Tech Talk: Stacy Royster from Opelika City Schools

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00:03

I’m Amy Bennett with Lightspeed Systems, and stuck at home a long time today I’m gonna reach out and talk to some of our customers. Good morning, Joe, how are you today?

00:15

I am good.

0:17

Can you introduce yourselves for everybody?

0:20

I am Joe Kuzo, the Director of Technology at Quakertown School District – a small school district of about 5500 kids, about an hour north of Philadelphia.

00:29

You guys have been in remote learning mode for several weeks now, how’s that going?

00:34

Oh it’s going pretty well. We are already in a pretty good place for it. We had a one-to-one in six through

twelve, and surprisingly on a Friday that

00:44

we know we were gonna shut down our

00:46

elementary teachers and principals

00:49

distributed 2,800 Chromebooks in about

00:51

two hours to all our elementary students

00:54

so I know you’ve got relay filtering on

00:57

all of those devices how’s that goin

00:59

correct good I mean a lot easier than

01:02

on-prem right now but I will say one

01:04

thing I’ve seen a slight uptick in would

01:06

be the safety check notices so I think

01:10

with kids being home more often now and

01:12

dealing with some of that that

01:15

distancing has some effect on so that’s

01:17

nice to be able to alert the necessary

01:19

people to that so you think about how

01:22

hard this is for all of us for kids who

01:26

are isolated and lonely I’m not hanging

01:29

out with their friends I think their

01:30

mental well-being is a pretty big

01:32

concern I’m glad we were able to help

01:35

out those alerts I know that you and

01:37

your team are always busy over the

01:39

summer doing your summer project

01:40

preparing for the next year have those

01:42

priorities shifted do you have a new

01:44

summer plan I’m not sure if they’ve

01:47

shifted I mean it’s been a topic I mean

01:49

budgets obviously a concern right now

01:50

we’re all seeing a multi-million dollar

01:54

shortfall this year so everything you

01:56

know what can we cut one of the

01:59

fortunate things I guess for me is in

02:00

this time it really shows how much you

02:02

rely on technology I’d say if anything a

02:04

lot it’s a lot of things related to

02:05

technology have kind of come up front

02:07

and center is you know we can’t we can’t

02:10

be unprepared you know especially come

02:11

to fall if we’re still in this

02:13

environment or it rebounds

02:15

and it gets worse who knows I don’t

02:17

believe fall is gonna be a regular start

02:19

to the school year any words of advice

02:23

for schools out there who maybe didn’t

02:25

transition as smoothly as you go I think

02:28

that a summer I think a lot of districts

02:30

need to look at investing in and what it

02:32

is to to teach in this environment so I

02:34

don’t think this will be the first

02:35

obviously the first but I don’t think

02:37

it’s gonna be the last yeah well I think

02:40

even though you say it you don’t like to

02:42

give advice you had some good advice in

02:43

there which is invest in technology plan

02:46

for the future make sure you’ve got the

02:49

devices and thus offering stones to

02:52

scale for this yeah I think the you know

02:54

see in a lot of districts right now you

02:56

know whether they didn’t have the money

02:57

or they just didn’t think technology was

03:00

the route they wanted to go and now you

03:01

see everybody you know struggle right

03:03

now to quickly acquire technology get up

03:05

and running and then to have the

03:07

expectation of teachers to understand

03:08

how to utilize it with no training is

03:10

also I think unfair for everybody

03:12

involved so so Joe had not looked at the

03:17

online activity dashboard but I just got

03:20

him to take a look we released it I

03:22

think it was just last week so it’s no

03:24

surprise you didn’t see it yet we our

03:26

developers quickly jumped into action

03:28

after talking to you a lot of school

03:30

districts and what they needed was that

03:32

sort of visibility and who is engaged

03:36

and who’s not that you were talking

03:37

about Joe so now you’ve taken a look

03:39

what do you think I I think it’s a

03:41

really nice kind of fingertip report and

03:43

in Granite I have not dug into it but I

03:46

think one conversation we’ve had at you

03:48

know a cabinet level when we’re looking

03:50

at engagement as you know what our

03:52

students engaged are they online you

03:55

know what are they doing so I think got

03:56

a quick glance at least you can see

03:57

Steven nice that it’s broken down by day

03:59

and time so you know in the future maybe

04:02

target particular hours of the day that

04:05

seem to be more active with student

04:08

student use so well and just like all of

04:11

your other relay reports you can drill

04:13

down and look at the same thing by your

04:15

schools or classes or however you have

04:18

your structure set up so take a look at

04:21

that and you know you need to pay close

04:24

attention to all those emails I send I

04:26

do apparently I’m not new

04:28

well thanks for sharing your story

04:30

collecting these to help some of those

04:32

schools that may be warmest preparer

04:35

looking for some advice and guidance

04:37

were think all in a totally new

04:40

situation and learning from each other

04:42

yeah I agree

04:44

I appreciate it thank you John okay fine

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Tech Talk: Stacy Royster from Opelika City Schools

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