034: Tech in Education 101

First of all, welcome back. You know, I think it's an honor to say that you are the first repeat guest that we've had here at Creative Genius. So welcome back. Yes, I am very welcome to be welcome back.

It's last time talking with Adam and creating a movie list for you, which I would love to get a little update soon and for our listeners. How to blast and excited to be back. Yeah, man. It's good to have you.

And it's nice to, you know, I mean, I got to listen to the movie episode, of course, I was out of town, but I got to listen to it. And it's nice to do an episode with you now. So I'm excited, man. So I guess I think this is really funny because like timely wise, we were recording this about a week after April Fools, but it's kind of an annual tradition for April Fools jokes to be played by all sorts of tech companies.

And this year was like no, no, that down at all. So I just threw a couple links in the show notes here to a couple that I saw, but was there any that like caught your eye? I know the big one for me was I use YNAB now that Adam pushed me that direction and YNAB did this like whole like podcast that was an entire April Fools joke about like them getting acquired by Intuit and that like in the like, you know, this was their kind of like their dream and the company would change, of course, a little bit. But like, you know, it was like, it was just really funny to do like an entire like six or seven minute podcast with all the production value and everything that goes into that.

And then also should be like, yeah, April Fools, but have a good April Fools. Yeah, the April Fools jokes are too good, especially with like the fact that these companies know like being we live in such a technically driven world and product centric world that they can do these things. And I'm not going to lie, there were a few that like I still knowing it's April Fools was like, wait, no way, this is actually happening. And there were probably two that were my favorite one that I think you had mentioned here as well was the T-Mobile bringing back the sidekick.

And there's a video that goes along with it. And I hope we can attach it to the show notes so everyone can watch it. But it is probably one of the best well produced April Fools videos I've seen. And essentially way back in the day T-Mobile was known for their mobile phone, which was the sidekick and had like a flip out screen and keyboard and everything.

And what was funny is essentially this was a shoe that very jokingly had all this technology in it. What I thought was funny is there was like a lithium battery like underneath the sole of your foot, which is essentially the most dangerous thing ever, as well as you could like tap your shoes to someone else's. And what was the service that you that used to like tap phones together? Wasn't that literally just called like bump?

Was it bump? Yeah, I think that's what it was. Yeah. So something like that.

And it's John Legare, or Ledger, and he's like, they did another one where it was like him on an infocomercial selling all these shoes. And anyways, it was really funny. But one that I didn't that we don't have here, which I'll add is, have you heard of slick wraps? Oh, yeah.

They're coming to you. That's all those like phone wraps, right? Yeah, exactly. So there's a guy that I work with and he gets slick wraps all the time.

And I was sitting next to him and he got this email and he's like, oh man, look at this. This is like insane. And what he didn't know was that it was April Fools. And I was kind of like half hesitantly like listening to him while kind of like already knowing the T-Mobile thing, knowing like this was probably wasn't real.

And essentially what it was was if he had a broken screen, they created this new product called crack and essentially you smear this in between a crack and it showed like a before and after picture. And I was looking at it and I'm thinking like, man, this is like, this is true. This is kind of like crazy. But I continued doing my work and then a few minutes later, he was like, oh, he's like, I think this is just an April Fools joke.

He's like, I think this gives it away. And it was a guy at the bottom and it was customer testimonies. And it was just this guy with a smile and it's like, I'm just here for the crack. And anyway, it was just, it was pretty funny.

But yeah, those were probably my favorites. What about yourself? Other than why not? Any other ones?

You know, why not was the winner for me this year? Just something I hadn't seen and expected, I guess I would say because I totally listened to their podcast on a weekly basis. And for me to just kind of get, you know, had in that way was so good and so unique because I'm used to it on the web, you know, I don't know, it's just something that you kind of wake up that morning and you start seeing them on the internet and there are already people like collecting the best of April Fools. And so to get it in podcast form was so unique.

I did see Roku did one as well. And I mean, a lot of companies tend to get in on these days, but I don't know, man, like hands go down to YNAB and T-Mobile was pretty good. I have to say the psychic. I was like, man, dude, that thing was, that was all the hotness back in the day.

Everybody wanted the psychic. So, you know, to say that that was coming back, I was like, man, if only, if only we could go back to the psychic for like a month so that all these people could understand what great world we live in. Yeah. I attached a link to the show notes.

