a
brilliant and still remains abrilliant young man. I was
talking to her about theprogram, and she asked me, she
said, you know, if people withthis type of technical capacity
are important, then would you bewilling to help write a letter
(09:33):
to the state government and saythat we need more attention to
this mechatronics program? And Isaid, What's mechatronics? I've
never even heard that wordbefore. What's that made up?
Garbage? It's a combination ofmechanical and electronics and a
combination of disciplines thatrounds out automation. It's
like, oh, automation. Why? Iknow what that is. And so I
(09:54):
wrote the letter that said, weneed to more of this type of
education. And once I did, itwas part of her. Effort that
actually got more support fromthe state, and she said, we
don't have enough teachers.
Would would you like to teach?
And it's funny, I think anyengineer would agree with me
that when an engineer isapproached with, would you like
to teach? What you know, it'slike, yes, of course. I'll be
(10:16):
the best teacher in the worldbecause I'm the best engineer in
the world. That's the type ofengineering mentality. We're
very ego forward. I remember myfirst couple of weeks in the
classroom and thinking, Oh, wow,I have no idea what I'm doing,
and I'm doing pretty bad, andeverybody can see it. And it was
a incredibly humblingexperience. In fact, I attended
several of Marcy's classes andsat in the back just to see how
(10:39):
is a person supposed to teach,and I actually learned how to
teach just by watching her inthe classroom.
Matt Kirchner (10:45):
Interesting. So how long ago was that helped me
put this into perspective. Hasthis been a few years now since
you moved over to teaching? Thatwould have been 2018
Danny Murphy (10:53):
So I'm coming up on my seventh year of teaching.
Matt Kirchner (10:56):
Yeah, awesome. So seven years in, and you were
obviously in the engineeringdiscipline before that. What
kind of engineer you said youstudied at DeVry? Studied At
DeVry? Tell me about that. Well,I
Danny Murphy (11:04):
studied in electronics engineering, and
when I graduated, I immediatelywent into controls. We had kind
of three pathways at the school.
There was networking, I knew Icouldn't stand that. There was
telecommunications. I didn'teven really understand the
basics of that, and it leftcontrols. I was like, well,
that's making machines move.
That's cool, no matter who youask. And right, it very much
(11:25):
was. And so in 1999 I think Ientered the workforce as a young
engineer with zero experience atall, with far more confidence
than I than I actually deserved,and I had been in automation
ever since. So
Matt Kirchner (11:39):
1999 to 2018 you're in automation. You're in
controls engineering, doingreally, really cool stuff in and
around manufacturing. 2018 youmake the switch to education.
You already chatted a little bitabout some of the challenges and
adjustments that take place whenyou step into the classroom and
all of a sudden the spotlight ison and students are expecting
you to be delivering learning ata really, really high level,
(12:00):
which I know you're certainlyable to do. But let's go back to
that 2018, time frame and talkabout what the classroom felt
and looked like when you firststepped into education, and then
we'll talk about how it'sevolved since then. So
Danny Murphy (12:12):
my first class, I believe, was in the basement of
the framatome building. It wasacross from the machine shop,
and it was an overflowclassroom. I remember my first
class in PLCs. I was teachingthe students what PLCs were,
and, by extension, a little bitof electrical theory. And I was
(12:33):
in the middle of making a spiralwith my finger to describe how a
magnetic field would propagatearound a path of current flow.
When a student interrupted memaybe about 30 minutes into the
lecture of programmable logiccontrollers and and he said,
Hey, what's a PLC? Yeah. And Irealized that I had been talking
(12:55):
for however long about theautomation and everything, and
I'd completely, completely leapfrogged all of the basics in any
of the context that would havehelped them apply it to their
level of knowledge. And it wasat that point where I thought,
oh, man, you know what I'm whatam I going to do? I really don't
know what I'm doing. And eversince that moment, I've realized
that in the classroom you'regoing to have people from all
(13:18):
all backgrounds and all levelsof expertise. And if you don't
really flesh out that basement,if you don't really build the
foundation forum of whateverything rests on top of,
you're effectively building ahouse of cards. And I think a
lot of people make that mistake.
They assume that the people intheir classroom have the
experience with theprerequisites that they need in
order to have the understandingthat they need to build on top
(13:39):
of, and so often that's not thecase. I mean, I was one of the
worst students I can think of. Iwas so bored in the classroom, I
rarely could pay attention. Iwas good on tests somehow, but
you automatically flush all thatinformation and and I found that
an integral part of my teachingstyle since then is to spend far
more time on the basics than youthink you need to, because if
(14:00):
you don't have those, then youreally don't have anything.
Matt Kirchner (14:05):
Absolutely, you know, the story you just told
takes me back to a coupledifferent ones, some when it
comes to PLCs. The first one isthe I ran for 10 years, a spin
off of Rockwell Automation. Andso, you know, you think about
kind of the behemoths and incontrols here in the United
States, you've got companieslike Siemens. We've had Barbara
Hampton, who's the CEO ofSiemens, USA, on the podcast,
(14:27):
Blake Moret, who's the chairmanand CEO of Rockwell Automation,
has been on but for 10 years, Iran a spin off of Rockwell
Automation, and my first week inrunning that company, and I was
the chief executive of thecompany, we were a tier one
supplier to Rockwell. Andsomebody said, you know, was
pointing at a production part,and they're like, well, that
goes into this part. That goesinto this part of the PLC. And I
asked the same question. I'mlike, What's a PLC? They're
like, wait a minute, you'rerunning a tier one supplier to
(14:49):
Rockwell Automation, and youdon't know what PLC stands for.
Fast forward from that 20 someodd years, and I get into the
education world. And I was witha group of high school
educators, Danny, and I wastalking about. PLCs. And I was
like, you know, this is a PLC.
And we were talking about amechatronics trainer, actually,
in that case, and talking abouthow the PLC controlled the
manufacturing operation and soon. And finally, one of them
raised their hand, and they'relike, I get it, but what do
(15:11):
professional learningcommunities have to do with
this? I'm like, No, not thatkind of PLC. We're talking about
programmable logic controllers.
But you're exactly right whenyou think about meeting that
student where they are. So wegotta do all of this with
important context. And webought. We gotta do it also in a
way that makes the learning funand engaging. And talk about was
that model there 2018 when youstarted teaching, and over the
(15:34):
course of the seven years nowthat have ensued, how have you
made learning more fun and moreengaging for your students?
Danny Murphy (15:41):
I often thought when I was sitting in class in
college. Now, DeVry did a finejob, but I was particularly
scatterbrained student, and Iwas always finding myself
thinking about something elseand and never really focusing.
Really what I would focus on themost is how much longer do I
have before I get out of thisand go out to do whatever I need
to do. It took me a littlewhile, maybe half a semester, to
(16:04):
realize that I was committingthe same atrocity that I'd
criticized others on. I'd alwayssaid, if I was going to teach
the class, I'd make it fun. And,you know, everybody thinks that,
but what they don't understandis it's not just make it fun.
It's so much more workload forthe instructor to chart a course
through the learning processwith different activities. And
(16:25):
I've noticed that. I'm sure manypeople who are listening right
now have noticed this too, thatin the last probably decade or
so, our social media use, ourdevice use, has really limited
everyone's attention span.
There's actually statistics onthis of how your attention span
right now, you're doing good. Ifyou can make it two and a half
minutes. It used to be 10minutes. And once I really
(16:45):
realized that, once I reallystarted looking at my students
as I was teaching them, and youcan see that moment where they
go from engaged to their eyesbeing glazed over, once their
eyes are glazed over and they'renot really following you, you
might as well stop talkingbecause they're not learning.
And I found that the best way tokeep that attention was dynamic
volume, with storytelling, andespecially with transitioning
(17:09):
the type of media with which youwere using to present the
material at about every two anda half minutes. So I learned
that if I'm going to talk, Ibetter say what I need to say
within two and a half minutes,and then I better show a video.
And when I show that video, itbetter not be a 15 minute
YouTube video. It better be ashort and when I do that, I
ought to transition to hands onactivity. Now, hands on activity
(17:31):
you can make go for longer thantwo and a half minutes, but you
can't make it go for two and ahalf hours. So it's a constant
cycling between things thatactivate different portions of
the brain and keeping thestudent awake. You
Matt Kirchner (17:47):
know, it's interesting that you say a
couple things there. You know,number one, and we talk from
time to time on the podcast. Ihave the opportunity and the
blessing of being able tokeynote events quite frequently.
It's probably at least once amonth, a lot of times. Might be
even two or three times a monththat I'm in front of an audience
and and delivering a keynote onone topic or the other. The last
year or two, it's been a reallyaround artificial intelligence
(18:08):
and applied AI. But the thecontent has changed over time.
The one thing that doesn'tchange is the importance, I
think, as a speaker, of keepingthe audience engaged. And as I
try out new content, because Ialways try to keep the content
fresh. And it doesn't mean thatI never repeat a story or never
use the slide in two keynotes ina row, but over the course of
six months or a year, thatpresentation will completely
(18:28):
evolve, because I'm constantlyreplacing older content with new
content. So you try out the newcontent, and the thing that I
look for is watching the eyes ofthe audience, and you can just
tell by looking at their eyeswhether or not the intent that
you had of whatever new thingthat you put into that
presentation or that speech isresonating with the audience,
because you're right when thatwhen the eyes go blank, or you
(18:49):
see people start to yawn, orsomeone's looking down at their
phone, or whatever it's like,okay, that part of the
presentation wasn't engagingenough. I've got to find a way
to make that more engaging. AndI just see an incredible
parallel between what you justsaid there in terms of engaging
classroom learners and engagingstudents in a, you know, an
applied, hands on way and andkeeping them engaged in the
learning. You know, we talk inour businesses about sending a
(19:11):
message, and it's you can't tellsomebody something once. You
have to tell them seven timesseven different ways, your idea
of changing the media by whichyou're delivering the message
really, really aligned there. Ithink the other thing that you
and I are super aligned on isthe importance of not just doing
great presentations, but gettingthe students engaged in their
learning through projects. And Iknow that's a key part of your
program. So talk a little bitabout the projects your students
(19:34):
are doing and not just that, butalso what kind of feedback
you're getting from
Danny Murphy (19:38):
them. That's a great point. I'm glad you
brought it up. The studentsdon't come to school to listen
to me talk. We live in a worldwhere if they want to listen to
somebody talk about how to dosomething, YouTube is free. They
don't have to pay to come tolisten to me. They have
unfettered access to brilliantpresentations, wonderful
animations. What my role in thatshould be is the person that can
(19:59):
allow them access. Access to thetools and the equipment that
they actually need in order tolearn themselves. And I think
some of the most successfulprojects I've tried to work on
are not only hands on with realworld equipment, but they
involve some kind of creativedecision making from the
student. And I'll explain what Imean. When I started my robotics
(20:20):
class, I was trying toapproximate fanics handling tool
program. And of course, there'sseveral different topics you
have to go through, and a bookthat goes along with it that
explains it perfectly. And it'simportant to follow instructions
in order to become a technicalworker, because there's so many
instruction based things thatyou have to do, but you're not
(20:42):
going to retain the tasks thatyou do off a list. And so how do
you do it? Well, how I do it is,I spend a little bit of time
with the students in theclassroom saying, Hey, this is
what we're going to learn today.
