In this episode of All Things Marketing and Education, Elana Leoni talks with Kyle Calderwood, a technology coordinator at Tabernacle School District and Google-certified educator. They discuss “unconferences,” owning professional development as an educator, and game-based learning. Kyle shares his expertise in integrating gaming in the classroom and working with teachers across the country on this issue. They also speak to how EdTech products and services play alongside of professional development in education. Throughout the conversation, Elana and Kyle keep things informal and share some personal anecdotes about their history of collaboration.

Access this episode's show notes, including links to the audio, a summary, and helpful resources.

Elana Leoni:

Hello, and welcome to All Things Marketing and Education. My name is Elana Leoni, and I've devoted my career to helping education brands build their brand awareness and engagement. Each week, I sit down with educators, EdTech entrepreneurs, and experts in educational marketing and community building. All of them will share their successes and failures using social media, inbound marketing or content marketing, and community building. I'm excited to guide you on your journey to transform your marketing efforts into something that provides consistent value and ultimately improves the lives of your audience.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of All Things Marketing and Education. This week I am sitting down with my friend, and he doesn't want to be called an educator, but I call him an educator, Kyle Calderwood. Today, we're going to be talking about all things unconference. If you don't know what that is, stick around, we'll talk to you about that. We'll be talking about how to own your own professional development as educators. And if you are an ed tech professional listening, it's also about how you can help support professional development and what role does professional development play alongside your product or service. And then we're going to be talking about gaming, game-based learning.

A little bit about Kyle. Kyle is the technology coordinator at Tabernacle School District in New Jersey. He is a Google-certified educator. He is a Microsoft innovative educator expert, whoa, lots of stuff here, and a Minecraft Global Mentor. He is a gamer, and in fact, he's coming in alive. We will be sharing some of the video clips of this podcast, but he is in... What is this where you're at? A gaming...

Kyle Calderwood:

esportsLab?

Elana Leoni:

The esportsLab. So he's got very fancy chairs and a lot more fancy things than me, let's just say. Kyle, because he's a gamer, we're going to be talking about game-based learning and what he's been doing. He enjoys working with teachers across the country on how to integrate gaming in their classroom. He's presented at ISTE, FETC, TCEA, let's throw in some more acronyms-

Kyle Calderwood:

Damn right.

Elana Leoni:

... Edcamps, TeachMeets, as well as BET in London. I remember when you were going to that. And last but not least, he's also an adjunct faculty member at Stockton University. I've had the pleasure of zooming in to a couple of his classes that he was teaching them how to tweet, and then just teaching them how to be like... I don't know, what would you call it?

Kyle Calderwood:

How to get them ready for the job market.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah. I was like, how to be acumen, but that wasn't it. How to get them ready for-

Kyle Calderwood:

The interview process, yeah.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah, I remember that. I know Kyle, you can tell we're pretty informal. I've known Kyle from way back in the day. Kyle was my first-ever co-presenter at a ISTE back in... Do you know what year that was?

Kyle Calderwood:

That probably was '13 maybe.

Elana Leoni:

'14.

Kyle Calderwood:

Was it 14? Well, I was close.

Elana Leoni:

Kyle Calderwood:

Somebody canceled or something. Yeah, something happened.

Elana Leoni:

Somebody had canceled on me. I think I might have put it out on Twitter, "Who can help me?"

Kyle Calderwood:

That was the power of that back then. We're like, "Hey, I'll jump in, sure."

Elana Leoni:

You just jumped in and you really didn't know me that well, and that was so cool.

Kyle Calderwood:

And look where we are now.

Elana Leoni:

Kyle Calderwood:

Oh wow. Okay.

Elana Leoni:

You asked me for an Amazon Kindle.

Kyle Calderwood:

That was probably begging for a sponsor for my conference, yeah, yeah.

Elana Leoni:

You said, "Edutopia is already sponsoring, but can you also give me a Kindle?" I was like...

Kyle Calderwood:

That's a nice first tweet.

Elana Leoni:

But then we just kept in touch since then. There you go. Well, thank you Kyle for being on the show today. Again, we're going to be talking about all things unconference, what is it, how do you find them, how to own and direct your own professional development as educators? We had Lisa Schmucki on as a guest, who's the founder of edWeb, and she says she actually doesn't like the term professional development, she calls it professional learning. So whatever you want to call it. And game-based learning. So welcome, Kyle.

Kyle Calderwood:

Thank you very much.

