Join us for a conversation with Nate Doelling, Director of Technology at Seoul Foreign School. Nate shares his extensive experience leading technology in international schools across several continents, offering a unique perspective on the challenges and rewards of his global career. Discover the nuances of international school technology management.

• Nate Doelling’s LinkedIn profile
• Seoul Foreign School
• Toddle, learning management system
• Managebac, multi-curricula teaching and learning platform
• Seesaw, learning experience platform connecting teachers, administrators, students, and families
• Brisk Teaching, Chrome and Edge browser extension that helps teachers with curriculum, feedback, and differentiation
• Magic School AI, AI platform for teachers and students
• 9ine, service that simplifies data protection, compliance, and cyber security requirements for schools

Nick, welcome to Talking technology with Atlas,

the show that plugs you into the important topics and trends for

technology leaders all through a unique Independent School lens.

We'll hear stories from technology directors and other

special guests from the Independent School community,

and provide you with focused learning and deep dive topics.

And now please welcome your host. Kristina llewellen,

hello everyone, and welcome back to

talking technology with Atlas. I'm Kristina llewellen. I'm the

president and CEO of the Association of technology

leaders in independent schools.

And I'm Bill Stites, the Director of

Technology at Montclair Kimberly Academy in Montclair, New

Jersey,

and I'm Hiram Cuevas, the Director of

Information Systems and Academic Technology at St Christopher

school in Richmond, Virginia.

Hello, gentlemen. How are you today?

Doing very well, up and early and at work, a little

tired, but doing

well end of school year stuff you're getting

there. Are you guys done with school? We are

yes, we are done and in full fledged someone

mode. Love

it. So normally I come into the pod and

I have some kind of topic to chat with you guys about, some

kind of prompt or question or just chit chat before we get

into it with our guest. But today I arrived, and my

understanding as Bill, do you have an order of business. Is

there something on the agenda, sir, I do. All right,

Hiram may not be aware of this. You may know

where I'm going to go with this, Christina, but I'm just going

to bring it up. So I really don't I'm

clueless. So I was

on a recent call with Kristina, and we were on

with a few other people, and we were discussing fun and

interesting topics, where Christina was talking for quite

a while, and we were talking about a get together that we

were going to have, and then what we might do, or what one

might do with time off. And Hiram, I have to tell you,

Christina has been holding out on us, because one of the things

that she said she likes to do, be willing to do or want to do.

I mean, it's pretty fun.

Involves Hiram throwing melele weapons. So all

this talk about Christina not being into it, or not really

being sure what to do when the zombie apocalypse hits,

Christina wanted to go AX throwing, yeah, and I said,

whoa, whoa, hold on. Wait a minute. You're in the mix of

this. You're doing this probably more than Hiram and I are doing.

So you have been lying to us all along. Christina, you are a

closeted.

No, there's no closeted. Nothing. Bill,

because I didn't make a connection. Because zombies are

fake. What is real is the fact that I almost won this very

impromptu AX throwing situation on my very first attempt. Like I

thought we were just going to a networking event. I honestly

can't even remember what it was, probably an association group.

And they're like, we're going to go to AX throwing and I'm like,

great, that's fun. And I showed up and I literally almost won

this entire thing. And so I don't know that I have a secret

trick to how this all went. Other than one of the people who

were teaching us how to do it, he kind of said, hey, it's all

in the stomp. Like, if you stomp your foot really hard before you

throw, that's how you can get it. And apparently my dirt throw

in days came back and I had pretty decent accuracy, so I

don't know, but I didn't connect this with actually, like,

chucking it at a zombie. All

I'm saying is, in what practical application in

your life are you ever going to be throwing an ax at someone and

trying to hit a target like very well, like, I'm from New Jersey.

I'm a fairly aggressive person, but even I don't think about

throwing axes at people only when I'm talking to Hein about

the zombie

apocalypse. Now, I will say we just had our admin

retreat, and the bill podcast dropped the week prior, and our

Head of School played the first four and a half minutes to the

entire admin team and put Bill's picture holding his birthday

mele weapon on the screen, and he said, If this doesn't say

boys school and boys learning, nothing else does,

I really think that, like because of AI

and the transcripts that accompany these podcasts, we're

going to start showing up in zombie feeds. And you guys, I

mean, like, I think that I need to bring some balance to this

conversation. We need to have a different topic. But yes, I

might be throwing axes, like, against you guys. I'm just

saying, like, if we end up doing this as a team building

initiative, we can record it for the pod. I think I could take

you on. It could be a fundraising challenge or

something like that, but I'm thinking the three of us could

go head to head on the AX throwing. Well, the good

news is in the choose your own adventure story

that I created. Now we're not saving Christina. Now we're all

on an even playing field.

Maybe I'm saving you guys. You don't know.

Ooh, I. Could happen. I think you could. I

think you got it

all right. Let's go back to reality,

please. For the love of God, here we go. We are. We are

hosting a podcast today, and we have a poor guest joining us.