Everyone can click on it of a lot of them. I just saw one, it was Coca-Cola and it was avocado flavor, sourdough flavor and charcoal flavor. Solid flavor choices. Anyways.

Good year for April Fools though. Good year. Yeah, it was. So in a little bit of follow up, I know we've been talking a little bit about travel and you know, Adam's been gone.

So, you know, I think it was only natural to just say you're a techie as well, John. So when it comes to travel and technology, what do you pack and what is your like, I guess, let's break this into two questions. What is your daily carry and then like, what is your travel necessity? You know, when you're going a little more long term, five to ten day trip, what do you bring with you then?

How does that change? Sure. Well, I wish I went on trips that were five to ten days, I'm like you, Lou, but when I do travel, all right. So when I travel light, essentially, I kind of switch it up between two different bags.

I have a awesome in case kind of shoulder bag that I'll use. It has a slot for my laptop, my iPad, and then it has a slot on the front just to slide my iPhone in and out. And then it has an area on the back where I can throw any like additional things, maybe my glasses or some snacks or something like that. So for light travel, I typically will use that one.

When I do travel for longer periods of time, I typically use another type of bag from in case and not that I'm sponsored by them in any way, but essentially that backpack has quite a few slots on it. I call it my Swift Army backpack, but essentially it has probably total almost like 30 different little areas inside of the backpack. So I have a huge slot. I bring along my laptop, I can bring my charger from my laptop, I have a slot for my iPad, and then there's a big open area in there where I can throw in.

I have some external batteries for charging on the go, my headphones. I just got a new phone that charges wirelessly as well. So I can always bring my wireless charger if I don't want cables. Naturally I bring a cable for each device because I need to be able to charge them all.

So I probably have about three to four cables in there for my devices. I have a larger backpack. I do wear glasses every now and again. So I have my glasses.

I have my sunglasses in there. I can throw in snacks in there as well. The other day I threw in like a 11 ounce, I don't know that's actually a lot, but I was a large bag of jerky and a whole thing of planters peanuts in that backpack with everything I've mentioned so far. And that was awesome.

And then I will also throw in, I have a slot for like my Apple Watch bands. Wow. So you seem to have like two fairly large extremes. There's the light version which I understand and then there's the like hefty, I need to like you know, be able to bring the entire technology life with me on the go.

And so there's like a bunch of pockets. Exactly. And part of it is probably because when I'm gone, I'm afraid of leaving all of this technology like in my house, not that I live in a bad area, but like my worst year would be coming home from a really nice vacation and like all this stuff that you could have brought with you is just no longer in your house. So yeah.

Got it. So Adam and I spoke about this just a little bit about the idea that you bring your wireless charger with you or not. And you mentioned bringing your wireless charger. Is that something you sort of enjoy or bring with you or when you go, you just charge normally or what's your feeling on that?

Yeah. So I've probably only brought it once with me on a trip where I was at a house for about a week or so, which was nice because at nighttime I pretty much find myself only laying it on the wireless charger. I know if I believe correctly Adam had just gotten one as well. I find that I enjoy having it just for a longer period of time or if I know I'm going to be utilizing that device on and off through a certain period of time, but other than that I typically will plug it in and on my phone specifically I'll do a fast charge so that I can go from pretty much no battery to full battery charge and the only way to do that would be through the wires.

So I enjoy the wireless charging and super convenient, but it wouldn't be something that I see like you can just take everywhere and really rely on unless it was for a longer period of time. That's cool. So the way you charge is actually really interesting because I feel like a difference from a lot of people. So you charge with wireless charging if it's overnight or you know it's kind of slower so you're not so concerned with the speed, but then when you really need to top it off you're just you carry that fast charger with you so you can just juice it all up, which I think is unique and like a good way to attack the problem.

And I think it kind of benefits the both sides of the equation. I mean you kind of got the best of both worlds. So that's pretty cool, man. So I guess we should probably talk about my movies, huh?

What do you think? I want to say for the audience in the few conversations we've had outside of this podcast and the fact that I think it was like two podcasts ago, Adam brought up I seen from Iron Man and like I was listening and I heard you like acknowledge it. It made me feel really proud. So I know culture pop culture is starting to come into your life and it's makes me happy.