Let's say it's user frames, orlet's say it's some kind of
loops. Here's why they'reimportant. And what I want you
to do is, I want you to createan exercise for yourself where
(21:04):
you get to employ theseprinciples by doing whatever you
want. The only criteria I havefor you is that you have to
display a mastery of thesetechniques, and it has to be
cool enough to be interesting tome, and that's an unusual
criteria for students to hear,is that it has to be cool and it
has to be fun, right? And theexercises that that builds are
(21:26):
the types that I make videosabout and post on social media,
where student will bring in abox of cocoa puffs and a gallon
of milk and a couple of bowlsand and we'll take ladles and
we'll protect the robot, andthey're, they're trying to write
a program to scoop the cocoapuffs out of the bowl and to
make a bowl of cereal. Or oneteam might have a jello mold and
(21:47):
create jello and try to putjello in something, or even
something to where, if it's asimple conveyor exercise in PLC
class, who are you're conveyinga box? Well, I've found an old
alarm clock that it looks likebacon, and we called it Mayor
mcbaikin For some reason, and wetaped him on the top of the box.
And now the exercise isn't aboutconveying a box from the
(22:09):
upstream photo eye to thedownstream photo eye. It's about
conveying Mayor McBain down theconveyor and not allowing him to
fall off the end. And it seemslike so many silly, zany or
otherwise ridiculous littlespices that you can throw into
your lab become the memorableportions of that lab. Sure, by
(22:30):
by definition of the word thatwhich is out of the ordinary is
something that you're morelikely to focus on and remember.
Well, if you remember thatcreative element, that fun
element that causes you toengage, or you remember that odd
element that's associated withthe lesson that you are trying
to teach in the first place, andso you're allowing there to be a
(22:52):
link to something they're likelyto remember, to this thing that
they need to remember
Matt Kirchner (22:59):
absolutely. You know, you think about like all
the mnemonics that I used to usewhen I was going through my post
secondary journey to memorizethings and and that was what is
all about. Was it was to createsome, take something that you
can relate to and then use it tomemorize or remember or learn
something that kind of ridesalongside of that, I think, to
(23:19):
some of the even reading throughsome of the memory books and so
on, understanding howindividuals have created systems
for remembering people's namesor remembering a list of items
or what have you, and you've gotto anchor it to something
memorable. The bigger and thelarger that experience, and the
more that that kind of playsright into your haptic zone, the
more memorable that's going tobe. And that's exactly what
(23:41):
you're doing with the learning.
I'm glad, by the way, thatyou're protecting the robots
while the students are doingthings like ladling milk and
moving seriously around theworkspace and so on. That's and
jello too. They probably don'tplay really well with robots.
Fair to say,
Danny Murphy (23:54):
we go through a lot of duct tape and a lot of
trash bags. So yeah, if I couldbring up two, of course, I'd
skipped over a little about thestudents creative engagement.
Okay, that's important too,because just last night, we
finished up the capstoneprojects in the robot lab. And
one thing that a student choseto do was bring in a cake and
(24:16):
bring in two different types ofice cream and multiple different
types of sprinkles, and theywanted to have the robot cut the
cake, spatula it onto a plate,and then change tools, grab a
ladle, grab some soupy icecream, drizzle down over top of
it. And in their mind, they'dhad such a clear picture of how
they were going to do that,technically, instructionally,
(24:39):
programmatically. But what theylearned in that process was how
many of the things that you'reunlikely to encounter verbally
in a classroom can possibly gowrong on a project, on an
engineering project, on aprogramming task, everything
that can go wrong does go wrong.
And the student experiencedthis, and while they. They
absolutely accomplished theprogrammatic portion of their
(25:02):
lab. They found so manychallenges that were unexpected,
that cost so much time. And Ithink that's important for
students who are likely to go ona commissioning trip, to realize
is, if you're budgeting for a 12hour trip, what are you going to
do if it takes 40 hours? What'sright? How long do you spend on
various portions of the project?
(25:23):
And the thing that's interestingabout it being their own choice
is, if it was my lab that I toldthem to do, once things start
getting frustrated mentally,anyone's going to start blaming
the instructor for not preparingthem well. But if they chose
that task themselves, right?
They're much, much moreincentivized to stick with it in
order to prove to themselvesthat they can get it done. And I
(25:46):
think that's an important partof curriculum development that's
often overlooked.
Matt Kirchner (25:51):
So prove to themselves and prove to you,
right, as their teacher andtheir instructor, that they've
got what it takes
Danny Murphy (25:56):
to be able to their classmates, yeah, and
their classmates while we're atit, yeah. And there's pride that
goes
Matt Kirchner (26:00):
along with that, and there's a tiny bit of shame
that goes along with failing atthat as well. Certainly, okay. I
mean, not everything goesperfect in the lab in a college
environment or on themanufacturing floor in a
manufacturing environment. Andso just to paint a little bit of
the picture for our audience, alot of us are spent a lot of
time around industrial robots. Alot don't what you're talking
about is doing this with like asix axis robot. Think about if
(26:22):
somebody had to program theirown arm from their waist all the
way down to their fingertips,and rather than just
automatically knowing how toladle milk into a bowl, that you
had to program and tell everysingle one of your joints
exactly how to do that and whereit needed to go, and in some
cases, the path that it neededto take. All these things that
we do intuitively, somebody'sgot to program a robot to be
able to do that, and those arethe kinds of things that your
(26:45):
students are learning. I lovethis example of the cake and the
capstone project from this week.
Am I going to see that on socialmedia? Is that going to show up
on LinkedIn?
Danny Murphy (26:52):
Yeah, I actually filled up my phone memory with
taking video of that particularproject. I'll probably be
putting that out by the secondweek of May.
Matt Kirchner (27:00):
We'll keep our eyes open for that in the second
week of May, and I believe thisparticular podcast is probably
going to drop right about thatsame period of time. We'll see
if we can't find some links toput in the show notes as well so
that our audience can check thatout. How long have you been
posting on social media? Whatgot you started with that?
Danny Murphy (27:15):
I would say it's been more than two years. I
don't know if it's been threeyears, though, I was never much
on social media, just theculture that I grew up in looked
down on social media use as asilly toy for people that didn't
get out in the woods enough. Andthat's the kind of the way that
I felt about it, too. And I wason LinkedIn, and LinkedIn was my
(27:36):
social media of choice, justbecause it seemed somewhat more
serious and useful than some ofthe other social media
platforms. When I started, and Iwas reading through about
different engineers that hadopinions on education in our
country, and universally, theopinion that you read is they
don't teach in schools what youneed in industry, and there's a
(27:58):
lot of that going on. To befair, teachers will talk.
They'll have dry lectures aboutsomething that was only relevant
20 years ago, the instructormaybe had never actually been in
industry to know what wasimportant. And I was thinking
about some of these horriblynegative comments that I was
reading and thinking, this isinflammatory, but there's a lot
of truth in what they're saying.
But my classes, I feel likethey're different. You know, I
(28:22):
do come from industry. I spent along time in industry, and the
things that I teach aren'tnecessarily the things that I
find in textbooks. They're thelessons that I learned by my own
mistakes in the field that Iwant to protect my students from
having to repeat. And so atfirst I thought, well, I'll
argue with these comments. Andthen I remembered that arguments
and comment sections of socialmedia never go anywhere
(28:43):
productive, right? So I thought,well, what I'll do is I'll take
my Android and I'll film what mystudents are doing in my lab,
and I'll make my first post, andI'll just show people, Hey, this
is what I'm doing to make itseem useful for their future
employers. So I took a video ofsome robot, some robot lab, I
posted it up, and the very nextday, I had a call from an
(29:05):
employer in town that I hadn'tbeen aware of before, and they
said, We want to hire the guy inthe gray shirt. And I was like,
do you mean Mike? And you'relike, we don't know, just the
way he was using that robot,that's exactly what we need.
This is a great lesson. And so Italked to Mike, and he was like,
Wow, that's incredible. Mikeended up going to work for that
(29:27):
company within the last twoweeks, and I thought, That's
awesome. If I have this kind ofpower on my phone, well, I'm
kind of ethically obligated touse this now. And so I started
producing maybe one or twovideos a week, and I'm not a
videographer, and I'm notparticularly creative in that
aspect, so a lot of them werequick cuts of what was going on
in the classroom. I learned veryquickly that I had to apply the
(29:50):
same principles to my videosthat I applied to my lectures in
that they can't be long andrambling. I have to have really
short. Cuts a video, it's nottwo and a half minutes in a
video, it's 1.6 seconds perscene I found as the hot spot,
and so I started posting one ortwo videos a week, and so far, I
think I've had six students gethired from companies that they
(30:13):
weren't in contact with,exclusively from being seen on
my videos recently, and I've hada PhD in material science and a
master's in machine learning,see my videos, be excited about
what was going on in my class,and volunteer to come in on
several occasions to help withmy class. And it's astounding
the power we have, through thiseveryday form of communications,
(30:35):
to collaborate with people thatwe never would have met. And I
think it's a brilliant modelthat more people should be using
in their own teaching. And
Matt Kirchner (30:45):
I want to get into in a minute some of the
advice that you might have forother educators in terms of how
they become more active onsocial media. Before we do that,
you used a term in that lastanswer that I want to make sure
wasn't lost on our audience whenyou had this young man named
Mike who got hired literallybecause you took the time to
post a video of his work onsocial media. You said you feel
like you have an ethicalobligation to do that kind of
(31:09):
work after it worked the firsttime. Why is this so personal to
you? And tell us a little bitabout more why you would look at
that as an ethical obligation,as opposed to just something you
would do because you want to bea great instructor.