And I say that this poor unfortunate soul, I don't think

this dude had any idea what he was getting into. But alas, here

we go. Nate doling, you are joining us. Welcome to the

podcast. How are you today? Sir, hi. I'm

doing well. Great to be with you guys today. And

zombie apocalypse definitely sounds like something that could

take place in Seoul. So we can arrange that

that is possible. Yes. Nate is joining

us today from across the world. You are in Seoul, it's amazing

what technology can offer. Is a conversation, you know, very

late in the day for us, very early in the day for you. But

thank you so much for joining us. I think this is going to be

really cool. We're going to talk about tech internationally, and

I think that that's a

first for us. Nate, one quick question I gotta

ask, have you taken the train to Busan yet?

I have, yeah, the KTX down to Busan. We just had

our spring tech retreat for the Korean tech leaders. It was at

Busan International School. Busan this year one

of the best zombie movies ever. Oh, Lord. Okay,

so we invited you on the podcast

because you have worked at independent schools, both here

in the States, but also now you're calling, as we mentioned,

in from Korea. So why don't you start by telling everybody a

little bit about yourself and just your professional journey,

like what landed you in Korea?

Wow, it is a long road through many countries, but

I'll keep it short. Began public schools in Texas, and then I

quickly transitioned into private schools following

teaching careers and sports medicine, which was my original

path. And I ended up in when I was in Massachusetts at the

winchington school, turning the tech hobby at the time into a

computer teaching position. And then that just launched through

independent school connections into a job in Switzerland, where

I was a tech teacher and part time tech team. That led to my

next school in Japan, where I was at the ASIJ in Tokyo, on the

tech team there, and also a tech teacher. And then by that time,

I gained enough experience to get into a coordinator position.

So a startup school in northeast China, opportunity came along,

so I ended up in Shenyang China, where I was the Tech coordinator

for small startup school about three years there, then we came

back to the states to raise the children and landed at

Canterbury School in Fort Wayne, or as the tech director there,

amazing tech team spent eight years there, then Ready for some

international return, came back over to Seoul, South Korea to be

here. I've been here five years now, just finishing up the fifth

year.

That's pretty incredible. I mean, is

this something that is kind of in your blood, like, Are you

kind of a world traveler type person, or is this something

that you just kind of fell into and then you said, Well, that

was cool. So let's do another one.

Yeah, yeah. I was not a world traveler before I

got started. I think that first school in Switzerland was

definitely like I came home with culture shock on vacations. But,

you know, after a few years, yeah, you get into it, move into

a new school, the routine, and when you're working overseas,

normally three to four years, if your tech director, maybe five,

you're looking at the next spot to move and explore. You've

traveled the region enough and sampled the food and culture,

and you're ready for a change.

So now, what is your role now for what

school, and what does that kind of look like? The reason I ask

is because at schools, tech director for one school means

something really different than tech director for another

school. So what's your role? And what does that encompass?

Yeah, I'm the Director of Technology at Seoul

foreign school. I oversee a local Korean tech team of seven,

and then I have two educational coaches, or digital learning

coaches, that work with me as well serving the Ed Tech needs

of the school. We're a large school. It's 1600 kids, over

1600 kids, so it's the largest one I've been with. We have 185

teaching faculty and over 200 General Affairs staff. So this

is the most devices I've ever worked with. The most complex.

We have four sections of the school, including a British

school that runs elementary school through middle so we're

pretty diverse, and like the US, the job kind of looks different

depending on as people come through international schools,

you tend to have leadership changes a lot more frequently.

So there's a lot of refreshing and vision people bringing in

the experiences and skills from other schools. So we're on our

toes a little bit more, and we don't get settled in as much as

my experience was back in the States, but there's ups and

downs to that and

benefits. What type of students come to

your school like? What's the population look like? And my

other question is, are a lot of the faculty and staff from the

States and from England, or there are some local folks there

as well? Yeah.

We are a true international school, worldwide

representation at the school. There's a large portion of the

faculty and students that do come from America, but Europe

would be probably our second largest source of people coming

to the school. Every continent is represented here in our

teaching faculty and to students as well. Most of the long term

operational staff are local Korean, though a large portion

of our student body is Korean or Korean foreign passport

combinations.

And what does technology sort of look

like at your school? Is it kind of a tech forward school? Is it

pretty typical? On average, it's pretty

typical on average, being in Korea, we have

some cool gadgets and stuff fee, as you can imagine, but we're an

older school, over 100 years, over 110 years, so we've been

pretty established, and our mission is really education and

delivering the best we can for our students. First, technology

supports that, but it's not at the forefront. So we focus on

pedagogy and service and International Baccalaureate

program philosophies first, and then how technology can

integrate and support into

that. One question that comes to mind is, I think a

lot about people that are in the job search and, you know, trying

to figure out where I'm going to land next, and I think about all

the places I would go to look, but I don't often see a lot of

postings for international placements. If I were interested

in a tech position internationally, where am I

going? Where am I looking? Who am I talking to?

Right? I know what you're talking about. Like

my first start came from Kearney Sandow, and they carry a few

especially the tech director positions. But if you're looking

to go international, you got to step outside the typical loop.

There's two major ones. The first is search associates. You

establish basically like Carney Sandow, a portfolio with them.