Well, I'm glad it makes you happy. I'm really working on my like associate's degree in pop culture here or something like I'm thinking like, you know, college 101 pop culture. So the struggle is still real. There's a lot that I don't know and I'm only a couple movies into the year, but hopefully by the end of the year I will have a little more to add to the to the plate when it comes to pop culture.

Yeah, I if you didn't know if you graduate this year from all 12 movies, you will get a certificate of a year one completion and then you move into year two. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. I never formally said I committed to two years.

So we'll see. I'm going to assess at the end of the year. I might just become a college dropout. We'll see.

Anyway, let's see here. So I had to watch Batman and not only just Batman, but the 1989 version of Batman, which I have to say before this, I knew nothing of the sort that there was even multiple Batman's, but yeah. So so the 1989 one, I don't know, I'm like sort of, you know, the way Adam's having me generally do this is like thumbs up, thumbs to the side, thumbs down, like good, okay, and like terrible. And I'm like somewhere between thumbs sideways and thumbs down.

I don't know. It wasn't it for me. It was very, I mean, so I get that the like stunts and effects and stuff like that are looking incredibly dated at this point, like scary, dated and it almost looks like it's done on like fucking VHS at this point. But you know, it's, I think the biggest thing was that it was like at points, it felt like a musical man.

So you don't like that Prince in there, that Prince song? Dude, I didn't even pick up on the Prince song to be honest. That's like the one most iconic song or the fact that like he almost did like that entire like pop culture, like for the references in the movie. So obviously it was done by Tim Burton.

So you could probably feel it was very like dark and grungy kind of feeling. Yeah, who's Tim Burton and what else has he done? So Tim Burton, he did Edward Scissorhands, he's done, let's see, The Nightmare Before Christmas. That's obviously animated, he's done, what else did he do?

So we need Todd, he's done. Okay. I mean, like I know of The Nightmare Before Christmas and I really only know that because of Disneyland. So yeah, that's that's kind of where my education there is stuff.

But yeah, I mean, so it was dark, it's definitely dark and grungy kind of film. Like I get the theme there, it's a little overdone at times and I think they kind of had to do that back in the day for like literal like just that effects. I mean, like you couldn't do the special effects you could do today. So how do we do this?

We're just going to kind of overdo it then, you know, it is what it is. But overall it just wasn't, it felt borderline musical at times and I was like, oh, not really my thing. It definitely is a little borderline musical there is, there is like the scene with Jack Nicholson as the Joker and either in like the art museum and he's like, they're all just like dancing and stuff with like the boom box that like he's just like throwing paint on like these like really priced like paintings. Yeah.

It's all about wreaking havoc and Batman's got to stop it, you know? Yeah, man. It's it's interesting. So I was going to say, so that movie came out in 1989, right?

It's also his favorite movie, Adams and you know what's also a favorite of Adams, who's his favorite artist? I don't know. I don't know. He's Swift, right?

And what's her album called? There's one album and it's called 1989. Yeah, I think there's a little conspiracy theory here, we'll have to see if Adam can speak to this. Maybe there's something special about 1989.

So yeah, it's Batman. You made it through, at least you understand it, you've seen it when someone's like, oh yeah, the original Joker, you can be like, oh yeah, that was Jack Nicholson. So yeah, he's definitely, clearly there's something about 1989. We've talked a little bit just briefly on the subject of like creepiness of Google and like privacy.

By the time it's like really creepy this week. So I'm watching Batman, whatever, 1989, there's like 17 versions of Batman that has come out since then, it seems like, but it's like, you know, I watched it, I'm sorry, I shouldn't say I watched this week. I watched it last week. And this week, I'm in my YouTube TV subscription.

And what comes up, it's like, oh, suggested for you Batman, 1989 on, you know, this particular day. And I was like, wow, that is kind of creepy that it's in the suggested section and like, I would have never watched it. And I have to wonder, like, I think I did do like an IMDB search or something like that, just to like gather the cast and stuff like that. So I'm curious if that's where that came from.

I have no clue. I don't even know if these are like, it all related, but I just was like, wow, borderline creepy. Anyway, so kind of rounding out my movie for this month, I would say it is Thumb sideways at best. And then, I don't know, maybe, maybe it gets better.