Danny Murphy (31:20):
I think if any of us are the type of person that
wants to see those within oursphere of influence succeed,
then we're responsible for doingwhatever we can in order to make
that happen. And that's justkind of a basic cause and effect
action. I'm sure a lot of it isbased off of my own realization
(31:41):
of where I would be were it notfor the intervention of my
electronics teacher earlier. Iknow that I have the power,
somewhat accidentally, to impactthe students in my class. And if
I have that power, and if Ichoose not to use it, then it's
the same as doing the oppositeof what my and their goals is.
Matt Kirchner (32:02):
It's really, really well put, and it really
speaks to at the heart of themagic and the incredible impact
that the teachers andinstructors have, not just on
their students, but on theentire world and all of these
people that you're reaching withincredible stories on social
media, is having that effect.
Clearly, having that effect.
Talk about the other types ofyou mentioned the post of Mike.
(32:23):
You mentioned the post of therobot making the cake. What are
the other kinds of things thatpeople might see if they look
you up on social I've
Danny Murphy (32:30):
found along the way, as I post various types of
content that what people aremost interested in is probably
what they lacked themselves inthe classroom, and that's
laughter, and that's creativity,and that's fun, hands on
learning cooperatively withother students. I find the more
(32:51):
I just display that the morepeople it resonates with, not
because of anything I'm doing,but because how many of us sat
in the classroom and listen tosomebody drone on about
something they knew wasn'trelevant at the time, and how
many people would have muchrather been in a kind of adult
playground to where they couldhave just experienced the tools
(33:14):
that they knew they were goingto have to use later on in a
creative environment thatallowed them the opportunity to
make mistakes in a safe place.
The types of posts that I'vemade that have gotten
significantly less resonancewere times where I'll speak over
top of a compilation and I'lltell people what I think about
(33:34):
something I've learned veryquickly, people don't want to
see me, they don't want to hearme. They want to see what's
going on in my class. And atfirst, that was kind of
humbling, but I completelyunderstand that there's two
types of people that I thinkreally resonate with my content.
That's people who were bored inthe classroom and wish they
would have had the experiencethat they're seeing. And then
there's the people who are inthe workplace now and wanting
(33:58):
some evidence that somebody thatthey're about to hire might have
any experience with a toolthat's relevant to what they'll
be getting paid to do. I'm
Matt Kirchner (34:10):
actually fighting the temptation right now to go
down my rabbit hole of myeducation journey, which is
exactly what you just described,and that is wondering for
literally 14 years, or whateverit is, even longer than that, I
guess what I was doing there andwhen I could get out and
actually do the fun stuff, andseeing the kind of content that
you post, it really does exactlywhat you just described. It
(34:30):
brings in any of us, and there'sso many of us that are like,
wow, education. I grew upthinking that I was wrong for
education, and it turns out thateducation was wrong for me, or
at least the style of educationthat I was getting in a lot of
ways. And that's not to takeanything away from incredible
teachers and people that took aninterest in me and so on. And I
don't have any regrets, but,man, that journey could have
been so much different. Ifpeople want to see all this
(34:53):
content, Danny that you'reposting, you mentioned LinkedIn.
Are there other platforms thatthey'll find you on? Sure. Danny
Danny Murphy (34:59):
Murphy only. In and I'm underscore Papa Murph on
Instagram, a lot of times, myvideos that I post on LinkedIn
will be edited in a somewhatmore professional way to appeal
to that demographic. The thingsthat I post on Instagram are
largely formatted to appeal tomy demographic there, which is
(35:20):
engineering students in their20s. I got about maybe 30,000
people following me onInstagram, maybe 11,000 on
LinkedIn, which aren't hugenumbers, but they're big for me.
Those are
Matt Kirchner (35:30):
pretty significant numbers. Sure you're
reaching a lot of people goahead. Well,
Danny Murphy (35:34):
thank you. I appreciate that. And so on
Instagram, there's occasionallyslightly more modernized music
that I'll ask my students, like,hey, what music is cool? Because
if it was up to me, it would beall 90 scratch music,
Matt Kirchner (35:46):
which is also cool, but maybe not meeting the
right audience
Danny Murphy (35:49):
that still certainly finds its way in
there. Just because sometimes Iwant to make something for me,
but a little bit a little bitmore mean content, but I try my
best not to make it stupid. Ifind that sometimes, once people
establish some following, itoften becomes the case that you
get more followers when youappeal to the lowest common
denominator and you see thecartoonization of their content
(36:13):
over time. And I'm trying tomake sure that doesn't happen,
because I'm not in it for thefollowers, and I'm not in it to
appeal to the dopamine chasersI'm in it to advertise for my
students, and also above andbeyond, advertising for my
students, to just put themessage out there that, hey,
education is meaningful and it'sdelightful to improve yourself.
(36:40):
I love
Matt Kirchner (36:41):
that education is meaningful and it's delightful
to improve yourself, and that iswhat it's all about. All in the
pursuit of not just awesomecareers, which I know you're
pretty you're putting a ton ofyoung people into, and people of
all ages, I'm sure, into really,really cool career pathways, but
also for the sake of justbettering ourselves and
recognizing that there's agreater part of life that comes
(37:01):
with knowledge and comes withunderstanding, and I know that's
all part of what you'redelivering in the classroom.
Lots of educators doing, or atleast working on, doing the same
thing. Let's kind of pivot alittle bit now, dandy to advice
for other educators. One part ofthis question is, are the things
that you found on social media,in being active on social that
have surprised you. Youmentioned a couple stories
(37:23):
already, but anything else youwould add, and then in
responding to that, also alittle bit about, if I'm an
educator who would love to getstarted doing the same kind of
work that you're doing, but haveno idea where to start. Where
would you start? So somethingthat would surprise them, and
then where should they start? So
Danny Murphy (37:39):
the thing that I found most surprising was the
toxicity of some of the peoplewho anonymously hide behind
their profile to make comments,a lot of what I have to do after
I make some posts, especially,much more on Instagram than
LinkedIn. LinkedIn is people areon their best behavior because
that's where they find jobs whenthey don't have them. Instagram,
(38:00):
on the other hand, there's a lotof angry and frustrated people
in the world, and it'sparticularly uncomfortable to
realize that that anger andfrustration often should be
channeled inwardly, and so wetake it and we just spray it
outward onto whatever seemsbeautiful. And I've had a lot of
comments about young men andwomen in my posts, I try to stay
on top of it so that I coulddelete it as soon as I see it. I
(38:22):
learned very early on don't tryto argue with negativity,
because it just spirals intomore negativity. So I police my
content so that hopefully nostudent who is ever delighting
in the fact that they're beingcongratulated on social media
has to go to a section wheresomeone is just being hateful
about the clothes they wore, orwhether or not they think they
(38:43):
agree with that person'slifestyle. That was surprising
for me, especially. There wasone reel that I had blow up. I
think it reached 800,000viewers. And you know, when you
have 800,000 people, imagine howmany comments that are negative?
If you
Matt Kirchner (38:59):
it only takes a few, right? Yeah, absolutely.
Point 1% Yeah. So
Danny Murphy (39:03):
that was the surprise. As far as getting
started, some educators willhave a steep hill to climb. I've
talked to educators who let meknow that their college or their
high school has specific strictrules against videoing students,
regardless of whether or not youhave a release waiver, you, by
the way, get a release waiverand ask the students, 100% ask
(39:26):
the students which one of youmind? Here's what I'm planning
to do. I would like to advertisefor you, and I think you look
great while you're doing this. Idon't want you to be
embarrassed. Who wants to be apart of this, and the students
who don't want to be a part ofit, make sure that you leave
them out of it. Make sure thatthey don't think while they're
working that they're beingfilmed. You know, be very
respectful of that. Butimportantly, it takes an
(39:48):
incredible investment of time tobuild a social media presence.
There's times I wake up at twoin the morning and I can't
sleep, and I go on LinkedIn, andI try to make 50 connections
before I go back to. Sleepbefore class. That
Matt Kirchner (40:01):
says a lot about you in a lot of different ways.
Probably have a wholeconversation about what you just
said, but continue. Well,
Danny Murphy (40:09):
one thing that I've been trying to do to help
other educators is to allow themto piggyback off of the effort
that I've already put forth tobuild a platform I've been doing
a little 30/92, teaserinterviews with other educators
that I'll post, and I'll addthem as a collaborator, in the
hopes that some of the peoplethat view my content will also
(40:31):
go and follow them. So ifanyone's interested in building
the same type of social medianetwork, please reach out to me
and I'll see if I can interviewyou would put you in the
spotlight and feature you
Matt Kirchner (40:42):
awesome. That'll all be in the show notes too. If
people are looking to find outhow to contact Danny Murphy,
we'll make sure you can do thatright through the show notes. So
absolutely terrific and greatadvice. What platform would they
start on? Danny? I know you saidyou started on LinkedIn. Is that
where you would recommend aneducator start? Should they be
on Instagram? Should they startmaking tick tock videos? What's
the best spot? I haven't gotten
Danny Murphy (41:02):
big on Tiktok, just because earlier, when I was
starting to do this, I workedfor a state school. There was
actually rules against usingTiktok because of the national
involvement. But Tiktok iscertainly quite popular. I would
think that the platform that theindividual chose should probably
at first be a reflection of thatperson's personality. How about
(41:24):
that? So someone who isinterested in making slightly
more professional content,slightly more conservative
content, LinkedIn is a greatplace to do that. If the
person's more fun and exuberant,maybe Tiktok or Instagram would
be a better place. But to behonest with you, try it all and
throw the spaghetti at the walland see what sticks, see
Matt Kirchner (41:45):
what resonates.
Really good advice. Anything youdo differently in the last two
and a half years that you'vebeen active on social
Danny Murphy (41:51):
Yeah, actually, my activity on social media has
taught me how to be a morepatient person and less prone to
react negatively to a negativecomment. I know the first
several negative comments that Igot on some of my posts, my
instinctual reaction would havebeen to say something nasty back
and then three minutes later,delete it when I found out that
(42:13):
I'd been a jerk. But it teachesyou to be more of a public
figure, and it teaches it taughtme anyway to be a stronger
representative of a benevolentforce out there into the ether.