You get your confidential references uploaded, give them

your application details. The other one is shroll, which just

merged with ISS. So those two big agencies, you get a profile

with them, then you get access to the job board, then you just

start indicating your interest in positions, and if you match

with a school, they'll reach out. That's pretty cool.

You're a co founder of something called K

tech group. What's that all

about?

So when I landed in Korea, obviously, you're in

your own little bubble with your own school, and there's all

these international schools, especially in Seoul, so you want

to get connected? And I just sent an email out to one of my

colleagues over at Yongsan International School, which is

near the military base here in Seoul, and said, Do you want to

start meeting at lunch over Google meet? And this was during

the pandemic, so we were all pretty isolated from each other,

so we had Google meets at lunch once a week, and we said, hey,

this would be great if we can get some more people into it.

Let's just start emailing the other schools. And we quickly

grew. We're over 10 member schools now. We meet once a

month online, and then we have an annual meetup in person in

the fall at the Google headquarters, which is

facilitated by one of our vendors, among for the Google

products, apps, events, and after that meeting, we meet up

again in the spring and do a job alike. We bring our local staff

along with us, our digital learning coaches, and we get

together and we have round tables. Vendors will call in and

give us a presentation. What's new? Cool features when we have

social time. I

mean, that sounds like a tech director type

gathering, if ever I heard of one, sounds very familiar. So

let's go back to what Bill was just talking about. You know,

you told us a little bit about how to kind of find your way

into the international tech leadership scene. But that is a

lot more complicated. I mean, I thought that it was kind of

crazy that tech directors often have to uproot their families

and move a few states away, let alone on the other side of the

world, and there's all these time differences and all of

that. So tell us what that part of the experience has been like

for you in terms of uprooting your life and going far far away

to do this role

the first time is tough. You're sitting on the

edge of the cliff, deciding if you want to jump, and by jump I

mean selling all your possessions or moving them into

storage, selling your house, or learning how to manage

properties, or hire a property manager for you, having that

discussion with your family. Hey, we're moving the grandkids

and ourselves more than 1000 miles away. It's tough. You're

either in a position, economically or with your

family, that you're able to do it, or you're not, and if you

are, you know that first one's scary once you do it, and you

get through all the hurdles of getting passports and visas and

movers and travel arrangements and landing in a country where

you don't speak the language, once you overcome that and do

it, once you're equipped, your kids are equipped, your spouse

knows kind of what to do. That makes future ones easy. Boy,

every different school that you walk into, it's kind of an

unknown, like you're lucky if you get to visit a school when

you're hiring internationally, most of the interviews that. To

be conducted at job fairs, and there still are job fairs where

you would go. You'd meet the school for 10 minutes to decide

if they like you. Maybe you'd have some follow up

conversations. Maybe they'd offer you a contract on the

spot, and then that would be the basis you have to make your

decision for the senior tech leadership positions at the

larger schools. Several of them will fly you in and do an on

campus interview with other candidates, so you get a better

chance to know what you're joining on with. But yeah, it's

kind of like the world your oyster, but you had kind of a

blindfold on, yeah?

I mean, it's taking a leap of faith for sure.

Like guys, if you were to do it, if you were to take an

international tech job, do you have any countries or parts of

the world that you would say, Yeah, I'd give that a try. Hiram

has a language advantage. Yeah. So

it's interesting you say that I went to a

conference at shabby Luther school, American School of

Bombay in India, and spent 10 days there, and was talking to a

lot of different faculty members about what it's like teaching in

the American school system internationally, because that

conference, because it was located in India, brought in

Singapore American and it brought in a bunch of schools

from that particular area. And you are your own support system

as well. My wife and I have talked about making that leap.

We just haven't dared to do it yet. I give you credit. You've

made the plunge. We've been toying with the idea. Now we

have a daughter who's just gotten married and living in

town, and so we're trying to figure all this out. You know

what next steps would look like? But it is definitely intriguing.

I have been really surprised not only about how good the schools

are, but some of the amenities as a teacher in these schools

are quite impressive.

It's funny, my wife teaches a foreign language. She

teaches Spanish, and we'd love to travel. For me, it's a

question of, you know, being in a country where you are a non

native speaker, and where you may or may not actually know the

language, and what that challenge is like, and being

open to that type of experience, I think, is very interesting. I

thought more and more about it recently, after my son graduated

from school and he spent a semester abroad, and really how

much he learned and grew by traveling around Europe on his

own, and what that really did for him, and thinking about what

that would be like on a larger scale. So I'm curious as to how

the language issue works. But the other question I actually

have as I'm thinking about this is when you take on a job like

this in a foreign country, I signed a year to year contract.

One of my colleagues spent time in Saudi Arabia, and he had to

sign a two year contract. You know, I've talked to others who

have to sign different types of contracts based on the amount of

time that they want you there. You know, we mentioned some of

the benefits that you get, you know, if they're going to help

you move there is there an expectation that you're going to

stay there for a certain amount of time? So the language is one

thing. How have you dealt with that? And then, what is that

like from the expectation of your time in the position, and

what does that look like, and how's that been throughout your

career?

