Technology in Education

Guest Jason Bruso, IB Digital Design 7 & 8th grade teacher at Madison Meadows , discusses the importance of technology education and how tech education can prepare students for future careers.  Jason has taught for the Madison School District for eight years and grew up in Phoenix.  He was a tinkerer, artist and problem solver for as long as he can remember. Growing up with the rise of personal computers, the internet, and smart phones gave him a unique perspective on technology use, especially for young people. He followed his path as a teacher from writing to science to Technology and Engineering.

Transcript

Nicole Rodriguez: Welcome to Parenting Future-Focused Kids. Today we are going to talk about the importance of technology education and how tech education can prepare students for future careers. Calling into our podcast today as Jason Bruso, International Baccalaureate Digital Design, seventh and eighth grade teacher at Madison Meadows. Jason has taught for the Madison School District for eight years and grew up in Phoenix. He was a tinkerer, artist and problem solver for as long as he can remember. Growing up with the rise of personal computers, the internet and smartphones gave him a unique perspective on technology use, especially for young people. He followed his path as a teacher, from writing to science to technology and engineering. He has two elementary aged children who give him first-hand practice in navigating technology use in a family and at school. So Jason, welcome to our podcast. Thank you so much for being here today. Let's just jump right into our first question, and that's why do we need technology education? You know, some people say that students, you know, they might be getting "technology education" - I'm using air quotes - when they're using their personal devices at home. So why do we need that in the classroom?

Jason Bruso: Yeah, I'm really happy of the emphasis on technology education. And when I was a kid, it was mostly just typing and kind of like school skills. And now we're teaching kind of everything that you do as a commercial artist, what you would do in business. So technology education is kind of like a vehicle for work skills, but not just office, but like creative and expressive skills, those soft skills that we talk about for the 21st century careers. So those those students get plenty of screen time. Definitely not all equal. Just like any of us, you know, when you draw, sure, you're you're practicing pencil and paper. But if you have a specific subject, you're drawing or you're trying to improve your technique, that's when you improve on it. Same thing with technology education. I mean, we're trying to give people practice at using these technology skills to create something, solve a problem and work with others. So again, technology education is just like a vehicle to be able to get technically good with these things, but also see how they're useful in your everyday life.

NR: Right. Absolutely. So what technology skills are students learning in your class, specifically.

JB: The skills they're learning anywhere from analyzing a design brief. So if a customer were to come to a company and say, I need this product made from you, students are given that design brief and they're able to analyze it and say, Well, what are they asking for instead of just taking it and here's the assignment do this, make me a poster. They're taking it like a real, like a real professional person. Other skills are doing they're working on peer feedback ways in which they can not just finish it and show it to a teacher, but finish it - think they've finished it - and show to a peer and actually get authentic feedback as far as other technology skills, I mean, thinking about programs, we have all of the Google Suite that we all use and everything. Also, a lot of our multimedia programs. One of my favorites in my class using a 3D modeling. So cad modeling. Well, I mean, there's just so many jobs available and also just for your own thinking and abilities to do 3D modeling. There's a great program called Tinker CAD, another one called AutoCAD, just a ton of them that are real good for 3D visualization and where a kid can make a specific object based on specific specifications. So it's just really like the technical skill and the pride they have in making this finished, awesome looking product.

NR: Right. And I love how you mentioned that there's feedback involved, and it's really everything you just talked about prepares our students for future careers. What would you say are the careers, the career fields that your students are most interested in as they're they're learning in your class?

JB: Yeah, it's really fun when when we can present these challenges and say, OK, you're pretending to be an architect, you're pretending to be a commercial designer. I still, whenever I ask the question, you know, what do you want to be when you grow up? It's still a lot of those, sort of. I don't want to say dream jobs, but definitely like the high paying kind of famous jobs. But when you phrase it as you're you're a person who works at this type of company, I really get a lot of kids saying, Wow, I can imagine myself as a sound designer. I can imagine myself as an animator, an editor, an engineer, a 3D modeler. I've done some, some units where they're actually pursuing a career and in that it's interesting to see how engineering really can be in so many different fields. So I think when they, when they walk out, speaking of themselves as an engineer, a mechanical engineer, a 3D designer, there is a sense like, Wow, that's a real job I could really do. Any kid who's had any experience with robotics or Legos really feels like, Wow, I could be a computer programmer right now.

NR: As you're saying this, I'm thinking about how many more opportunities I guess, you know, these things didn't exist when when I was in school. So how have you seen technology education change since you were in school? And what are those new things that you're focusing on?