Elana Leoni:

So excited to have you on the show.

Kyle Calderwood:

That's what I wanted to bring into that class that you joined. I wanted to show the power of Twitter and what those connections can mean to you professionally. I remember, God, I don't remember what semester it was or what year it was, but one of my students, he was in the Army and he wasn't doing a tour at the time. We talked about LinkedIn. He had never really heard of it, but he signed up on LinkedIn. That was one of the assignments we did. And then the next day he got a message from one of his former, I guess, commander offering him a job in Afghanistan as a contractor to go drive or do whatever.

So I mean, it was just that fast the connections, and that's what I was trying to tell them. I also had a kid, this was one of the first semesters I taught, and I stood up there and I said, "We're going to use Twitter. It's mandatory." Out of the back I hear, "Are you kidding me?" He was so adamant about not doing it and now he is, I believe, the CEO of his own company and does intense marketing through social media. I just messaged him through LinkedIn one day and I'm like, "See?" just jokingly, and he goes, "I know. I just didn't get it back then." He's like it, "I'm so thankful for that."

Elana Leoni:

Sometimes you need a little push, a little prod.

Kyle Calderwood:

Yeah, it's important.

Elana Leoni:

It's important.

Kyle Calderwood:

Yeah.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah, it's important despite all the stereotypes around it too. We make assumptions, I think, of certain generations knowing how to use social media. But when we say social media, we say, "How do we use it professionally? How do we use it to professionally develop, to create those connections in education?"

Kyle Calderwood:

Elana Leoni:

Yeah. I mean, this is what I do so I definitely see value in making sure that everyone in education has an ecosystem where they can talk authentically to one another and create some relationships, hopefully. I'd love to hear this story because you being an educator... Even though right before he said, "I'm not an educator, Elana." But you are, you're just not in the classroom-

Kyle Calderwood:

I'm not a full-time teacher. Correct.

Elana Leoni:

... in a traditional sense. But think about Kyle circa graduating high school, what drew you to education? What drew you to the field? Was it something like you had parents or you always knew you wanted to be a teacher? And then what keeps you in the field still?

Kyle Calderwood:

Well, it was funny enough. When I graduated high school, I went into college not really knowing what I wanted to do, and I'm sure a lot of us did. Actually, I wound up being a communications major because actually I wanted to go into film. I loved video editing. That was my thing from high school that had carried over. Back then, the phones and everything weren't there, so to be successful, you were either in New York or you were in LA. So living in South Jersey, for me, it wasn't the mecca of filmmaking there. I graduated and then it was either marketing or what did I want to do, and I wasn't sure. I actually went back to the college that I graduated from and started working there.

While I was working there, it was a great opportunity, I could go get my master's degree, and I could do it for free because I was an employee. So I was like, "Hey, why not?" That's when I chose instructional technology. I have a strong technical background, so that's why I went to through the technology route, but education really wasn't on my radar until I went to ISTE, believe it or not. It did open up my eyes and say, "I would love to work with teachers and do this." When I was at the college, I did work with faculty, and I worked with the older students obviously, but I loved working with faculty. I loved going in and helping them. We always went in and fixed things, but being able to sit down with them and show them new things and work with them and find alternatives for them to teach their lessons, that was actually pretty exciting to me.

And then towards the end of my time there, I was actually unofficially appointed to be their education department's tech. So every time they had something, it was me that was going up there. I really formed a relationship with educators there too, and then meeting the students who were going to become teachers and working with them. It really all happened there. But I would say that the turning point for me definitely was that first ISTE.

Elana Leoni:

Kyle Calderwood:

I worked in computer services for another year and a half. And then funny enough, on Twitter, I saw a job posting for a school as a technology coordinator, so I'm like, "I'll give it a shot." That was it. I mean, I had an interview and I was pushed right through, and I was in charge of a school. It was a K-6 school. It was a really good learning experience because it was a small school, we had about 300-some students, so it was very manageable for me. Because I was the only tech there, so it was just me. Learned a ton there. And then learned of this job that I'm in now and moved on. After seven and a half years at the other school, I came here, so I've been here about two years now, just passed my two-year mark. Now, this is a bigger district, so now I have both an elementary and middle school to be in charge of. It's a different realm, but I like it, it's different challenges.

Elana Leoni:

With all this time in education, what keeps you going in education? What keeps you saying, "This is my jam, this is my spot. I'm not going to leave this spot."?