So language is not one of my strengths. French

was the language I took in school. It was very helpful when

I was in Switzerland and when I visited back but that is pretty

much the only language that I've managed to acquire when you're

working in a school, if you're great at languages, people will

dive into opportunities like taking courses, often teachers

the language teachers at a school will offer courses to new

faculty coming in. You'll find opportunities in the community

to learn. There's usually some kind of English exchange group

that was really popular when I was in China, where locals want

to meet with the foreigners teaching in language schools, or

English learning schools. So they'll have social

opportunities just where they can come and speak English with

you and teach you and teach you a little bit of the local

language. But when you're at an international school, it's

pretty much a bubble. You're in an English bubble all day. It

can be a challenge to work with some of the local colleagues, so

you tend to leverage a little bit of translation, whether it's

technology, which has been amazing the way some of these

translation tools have come forward to help us. I use

Microsoft Translator just to understand sometimes what's

going on in a meeting where I'm the only foreigner in a meeting

and conversations start happening between people. So you

can use tools, you can use translators, but that works

great for you, the person working in the school, or your

kids who are in the school, it can be a struggle for your

spouse, especially if your spouse is what we call a

trailing spouse. They're not working for the school. So

there's a, usually an equal balance of teaching couples and

non teaching couples. And for the non teaching couples, yeah,

the spouse is the one that's going to have to be going out

into the market and shopping and. The first time you walk

into a store and you cannot read anything in the store, you're

just going off the visual cues of what stuff is. Is this bleach

or vinegar? You're looking at the bottle it cleans, but you

don't really know. So pulling out Google Translate and live

scanning essential, essential

for survival, thank goodness for

technology, right? Yeah,

it's really made it easier compared to when I

started, for sure, when none of these tools existed on your

smartphone in your hands. So that's the language piece. If

you're great at languages, the more power to you, and I'm

jealous of you. But that was not for me. Okay? So just like the

benefits, the contract terms per school run the gamut and vary.

Some of that's determined by visas. For example, I can share

like Korea, your first contract is two years, because your first

visa can be for two years, and then after that, it's an annual

renewal under the visa type that we're on here. I've seen other

schools, if you're a senior tech leader, they'll want you to come

and stay three years, so they'll give you a three year contract

at a time, and so save enough time to plan for transitions,

renewals can then get shorter after that.

So Nate, I find that really interesting, because

the life cycle of tech is so short, and you really want to

try and forecast things, 567, years out. Having a two year

life cycle, or potentially a three year life cycle, seems

really punctuated for a tech leader to try and provide the

school what it needs to future proof it,

yeah, it's not different than other academic

management positions throughout the school, whether they're

curriculum coordinators or vice principals. We all work off of

five year plans, just like back in the States, you'll either be

coming in and inheriting one, which is always fun. We all

bring different skills to the job, different philosophies of

what's the priorities. So you'll either inherit one, or you'll

maybe get lucky and you'll come in and they'll either ask you to

change directions and start something fresh, or the previous

one has run its course and it's just time for you to chart a new

one for the future. A lot of times, the infrastructure stuff

tends to stick your plans for the future in that area, the

local staff will carry those on. The future, director will carry

those on. But some of the more transient stuff, curriculum

plans, educational platforms and tools that can be pretty

transient and subject to change, so that can be a great

opportunity to learn something new. Can also be a lot of stress

to step in the door of a place that you're not familiar with

and launch something new.

What I find interesting Nate is that, you

know, we'll put a link in the show notes, and if our listeners

went to Seoul foreign Schools website, this school could just

as easily be somewhere in the States, right down to the

sports. You know, you go to extracurriculars, and the

academic is similar. The athletics is similar. There's

not a whole lot here that would, at a quick glance, say, oh,

that's in Korea. So I guess one of my questions is around what

the challenges are that are kind of unique, maybe also the

opportunities, right? So, like, you're leading ed tech in this

international setting, but in a lot of ways, it does mirror a US

or a North American school, and so I'm just kind of curious

about the pieces of that that are unique.

When you step into an international school,

your first kind of shock will come into the systems and

hardware that you're used to being available to you, maybe

that you've become accustomed to in the States. When you land in

this country, the equipment may not be certified. The software

seller may not do international deals. I had some favorite

pieces of software from America through amplified it before they

got bought out, the gopher tools, the goops Gopher, the

Google Gopher, came over to Korea, and then after a year of

being here, they stopped selling them internationally. They

closed down that market, and you've grown accustomed. That's

how you manage your Google Classroom turnover every year.