So we'll see. I would go Thumb sideways, but next month or sort of this month because we're recording now, I did hold this one over to talk specifically with you about it, but it's Silence of the Lambs. So I'm not sure what I'm in for there. It sounds, and I think this one is like really bloody gory and violent.

So we'll see. I feel like the, I'm kind of headed down a dark path for the next couple of months. So hopefully things, there's light at the end of the tunnel, I guess. Yeah, Saara, Silence of the Lambs is more of like a little bit of gory, but it's very dark, very psychological.

I think it would probably be of more interest than probably the Batman movie, but sorry, Adam. But Science of the Lambs, there's some good scenes done by Anthony Hopkins that are very well known, and I think by the time you finish it, not only will you feel probably a little disturbed, but you'll also never want to be alone in a room with a man who is also a potential cannibal. Oh, I'm just so excited to watch this now. So going from a completely gory topic to a much more fond topic, I think we wanted to kind of talk about education and tech and how that has changed over the years and how tech is kind of pushing education and education is pushing tech.

And this is kind of partially motivated by Apple having a recent announcement around education only. And it's something that I kind of came up with as a topic because I was like, hey, we really haven't talked about that at all. But I think we're going to kind of dive into hardware software and all sorts of stuff in a little bit here. But one thing that keeps getting thrown around a lot is this idea of one to one and essentially all that is a very fancy phrase for does each student have some piece of hardware that is theirs for learning purposes.

And that could be whatever flavor you want, that could be an iPad, it could be a computer, it could be a tablet, it could be a convertible, it could be all sorts of things. But I'm kind of curious, John, what is your thoughts on, is the one to one ratio kind of a must to foster a great learning environment, do you think, or do you think like the old school way of like, we have a computer lab or like maybe a rolling cart that goes around is okay and will suffice enough for most students? Yeah, it's a good question. You know, I was thinking about back in the day when I was in school and essentially it was all computer labs and essentially it was like a really cool like privilege thing to be able to get access to it.

And of course back then you weren't probably trying to do homework and you're probably hopping on the inner webs and trying to circle web link, but your schools had it all locked down. But I think it's changing and it's kind of hard, I think a lot of people as technology moves forward struggles with this concept of like, you know, that's not how I used to do it or like, is that even feasible, does that, you know, does education increase? I think it does. I think having a one to one is very beneficial, but you know, I think there's a lot of, I think of like kids and schools and what, you know, the resources that they're given, I think sometimes it's a struggle.

And I think there's obviously software and other companies that allow kids to kind of pass things between one another and as students or classes move through class, you know, different teachers or classrooms, they're able to pick up that device and it just becomes, you know, there's for that moment and things get saved through cloud services. But I think having a device for a kid, whether it's theirs or the schools, I think that does create a better learning environment. And I think it's going to be interesting because the way kids are learning now is way different than myself or you or probably even Adam. And you know, Adam has kids.

I don't have kids. So I'm kind of curious to get his take on it when he comes back to the show just because he probably may see that more firsthand than we do. Yeah, I mean, I think it's something to be said that we both don't have kids and we were fairly recently, I mean, we're not 50. So we were here, you know, not that long ago.

And so we remember the days of going to the computer labs. And I think, you know, a lot's changed. You know, I mean, I remember when we used to go to the computer lab and you're right, it was a privilege and it was something you kind of logged into like a generic account that was on the computer, but it was pretty locked down. You're right.

And I think one of the things that's changed a lot is there's there's really, you know, a lot of stuff is stored on the cloud today and people have accounts and so that one computer really can like be used by pretty much anybody in the school. It's not, you know, anyone can sit down at that computer that I've had that Chromebook or whatever you want to call it. And pretty quickly, you know, even with Microsoft's, you know, stuff you could set up like, you know, Active Directory and have, you know, you know, AD set up where, you know, deskops get loaded and all that sort of stuff. Like there's, there's tons of stuff that can happen, but I think it maybe isn't necessary to have a hundred percent of one to one ratio because you can do some of those things today.

But learning is something that is definitely, I think, strengthened with technology. So it's important to have a good ratio. I don't think it could be one to 50. I think it needs to be higher than that.

And I don't know that it needs to be one to one per se, but one to one certainly isn't going to hurt. I think it just, it probably brings some additional challenges because there's even more you have to lock down. I think when you start going to one to one because students carry them home, they, you know, do different things with them that, you know, they're not with them or those are with them all the time. So those devices being with them all the time adds additional burden and tech overhead and management overhead to make sure they are locked down.