Kyle Calderwood:

Every day is something new, let me tell you. Never walk in the doors and get the same thing over. What the kids are doing and what the teachers are doing and what's going on in the area and what's changing in education alone all the time, there is something new every day. It's not like that nine to five, you go in, you're grind, you sit at a desk in a cubicle somewhere and just stare at a street. It's something new every day. It's the relationships that you form. It's been great.

I'm sitting here in this esportsLab that I help design and it's something that I'm very proud of to bring to this school. We started last year, and then our first season we actually went to state finals. I mean, it's been a pretty awesome experience for these kids. Again, I'm not directly involved anymore, but to be able to sit back and hear the stories from the coach of some of the kids that wouldn't have had an opportunity to be in this grouping or a community like this if it wasn't for this, so that was exciting for me.

Elana Leoni:

Let's jump into some of the things we were going to talk about. I know with you, we can talk about esports, we can be talking about lots of... But in terms of unconferences, many people might have heard the term by this point, but we also have some new EdTech professionals that join this audience and may be newer to the field. So can you just talk about what is an unconference and why is it different from a traditional conference?

Kyle Calderwood:

Elana Leoni:

What I love about the unconference part... Sorry to jump in, just-

Kyle Calderwood:

No, no, go ahead.

Elana Leoni:

Kyle Calderwood:

The law of two feet.

Elana Leoni:

Kyle Calderwood:

Yeah. Yeah.

Elana Leoni:

But yes, the law of two feet. And if you have somebody, say you're in a robotics session and you are interested and they're all, "Well, I use it for my special education class," it's perfectly okay for you to start a side conversation with that person and start working out details. I'm just, I guess, a little ADD where I'm in conferences, I'm like, "But I want to ask a question. How did you do that? Can we collaborate?"

Kyle Calderwood:

Yeah, I always encourage people to just stop me in the middle of the... We need to have that conversation, and I think it's important to answer those kinds of questions. I know from a conference organizer, and maybe you can chime in on this as well, Edcamps, they make me very anxious as an organizer because you don't know that morning, "Oh my God, am I going to fill all the slots? Are we going to have enough people?" that kind of stuff. With TeachMeet, it's a little different. Here in the US, they do it differently in the UK, but here, both Will and I made the decision to pre-organize everything and get the schedule going.

So we put out the call of presenters months in advance. We don't turn anybody down, but it's more of I want to make sure that there's sessions. I do have this annoying habit of being stuck on numbers, I don't know why, but if there's 50 people there, for me, it doesn't feel like a successful day because I feel like there's not enough sessions for them to move around or whatever. But gosh, what year was it? ISTE Denver, I can't remember, '15 or '16, something like that, but we had 500 people at TeachMeet SD, and I think it was the second year we did it. I know I shouldn't say this, but to me, that's a successful day.

So yeah, the unconferences are what you make of it. Like you said, if you're in a session and it's not what you need, then you get up and you walk out and you go to something that is. It's your time, it's more you need to get what you need out of it. It's not to be a waste of time. Because I think too many of us have been stuck in PD for an hour or sometimes four hours or eight hours there. You're sitting there all day and like, "This has nothing to do with me. I can't use this, so I'm just going to check my email and do this."

That's why I like unconferences where you pick your own schedule, you do what you want to do. We actually first started, the first five years we did it, we did all day. And then, as I'm sure Edcamps have seen too, after lunch they peter out, so then by the afternoon you got minimal sessions. We started doing half days, and actually I think that's more successful because by the end of the day, that first morning session, you've got I think 11 or 12 sessions to go to for a TeachMeet, because they're only 20 minutes. So by then they've got everything. Some people are overwhelmed. So for them to just digest and take it all in, have some lunch, and then off for the day, especially in the summer because we're by the beach. It actually, I think, has worked out much better.

Elana Leoni:

I would say for those of you that think, "Gosh, what the heck are they still talking about?" so we'll be putting resources in the show notes. You can go to the Edcamp Foundation, edcamp.org for all of the Edcamps that are happening probably locally in your area. TeachMeets also have a national website, plus there's stuff usually happening in your local area. This coming ISTE, there will be a TeachMeet as well, so we'll put that information in the show notes too.

But the one thing I love about unconferences is for me I would always push myself to be as open as possible to things. Because sometimes what as educators and even EdTech professionals, sometimes we go in with, "I got to learn this. I got to learn my SMART Boards because my district gave them to me." or "I'm super interested on AI, so all I'm going to do is go to AI." But by having that narrow focus, it really stops you from that beauty of serendipity of learning. And so, with unconferences in particular, I wouldn't even look at the schedule and I just pop in any session. And so, being able to embrace like, "Whoa, I'm so glad I stopped in, but normally I wouldn't."