That's how you manage all the settings for your several 100

Google Groups. You learn to pivot. You learn to find

something new. In our case, I learned how to do App Script and

develop apps script for Google Sheets to manage my Google

Groups, to kind of replace that functionality locally. So

there'll be software challenges, there'll be vendors. Maybe

you're used to in the States, you're used to working through

somebody big, like CDW to order things, but when you get into a

country like China, everything's on the local level. You

literally go to the electronics market and there's 20 booths

where they sell Lenovo computers. And you're walking up

to one, and you have your model that you want, you're asking,

what's the price from you? And then you go to the next guy,

what's the price from you? And you're really hands on, dealing

in cash to buy laptops for your school and arrange for 100 200

to be to. Deliver tomorrow to you out at the school. So it's

things like that. Also dealing with local staff, you can be

really lucky and have many people on your team that are

strong in English. They've learned two languages, and

they're amazing at it in if you've got them on your team,

the amount of collaboration you can do, an understanding of

local systems, and how involved you can be in the infrastructure

and stuff with the school will vary with a school that you may

not have such a staff that's diverse with their language

skills, and so you may not be able to communicate as strongly

with your team, especially in technical language. So the

environments are pretty diverse that you walk into, and you

really have to be flexible and adjust to that and be

comfortable with not knowing every piece of the network, not

knowing how to get into your hypervisor, to manage your VMs,

or be very involved in network settings if you're very hands

on,

it's crazy. I mean, guys, can you imagine,

like, even just walking up into a Best Buy, and like buying all

your computers in cash for the school year, that's crazy.

I usually roll with that kind of money in my pocket,

so it's not really a problem.

I don't think you do if you do then you

better be betting it during our AX throwing expedition.

Then one of the questions I actually have so you

mentioned a lot of the hardware and some of the software tools

that you're using, you know, like, I've been spending a lot

of time working with schools using their various sis systems.

And are you using American based sis systems there? And then to

the second part of that question, if you are, do you

have any localization issues that you run into when you're

trying to use them. Or because maybe you're on a US based

curriculum and you're pretty aligned with US based schools do

things just seem to fit and work. Or do you have those old

issues of we say this, you say that we needed to say this to

make sense to the people here?

Yeah, fortunately, most international

schools do rely on platforms that we're familiar with working

out of the states. We're a Power School. Been a Power School for

a long time, but when we transitioned away from the

American curriculum and opened the British school and British

curriculum and went to IB, we needed an additional platform

beyond Power School, because Power School was our SIS and

LMS. So a lot of the international schools, they

either are running something called Toddle, if you're

familiar with that, the Toddle app, or manage back. So we had

switched to manage back just five years ago, the previous

tech director before me, and we rolled that out so that supports

our IB curriculum, because that's pretty unique, and it's

not as popular in the States. A lot of the add ons to that

program that you need in an SIS to track, like the service hours

and the special courses that falls outside of something like

power school that would develop. So you add that on top, we have

Google Classroom for supporting collaboration and work within

the Google Suite. We run seesaw for our elementary school years

for the portfolio and messaging and sharing of work. So it's a

lot of the same tools. Localizations can be an issue.

We're transitioning to the Oliver library system from

Follett, and when we imported all of our Korean book titles,

they didn't transfer. They didn't, apparently, use UTF for

the import of the information. So all of our titles were in

strange ASCII code characters. And yeah, you have to go back

and say, remember, we're in Korea. So do you support

international language for this product that we just bought? And

yeah, fortunately, they do, but it was just overlooked in the

Settings Configuration. So you run into that, but a lot of the

times, you'll have to develop something custom, especially if

you need something for your school, like dual currency

support, something we don't even think about in America. But when

we're overseas, here in Korea, we take tuition in as dollars,

and we take tuition in as Korean won, and we spend in both as we

send overseas to pay our software license bills, and then

we pay locally for hardware and software here. So you need an

accounting system that can do that. We've been using financial

edge from Blackbaud, and that supported the dual currencies.

And when we went to the next product, we ended up having to

build something custom with Oracle to be able to support

that, because there just wasn't. It's not a thing for a lot of

American platforms.

It's really interesting. I mean, there's

those considerations on the tech side, but let's go to now the

teaching side. I guess where we should start is, what are the

students like compared to your experience with students in the

states are kids, kids, no matter where they are.

Yeah, it's the same. You're walking down the

hallway, you wouldn't notice a difference when you're here

versus in America, the work you're seeing on the walls, the

conversations you're hearing in the hallways, depending on the

school, they might be more in the. Local language, or be in

English. The kids that are going to a private international

school are typically very motivated, and they can be

advantaged, so you might see different levels in performance

compared to the states in terms of the balance of your the

demographics of your students. A lot of the international schools

don't offer scholarship programs, so there doesn't bring

that diversity into the mix. But as you mentioned, you look at

the website, you see the kids, you see the classes, you see

what we're doing, the experience is pretty much going to be the

same. So someone could leave from this school and go to a

school in America, and it wouldn't be a shock or large

transition for them. They'd walk into school and they'd be

comfortable, they'd feel like home. And what

about the teachers? So the faculty, you

said, it's a pretty diverse mix of teachers from different

areas, probably all over the globe, right? But my question on

the faculty side is, you know, we're dealing with a lot of

retention issues in the States. We're dealing with a lot of

stress and burnout issues. I don't think that teaching is as

highly respected as it may have been in previous generations.

And so our teachers are struggling. Do you see similar

challenges among the faculty? There

no in the international scene, it's pretty

competitive. And as teachers are moving around, just like we do

sometimes for new opportunities, teachers do as well. So teachers

may come in for just two or three years because they wanted

to experience the country and the region, and then they're

moving on. Some may stay 2030 years, if they're happy at the

school. There's a lot of transition among the teachers.

