Unknown: Hey everybody, welcome
to the latest edition of Volley. I'm Carolyn April and as always
looking for my good friend, Seth Robinson. Hey, how you doing?
Winter finally decided to show up here in New England, we've
had weeks of on and off snow. Very pretty outside, but after a
really dry December in terms of snow, it's it's behaving
normally now. But beyond that, not a lot going on kind of a
post holiday ended January lull, I guess. I mean, we, we want to make
things exciting for you. Gett
ing getting ready for this
recording, we jumped through about 18 hoops trying to get
this recording going. So hopefully that added some
excitement. I love technical difficulties and
sitting and watching other people try to figure them out.
Lots of fun. Yeah, well, speaking of people
that could help out with technical difficulties, we
wanted to talk today about how students, students, you know, in
high school for the purposes of our discussion today might be
thinking about careers in technology.
This is a topic that
we've looked at, through a few different angles on the research
team. And we wanted to come back to it. It's been a while since
we had the discussion. We also wanted to bring in someone that
is actively participating in this and working with these
students. So we're really pleased today to welcome Brad
Chamberlain. Brad is teacher of computer networks and lots of
things technology at Maricopa High School in Maricopa,
Arizona. And Brad has also helped students kick off a
stud
ent led business called 24PinTech. Brad, did I get all
that right? Is there anything else that you do in your job
there? No, you you pretty much hit the
nail on the head. Those are the things that we do here. I've
been teaching this class for about 12 years now in Maricopa. Yeah, we're really glad to have
you. I know that you work with some CompTIA products in your
classwork and with your students there. So we're really pleased
to have you as part of the community here. And we're really
looking
forward to the discussion. So I guess to kick
things off just at a really high level. One of the angles that
we've used on the research team before has been what are
students perceptions of technology? How do they view it?
How do they think about it? Obviously, almost all these
students are using technology on a on a daily on an hourly basis.
But does that translate into thinking about technology as a
career? So from your viewpoint, how do you see that spectrum
playing out among your students? W
ell, that that personal
interest in technology, that's the hook, that's what I find to
get them in the classroom. You know, I've been involved in this
for a long time. I've been a tech director for three
different school districts. I've been involved with tech here in
Arizona since the late 1990s, the first e rates and those
kinds of things. I've been doing it for quite some time. Um, you
know, I used to be a gamer. And that's what got me into tech
originally. And that's the big hook for most of
these kids
nowadays, because just about all of you game, they use tech one
way or another. So we have a lot of that actually in the
classroom of gaming PCs that kids have built, you know, I've
tried to get kids in the room in the lab to see it. Once we get
him in here, we get the hooks in now we start talking about tech
and how what they already know can translate very easily into a
career and try to show him a career opportunities that they
do have in technology today. I'm interested in whethe
r or not
the classes that you teach our electives, or if they've now
been baked into requirements that students have to at least
take one course in technology, IT job career technical
education, which is an elective school, kids can start taking it
their freshman year, but I'm working closely with the
district and trying to get a six or 12 cybersecurity track going.
Cybersecurity is obviously the big new thing attack. I mean,
it's been around a long time. But there are the jobs are
really openin
g up in that area right now as it becomes
prevalent in new regions. Everything else. So I'm working
with it trying to become a permanent class, but it is
getting a doubt adopted more. At the junior high level back.
They're putting in a computer maintenance program at my feeder
school that comes in which is just going to help me as we go.
So right now, it's still an elective mid level. Yeah, the reason I asked that is
we hear that all the time is that like the public school
system hasn't really c
aught up with the technology as a career
and making it baked into part of the curriculum as you would any
other of your primary subjects. When you think about how kids to
setpoint, you know, deal with technology, how they handle
technology, how they view it, how do you sort of like as a
school navigate, making kids be digitally fluent and making sure
that they're able to sort of like navigate the world in terms
of the kind of technology that we all have to have at least a
cursory now Elijah, and
then figuring out those kids that
really might have an affinity for a deep dive in technology
and and and potential for a career there because we know,
one, they're not one in the same. I could say I'm somewhat
digitally fluent. But I would hardly say that I'm built for a
technology career right now, with the skill set that I have
you ever How do you go about sort of discerning between the
types of students that are there? And how does the school
then handle those different types of students? G
en. z versus
specialty specialty? Yeah, no, definitely. Um, a lot
of us started with COVID. I mean, that's when kids started
to become a really good, you know, because so many kids were
forced to go online and use the many tools we have taken for
granted, online meeting online meeting spaces, those kinds of
things. So once we went with COVID, you know, a lot of those
kids started do understand those digital literacy skills and
learning more. I think that those are incredibly important.
If you lo
ok at the students in my class, now I have both types.
I have the kids that are just here, you know, they want to get
that basic knowledge and tech, but maybe not go the career
route with it. And then I got the kids who take the deep dive.