Yeah, you bring up a good point. I think it's crazy that like school, there are schools out there where they're totally like, yep, this is your iPad and you can take it home and essentially you can do what you want. And I think in those scenarios, like you said, you know, it's just that much more complicated. And then you probably get into like liability issues.

And the only thing you can do is probably install like a profile to allow the kids to do certain things and other things. And I think of like them getting damaged and stuff. So, you know, it does introduce completely different, you know, a scenario type. And because of that, I mean, schools are definitely limited by some sort of budget.

So, you know, do you think schools and their budgets play a factor into, you know, how that technology is obtained, how they issue it, getting, you know, cycling technology. Do you, you know, do you think schools have a problem when it comes to their budgets? Yeah, I mean, I think it doesn't matter really what industry we talk about. It doesn't matter for schools or business or whatever.

Everybody has a tech budget. You have to have a budget. There's not an unlimited flow of money there. So it's really important that we, you know, make this sort of technology accessible to schools.

One of the things that concerns me sometimes is I think sometimes schools are limited by budgets more than they should be for reasons of, you know, that are sort of grandiose and outside of their control sometimes, you know, maybe at the school board level or something higher than that, even where, you know, some school decides to get a little overly committed and they say, you know what, we've got this 20 year old elementary school and, you know, it's old. We're going to build a new one and they go build a whole new school when in reality, you know, spending, you know, a quarter of that money in the old school and fixing it up a little bit and then using the excess money that they were going to spend anyway for, you know, enhancing education is probably a better use case because my big concern is that the schools go through all that and then, you know, then they're just cash strapped. They're like, hey, so we're trying to pay off this, you know, sort of beautiful building we made that your students can come to, but we can't buy anything for it. So that's a concern.

But I think budgets are always a concern and I think schools are oftentimes very concerned about not only procurement of just the hardware, but long term costs of, you know, things like software and management and stuff like that, that has to be all factored in because at the end of the day, if it were just, you know, you know, recently Apple did their announcements but if it was just $2.99 for the iPad and that was it, I think schools would have a lot more, you know, opportunity to say I'm ready, you know, we'll jump in, we'll do one for every student. But when you start to factor in the case, the, you know, warranty to protect it, you know, the software to manage it, any apps that they think they might need and you put all that stuff together and it's like, okay, now we just went from 300 to, you know, 300 or to like $450 and then for $450, I also have to add on about, you know, $75 a year per iPad for management fees, you know, all this stuff starts adding up and it's huge, it becomes a big burden. So they got to look at the big picture, but I think schools in general really try to focus on leasing and I think that's so important for them to do because this is a really easy way for them to spread that cost out and to turn technology back in to, you know, usually a hardware vendor and say, know that they're going to get X amount of dollars back, you know, some years down the line and they can build that into their workflow so that they know, hey, then we can just essentially read up that lease and get all brand new hardware. So I don't know.

I think that's kind of where I am when it comes to it. I think budgets are, yes, a concern, but sometimes we spend the money a little too frivolously and, you know, they need to know hard and fast rules about what money's going to be there and when it's going to be there and it's at costs, you know, at every step of the way. So that's kind of where I'm at. What do you think, Johnny?

Is it something that you think budgets are severely limiting schools when it comes to technology or do you think that the budgets are there or what's your thoughts? Yeah. So, you know, I think it's interesting because I actually went to a private school when I was going through essentially kindergarten through eighth grade and it was really interesting because even though it was a private school there, that which obviously you can be expensive, it would be assumed that sometimes these private schools are getting a lot of money and even though it was expensive ago there, we didn't really have like the best technology. I remember it wasn't until like my seventh grade where all of a sudden we got these like really awesome bitching Dell computers that we thought were amazing and like that was like our first kind of like almost technology in the classroom.

But when I went to public school and I was in high school, there were like multiple computer labs which I thought was interesting and that's obviously because probably even though it's public, they at least where I was going to school, there was probably a lot more money or they somehow made it important to include technology in their budget. I think of what's been happening in Oklahoma, I believe it is where a bunch of teachers have been marching on like the capital not to get political but essentially they're fighting for not only pay increase but also for students where they just feel like they're being cheated money-wise on school budgets and I think it's really, I think it's becoming a big important thing in that there's all these schools that are mixed and you have to wonder where like some of this money is actually going for schools that maybe can't get some of this technology. And I think it's going to become more of a topic coming forward but I think as far as like do budgets limit, I would say yes but the people who control all that might be making it limited. So I'm kind of curious to see in the next coming years if we see schools change their stance and include more money for their budgets.