You have people bringing in their curriculum and

preferences. They're asking for new tools all the time, so it

really keeps our education integration technology team

busy, and they're constantly getting exposed to new ideas and

supporting people to grow and learn. Our systems. Professional

Development is just as important as in the States, but it's more

on the school to provide, obviously, because there's not

the local workshops and connections that you might have

from the education agencies or state sponsored education

agencies back home,

I think that's really interesting. So

you have kind of a rotating door, right? Not in a bad way,

but just like there's a lot of transition, some folks are in

and out again, depending on visas for a limited amount of

time, and that brings with it ideas and energy, which, again,

is probably a lot for your tech team, but it also probably keeps

it from getting a little too stale, or it's not like they're

not willing to try new things if they're going to move to a

different country, then I doubt they're fussing over a change in

technology. And so that's kind of cool. Has AI been embraced by

your faculty? And how are you guys using that at your school?

Absolutely, it hit us the same. You know, we

woke up in November to the news a couple years ago, and life

changed on a dime, suddenly, something we hadn't anticipated

and planned for, just like everybody else was here. And are

we going to use it? Are we going to support it? We took a very

conservative approach in the beginning and took our time

watching what other schools were doing in the region, learning

from like Warren Apple over at ASIJ, and the work that they

were doing to develop their AI policy and frameworks. And

everybody was talking just like in the States, about how we're

exploring different tools and how we're using them

internationally, you'll have the same exposure to laws and

regulations, and so you kind of have to keep in touch with the

situation in your country and what they're allowing for Korea

operates off of a slightly different age system, of 14,

which can be challenging, but also beneficial. That definitely

means for our high school that pretty much none of our middle

school students can qualify to use apps that are restricted to

14 and over, but all of our high school can't. So that works out

for us. AI, we recently launched a program sponsored by our

senior leadership team and human resources department to allow

teachers to explore individual tools subscriptions with their

professional development funds. So that's bringing in a lot of

new ideas, introducing platforms like brisk bringing that to the

forefront and awareness of our technology team. So that's a

program that we piloted this spring with over 50 teachers

looking at the brisk schools plan, and we're finding that

it's really benefiting the teachers in the areas of

feedback, especially when it's integrated with a Google Suite,

when they can make a Google classroom assignment, and then a

tool can just go in and access the document and then identify

areas for the teacher to highlight, for commenting and

further refinement, but also allow the student to have a

writing coach when they're going In before they even submit that

they can get not rewrite suggestions, but just the

feedback. Like you could revise this paragraph for more clarity,

or you mentioned that this was an objective or goal of this

section, but you didn't really provide evidence to support

that, and that's been really exciting. Also, activities like

book. Just the chat bot stuff school, AI magic school also has

tools like that, right the chat bot, where the teacher can load

up the YouTube video and the student watches it, and then the

chat bot can check for understanding, and it's

flexible, and it levels to the student, and can go beyond what

we used to just do, like answer this multiple choice question,

and you either got it right or wrong, but it goes in and asks,

you know, yeah, you're on the right track. But let me change

your thought. Have you thought about this and really love what

we're seeing with that functionality? It's interesting

talking about all these different tools. And Bill

and I kind of been going back and forth in the chat. He

mentioned GDPR. I'm thinking about some of the you mentioned

the age difference, or restriction for Korean school

being the age of 14. Here in the States, it's 13 with COPPA. So

do you utilize a company called Nine to help with some of the

vetting of applications? To help you understand? Is there a

clearing house in Korea that would help with terms of

service, because I imagine you're dealing with not only

local but you've got GDPR, you've got to worry about, and

perhaps other national standards and legislation that limits what

you can and cannot do with your students.

Yeah, I'm thankful for nine I love their

workshops. We're not a current partner with them, but we've

definitely engaged with them and the service that they're

offering, especially if you're a European School for GDPR

tracking and the vetting of the apps, especially with the new AI

regulations, really helpful. They're a valuable partner the

clearing houses in America. I wish I had access to those that

would be a great resource as well. Create doesn't have that

clearing house yet. We do have PIPA, which has a memorandum of

understanding with GDPR, so the terms and expectations for

privacy management and protection are very similar, if

not the same. We rely a lot on our local risk manager who

communicates with the legal team available to the school. We do a

lot of checking for not only is this in compliance with national

regulations, but the local Ministry of Education has its

own guidelines for school as well. Sometimes they can be more

flexible, sometimes they can be more strict. So having someone

in your school who can communicate locally is a big

benefit to helping you do your job. But like every school, a

lot of this does fall on the tech director or someone on the

tech team to kind of keep up with and update your privacy

policies and your consent forms to make sure that you are

specifying your retention periods and everything, and that

you're upholding them as well. So there's resources out there.

A lot of them tend to be more global. You're really lucky if

you've got something in your country that you can directly

work with.

Sounds like it adds a whole nother layer to

what you guys are dealing with. Bill and Hiram here in the

States. It's like got to figure it out on the ground, on your

own. What do you have Nate that keeps you tapped into

professional development opportunities for you, Where do

you stay in the loop on some of these issues as an overseas

international tech director.