I've found people especially onI found this on LinkedIn, an
engineer might look at somethingI have in a video and say, Oh,
(42:36):
you're doing this wrong. Youshould be doing it this way. And
if you can push down thatargumentative instinct and just
say, Wow. You know, I bet youhave a lot of experience with
this. Could you teach mesomething about how to do this
better? Teach me based off yourexperience? Well, most
engineers, and I can say this asan engineer, spend their entire
life in a cubicle, and the onlytime anyone talks to them is to
(42:58):
criticize them for somethingthat might not even be their
fault. So if you take thespotlight and shine it on them
and say, Thank you, teach mewhat you know. 80% chance you've
just made a friend for life.
Absolutely,
Matt Kirchner (43:10):
that's really good advice. I like the way you
started that by Hey, this is howwe reacted and some of the
challenges we've had with thenegativity and then rolling into
putting the spotlight on anindividual and maybe changing
their life in a huge way.
Thinking about not justnegativity, let's turn it to
positivity and also things thatcan change lives and in a huge
way. We mentioned in the introthat you were the 2024 a three
(43:32):
Educator of the Year. You've gotto be just tremendously proud of
that. Tell us about what thatrecognition means to you.
Danny Murphy (43:40):
I was unbelievably excited to receive that award,
and what it taught me is, ifthere's going to be some global
entity out there that isbestowed on me the title of
Educator of the Year, I reallyneed to up my game to deserve
that. It's a call towards moreaction, if anything else, it
(44:01):
caused me to really rethink alot of what I had assumed my own
limitations were, and to see howto exceed that. I currently
maybe help 60 or 100 students ayear. I need to find a way to
change that to 600 or 1000 andwhat can I do to share that the
reward with others who haveearned it at least equally well,
(44:22):
and perhaps more than me,
Matt Kirchner (44:24):
it's amazing. As you were saying that I think
about the effect that a teacherand instructor has on a student,
and that whole idea of raisingexpectation and showing a
student that they're capable ofdoing something more, and
sometimes just the act of aninstructor saying, here is an
expectation. This is somethingyou're really, really good at
this is something that youshould be recognized for. Almost
instills in them this desire todo even more. And it sounds like
(44:47):
this recognition did exactly thesame for you.
Danny Murphy (44:50):
That's right.
That's exactly right. How manytimes have students across the
world seen the F on their paperor heard you're not very good at
this? But if you look at astudent directly in. Their eyes,
and you tell them, I know thatyou could achieve this, and I
believe in you. That's fuel.
It's absolutely
Matt Kirchner (45:07):
fuel. It gives them the confidence to at least
give it a shot. And somebodybelieves in them, somebody they
don't want to let down, andsomebody that they want to have
enjoy that level of successright along their side, which I
know is exactly how you're doingthings in the classroom. I think
we've got time for two quickquestions here in the time we
have remaining. Danny, the firstone, actually, both of them are
ones we'd love to hear from ourguests about. And the first
(45:29):
question is, tell us thing ineducation. We've already heard a
number of them. But is theresomething about your educational
journey, or something abouteducation in general that you
believe strongly that wouldsurprise other people,
Danny Murphy (45:41):
I believe that your attitude towards what you
can do and how you interfacewith the people around you is
perhaps more important than yourinnate technical ability. If you
behave yourself in a way thatanyone wants to be around you
and you chase what's your bestpresentation of your own skill
(46:02):
set, often you're going toperform better than someone who
is ridiculously good atsomething but has no drive.
Matt Kirchner (46:09):
Isn't that the truth that it's you know, you
can be really, really smart, youcan be really, really talented,
but if you're not doing it forthe right reasons, you're not
motivated in the right way, oryou don't have the ability to
interact, and it's with andinspire others in a certain way
that that innate talent, or thattalent that you've gained over
the time the course of yourlife, can only go so far. I
think that's a really, reallypoignant point. I'm also looking
(46:31):
forward to the answer to ourlast question, which given where
we started this conversation inthe life story that you have,
and where you were as a 15 or 16year old, I'm curious to know
this one again, it's a questionthat we ask every guest, but in
your particular case, and aparticularly insightful one, I
think if you could go backDanny, to that 15 year old Danny
Murphy, and give him one pieceof advice, what would you tell
(46:54):
him? I would tell
Danny Murphy (46:55):
him you're not nearly as smart as you think you
are, but you can be infinitelysmarter than you think you can
become.
Matt Kirchner (47:02):
That's beautiful advice, and I will tell you that
you have been infinitely,probably smarter and infinitely
more influential on the lives ofyoung people and people of all
ages than I'm sure you evercould have imagined. Not just
through the magic you work inthe classroom, Danny, but
through this incrediblereputation and this incredible
channel to people out in theworld of education, in the world
(47:25):
of technical education,engineering students thinking
about what the world could befor them, I want to thank you
not just for being a great gueston The TechEd Podcast, but for
the incredible work you're doingon behalf of technical
education. Thank you so much forbeing with us. I appreciate it.
What a terrific episode we hadwith Danny Murphy. I learned so
much about the passion that hehas for technical education, the
(47:47):
incredible dedication that hehas for his students. We need
more teachers like Danny Murphy.
If you enjoyed this episode asmuch as I did, you are
definitely going to want tocheck out the show notes. We
will put those at TechEdpodcast.com/danny, that is
TechEd podcast.com/d, a n, n, y.
We heard all about Danny'ssocial media handles, and you
(48:10):
will find those in the shownotes as well. So check those
out. If you are into socialmedia, like we are, like
everybody is. You can find us onFacebook. You can find us on
tick tock. We are on Instagram.
We are on LinkedIn. We areanywhere you go to look for
social media, and when you getthere, say hello, we would love
to hear from you, and we wouldlove to see you next week on The
(48:30):
TechEd Podcast. Until then, I'mMatt Kirk. You.
Foreign
Matt Kirchner (00:08):
Welcome to this week's episode of The Tech Ed
podcast. Before we get startedthis week, I have some exciting
news to share with our audience.
We are launching a brand newsegment at The TechEd Podcast.
It is called Ask us anything.
You know, I get so manyquestions, whether it's on
social media, people emailingme, people asking questions. At
(00:29):
the many events that we arehonored to speak at, every
single month, there's such greatquestions, and we want to share
the answers, not just with theaudience members who ask them,
but with all of our audiencemembers. So every single
quarter, we will do an episodeof Ask us anything. The first
thing to know is that you cansubmit any question for The
TechEd Podcast at TechEdpodcast.com/ask us anything
(00:54):
that's TechEd podcast.com/ask usanything. Submit your question
in that format. We'll get it.
We'll make sure it finds its wayinto the next episode of Ask us
anything. By the way, this isgoing to be moderated by our
producer, who many of you know.
Our producer, Melissa Martin, isgoing to moderate those
discussions, and we willtogether answer the most
(01:14):
important questions in all oftechnical education. Be sure to
check it out. And now on to thisweek's episode. It's another
week of The TechEd Podcast. Myname is Matt Kirkner. Welcome
in. As you know, we are thenumber one podcast in all of
STEM and technical education. Weare on a mission to secure the
American Dream for the nextgeneration of STEM and workforce
(01:38):
talent, and as we do that work,we attract all kinds of amazing
guests. If you listen often, youknow that we've had several
senators on the podcast, numbersof members of Congress, five
governors, more than 25 fortune500 CEOs have joined us in the
studio of The TechEd Podcast,all on that mission, like we
said, to secure the AmericanDream for the next generation. I
(02:00):
will tell you, with all thoseincredible guests, some of the
best feedback that we get fromour audience is when we bring
someone who is working the magicof technical education in the
classroom, in the labs acrossthe United States of America and
beyond. When we bring thosefolks in to talk about their
work, those are some of ourabsolute most popular episodes.
(02:23):
We have that kind of episode foryou here this week, my guest is
Danny Murphy. Danny is amechatronics professor at
Central Virginia CommunityCollege. He's also, by the way,
the A three Educator of the Yearfor 2024 and that is some pretty
high standing. It's an honor forme to welcome to The TechEd
Podcast, Danny Murphy. Danny,thanks so much for coming on.
(02:46):
Really excited to be here. Thankyou. You've got this incredible
life story that I know is goingto resonate with our audience.
So how does the Danny Murphy ofthe last several decades come to
be the Danny Murphy of today?
Hopefully,
Danny Murphy (02:58):
most people that know me nowadays Think of me as
a pretty even tempered andhelpful type of guy, but I
wasn't always that way when Iwas a teenager. I was, I
suppose, the poorestrepresentation of any teenager
you could probably imagine,which led to my parents decided
to kick me out of the house whenI was 16 years old. For the
first couple of days of that, itwas sleeping on the friend's
(03:18):
couch or whatever, until thoseopportunities quickly
evaporated, and I found myselfin some pretty, pretty dire
straits. Slept in cars, slept instrangers, lawn mower sheds, and
eventually found myself in aabandoned building that I could
crawl into after high school. Ikept going to high school, and
as a matter of fact, that'simportant, because it was my
(03:39):
electronics teacher, SteveCosner, who noticed that I was
getting a little worse for wear,and I still remember the way
that he approached me and hesaid, Look, you look terrible.
You smell bad. I don't want toreally get involved with
whatever's going on, but let'sget your grades up to make sure
that you can eventually makesomething out of your life. And
he did with that sternlymasculine way that only certain
(04:02):
types of mentors can gentlybeach into shape, and I owe my
life to that man. He found me ascholarship to DeVry University.
I'm sure I would never have goneto college were it not for his
intervention. In fact, I wouldmost likely be dead in a ditch
somewhere, such was mysituation, anyway, so I was able
(04:23):
to go to college, get a greateducation, get out of that and
start a deeply meaningful careerin engineering. And after about
20 or so years of that, I wasapproached by Marci Gale, who's
the head of my department atCVCC now. And after a short
conversation, she said, Wouldyou like to be one of our
electronics teachers? It wasweird. I can't really describe
(04:44):
the feeling I had during thatmoment. It was like, the whole
universe went full circle. Andit's like, oh, an electronics
teacher like Steve Cosner, theguy that put me on the path I am
today. And I remember thinking,I wonder if I do this, if I
could ever possibly. To find away to be as impactful to
anybody's life as that man wasto mine. And it turns out that
(05:08):
people give teachers thatopportunity about three times a
semester. It's incredible thepermission that our culture
gives people in this role to beimpactful towards other people's
lives,
Matt Kirchner (05:21):
absolutely. You know, I talk a lot of times
Danny about the whole idea thatthe real magic of a teacher and
it doesn't matter what your paththrough education, whether it's
formal or informal, whether itends at high school or goes on
to post secondary and beyond.