Kyle Calderwood:

There were three ISTE, maybe even four in a row, where I never went to any sessions because I found the conversations with people were more enriching than sitting in a session sometimes. At least in my position, going to the vendor floor to see what's new, I found several wonderful products that I have brought to both my districts just by walking around, really taking the time. Because it can really get overwhelming when you go to that vendor hall the first time, and it's the size of a football field or an aircraft... It's huge. But again, to be able to hear that, talk to people directly is nice. But really, just to sit down in those blogger lounges and those newbie lounges and just have those conversations. I think even when you and I talked last year, I mean, just running into people that I haven't seen in a couple years and catching up and talking about, "Oh, well where are you at now with professional?" and see how that things have changed, it's just such a great experience. It really is.

Elana Leoni:

So beyond Edcamps, unconferences, TeachMeets, we do have this elephant in the room around professional learning, professional development. Every educator, depending on what district you're in, different state that there's different requirements around it. But within those requirements, what advice would you give educators that are trying to make it more of their own, own that journey so then maybe they could start going to things they're excited about or curious about. How do they do that?

Kyle Calderwood:

I would say almost pick a buddy too. Find somebody who knows or has maybe gone to a lot of these conferences and experience it with somebody who's more apt to have gone to these things, and I think you'll see that it might change your perspective. I think too, after COVID, a lot of our PD has transitioned online. I've seen a lot of these companies now, instead of having webinars that are two hours or whatever, it's now bite-size PD where you can go in and learn specific details about a product or a program that's out there in one to two minute or five-minute sessions. So I think that is important too, being able to go in on your time because I think that's important now, especially the way that the landscape has changed. I think time and especially budgets now, being able to just go online and get what you need and still have that count for your PD hours too.

Elana Leoni:

Great. And then for EdTech companies listening, what advice would you have for them around just maybe how to offer professional development or how to support educators' professional development or learning journey?

Kyle Calderwood:

I've gone to quite a bit actually, more than I have in the past couple years, but one thing that's very difficult is I would say offer multiple time slots. Because some of those are during the day obviously when they're teaching, and it's difficult. I know usually afterwards it's on demand, but I think most of them will have a Q&A session at the end where I feel that's a pretty valuable asset. So I think having multiple time slots.

I know when we do our monthly meetings for the Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert program, there you go, there's always two slots. There's a morning and then there's a night because everybody's got a different schedule, we're all over the country, that kind of stuff. So I think that's beneficial because there's sometimes where I go to sit down at my desk and get ready to listen and then boom, a student comes in or a teacher calls and then that hour is lost. So I'll try to do it at home or vice versa when I go to sit down at home and my kids are screaming in the background and we're trying to get dinner together. So have that flexibility, I think, for everybody. And then again, I think those bite-sized PDs are great. We have Promethean here, so they do Camp Promethean in the summer, and they have everything laid out. The sessions aren't terribly long, and they start from beginner to advanced, so you have that capability too. I think differentiating your PD might be something that they start trying as well.

Elana Leoni:

So differentiating by maybe different needs around, or urban, that kind of thing?

Kyle Calderwood:

Or even, like I said, just beginner, advanced, someone who may have had the product for six months but just wants to get back up to speed or wants to know what's new. Because you get newsletters, but sometimes you don't have a chance to look at those.

Elana Leoni:

In marketing, we call those personas. I was just talking with a new client and we're designing a community, and I said, "Let's design a community for three different use cases, one person that wants to dive really in and be all the things in there and learn it all and soak it all up." We all know those educators that want to do that with certain things. But then you have the educator, "Well, I want to do a little more in the bare minimum, but I want to be focused." And so, it's like a medium effort. And then you've got the one, "No, too busy for life, give me the minimum I need to know." And if you can design PD or other things around it, even just use your journeys on your website too.

Kyle Calderwood:

Yeah, I think that's important, because no matter where you're, you're going to get people like that. It doesn't matter what industry you're in. So differentiating your PD for them I think would be huge.

Elana Leoni:

Okay, so we've talked about professional development, a little bit about owning your own professional development. We'll put in the show notes our talk with Lisa Schmucki, the Head of edWeb, too. She talks a lot about owning your own PD and some tips and tricks around that too. Let's get into the world of gaming because you are in esportsLab right now. Let's talk about game-based learning. How would you define what game-based learning is, and what does it typically look like in the classroom?