A lot of that happened, actually, during COVID. Because
I had kids coming to school, I had a small core group, so I had
them like doing very large projects. And we were doing
things like building an essay, yeah. All kinds of building a
web server, building our
own Active Directory domain where,
you know, I had kids diving into all these different aspects and
different projects. But I also still have the kids that, you
know, maybe they just want to come here and repair phones, it
requires a lot of work, I'm looking for not diversity, but a
lot of diversification in the way I deliver my education.
That's the business comes in 2014 Tech Model. Kids can each
have different jobs in technology, I have some system
administrators, I have some technicians, I
have kids that
are doing the marketing media aspect of what we do. So it's,
it's, it's quite a different kind of class, the way that I
teach it, but I do try to reach all of them. I'm really trying
to get the digital literature and cybersecurity baked in to
that 612, I want the sixth and seventh graders to really be
getting those classes. And that's what I'm hoping to get
that going district wide in the next couple of years here. And just to stay with this
thread for a minute, Brad, you know, I
think one of our big
messaging points for a while now has been that technology has
blossomed into so many different types of careers. And there are
a lot of different specializations out there. And
so along with whatever kind of digital literacy, you might need
for a business rule that's not tech specific, you can go into
technology, and it doesn't have to look like you're in the back
room pull on cables all the time, right, you know, that job
is still there. But there are a lot of different job
s that now
appeal to a lot of different personality types and skill
sets. So with all the work that you're doing both on the focus
work on the general cybersecurity stuff that you're
trying to build in, is part of your messaging, also that
students can consider the strengths that they do have, and
that those strengths could possibly be applied to a career
in technology. Oh, absolutely. I think that's,
that's one of the primary focuses of my class, everyone's
different, everyone has a different s
kill set, different
personality types. No matter what you learn in tech, you're
going to be able to apply it somewhere in your job down the
road. We do soft skills all the time. So I teach kids, you know,
how to send an email, how to use a work order system, how to
communicate with customers, and all those are part of the
curriculum that I use. And I emphasize, hey, maybe you won't
go in this field. But if you're applying for a job, and Joe
Schmo is applying for the same job as you are, and you
have
this tech background, and they don't, the chances are you're
going to get a stronger look than anyone else. Because, you
know, those skills are needed here. And, you know, that's
something we do in the class, we have competitions, we compete in
most SkillsUSA CyberPatriot other competitions, where you
know, communication is required dealing with public is required.
So, we try to bake all of that into the curriculum, because you
can you guys know, being in tech, there's no way, I'm an
expert
in everything. There's no way I can teach everything. Even
like, I have a kid that's a coder, I don't do a lot of
coding. But I try to open that opportunity up for them here.
And I'll even tell them that, hey, if you get your A plus
cert, or your net plus cert CompTIA, you know, when you
decide to go to coding route, well, seeing that you got that
CERT is what's gonna get you in the door, and then a lot of
these businesses will train you once they get you hired. So
there's lots of ways we can g
o about it. And that's just what's
worked for me. I'm curious whether that has
brought you more girls more females into the fold. Having
that sort of like, broad approach to technology doesn't
mean it's set said pulling cables alone in a backroom all
the time. And there's so many other career paths that you can
take, or just having this skill set will help you with a
different type of career path necessarily, but it's a good
background. For me. Unfortunately, I haven't
gotten a lot of girls and
I'm hopeful in the next couple of
years, that's going to change a little bit more, I've kind of
seen that as I'm talking to the younger kids like middle
schoolers who are about to come to high school, I've seen some
more girls with that light in their eyes, as I'm talking to
the group going back and forth, I always look to see my
connecting with this kid on some level. And I'm starting to AIPAC
yesterday, I just had a group that I talked to, and I saw four
or five girls in there that you know, h
ad that into. So
hopefully, I get those numbers up. That's good. That's good to see. So you
know, what about when you finally have identified those,
those kids who have the light in the eye, as you said, and so you
want to pair that beyond basic, you know, introduction,
technology and do a do a more advanced, more sophisticated
look at me potentially having a career down the road? What are
some of the practical steps that you advise them to do? You know,
you know, we know what the practical step
s that the
guidance counselor's office typically tells the kid in high
school, you know, look through your colleges, looking for your
colleges, etc. The types of things that you're looking for
big school, small school, you know, what about a kid that has
some genuine promise with a tech career? What are some of the
things that you recommend for their path? Again, all my recommend getting
their certification, get your certification, if you're gonna
go in this industry, it's probably more importan
t than a
four year degree. It really is. businesses, community colleges
and local businesses, I have a very good Advisory Board, people
from Microsoft on their intel are all telling me that look,
it's certifications right now is what we're really looking for.
So I tell him to get that first. No. And then again, depending on
the student, I have a lot of students and universities work
with you at here and there in Phoenix and University of magic
technology. I've had several students go there. And
that's
kind of a very different path from your traditional
university. I recommend Mesa Community College, Glendale
Community College and both have a really good Cisco program and
a really good cyber program. I recommend students to go there.