JB: Yeah, I think back to my middle school days, I went to Osborn Middle School and they had a really good kind of computer technology design technology program. And that's where I got a lot of my. I was able to practice a lot of these skills. But even then, it was just, you know, VHS. It was like physical, physical information, and you build a lot of stuff with your hands and it's all paper. And so now, since things are cloud based, things are remote. I guess I would say the big difference from from then to now, what I've seen these last, I guess, ten years in education, doing technology is just it's it's a lot more just like it's taken for granted in a way that computers are a natural part of your day. It's not just OK, go to computer class and do computer assignments, it's it's a regular part of your day. And one of the other big differences is, I guess, the the way in which they express their finished products. It's no longer just OK. Finish it, finish it, print it and hand in your your documents. Especially what I'm doing at Meadow's. There's a lot of, I guess you call it, authentic demonstration or authentic assessment where they they do something for a reason and then they deliver it to an audience for a reason. Just today, we were making an advertisement for the Fall Festival at our school. And so that actual assignment can be used to actually advertise to the parents and hopefully get some more people to come. So I guess it's just it's more authentic. Go ahead.

NR: No, I just can't tell you how excited that makes me as a communications person that that type of education and, you know, types of marketing and things like that are offered at the middle school level. That's just so cool to me. What is your opinion of the increased amount of screen time for students, especially since the pandemic? You know, a lot of families have concerns about that.

JB: Yeah, I don't know if my opinion is the same as other technology teachers or other parents. I guess I consider myself old fashioned. You know, I have I have a backyard with goats and chickens and gardens, and I I would be happy to stare at a tree in the wind for minutes on end. I know other folks may not enjoy that. So I believe in a very balanced approach to screen time. Really, you might say unbalanced because I really want screen time to be a much smaller portion than, say, Green Time and being outside, being with real people, doing things that are real. So, yeah, with the pandemic, it's it was tough. When I was an online teacher, I gave lots of breaks as a parent, same thing. I know it's tough to balance assignments and workload with giving yourself natural breaks. I believe that's something we just need to teach. We need to model ourselves as parents and adults and as teachers model, giving ourselves a specific break, like an intentional break, like I'm putting my phone down. I'm going to put it over here. I'm not going to touch it for an hour. I could watch YouTube for 15 minutes or I could go and do stretches or do yoga or something. So I think it comes from expressing the balance that we all need in our lives. And then just also plan that into our teaching, having time to instead of just go, go, go, get it done, having time planned out in the day to let's stop, let's stand up and talk to each other as real people. Let's go outside and feel the wind on our skin. So I just think it needs to be really more thought of in our day and just kind of not let it be automatic that screens are taking care of our kids.

NR: Right. So if I, you know, if if you have a child at home who is really interested in, maybe a career in technology or, you know, loves to kind of learn in that way. What can parents do at home to support their children with that, while also keeping in mind the balance that you just talked about?

JB: If if a parent saw a real interest in their kid and they had the time to pursue this interest with them, I would strongly recommend some kind of like a quest or like an adventure or a project that they can do together that could involve research online, watching YouTube videos, as well as actually like pursuing it physically. Let's say that they're interested in, you know, hydrodynamics or like rivers. There's videos they can watch. The video can also create a river in their own backyard or in their sink. So I think it's almost like using technology as only one part of the tool and then also going and engaging it together. There's certainly lots and lots of resources online. I mean, there's Khan Academy. You can just search for anything and they have grade level appropriate resources. So but that's just one, just just one tool. So I think the most important part as a parent is staying with your kid through that interest, learning things together. If they're talking about robotics, like we'll do the robotics together. If they're going to be on the screen, you see what you can do together so that you kind of make the most of that time you're still interacting, even though they're on a screen.

NR: Mm-Hmm. Yeah, I think that's a great idea because I think oftentimes we think of technology as an all or nothing, and it's tying back into that balance of, you know, using technology. But having that be a portion of the project or whatever it is that you're that you're researching or, you know, applying in real life. So that's that's a great idea.

JB: Exactly, yes.

NR: So in class, you know, if a student is at Madison Meadows and in your class, do students in fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grade receive like grade level specific technology education? Or are there different classes that they can take for different skill levels?

JB: There are. We tried to make our schedule as flexible and provide lots of different opportunities for kids to get the the skills at each grade level. I think it also part depends on the teacher schedule and things like that, so it's not going to be perfect. I think we're all our our school is kind of in a growing couple of years. We have new, fairly new principal, lots of new staff. And so I think we're going to get it to the point where certain skills like the Google Suites is all learned in fifth grade, like really, really hard so that they're prepared for sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade, seventh and eighth being a lot more in-depth and a lot more self-guided. So we're not there yet, but what we do have is grade level specific, I guess intensity for the things they kind of spiral around. You know, they learn Google Slides early on, you know, in fifth grade and then we use it for different applications in each grade level. So as far as specific technology in my classes, I just find that I have I have these many resources and I try to find as many ways to use those resources for each grade level that I do teach. So then when I have them for fifth grade, they don't do the exact same project in seventh or eighth grade, but they do, you know what they learn and they can keep growing from it.