Kyle Calderwood:

It could be anything from having a chart on the wall with points or all the way to actually using video games in the classroom to me. I think that's where I lean more towards because I think you're hitting the kids where they're used to and what they're accustomed to is video games. I mean, I have a 11-year-old son who I can't pry away sometimes. I say this as a gamer growing up all the way through back to the Atari, but it depends on your comfort level. I know when I first started talking to our esports coach, she had no familiarity with any of the games at all. It didn't matter because she knew how to coach, and that was the important aspect of it. The kids can handle the gaming part of it.

Same thing with anybody that's out there thinking about using Minecraft in their classroom, I've had some of the best experiences with a teacher at my other district who taught for 37 years and she never once went into Minecraft. She knew the basics, but that was it. We did phenomenal projects. We did a project that took six months. She handled the part of it where they would do the research and she wouldn't even let them even touch the game until the research or the math were all done properly on that aspect. And then she would look at it, correct it, or say, "Okay, you're good." Then they would go in.

So there is a way to incorporate that. And I think especially if you have kids who are quiet or not able to speak up really or present or get nervous or maybe not engaged with their traditional project base like that, so if you put them in an atmosphere that they're used to and that they're accustomed to, you'll see them grow and be excited about it. I mean, we had kids that were asking, "Can I skip recess? Can I skip lunch? Can I stay after school just to get this project done?" They loved it. It's just something that I love. Obviously, I've been a gamer since I was little, so it's just a new way of teaching the same things that you're doing now. It's really just how can you adapt a current lesson and put it into a video game kind of atmosphere. We have a-

Elana Leoni:

Sorry to interrupt, but I was just wanted point out that some of the examples you gave, the teacher's not the expert, and they have to be comfortable probably with not being an expert.

Kyle Calderwood:

Right.

Elana Leoni:

I think there's a fundamental assumption that you have to know the tech in and out so you can catch the kids doing things or direct their learning. I remember one of the ISTEs, there was a huge Minecraft session. It was really advanced, and I was thinking in my head, I'm like, "Do you have to know?" It's cool if you do and you're interested, but you just proved two use cases that you don't really have to.

Kyle Calderwood:

Elana Leoni:

I want all technology type teachers that are like, "Oh, well, I don't know ChatGPT," or "I don't know this type of AI," or whatever it may be. It's okay, you can co-learn, co-explore.

Kyle Calderwood:

Yeah. And not to go off on a little tangent, but we'll go off on a little aside on that now that you brought ChatGPT up. As soon as I had learned about it, I looked at it real quick. I emailed our teachers right away and I said, "Yeah, sure, I can block this, but they're just going to go home and use it, so why don't we just try to use it and embrace it. It's coming." Yeah, I think it's Microsoft said they're already going to integrate it into some of their tools. I mean, it's same thing with the calculator, "Oh, they're going to cheat. They're going to do their math on a calculator." Well... Or the internet when that came. It's a new tool and you segue into it. How do you use it properly? But to get back to Minecraft-

Elana Leoni:

Kyle Calderwood:

Yeah, so I got... Go ahead. Go ahead.

Elana Leoni:

I want to congratulate you on making that decision because there's a lot of districts that are scared and will say, "Oh, block." And it's all the same districts that blocked Facebook, that blocked YouTube, that made cell phones illegal, all the things that they had to eventually reverse. We know it's coming, let's embrace it. I've been doing a lot of reading on it too. John Spencer just recently came out with some thoughts on Facebook, and he probably put it on Instagram too, but he said it's an opportunity for us to be better, obviously, so to be able to encourage and empower the students to be even better than that or do it to a completely different nature. So it's giving me a bland definition of X, Y, Z. Okay, what can I do that this will never do? And being able to fully differentiate not only our learning, but as educators our teachings.

Kyle Calderwood:

I said, "Hey, we can stick our head in the sands and pretend it doesn't exist or we can just bring it on and learn to use it." I mean, some of the examples that I've seen is let's say a student reads a portion of the World War II history and just doesn't understand it, and then goes to ChatGPT to get a summary, that which then helps them better understand it. Now, it doesn't cite, so you know that. And then you've also got from the teacher aspect, I'm pretty sure at this point of the year, if a student hands something in that is 100% from ChatGPT, you're going to know. So I think there's that, "Okay, let's talk about it." Because that's exactly what I said in the email, I said, "This is a great time to have a frank conversation about plagiarism with your students and talk about that aspect of things, and not just letting it do it for you, but using it as a tool, just like any other program.