Every one of us has three peoplein our lives that just took a
chance on us showed us that wewere capable of doing something
that we didn't know we ourselveswere able to do, put us on a
(05:43):
career path that we never wouldhave been on if it hadn't been
for that individual. I love itwhen people name individuals
specifically. So somebody likeSteve Cosner that had such a
huge impact in a pivotal and Imean that not just figuratively,
but like pivoting from thatchallenge that you were facing
and showing you a differentpathway. It really, really
underscores the value and theincredible change and impact
(06:05):
that teachers, I think,sometimes in ways they know, and
a lot of times in ways they willnever know have on individuals.
Have you stayed in touch withSteve?
Danny Murphy (06:14):
I know when a three reached out to me last
year and told me that I'd wonEducator of the Year, I had lost
track of Steve Cosner along theway, and I believe one of my
high school friends is a retiredteacher in that area, was able
to look him up, and he's retirednow, and I got his number, and I
called him and I let him know,hey, guess what's going on? This
(06:35):
is some pretty big news, and itall directly translates back to
the role that you played in mylife, like so many people who
were responsible for that typeof influence, he just completely
laughed it off. Was like, no,no, that's everything you're
doing as a result of who youare. And I didn't do much, and
we both knew that was and thatwas a little bit of a lie, and
(06:56):
we kind of let it ride likethat.
Matt Kirchner (06:58):
Yeah, well, Humility is a virtue without
question, but what an incrediblestory that have, and what an
incredible individual to haveimpact your life in that
particular way. And I am glad,by the way, that you had an
opportunity to go back and andlet him know that, and whether I
would just tell you, and I'msure you recognize this, and you
already alluded to it, whetherhe acknowledged it or not, that
gentleman hung up the phone andprobably was on cloud nine for
(07:20):
the next week knowing that hehad that he had that kind of an
impact on you and maybe evenbeyond. So you mentioned some of
the challenges as a teenager. Ifyou don't mind me asking, Did
you patch things up with yourfamily? I mean, how did that go?
Danny Murphy (07:32):
I've thought about that a lot. I know that both of
my parents, I learned myindependent streak from them.
There's often friction thatcomes with the participation in
the dominance hierarchy thatdisappears once you're out of
that situation. They often didtheir best to try to get me to
come back home, and I want tomake that clear that they were
diligent in trying to take careof me at that age. But I wanted
(07:55):
to see if I could do it. Iwanted to see if I could make it
without being anyone underanyone's roof, and it's only in
retrospect that I can realizehow difficult I made it for
myself when it didn't have to bebut at the same time, I'm
delighted to have had thatexperience, because it really
does turn the volume down on alot of other conditions. The
(08:16):
gratitude you have for justhaving a suitable temperature
home to live in and some waterand some food, it makes the rest
of life a lot easier.
Matt Kirchner (08:23):
Absolutely, there's no question about that,
and gives us a level ofappreciation both ways, scarcity
certainly gives us a level ofappreciation for that. You know,
when we do have those things inour lives, to recognize how
important they are. So youbetter than anybody can tell a
story like that, Danny. Tell mea little bit about Marcy. So
this is the individual who said,Hey, again, a pivotal moment in
(08:44):
your life. Somebody that said,hey, maybe you should try your
hand at teaching how did thatrelationship come about? And
tell me about that person. Marcyis
Danny Murphy (08:51):
a brilliant woman, and I'm delighted to be able to
work in the same building asher. She's been incredibly
influential. I'd reached out toMarcy at a company that I was
working with because we needed ayoung engineering student or
young technical worker. And wedid what every company does to
every school, is they call themand they say, We want your best
student. That's always what youhear. Everyone wants your best
(09:12):
student, and they all think thatthey deserve it. And then I
called Marcy, and I said, I wantyour best student. She hooked me
up with a young man by the nameof Jesse Scott who was truly a
brilliant and still remains abrilliant young man. I was
talking to her about theprogram, and she asked me, she
said, you know, if people withthis type of technical capacity
are important, then would you bewilling to help write a letter
(09:33):
to the state government and saythat we need more attention to
this mechatronics program? And Isaid, What's mechatronics? I've
never even heard that wordbefore. What's that made up?
Garbage? It's a combination ofmechanical and electronics and a
combination of disciplines thatrounds out automation. It's
like, oh, automation. Why? Iknow what that is. And so I
(09:54):
wrote the letter that said, weneed to more of this type of
education. And once I did, itwas part of her. Effort that
actually got more support fromthe state, and she said, we
don't have enough teachers.
Would would you like to teach?
And it's funny, I think anyengineer would agree with me
that when an engineer isapproached with, would you like
to teach? What you know, it'slike, yes, of course. I'll be
(10:16):
the best teacher in the worldbecause I'm the best engineer in
the world. That's the type ofengineering mentality. We're
very ego forward. I remember myfirst couple of weeks in the
classroom and thinking, Oh, wow,I have no idea what I'm doing,
and I'm doing pretty bad, andeverybody can see it. And it was
a incredibly humblingexperience. In fact, I attended
several of Marcy's classes andsat in the back just to see how
(10:39):
is a person supposed to teach,and I actually learned how to
teach just by watching her inthe classroom.
Matt Kirchner (10:45):
Interesting. So how long ago was that helped me
put this into perspective. Hasthis been a few years now since
you moved over to teaching? Thatwould have been 2018
Danny Murphy (10:53):
So I'm coming up on my seventh year of teaching.
Matt Kirchner (10:56):
Yeah, awesome. So seven years in, and you were
obviously in the engineeringdiscipline before that. What
kind of engineer you said youstudied at DeVry? Studied At
DeVry? Tell me about that. Well,I
Danny Murphy (11:04):
studied in electronics engineering, and
when I graduated, I immediatelywent into controls. We had kind
of three pathways at the school.
There was networking, I knew Icouldn't stand that. There was
telecommunications. I didn'teven really understand the
basics of that, and it leftcontrols. I was like, well,
that's making machines move.
That's cool, no matter who youask. And right, it very much
(11:25):
was. And so in 1999 I think Ientered the workforce as a young
engineer with zero experience atall, with far more confidence
than I than I actually deserved,and I had been in automation
ever since. So
Matt Kirchner (11:39):
1999 to 2018 you're in automation. You're in
controls engineering, doingreally, really cool stuff in and
around manufacturing. 2018 youmake the switch to education.
You already chatted a little bitabout some of the challenges and
adjustments that take place whenyou step into the classroom and
all of a sudden the spotlight ison and students are expecting
you to be delivering learning ata really, really high level,
(12:00):
which I know you're certainlyable to do. But let's go back to
that 2018, time frame and talkabout what the classroom felt
and looked like when you firststepped into education, and then
we'll talk about how it'sevolved since then. So
Danny Murphy (12:12):
my first class, I believe, was in the basement of
the framatome building. It wasacross from the machine shop,
and it was an overflowclassroom. I remember my first
class in PLCs. I was teachingthe students what PLCs were,
and, by extension, a little bitof electrical theory. And I was
(12:33):
in the middle of making a spiralwith my finger to describe how a
magnetic field would propagatearound a path of current flow.
When a student interrupted memaybe about 30 minutes into the
lecture of programmable logiccontrollers and and he said,
Hey, what's a PLC? Yeah. And Irealized that I had been talking
(12:55):
for however long about theautomation and everything, and
I'd completely, completely leapfrogged all of the basics in any
of the context that would havehelped them apply it to their
level of knowledge. And it wasat that point where I thought,
oh, man, you know what I'm whatam I going to do? I really don't
know what I'm doing. And eversince that moment, I've realized
that in the classroom you'regoing to have people from all
(13:18):
all backgrounds and all levelsof expertise. And if you don't
really flesh out that basement,if you don't really build the
foundation forum of whateverything rests on top of,
you're effectively building ahouse of cards. And I think a
lot of people make that mistake.
They assume that the people intheir classroom have the
experience with theprerequisites that they need in
order to have the understandingthat they need to build on top
(13:39):
of, and so often that's not thecase. I mean, I was one of the
worst students I can think of. Iwas so bored in the classroom, I
rarely could pay attention. Iwas good on tests somehow, but
you automatically flush all thatinformation and and I found that
an integral part of my teachingstyle since then is to spend far
more time on the basics than youthink you need to, because if
(14:00):
you don't have those, then youreally don't have anything.
Matt Kirchner (14:05):
Absolutely, you know, the story you just told
takes me back to a coupledifferent ones, some when it
comes to PLCs. The first one isthe I ran for 10 years, a spin
off of Rockwell Automation. Andso, you know, you think about
kind of the behemoths and incontrols here in the United
States, you've got companieslike Siemens. We've had Barbara
Hampton, who's the CEO ofSiemens, USA, on the podcast,
(14:27):
Blake Moret, who's the chairmanand CEO of Rockwell Automation,
has been on but for 10 years, Iran a spin off of Rockwell
Automation, and my first week inrunning that company, and I was
the chief executive of thecompany, we were a tier one
supplier to Rockwell. Andsomebody said, you know, was
pointing at a production part,and they're like, well, that
goes into this part. That goesinto this part of the PLC. And I
asked the same question. I'mlike, What's a PLC? They're
like, wait a minute, you'rerunning a tier one supplier to
(14:49):
Rockwell Automation, and youdon't know what PLC stands for.
Fast forward from that 20 someodd years, and I get into the
education world. And I was witha group of high school
educators, Danny, and I wastalking about. PLCs. And I was
like, you know, this is a PLC.
And we were talking about amechatronics trainer, actually,
in that case, and talking abouthow the PLC controlled the
manufacturing operation and soon. And finally, one of them
raised their hand, and they'relike, I get it, but what do
(15:11):
professional learningcommunities have to do with
this? I'm like, No, not thatkind of PLC. We're talking about
programmable logic controllers.