And then I have some students going right into industry, I
have a student who is 19 years old, he graduated, he was 17, he
got a job here with the local the auction Indian community,
which is right down the road, they're very helpful to our
district all the
time. And within a year, he is actually
the lead network administrator for the for their network within
one year of graduation. So maybe, you know, there are so
many paths that kids take, and we all work with students. In
fact, I come from the reporting counselor, if they're doing
this, because I work with them and trying to get them on that
path as best I can. And that's great. I, you know,
to hear you talk about the diversity of options that are
out there, you know, I think it does depend on
exactly what the
student wants to go into, and the types of opportunities that
are there. But I think it's great that like even with that
dependency, there are so many different opportunities and
pathways that they can choose, as long as they're going to do
it with their eyes wide open, and they're figuring out what's
going to work best for them. It's it's so much more open than
I think it was, you know, 10, or certainly 20 years ago, as we're
wrapping up here, I'm kind of wondering, you know, f
or all of
these students that are trying to get into a technology career,
and they're maybe looking at a broad spectrum of tech careers,
like maybe some of them are saying, Yeah, I want to get
started right away, I want to get into IT support. Maybe some
of them say I want to be a data scientist. And so that'll take,
you know, more years of training to try to get up to that level.
But for any of those students that would be kind of starting
their journey. what are maybe some of the, you know, to
p two
or three basic skills and skill sets that that you would
encourage them to look into and really get grounded in? Well, for me, it goes back to
kind of my expertise. I always, you know, learn the computer,
learning the system, learn operating systems, learn mobile
tech. mobile tech is huge right now. Network Security and
cybersecurity and digital literacy. And those are all the
things that you know, I really important, I do not have that
coding background. But I strongly encourage kids if
t
hey're going to do that, you know, I'll get them accounts for
Code Academy. In fact, I got one young lady in the class right
now she's she we did a kanji integration here, which is
kanji. This actually supports all our Apotek our Apple
technology that we have here in the district, we actually
support it district doesn't. So she set that all up for us this
year as a student actually administers it. She needed to do
some scripting with it. So she started to explore on our own to
Hey, Chamberlain,
I need this in order for me to learn how to get
bash scripting, because that's not again my area of expertise,
so I will make sure that they have access whatever it is they
need in order to get stuck. That's great. Tell us a little
bit more as we wrap up about pintech
24. Because one of the big things that come to you,
obviously, our membership, most of them are solution providers
and the old end resellers and people in the MSP community, and
this is what they do. And it sounds like you've creat
ed
something there in the school using students to do that kind
of a business. Do you talk to them at all about the
possibilities of working in the IT channel as a potential career path? Oh, absolutely. I say that
for a lot of them are going to start with no matter what you
do, you may you're gonna start at a help desk, you're gonna
start doing support somewhere. So you need, you need to
understand how to give good technical support and how to
retain customers. So what 24 pin tech does, we're ki
nd of two
prong. We do all the CTE network here at the high school, which
means we're fully responsible, we image all the machines, we
put them on the network. So on and so forth, we have our own
domain here that we have to manage. Windows machines
includes Mac machines. So we have to take care of all of that
here. And again, I may learn all those soft skills as a part of
2014. Tech, the earth thing 2014 tech does is we work on the
second part is we work on customer devices, teachers,
students,
anyone who wants to bring a device in, we actually
have our own work order system that's on our website, people
can go there, enter a ticket, students will get that ticket,
whether it's a phone repair, whether it's computer repair,
gaming, Council, controllers, printers, we get all kinds of
stuff. So we'll get that in here, we bring it in to the shop
or repair it, we do it for free, except they have to order the
parts and then we'll go out to go out and research and tell
them, hey, you need to g
o here and get these parts and
components don't get it from here because we've gotten it
from them before the terrible. So that's all part of what 2014
tech does. We've been doing that for about eight or nine years
now we're on website 24 pin dot tech that anyone who's listening
can go visit if they want, we have our own wiki located there
for our work order system is located and actually our work
order system, our graphic design uses it and EBIT uses it in
Phoenix, that's another school distric
t because they saw what
we were doing with it. And I'm like, sure we'll host one for
you for them as well. And the kids manage all experience.
Yeah, very good experience. I mean,
that's amazing stuff. It definitely gives them insight
into what they're possibly going to get into. So I really loved
hearing about that and loved all the information that you're
sharing here, Brad, you're definitely one of the good ones.
We're glad that we had you on the show here. This This was
great. So thank you ve
ry much keep up the good work and maybe
we'll talk to you again down the road. for having me today was enjoy
beyond I'm always willing to talk about the program and the
kids. The kids is why I do it. You see these guys take over and
you know, become leaders and run this whole thing. You know, I
can be gone for a month. And I know this would still run
because I know these guys will take care of me. So it's a joy
for me. So thank you. I really appreciate it. Thank you.
Awesome. Well, thanks again
and thanks as
always to our producer Andrew Mellon that helped us through
all of the technical issues that we mentioned at the top. And
Carolyn, I'll see you next time. Sounds great.
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