Elana Leoni:

It reminds me a little bit too of this is super dating life like when the internet rolled in, right?

Kyle Calderwood:

Yeah.

Elana Leoni:

I'm not that old. I think I was in high school when internet became a little bit more dominant, but the teachers weren't scared of it yet because they didn't know about it too much. But if you embrace it, it's a totally different story. I remember when I started working at Edutopia, George Lucas would always say, "It's all about thinking critically." The internet, you can look up anything. If we teach you how to do that, we're wasting our time. It's all about how do we create critical thinkers around it all and make sense of this information too.

Kyle Calderwood:

Especially with the internet, you could search anything, but it's how you search to get the correct results. So there's that part of it too if you're working with an AI tool, so how are you putting in and what are you getting out? Is it what you need? Is it what you want?

Elana Leoni:

Is it popping out misinformation?

Kyle Calderwood:

Yeah, exactly.

Elana Leoni:

Now that's a big thing, right?

Kyle Calderwood:

Wikipedia, same thing.

Elana Leoni:

All right. I just wanted to be able to pause around ChatGPT because they've been a lot of questions around it, and I know that you've obviously had to face it too. But now this is somebody who's working in a district saying, "Hey, this is a good opportunity to have a conversation about plagiarism," to maybe explore the tool with your students. The more that we add in punitive measures, the more they're going to use it in bad ways.

Kyle Calderwood:

Right. I also just want to give a shout-out to my admins for backing me up and not saying, "No, you need to block that." No, they were totally on board as well and saying that we need to learn this as a tool.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah. Okay. So segue back-

Kyle Calderwood:

Elana Leoni:

... into the world of game-based learning. You talked a little bit about all the different things it could look like. You can have expertise in gaming, you don't necessarily need to. You don't even need technology, really, to have game-based learning. You want to tell a story about what got you hooked on in the world of game-based learning. Have you ever had that aha moment with a kid and you're like, "Oh, I want to do more of this?"

Kyle Calderwood:

I was pretty far into it at this point, but one that sticks out easily in my mind that gave me goosebumps is, so when the Quest... well, now it's called the Meta Quests... came out, my admin at the time thankfully said... I said, "Hey, I want to try this. Can we get one?" She said, "Yeah." So we were at her pre-order one, and we got it released in... My office at the time in that district sat inside the STEAM lab, so I was talking to the STEAM teacher quite a bit, and we would bounce ideas off each other and throw things around. That first summer, it was the, oh geez, 50th anniversary of the moon landing. I was like, "Hey, this is a perfect opportunity. Let's use VR. Let's try this out."

He designed physical stations so they went around. There was one station where they were building a Lego rocket. There was one they were doing traditional worksheets. He had all these different stations. I went next door into the computer lab, and we had an open space, and I was putting the kids into a recreation of the Apollo landing. So they would put the headset on. Long story short, there was... I think she was fifth grade at the time, but she was on the shorter side. When you set up the headset, it adjusts to your height. I wasn't thinking when I set it up. I did it myself and then I handed it to a student. Of course, she was a little shorter, so as you're in the lunar lander and you're landing on the moon and you look to your right and Neil Armstrong's standing right next to you. It's a pretty awesome experience.

So I said, "Oh, look out the window, you can see the moon coming at you." And she goes, "I don't see anything." So I said, "Oh." So I'm trying to work with her and then I realized, "Oh my God, it's stuck on my height." So I adjusted for her. Because it was new, I couldn't figure out how to do it on the fly, and I didn't want to ruin the experience, so I put a box box down, and I had her step on the box so she was up to my height. And as soon as she got to the correct level, she's like, "Oh my God." And just that awe to hear from her, it was a really cool experience just to be able to get that experience. But I think VR is an awesome playground for students to go into.

I've worked with our art teacher where she's gone in and had kids with Google Draw and paint some pretty beautiful murals and scenes. With that, you're stepping back. You're drawing, and then you can step back and walk around your presentation, so it's different than coloring on a canvas or painting on a canvas. You can actually interact with your environment. The VR one, for sure, was one. And then I had mentioned before, we did a six-month project in Minecraft. That one, our school was at the time going through a referendum. We hadn't even broken ground yet, and I said to the one teacher who was 37 years, and I said, "Hey, with your class, do you want to do a project Minecraft of this? Let's take the blueprints of what the school's going to look like and put it into Minecraft and let the kids do it."