But you're exactly right whenyou think about meeting that
student where they are. So wegotta do all of this with
important context. And webought. We gotta do it also in a
way that makes the learning funand engaging. And talk about was
that model there 2018 when youstarted teaching, and over the
(15:34):
course of the seven years nowthat have ensued, how have you
made learning more fun and moreengaging for your students?
Danny Murphy (15:41):
I often thought when I was sitting in class in
college. Now, DeVry did a finejob, but I was particularly
scatterbrained student, and Iwas always finding myself
thinking about something elseand and never really focusing.
Really what I would focus on themost is how much longer do I
have before I get out of thisand go out to do whatever I need
to do. It took me a littlewhile, maybe half a semester, to
(16:04):
realize that I was committingthe same atrocity that I'd
criticized others on. I'd alwayssaid, if I was going to teach
the class, I'd make it fun. And,you know, everybody thinks that,
but what they don't understandis it's not just make it fun.
It's so much more workload forthe instructor to chart a course
through the learning processwith different activities. And
(16:25):
I've noticed that. I'm sure manypeople who are listening right
now have noticed this too, thatin the last probably decade or
so, our social media use, ourdevice use, has really limited
everyone's attention span.
There's actually statistics onthis of how your attention span
right now, you're doing good. Ifyou can make it two and a half
minutes. It used to be 10minutes. And once I really
(16:45):
realized that, once I reallystarted looking at my students
as I was teaching them, and youcan see that moment where they
go from engaged to their eyesbeing glazed over, once their
eyes are glazed over and they'renot really following you, you
might as well stop talkingbecause they're not learning.
And I found that the best way tokeep that attention was dynamic
volume, with storytelling, andespecially with transitioning
(17:09):
the type of media with which youwere using to present the
material at about every two anda half minutes. So I learned
that if I'm going to talk, Ibetter say what I need to say
within two and a half minutes,and then I better show a video.
And when I show that video, itbetter not be a 15 minute
YouTube video. It better be ashort and when I do that, I
ought to transition to hands onactivity. Now, hands on activity
(17:31):
you can make go for longer thantwo and a half minutes, but you
can't make it go for two and ahalf hours. So it's a constant
cycling between things thatactivate different portions of
the brain and keeping thestudent awake. You
Matt Kirchner (17:47):
know, it's interesting that you say a
couple things there. You know,number one, and we talk from
time to time on the podcast. Ihave the opportunity and the
blessing of being able tokeynote events quite frequently.
It's probably at least once amonth, a lot of times. Might be
even two or three times a monththat I'm in front of an audience
and and delivering a keynote onone topic or the other. The last
year or two, it's been a reallyaround artificial intelligence
(18:08):
and applied AI. But the thecontent has changed over time.
The one thing that doesn'tchange is the importance, I
think, as a speaker, of keepingthe audience engaged. And as I
try out new content, because Ialways try to keep the content
fresh. And it doesn't mean thatI never repeat a story or never
use the slide in two keynotes ina row, but over the course of
six months or a year, thatpresentation will completely
(18:28):
evolve, because I'm constantlyreplacing older content with new
content. So you try out the newcontent, and the thing that I
look for is watching the eyes ofthe audience, and you can just
tell by looking at their eyeswhether or not the intent that
you had of whatever new thingthat you put into that
presentation or that speech isresonating with the audience,
because you're right when thatwhen the eyes go blank, or you
(18:49):
see people start to yawn, orsomeone's looking down at their
phone, or whatever it's like,okay, that part of the
presentation wasn't engagingenough. I've got to find a way
to make that more engaging. AndI just see an incredible
parallel between what you justsaid there in terms of engaging
classroom learners and engagingstudents in a, you know, an
applied, hands on way and andkeeping them engaged in the
learning. You know, we talk inour businesses about sending a
(19:11):
message, and it's you can't tellsomebody something once. You
have to tell them seven timesseven different ways, your idea
of changing the media by whichyou're delivering the message
really, really aligned there. Ithink the other thing that you
and I are super aligned on isthe importance of not just doing
great presentations, but gettingthe students engaged in their
learning through projects. And Iknow that's a key part of your
program. So talk a little bitabout the projects your students
(19:34):
are doing and not just that, butalso what kind of feedback
you're getting from
Danny Murphy (19:38):
them. That's a great point. I'm glad you
brought it up. The studentsdon't come to school to listen
to me talk. We live in a worldwhere if they want to listen to
somebody talk about how to dosomething, YouTube is free. They
don't have to pay to come tolisten to me. They have
unfettered access to brilliantpresentations, wonderful
animations. What my role in thatshould be is the person that can
(19:59):
allow them access. Access to thetools and the equipment that
they actually need in order tolearn themselves. And I think
some of the most successfulprojects I've tried to work on
are not only hands on with realworld equipment, but they
involve some kind of creativedecision making from the
student. And I'll explain what Imean. When I started my robotics
(20:20):
class, I was trying toapproximate fanics handling tool
program. And of course, there'sseveral different topics you
have to go through, and a bookthat goes along with it that
explains it perfectly. And it'simportant to follow instructions
in order to become a technicalworker, because there's so many
instruction based things thatyou have to do, but you're not
(20:42):
going to retain the tasks thatyou do off a list. And so how do
you do it? Well, how I do it is,I spend a little bit of time
with the students in theclassroom saying, Hey, this is
what we're going to learn today.
Let's say it's user frames, orlet's say it's some kind of
loops. Here's why they'reimportant. And what I want you
to do is, I want you to createan exercise for yourself where
(21:04):
you get to employ theseprinciples by doing whatever you
want. The only criteria I havefor you is that you have to
display a mastery of thesetechniques, and it has to be
cool enough to be interesting tome, and that's an unusual
criteria for students to hear,is that it has to be cool and it
has to be fun, right? And theexercises that that builds are
(21:26):
the types that I make videosabout and post on social media,
where student will bring in abox of cocoa puffs and a gallon
of milk and a couple of bowlsand and we'll take ladles and
we'll protect the robot, andthey're, they're trying to write
a program to scoop the cocoapuffs out of the bowl and to
make a bowl of cereal. Or oneteam might have a jello mold and
(21:47):
create jello and try to putjello in something, or even
something to where, if it's asimple conveyor exercise in PLC
class, who are you're conveyinga box? Well, I've found an old
alarm clock that it looks likebacon, and we called it Mayor
mcbaikin For some reason, and wetaped him on the top of the box.
And now the exercise isn't aboutconveying a box from the
(22:09):
upstream photo eye to thedownstream photo eye. It's about
conveying Mayor McBain down theconveyor and not allowing him to
fall off the end. And it seemslike so many silly, zany or
otherwise ridiculous littlespices that you can throw into
your lab become the memorableportions of that lab. Sure, by
(22:30):
by definition of the word thatwhich is out of the ordinary is
something that you're morelikely to focus on and remember.
Well, if you remember thatcreative element, that fun
element that causes you toengage, or you remember that odd
element that's associated withthe lesson that you are trying
to teach in the first place, andso you're allowing there to be a
(22:52):
link to something they're likelyto remember, to this thing that
they need to remember
Matt Kirchner (22:59):
absolutely. You know, you think about like all
the mnemonics that I used to usewhen I was going through my post
secondary journey to memorizethings and and that was what is
all about. Was it was to createsome, take something that you
can relate to and then use it tomemorize or remember or learn
something that kind of ridesalongside of that, I think, to
(23:19):
some of the even reading throughsome of the memory books and so
on, understanding howindividuals have created systems
for remembering people's namesor remembering a list of items
or what have you, and you've gotto anchor it to something
memorable. The bigger and thelarger that experience, and the
more that that kind of playsright into your haptic zone, the
more memorable that's going tobe. And that's exactly what
(23:41):
you're doing with the learning.
I'm glad, by the way, thatyou're protecting the robots
while the students are doingthings like ladling milk and
moving seriously around theworkspace and so on. That's and
jello too. They probably don'tplay really well with robots.
Fair to say,
Danny Murphy (23:54):
we go through a lot of duct tape and a lot of
trash bags. So yeah, if I couldbring up two, of course, I'd
skipped over a little about thestudents creative engagement.
Okay, that's important too,because just last night, we
finished up the capstoneprojects in the robot lab. And
one thing that a student choseto do was bring in a cake and
(24:16):
bring in two different types ofice cream and multiple different
types of sprinkles, and theywanted to have the robot cut the
cake, spatula it onto a plate,and then change tools, grab a
ladle, grab some soupy icecream, drizzle down over top of
it. And in their mind, they'dhad such a clear picture of how
they were going to do that,technically, instructionally,
(24:39):
programmatically. But what theylearned in that process was how
many of the things that you'reunlikely to encounter verbally
in a classroom can possibly gowrong on a project, on an
engineering project, on aprogramming task, everything
that can go wrong does go wrong.
And the student experiencedthis, and while they. They
absolutely accomplished theprogrammatic portion of their
(25:02):
lab. They found so manychallenges that were unexpected,
that cost so much time. And Ithink that's important for
students who are likely to go ona commissioning trip, to realize
is, if you're budgeting for a 12hour trip, what are you going to
do if it takes 40 hours? What'sright? How long do you spend on
various portions of the project?
(25:23):
And the thing that's interestingabout it being their own choice
is, if it was my lab that I toldthem to do, once things start
getting frustrated mentally,anyone's going to start blaming
the instructor for not preparingthem well. But if they chose
that task themselves, right?
They're much, much moreincentivized to stick with it in
order to prove to themselvesthat they can get it done. And I
(25:46):
think that's an important partof curriculum development that's
often overlooked.
Matt Kirchner (25:51):
So prove to themselves and prove to you,
right, as their teacher andtheir instructor, that they've
got what it takes
Danny Murphy (25:56):
to be able to their classmates, yeah, and
their classmates while we're atit, yeah. And there's pride that
goes
Matt Kirchner (26:00):
along with that, and there's a tiny bit of shame
that goes along with failing atthat as well. Certainly, okay. I
mean, not everything goesperfect in the lab in a college
environment or on themanufacturing floor in a
manufacturing environment. Andso just to paint a little bit of
the picture for our audience, alot of us are spent a lot of
time around industrial robots. Alot don't what you're talking
about is doing this with like asix axis robot. Think about if
(26:22):
somebody had to program theirown arm from their waist all the
way down to their fingertips,and rather than just
automatically knowing how toladle milk into a bowl, that you
had to program and tell everysingle one of your joints
exactly how to do that and whereit needed to go, and in some
cases, the path that it neededto take. All these things that
we do intuitively, somebody'sgot to program a robot to be
able to do that, and those arethe kinds of things that your
(26:45):
students are learning. I lovethis example of the cake and the
capstone project from this week.