NR: Right. So if you had to walk us through, if someone was, you know, if a child was really interested in technology education and they took all of the technology education classes they could from fifth through eighth grade, what skill sets would a student in the eighth grade leaving, you know, going on to high school? What what skill sets would you like them to to obtain as they move on?

JB: That's a great question. I'll try to narrow it down. Definitely, I would call these business skills. I would call these the things of how to write an effective email, how to communicate digitally with various resources sharing documents, collaborating as a team, using a calendar, sort of a business, business or successful school skills. So that's one. I would also work on since a lot of our projects are visual, we would work on effective elements of design and composing an effective advertisement or a poster using the audio visual multi-media programs. That's a set of skills. I really believe a lot in CAD design because again, it can apply. It can apply to so many different engineering careers as well as design careers, so lots of CAD, AutoCAD, TinkerCAD, the things that will get them thinking in 3-D and being able to manipulate in 3-D and create prototypes. Also in that, definitely, I think presentation is part of your business skills. Oh gosh, there was one more. Oh! Last one is, is coding or robotics. Just learning coding almost like a language. I mean, there's I talked to some a couple of years ago at a technology conference, some actual like CEOs of a coding company or a software design company. And I said, what are the most important skills that my students will need coming into leaving college or entering your company? And they said, Well, they just need some coding experience. It doesn't matter what language, Java, Python, even Blockly, which they use in Hour of Code. They just need some experience and then they need to be able to be a good worker. That said, if you can do those two things, you can get a job at just about any coding or software company because they'll they'll train you in the language they need you to learn. But as long as you have some experience, then then you're set.

NR: Yeah. And I think it's great that our students are learning those, you know, business skills, as you mentioned before, you know how to communicate via email digitally. Those are things that I feel like are often sometimes overlooked when we think about the big picture of like, here's here are the things you need to learn in school and those life skills and how to, you know, communicate in the world is huge. And then the fact that our students are walking away with coding knowledge and knowing a language at the middle school level means that they're only going to gain more knowledge from there and be that much more equipped to to land those jobs. So I think that's awesome.

JB: Yeah. Regarding technology and the design cycle, something unique at Meadows, since it's an IB school, the class I teach is called digital design. And so we use the design cycle, which there is in engineering and in art and kind of any production type field. There's a cycle kind of like the scientific method know you remember back in school scientific method, observe, make a hypothesis. Do research like the steps. That gives you a. Yeah. So so in in the design class I teach, we use the steps of the design cycle. So you ask a question trying to figure out what is the problem? Is there a problem with this product I need to improve? Or in our case, there's an advertisment we need to make. OK, so then the next step is developing ideas. After that, you select an idea and start building your project. You evaluate how close you came and then you might repeat the cycle a couple of times to get a really good quality product. I think that really works well again with technology education because you have the tools for really quick prototyping, you know, rapid prototyping with again, with the the CAD programs, you can invent something, make a working model of it and then kind of test it, you know, maybe even 3D print it and then test it out and see, is this really what I wanted, without having to wait till the finished product to figure it out, you figure it out halfway or a quarter of the way through the process. And so I just think that if people had more of that design thinking, we'd just be able to solve a lot of problems. I mean, you can kind of use it like a tool to solve just about anything. And then when kids see they can do that, it really empowers them and then it kind of fuels them for what's the next problem? What's the next time I can use this on that. That's one of the most exciting things.

NR: Yeah, no. I can tell you that we use that design cycle in our communications department just by looking at, you know what, what types of, you know, you know, designs do we want our communities to see and how can we connect better through our communication through our design? So that's that's really great that they're getting that experience, you know, like I said before, so young in a middle school setting.

JB: That's great to know how quickly, how easily it applies to real world applications, not just an education!

NR: Right! Absolutely. It's definitely something that we use here every day.

JB: Wonderful!

NR: So thank you so much for being here today, Jason. It was a pleasure getting to talk to you about technology, education and how much everything has advanced since we've been in school and we hope to have you back on again soon.

JB: I appreciate the time. I hope you guys have a great day.

NR: Thank you. Thank you for listening to Parenting Future-Focused Kids. To listen to our latest episodes, visit our website at MadisonAZ.org/podcast or search Madison School District on Spotify.