She's like, "Oh, that's great." So I got permission from the architects and we got the blueprints. So nobody in the building knew what we were doing. It was just me, the teacher, and our building manager knew. We had the kids take one of the wheels from gym class that measure out. We had them on the sly walking around all of the hallways in the school to measure out exactly what the hallways were, what doorways were. And they were learning concepts too that they weren't used to learning in sixth grade. So they were doing conversions. They were doing a lot of different things that they don't normally cover.

So anyway, in May, we had an all-school meeting, and even my admins didn't even know what we were doing. So we said, "Oh, we want to just show you this project." I put them all together and recorded a video on YouTube, which I can link to, it's still up. We took a walk through the entire building and showed everybody in the school what the new school part of it was going to look like. And so it was exciting. From a community standpoint, we put that video out on our Facebook, so now the taxpayers were able to see what their money was going towards and what it was going to look like. So I think that was pretty impressive too. Actually, the architect, he's like, "That was awesome." He was like, "I've never seen that done before." So-

Elana Leoni:

That's fun.

Kyle Calderwood:

That was a good one.

Elana Leoni:

You mentioned it, so let's go down the tech hole just really quickly. Metaverse XR, VR, MR, what's been your experience so far now that you've seen it multiple angles? You get to travel nationally and talk to lots of people around it, but what are your thoughts on its... I don't know, not viability, but what's the future? Are you really excited about certain types of technology, and do you think that it will be available and accessible in certain formats that can make sense? And can it be aligned with standards, because I haven't seen that, really?

Kyle Calderwood:

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I mean, you could definitely align it with standards. As I mentioned with the Apollo program that we did, we could easily do that.

Elana Leoni:

Kyle Calderwood:

No. Yeah, I don't think there's a... At least not that I'm aware of that there's a whole curriculum based off of it. But yeah, I think it's enormous potential. I think the Quest 1 came out now the Quest II is very popular. You're starting at, I think, 399, so it's not way out of the norm of what people are buying. I think it's basically just a little bit more than a Chromebook at this point, and you get a lot of experience. I think what needs to be changed or made more accessible is the purchasing of and account management. I'm saying that as a tech admin, but it's still very, very heavily consumer based. So I think that aspect, if that ever changes and it gears a little more towards management part of it, I think it would be even more explosive than it is now.

But some of the experiences and the apps that have come out have just been phenomenal. Man, I'm totally blanking on the company's name, but they make... Oh, geez, I can't remember the name, but I'll put it in the show notes, I promise. But they make a full learning environment. Chris has actually come in, his name's Chris Madison, he's actually come in to my class. I have them go into VR, and he will stand "face to face" with his avatar and their avatar. He can actually reach out and almost shake their hand, and the controller actually will vibrate. So it's almost like you're shaking their hand. He has scanned his face so it's really him that you're seeing, which is cool too.

Elana Leoni:

That's so cool.

Kyle Calderwood:

He's done demonstrations where they're in an operating room, and so the medical students can see how things... It's funny, but you just reach in and pull out, "Oh, here's a heart," and then you just hold it. But from a learning perspective, I think it's phenomenal to be in that environment. I know a lot of companies are starting to integrate it with... I think I saw even flight attendants now, they're putting them in VR to train and how to deal with that. The military has done it, although there's been a little problem lately with the HoloLens, but that's a different story. People were getting sick. But there is that.

But from a training perspective, I mean, yeah, I know... I can't remember the product, but again, it was a visor. If you're walking in a warehouse and you are looking at a box, just through the visor it would show the contents, what's in it, where it needs to go, and all that kind of stuff.

Elana Leoni:

If you have any favorite XR type of resources, we can throw them in the show notes too.

Kyle Calderwood:

No, absolutely, yeah.