Am I going to see that on socialmedia? Is that going to show up
on LinkedIn?
Danny Murphy (26:52):
Yeah, I actually filled up my phone memory with
taking video of that particularproject. I'll probably be
putting that out by the secondweek of May.
Matt Kirchner (27:00):
We'll keep our eyes open for that in the second
week of May, and I believe thisparticular podcast is probably
going to drop right about thatsame period of time. We'll see
if we can't find some links toput in the show notes as well so
that our audience can check thatout. How long have you been
posting on social media? Whatgot you started with that?
Danny Murphy (27:15):
I would say it's been more than two years. I
don't know if it's been threeyears, though, I was never much
on social media, just theculture that I grew up in looked
down on social media use as asilly toy for people that didn't
get out in the woods enough. Andthat's the kind of the way that
I felt about it, too. And I wason LinkedIn, and LinkedIn was my
(27:36):
social media of choice, justbecause it seemed somewhat more
serious and useful than some ofthe other social media
platforms. When I started, and Iwas reading through about
different engineers that hadopinions on education in our
country, and universally, theopinion that you read is they
don't teach in schools what youneed in industry, and there's a
(27:58):
lot of that going on. To befair, teachers will talk.
They'll have dry lectures aboutsomething that was only relevant
20 years ago, the instructormaybe had never actually been in
industry to know what wasimportant. And I was thinking
about some of these horriblynegative comments that I was
reading and thinking, this isinflammatory, but there's a lot
of truth in what they're saying.
But my classes, I feel likethey're different. You know, I
(28:22):
do come from industry. I spent along time in industry, and the
things that I teach aren'tnecessarily the things that I
find in textbooks. They're thelessons that I learned by my own
mistakes in the field that Iwant to protect my students from
having to repeat. And so atfirst I thought, well, I'll
argue with these comments. Andthen I remembered that arguments
and comment sections of socialmedia never go anywhere
(28:43):
productive, right? So I thought,well, what I'll do is I'll take
my Android and I'll film what mystudents are doing in my lab,
and I'll make my first post, andI'll just show people, Hey, this
is what I'm doing to make itseem useful for their future
employers. So I took a video ofsome robot, some robot lab, I
posted it up, and the very nextday, I had a call from an
(29:05):
employer in town that I hadn'tbeen aware of before, and they
said, We want to hire the guy inthe gray shirt. And I was like,
do you mean Mike? And you'relike, we don't know, just the
way he was using that robot,that's exactly what we need.
This is a great lesson. And so Italked to Mike, and he was like,
Wow, that's incredible. Mikeended up going to work for that
(29:27):
company within the last twoweeks, and I thought, That's
awesome. If I have this kind ofpower on my phone, well, I'm
kind of ethically obligated touse this now. And so I started
producing maybe one or twovideos a week, and I'm not a
videographer, and I'm notparticularly creative in that
aspect, so a lot of them werequick cuts of what was going on
in the classroom. I learned veryquickly that I had to apply the
(29:50):
same principles to my videosthat I applied to my lectures in
that they can't be long andrambling. I have to have really
short. Cuts a video, it's nottwo and a half minutes in a
video, it's 1.6 seconds perscene I found as the hot spot,
and so I started posting one ortwo videos a week, and so far, I
think I've had six students gethired from companies that they
(30:13):
weren't in contact with,exclusively from being seen on
my videos recently, and I've hada PhD in material science and a
master's in machine learning,see my videos, be excited about
what was going on in my class,and volunteer to come in on
several occasions to help withmy class. And it's astounding
the power we have, through thiseveryday form of communications,
(30:35):
to collaborate with people thatwe never would have met. And I
think it's a brilliant modelthat more people should be using
in their own teaching. And
Matt Kirchner (30:45):
I want to get into in a minute some of the
advice that you might have forother educators in terms of how
they become more active onsocial media. Before we do that,
you used a term in that lastanswer that I want to make sure
wasn't lost on our audience whenyou had this young man named
Mike who got hired literallybecause you took the time to
post a video of his work onsocial media. You said you feel
like you have an ethicalobligation to do that kind of
(31:09):
work after it worked the firsttime. Why is this so personal to
you? And tell us a little bitabout more why you would look at
that as an ethical obligation,as opposed to just something you
would do because you want to bea great instructor.
Danny Murphy (31:20):
I think if any of us are the type of person that
wants to see those within oursphere of influence succeed,
then we're responsible for doingwhatever we can in order to make
that happen. And that's justkind of a basic cause and effect
action. I'm sure a lot of it isbased off of my own realization
(31:41):
of where I would be were it notfor the intervention of my
electronics teacher earlier. Iknow that I have the power,
somewhat accidentally, to impactthe students in my class. And if
I have that power, and if Ichoose not to use it, then it's
the same as doing the oppositeof what my and their goals is.
Matt Kirchner (32:02):
It's really, really well put, and it really
speaks to at the heart of themagic and the incredible impact
that the teachers andinstructors have, not just on
their students, but on theentire world and all of these
people that you're reaching withincredible stories on social
media, is having that effect.
Clearly, having that effect.
Talk about the other types ofyou mentioned the post of Mike.
(32:23):
You mentioned the post of therobot making the cake. What are
the other kinds of things thatpeople might see if they look
you up on social I've
Danny Murphy (32:30):
found along the way, as I post various types of
content that what people aremost interested in is probably
what they lacked themselves inthe classroom, and that's
laughter, and that's creativity,and that's fun, hands on
learning cooperatively withother students. I find the more
(32:51):
I just display that the morepeople it resonates with, not
because of anything I'm doing,but because how many of us sat
in the classroom and listen tosomebody drone on about
something they knew wasn'trelevant at the time, and how
many people would have muchrather been in a kind of adult
playground to where they couldhave just experienced the tools
(33:14):
that they knew they were goingto have to use later on in a
creative environment thatallowed them the opportunity to
make mistakes in a safe place.
The types of posts that I'vemade that have gotten
significantly less resonancewere times where I'll speak over
top of a compilation and I'lltell people what I think about
(33:34):
something I've learned veryquickly, people don't want to
see me, they don't want to hearme. They want to see what's
going on in my class. And atfirst, that was kind of
humbling, but I completelyunderstand that there's two
types of people that I thinkreally resonate with my content.
That's people who were bored inthe classroom and wish they
would have had the experiencethat they're seeing. And then
there's the people who are inthe workplace now and wanting
(33:58):
some evidence that somebody thatthey're about to hire might have
any experience with a toolthat's relevant to what they'll
be getting paid to do. I'm
Matt Kirchner (34:10):
actually fighting the temptation right now to go
down my rabbit hole of myeducation journey, which is
exactly what you just described,and that is wondering for
literally 14 years, or whateverit is, even longer than that, I
guess what I was doing there andwhen I could get out and
actually do the fun stuff, andseeing the kind of content that
you post, it really does exactlywhat you just described. It
(34:30):
brings in any of us, and there'sso many of us that are like,
wow, education. I grew upthinking that I was wrong for
education, and it turns out thateducation was wrong for me, or
at least the style of educationthat I was getting in a lot of
ways. And that's not to takeanything away from incredible
teachers and people that took aninterest in me and so on. And I
don't have any regrets, but,man, that journey could have
been so much different. Ifpeople want to see all this
(34:53):
content, Danny that you'reposting, you mentioned LinkedIn.
Are there other platforms thatthey'll find you on? Sure. Danny
Danny Murphy (34:59):
Murphy only. In and I'm underscore Papa Murph on
Instagram, a lot of times, myvideos that I post on LinkedIn
will be edited in a somewhatmore professional way to appeal
to that demographic. The thingsthat I post on Instagram are
largely formatted to appeal tomy demographic there, which is
(35:20):
engineering students in their20s. I got about maybe 30,000
people following me onInstagram, maybe 11,000 on
LinkedIn, which aren't hugenumbers, but they're big for me.
Those are
Matt Kirchner (35:30):
pretty significant numbers. Sure you're
reaching a lot of people goahead. Well,
Danny Murphy (35:34):
thank you. I appreciate that. And so on
Instagram, there's occasionallyslightly more modernized music
that I'll ask my students, like,hey, what music is cool? Because
if it was up to me, it would beall 90 scratch music,
Matt Kirchner (35:46):
which is also cool, but maybe not meeting the
right audience
Danny Murphy (35:49):
that still certainly finds its way in
there. Just because sometimes Iwant to make something for me,
but a little bit a little bitmore mean content, but I try my
best not to make it stupid. Ifind that sometimes, once people
establish some following, itoften becomes the case that you
get more followers when youappeal to the lowest common
denominator and you see thecartoonization of their content
(36:13):
over time. And I'm trying tomake sure that doesn't happen,
because I'm not in it for thefollowers, and I'm not in it to
appeal to the dopamine chasersI'm in it to advertise for my
students, and also above andbeyond, advertising for my
students, to just put themessage out there that, hey,
education is meaningful and it'sdelightful to improve yourself.
(36:40):
I love
Matt Kirchner (36:41):
that education is meaningful and it's delightful
to improve yourself, and that iswhat it's all about. All in the
pursuit of not just awesomecareers, which I know you're
pretty you're putting a ton ofyoung people into, and people of
all ages, I'm sure, into really,really cool career pathways, but
also for the sake of justbettering ourselves and
recognizing that there's agreater part of life that comes
(37:01):
with knowledge and comes withunderstanding, and I know that's
all part of what you'redelivering in the classroom.