So thankfully, I had connected with Atlas back

when I was at Canterbury school, and Ashley over there, and I had

gone to an atlas conference back when I was in Dallas, and

realized that this was going to be an organization that would

help me grow and so I've kept that connection. I still get the

newsletters. In fact, I unsubscribed at one point. I've

resubscribed this year, connected again. So a lot of the

workshops I've attended, a few of them thankfully offered

online asynchronously, so I can attend those through Atlas.

Other organizations like international school services.

ISS will sponsor workshops a lot of the major vendors, like Power

School will offer, in addition to the in states training that

we sometimes attend in the summers, they'll have regional

collaboratives and workshops available. So you'll be able to

go to something in the Asian region for a power school group

to learn about new features and to get training. So you really

learn to connect with regional education groups like iricos

over here in Asia, there's a similar group of Council of

international schools in Europe, and you just really monitor what

opportunities are available for you online, and try to get into

as

much as you can when you come to a

new country and you come to a new school, what are

the types of things, whether they're your habits, your

beliefs, your mindsets that need to shift? Have there been many

of those. You know, I used to do it this way, or I used to

interact with people this way. But here it's a different

culture, it's a different mindset, so I've got to adjust

and pivot. Have there been many moments where you've had to do

that?

You must be a flexible person, obviously, to

work in international schools, mindset skills? Those job roles,

expectations, living standards you can't be set in your ways.

When you walk into a school, you're going to be like in the

States, you're going to be drinking from the fire hose, but

it's a much bigger fire hose, because it's how do you get

banking? How do you get a cell phone plan? How do you shop for

food. How do you get deliveries? How do you even get around town?

Where are things you can't go on Google and search for things as

easily as you do in the stitch you're looking for a donut shop.

Maybe you need to learn the Korean word for donut first and

see if you pop that in into the local maps tool, which is also

going to be in Korean, probably not an English interface. Does

that pop up? So you got to take things in stride, be flexible,

always adapting, whether it's something in professional life

or personal life, and embracing that challenge. And I think all

of us in tech do embrace challenge and new things. So I

think we're a little more successful in terms of

integrating than other people can be. You also have to

understand that it's very typical to say things like,

well, in my last school, we did this, or I'm used to running it

this way, because it worked at my last school. And everybody

can say that in an international school and with 10 to 15%

average turnover in a school, everybody's always coming in

with new things and experiences. So you learn to roll with it,

and it's refreshing, and you take that and you're just open

to considering doing something different. And so before you

say, Well, this is how I used to do it, you listen to what people

are saying and look at a situation, and your answer is,

what's the best solution to that problem at this school first,

before you start thinking how you might have done it in the

past.

So do you have a favorite country that

you've worked in? And do you have a wish list or a bucket

list of a country that you'd like to go to? I've

been really fortunate to span what three

continents in my career, I would like to get down to South

America one day. To add that to my list favorite country, I'd

have to give it to Japan. I had an amazing experience while I

was in Japan my two years in Tokyo. Love the country. All of

my experiences have been great. We love going back to visit the

schools, the people, the faculty that are still at those schools.

Years later, decades later, we just went to Switzerland for

Christmas and met up with my colleagues over the Christmas

break, more than 10 colleagues living in the town that we met

up with and celebrated birthdays and New Year with, took my kids

skiing on the same mountain that I learned to ski at the school.

It's amazing. That's all I can say about it.

That's really cool. I mean, you're

inspiring. I'm sure that there are people listening who are

like, I guess I could do it. One of my four daughters, Nate,

speaks a lot of languages. She speaks Spanish, Japanese,

Chinese and a little bit of Korean. So I think that she's

going to be very jealous. She's not a tech leader, but she is

one who can pick up those languages really quickly. And so

I, as her mother, hope that she does not decide to go live in

Korea, but I could also see it happening. But you're inspiring.

I mean, you make it seem like it's cool and fun and easy.

I'm glad to make it sound easy, because sometimes

you think is not. There's a lot of stress to the job. But like

you said, one of the reasons I do it, we do it as a family, is

for the kids. You know, in addition to yourself, the aspect

you get on life and people in the world, just by living

outside the country and working outside the country for a year,

two years, you know, you can go a couple years, keeping your

house in the States, being away from your family, just to get

out, to get the experience for a couple years. And you don't need

to take all your stuff with you. You don't need to uproot your

life. You can do a temporary thing, call it a sabbatical. Go

live abroad. Take your kids abroad, because when you see

your kids, my kids started in school in the States, obviously,

and you see them grow when they come and get exposed to these

people from around the world and all their ideas and languages,

foods, cultures, religions and all walks of life in the school,

they really have such a global perspective, and they realize

that we're all the same. The borders don't really matter.

They're just opportunities to try something different. You

hear your kids speaking differently and thinking

differently, and you know that when they go off to college in

the workforce and they start encountering people that are not

of the same background, the same ideas, from the same region,

same countries, it's not going to be a shock for them, and

they'll probably embrace it, and they'll make friends, and

they'll thrive in that kind of community and maybe be the one

to do it when they grow up, and they'll want to work

internationally, live outside the country, but they'll always

have that perspective. I think it's just such a wonderful

opportunity. We're really fortunate that we got to do it,

and we can continue to do it. I don't know where we'll end up in

the future, but we'll continue. Exploring the world, probably,

yeah, clearly sounds like the world is

indeed your oyster. You're ready to go, guys, are you feeling

inspired? Would you be willing to, like, wave a magic wand and

go work in another country? You feeling like you can do

it? I would say yes. I would definitely be very

open to it, the logistics of it right now. With one out of

college, one in college. It's not like I'm taking my kids with

me at this point. So it's a matter of figuring out where we

would be. But it's definitely something my wife and I have

talked about.