Elana Leoni:

We'll do that. And then jumping back to game-based learning, if you have any favorite resources, I know you mentioned Minecraft, but any other things that people are like, "It feels foreign," maybe if you could send over... Or do you know of any apps that are more beginner based that people could just jump in versus-

Kyle Calderwood:

Yeah, there's one, and this is just a real quick, so there's a very popular game called Assassins Creed. It's out for Xbox, PlayStation, everything, and on the PC side, they have a... It's like an add-on, it's called Discovery Tour. So each one of those games takes place in different time periods. We're actually going to be using it probably in about two weeks here in the lab. The sixth graders are learning about Ancient Egypt, so this Assassin Creed Origins takes place in Ancient Egypt. So they can go in the game, and all of the story part has been ripped out, all the violence and all that kind of stuff. There's a narrative and there's a tour of Ancient Egypt so you can see what life was like back then. There's all sorts of aspects of Ancient Egypt that the kids can just go in and explore using an Xbox controller or whatever they have. Things like that can really drive home whatever lesson you are getting at there.

Elana Leoni:

Awesome. So we will throw in a bunch of tools on the show notes, and at the end of the episode, I'll give a shout-out to what the actual URL is. But speaking of EdTech, Kyle, I'd love to give you an opportunity just to speak to EdTech that are listening around any advice you have. It could be around if they're trying to make their product a little bit more useful to you, because you get to see so many and you actually get to implement so much EdTech. What are the stuff that you love? What are the things you wish they did? Or if you just have any opinions or things you want to say to them.

Kyle Calderwood:

Yeah, I think in general, make sure you field test, go in the classroom, and try to see how it works, because I think sometimes from a marketing standpoint or from a laboratory perspective that some ideas seem great till you get them in the classroom. And then also as far as a field test, let the students use it because they will find ways around it, all that stuff. So make sure it's really heavily tested. And then also allow teachers to be able to have that opportunity to test it for you. A lot of them will be out there just ready to raise their hand and say, "Hey, I'd love to try something like that."

Elana Leoni:

Great. Well, the last question for wrap up question we have is around inspiration. You have long days in education. You have great days of, "This is why I teach," days. But I'm sure you also have challenging days that you're like, "Can I just forget about this day?" That you feel completely depleted, right? How do you begin to recharge? What's your go-to way to recharge your batteries so you're ready for the next day?

Kyle Calderwood:

Well, one, going home and being with my family, just washing away the day and trying to forget about maybe that bad day when it happened, and just stress-relieving with my family. But also, I think professional learning committees... excuse me, communities are huge. With my MIE program, we meet every once in a while face to face. Being able to not only reconnect with people who have become friends with, but again, just being able to talk and hearing the new ideas, that's when it sparks in your mind. You're like, "Oh." I know when I go, I'm instantly thinking of, "This teacher could do this. This teacher could do that. I know this student could try to just do that." So don't discount those face-to-face connections and then getting together again and learning from each other.

Elana Leoni:

Great. Kyle, if people are like, "Wow, that guy was super inspiring, I want to talk to him more. He's talking about collaboration," how do people get in touch with you? How would you like people to follow along and collaborate with you?

Kyle Calderwood:

I think Twitter's the easiest one. It's K-C-A-L-D-E-R-W, so it's just part of my name. And we'll throw that in the show notes too.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah. And that one for me, it's funny because I just thought you were the full name Kyle Calderw. I was like, "Oh, he stops at W," so we'll call-

Kyle Calderwood:

There's another one.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah. All right. So we'll put that all in the show notes. I want to thank you, Kyle, for your time. You're busy, you've gone through a pandemic, you've helped educators not only in your district but nationally. And also, I love the work you do and your faculty type of adjunct type when you're working with people and getting them excited about technology in ways that you have those cool stories to share, and you're like, "Hey, he is the CEO now." This is so fun. So I thank you for your time. Everyone, if you're wondering where those show notes are that we've been mentioning, they're at leoniconsultinggroup.com. That's L-E-O-N-I, that's my last name, leoniconsultinggroup, two Gs.com/43. So you are lucky number 43, Kyle.

Beyond that, I just hope that if you are interested in game-based learning, this is a really good time for you to think about your professional development journey. What do you want to get out of it? Do you want to include game-based learning? Are you interested in AI, ChatGPT, the metaverse? Be open, and then think about, "Hey, did this episode tweak a little bit of my mind shift on this? Or now do I feel like I have a little bit more of a foundation of what this is about so maybe I'm not so scared?" That's what we hope to do in these podcasts. So I thank you for sharing your wisdom, Kyle, and we will see you all next time on All Things Marketing and Education. Take care, everyone.

Thanks so much for listening to this week's episode. If you liked what you heard and want to dive deeper, you can visit leoniconsultinggroup.com/podcast for all show notes, links, and freebies mentioned in each episode. We always love friends, so please connect with us on Twitter, @LeoniGroup.

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