Lots of educators doing, or atleast working on, doing the same
thing. Let's kind of pivot alittle bit now, dandy to advice
for other educators. One part ofthis question is, are the things
that you found on social media,in being active on social that
have surprised you. Youmentioned a couple stories
(37:23):
already, but anything else youwould add, and then in
responding to that, also alittle bit about, if I'm an
educator who would love to getstarted doing the same kind of
work that you're doing, but haveno idea where to start. Where
would you start? So somethingthat would surprise them, and
then where should they start? So
Danny Murphy (37:39):
the thing that I found most surprising was the
toxicity of some of the peoplewho anonymously hide behind
their profile to make comments,a lot of what I have to do after
I make some posts, especially,much more on Instagram than
LinkedIn. LinkedIn is people areon their best behavior because
that's where they find jobs whenthey don't have them. Instagram,
(38:00):
on the other hand, there's a lotof angry and frustrated people
in the world, and it'sparticularly uncomfortable to
realize that that anger andfrustration often should be
channeled inwardly, and so wetake it and we just spray it
outward onto whatever seemsbeautiful. And I've had a lot of
comments about young men andwomen in my posts, I try to stay
on top of it so that I coulddelete it as soon as I see it. I
(38:22):
learned very early on don't tryto argue with negativity,
because it just spirals intomore negativity. So I police my
content so that hopefully nostudent who is ever delighting
in the fact that they're beingcongratulated on social media
has to go to a section wheresomeone is just being hateful
about the clothes they wore, orwhether or not they think they
(38:43):
agree with that person'slifestyle. That was surprising
for me, especially. There wasone reel that I had blow up. I
think it reached 800,000viewers. And you know, when you
have 800,000 people, imagine howmany comments that are negative?
If you
Matt Kirchner (38:59):
it only takes a few, right? Yeah, absolutely.
Point 1% Yeah. So
Danny Murphy (39:03):
that was the surprise. As far as getting
started, some educators willhave a steep hill to climb. I've
talked to educators who let meknow that their college or their
high school has specific strictrules against videoing students,
regardless of whether or not youhave a release waiver, you, by
the way, get a release waiverand ask the students, 100% ask
(39:26):
the students which one of youmind? Here's what I'm planning
to do. I would like to advertisefor you, and I think you look
great while you're doing this. Idon't want you to be
embarrassed. Who wants to be apart of this, and the students
who don't want to be a part ofit, make sure that you leave
them out of it. Make sure thatthey don't think while they're
working that they're beingfilmed. You know, be very
respectful of that. Butimportantly, it takes an
(39:48):
incredible investment of time tobuild a social media presence.
There's times I wake up at twoin the morning and I can't
sleep, and I go on LinkedIn, andI try to make 50 connections
before I go back to. Sleepbefore class. That
Matt Kirchner (40:01):
says a lot about you in a lot of different ways.
Probably have a wholeconversation about what you just
said, but continue. Well,
Danny Murphy (40:09):
one thing that I've been trying to do to help
other educators is to allow themto piggyback off of the effort
that I've already put forth tobuild a platform I've been doing
a little 30/92, teaserinterviews with other educators
that I'll post, and I'll addthem as a collaborator, in the
hopes that some of the peoplethat view my content will also
(40:31):
go and follow them. So ifanyone's interested in building
the same type of social medianetwork, please reach out to me
and I'll see if I can interviewyou would put you in the
spotlight and feature you
Matt Kirchner (40:42):
awesome. That'll all be in the show notes too. If
people are looking to find outhow to contact Danny Murphy,
we'll make sure you can do thatright through the show notes. So
absolutely terrific and greatadvice. What platform would they
start on? Danny? I know you saidyou started on LinkedIn. Is that
where you would recommend aneducator start? Should they be
on Instagram? Should they startmaking tick tock videos? What's
the best spot? I haven't gotten
Danny Murphy (41:02):
big on Tiktok, just because earlier, when I was
starting to do this, I workedfor a state school. There was
actually rules against usingTiktok because of the national
involvement. But Tiktok iscertainly quite popular. I would
think that the platform that theindividual chose should probably
at first be a reflection of thatperson's personality. How about
(41:24):
that? So someone who isinterested in making slightly
more professional content,slightly more conservative
content, LinkedIn is a greatplace to do that. If the
person's more fun and exuberant,maybe Tiktok or Instagram would
be a better place. But to behonest with you, try it all and
throw the spaghetti at the walland see what sticks, see
Matt Kirchner (41:45):
what resonates.
Really good advice. Anything youdo differently in the last two
and a half years that you'vebeen active on social
Danny Murphy (41:51):
Yeah, actually, my activity on social media has
taught me how to be a morepatient person and less prone to
react negatively to a negativecomment. I know the first
several negative comments that Igot on some of my posts, my
instinctual reaction would havebeen to say something nasty back
and then three minutes later,delete it when I found out that
(42:13):
I'd been a jerk. But it teachesyou to be more of a public
figure, and it teaches it taughtme anyway to be a stronger
representative of a benevolentforce out there into the ether.
I've found people especially onI found this on LinkedIn, an
engineer might look at somethingI have in a video and say, Oh,
(42:36):
you're doing this wrong. Youshould be doing it this way. And
if you can push down thatargumentative instinct and just
say, Wow. You know, I bet youhave a lot of experience with
this. Could you teach mesomething about how to do this
better? Teach me based off yourexperience? Well, most
engineers, and I can say this asan engineer, spend their entire
life in a cubicle, and the onlytime anyone talks to them is to
(42:58):
criticize them for somethingthat might not even be their
fault. So if you take thespotlight and shine it on them
and say, Thank you, teach mewhat you know. 80% chance you've
just made a friend for life.
Absolutely,
Matt Kirchner (43:10):
that's really good advice. I like the way you
started that by Hey, this is howwe reacted and some of the
challenges we've had with thenegativity and then rolling into
putting the spotlight on anindividual and maybe changing
their life in a huge way.
Thinking about not justnegativity, let's turn it to
positivity and also things thatcan change lives and in a huge
way. We mentioned in the introthat you were the 2024 a three
(43:32):
Educator of the Year. You've gotto be just tremendously proud of
that. Tell us about what thatrecognition means to you.
Danny Murphy (43:40):
I was unbelievably excited to receive that award,
and what it taught me is, ifthere's going to be some global
entity out there that isbestowed on me the title of
Educator of the Year, I reallyneed to up my game to deserve
that. It's a call towards moreaction, if anything else, it
(44:01):
caused me to really rethink alot of what I had assumed my own
limitations were, and to see howto exceed that. I currently
maybe help 60 or 100 students ayear. I need to find a way to
change that to 600 or 1000 andwhat can I do to share that the
reward with others who haveearned it at least equally well,
(44:22):
and perhaps more than me,
Matt Kirchner (44:24):
it's amazing. As you were saying that I think
about the effect that a teacherand instructor has on a student,
and that whole idea of raisingexpectation and showing a
student that they're capable ofdoing something more, and
sometimes just the act of aninstructor saying, here is an
expectation. This is somethingyou're really, really good at
this is something that youshould be recognized for. Almost
instills in them this desire todo even more. And it sounds like
(44:47):
this recognition did exactly thesame for you.
Danny Murphy (44:50):
That's right.
That's exactly right. How manytimes have students across the
world seen the F on their paperor heard you're not very good at
this? But if you look at astudent directly in. Their eyes,
and you tell them, I know thatyou could achieve this, and I
believe in you. That's fuel.
It's absolutely
Matt Kirchner (45:07):
fuel. It gives them the confidence to at least
give it a shot. And somebodybelieves in them, somebody they
don't want to let down, andsomebody that they want to have
enjoy that level of successright along their side, which I
know is exactly how you're doingthings in the classroom. I think
we've got time for two quickquestions here in the time we
have remaining. Danny, the firstone, actually, both of them are
ones we'd love to hear from ourguests about. And the first
(45:29):
question is, tell us thing ineducation. We've already heard a
number of them. But is theresomething about your educational
journey, or something abouteducation in general that you
believe strongly that wouldsurprise other people,
Danny Murphy (45:41):
I believe that your attitude towards what you
can do and how you interfacewith the people around you is
perhaps more important than yourinnate technical ability. If you
behave yourself in a way thatanyone wants to be around you
and you chase what's your bestpresentation of your own skill
(46:02):
set, often you're going toperform better than someone who
is ridiculously good atsomething but has no drive.
Matt Kirchner (46:09):
Isn't that the truth that it's you know, you
can be really, really smart, youcan be really, really talented,
but if you're not doing it forthe right reasons, you're not
motivated in the right way, oryou don't have the ability to
interact, and it's with andinspire others in a certain way
that that innate talent, or thattalent that you've gained over
the time the course of yourlife, can only go so far. I
think that's a really, reallypoignant point. I'm also looking
(46:31):
forward to the answer to ourlast question, which given where
we started this conversation inthe life story that you have,
and where you were as a 15 or 16year old, I'm curious to know
this one again, it's a questionthat we ask every guest, but in
your particular case, and aparticularly insightful one, I
think if you could go backDanny, to that 15 year old Danny
Murphy, and give him one pieceof advice, what would you tell
(46:54):
him? I would tell
Danny Murphy (46:55):
him you're not nearly as smart as you think you
are, but you can be infinitelysmarter than you think you can
become.
Matt Kirchner (47:02):
That's beautiful advice, and I will tell you that
you have been infinitely,probably smarter and infinitely
more influential on the lives ofyoung people and people of all
ages than I'm sure you evercould have imagined. Not just
through the magic you work inthe classroom, Danny, but
through this incrediblereputation and this incredible
channel to people out in theworld of education, in the world
(47:25):
of technical education,engineering students thinking
about what the world could befor them, I want to thank you
not just for being a great gueston The TechEd Podcast, but for
the incredible work you're doingon behalf of technical
education. Thank you so much forbeing with us. I appreciate it.
What a terrific episode we hadwith Danny Murphy. I learned so
much about the passion that hehas for technical education, the
(47:47):
incredible dedication that hehas for his students. We need
more teachers like Danny Murphy.
If you enjoyed this episode asmuch as I did, you are
definitely going to want tocheck out the show notes. We
will put those at TechEdpodcast.com/danny, that is
TechEd podcast.com/d, a n, n, y.
We heard all about Danny'ssocial media handles, and you
(48:10):
will find those in the shownotes as well. So check those
out. If you are into socialmedia, like we are, like
everybody is. You can find us onFacebook. You can find us on
tick tock. We are on Instagram.
We are on LinkedIn. We areanywhere you go to look for
social media, and when you getthere, say hello, we would love
to hear from you, and we wouldlove to see you next week on The
(48:30):
TechEd Podcast. Until then, I'mMatt Kirk. You.
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