Yeah, I would agree with Bill. I have one in

college as well. But what I'm most intrigued with Nate is your

temperament in this conversation right now and how easy going? I

don't know if it's because it's 630 in the morning over there,

or if that's your true nature, but you seem very adaptable to

this type of lifestyle and living

I am envious. Yeah, I won't discount that

probably a lot of my happiness is that it is the last day of

school and it is a half day, and I'm heading off on a plane

tonight, back to America for my summer job, where I get to relax

at summer camp, instructing crafts this summer, working for

my wife, who will be my boss at the camp. So I'm a little happy

about what summer opportunities bring, but I understand there's

a lot of stress in deciding to move overseas, but once college

is over, is when we see a lot of people return to overseas. A lot

of people take a break, especially when their kids are

about to enter college. They'll take a break to make sure that

they're in the States, or they're back in the country

where their child is starting school. We also have people that

stay overseas while their child is in college. They get them

off, they get them started. You know, maybe they start come back

to come back to school a little late that first year when

they're dropping their freshmen off to college. But after that,

did the kids come home for summer and they put them on a

plane like bye, bye, and the kids will come back and visit at

Christmas.

So you're on a US based schedule. Yes, we

follow a very traditional schedule with a fall

break, a Christmas break, a spring break than a large summer

break.

I couldn't even imagine my job with the summers

off. I haven't gotten this like multiple weeks in a summer in

years. That's what I'm most jealous for right there.

Yeah, maybe I shouldn't say it's summer off.

It's summer remote, but I have an amazing local staff, and you

know, the projects that are done over the summer, everything

that's in person they handle, the reconstructions, the

renewals, the refreshes. They get vacation during the summer

too. But their 12 month contract and their hard work and their

year round effort is What does allow me to step away during the

summer for six weeks and get refreshed and ready to rebuild.

But yeah, I'm still pretty connected. I've still got the

work laptop with me. I'm still hopping on at night to check

emails and process those software renewals and discuss

the status of project updates with the leadership team. So

yeah, I would say I more go remote for about six weeks, but

it's amazing. It's not a common benefit overseas, as much as is

not in the States. And

it's interesting, because where you are, it lines

up well, because as our day is ending right now, your day is

just beginning. So like that type of work that you might be

doing, like during the day to summer camp, if you to take two

calls a week, you could do it after work, when your team's

getting their day started and you're closing your day out, you

could take a little bit of time, like we're doing right now, and

have a conversation. So I see definitely how it can work. I am

still infinitely jealous.

I love it. Nate. I hope that you enjoy your

hybrid summer back here in the States, and I hope you have a

really smooth journey back over here, I'm sure that that's a

heck of a dose of jet lag that you have to deal with, but you

probably are an expert at that as well. So Safe travels, I want

to thank you for joining us so much. This has been so

interesting. You probably got a bunch of questions that'll be

waiting for you on LinkedIn after this episode drops.

Well, thank you. It's been great to speak with

all of you and get to meet you today. I still see the work that

you guys do, the things that come out in the newsletters.

It's really important to all of us working overseas, and I'd

love to see maybe an international subgroup with

Atlas for all of us expats from the States, because it's really

important to stay connected for just awareness of what's going

on, professional development and just expanding your friendships

and reach throughout the world. So thanks for this opportunity

today. It's been a real pleasure.

Yeah, you're very welcome. And I think it's a

good idea. I think that you're onto something. Maybe we need to

do some meetups, the timing of which would be a little

interesting, but we can figure it out we are smart people.

Well, I'm

looking forward to Columbus. I saw that pop up.

I've got family in Columbus, so I'm pretty sure I'm definitely

coming to the conference next.

Oh, that's so exciting. Will you do a

session for us on this topic so that you can talk about

international tech leadership?

Of course, perfect. And, yeah, people can.

To talk to me on LinkedIn if they want to know more. There's

a lot of resources out there about getting started, whether

it's a resource for teaching an international school or being a

tech leader, the information is probably going to be about the

same. The services are about the same. So reach out and I'll come

to the session. I'll do one. See, you

didn't know you were going to get homework

from this podcast, but now you're all tapped in. So we look

forward to we're looking forward to it. We're looking forward to

being in Columbus. I'm so glad that you're going to be there,

and thank you again for joining us. We'll circle back with

you on your homework assignment. Sounds

good.

Thank you so much. This has been talking technology

with Atlas, produced by the Association of technology

leaders in independent schools. For more information about Atlas

and Atlas membership, please visit theatlas.org if you

enjoyed this discussion, please subscribe, leave a review and

share this podcast with your colleagues in the independent

school community. Thank you for listening. You.