You talked about leasing obviously which is great because that allows schools to pay lower monthly payments and essentially spread payment over time but be able to recycle their technology and get into something newer. Because just like with our everyday lives, kids can't be using old technology that's becoming outdated because there's a lot of security elements and a lot of things that are used whether it's software or an app of some sort so it'll be interesting but I think schools and people as a whole probably might start reconsidering that budget because technology is just really important for our students which kind of takes us to our next segment which I believe is hardware. Yeah so I mean talking a little bit about the hardware here, I think the big players are really at this point, Chromebooks and iPad is probably the go-tos right now. I still think there are computer labs in schools that offer full fledged desktop computers but I think it's no secret that Chromebooks seems to be kind of winning over the classroom and education market right now and for a good reason.

I mean I think it's very lucrative for a school to say hey we can very easily go ahead and deploy these and when a kid signs into it they get access to essentially a free version of essentially what is word excel and PowerPoint, they write other reports, they have an internet connection, they can browse the web, they can do anything they need to do really. I think the big concern with Chromebooks is that they for one they're cheap, they lose like half their value as soon as you buy them, I mean it's like buying a car and driving it off a lot, the car's worth like 50% of its value, it's like Chromebook it's $200 when you bought it but it's 100 when you're done with it and that's the concern is that you're handing it back in say three years later and you're not after you've leased it quote unquote and you're not going to be able to get anything back for it because nobody that doesn't hold any residual value or something like an iPad when you lease something like that, Apple's products tend to hold value better and so they probably are more lucrative to schools for the leasing options because while they're more expensive to get into, you're going to get a lot more back later in the game but and then there's of course there's, the iPad kind of brings a lot more to the table because there's a plethora of apps out there that can help with education and so you're not just stuck on we're processing and reports and presentations that the Chromebook does so well but you open up the possibility to apps and being more creative and I think one of the things that personally is questionably I don't know it's something to think about is that when you buy an iPad you're not really just buying essentially what a Chromebook is, you're buying a Chromebook but you're also getting the apps, you're also getting things like a camera and I think that's so important to kind of not gloss over because if you really wanted to do a report with pictures and all sorts of stuff like that the school would maybe need to provide cameras to take pictures or something of that nature and most students shouldn't be required to have that with them but if you buy the iPad you're going to have a fantastic camera, you have the ability to video chat, you have all these other things that are kind of add-ons that come with it whereas the Chromebook doesn't natively support a lot of that stuff right out of the box and so that's a concern that I think is it comes up and then when we talk about the more traditional hardware, the Mac or the PC quote unquote or Windows, I think those bring a lot to the table but have significant barriers and that they're usually a lot more costly to set up and get going and they lack the portability that I think a lot of the students need and so I think the industry is probably moving away from these from a degree or to a degree but I don't see them at least at this point returning, I kind of see them as, oh god, what it's Steve Jobs called it like a post-PC error, well like I think we're in the post-PC and Mac error when it comes to education, it's probably going to be things like Chromebooks and things like iPads for the foreseeable future but that's kind of what I think about it, what are your thoughts on where the hardware is John? Yeah I think you nailed it on the head like from someone who's used to Chromebook like it's actually, they're really well made and they're super affordable, you can go out and buy one for like 100 to 149 bucks or so, 150 Macs which is obviously like half the cost of an iPad but the limit and some of them are actually like, you can fold them so you have like a tablet form, you have an actual computer form but the biggest drawback I think is exactly what you were saying was like yes the internet has a lot of things and kids can obviously search the internet with Google Docs and you have Google Photos and stuff like that, you can do a lot of stuff on it but it is limited to really the software base and I think that's where Apple and iPad has been kind of trying to push more and more, they introduced some more stuff around like augmented reality and just being able to in their presentation they showed like being able to dissect like a frog on a table in your biology class and I remember dissecting like a real frog and like it was cool but I would have much rather dissected the digital one and you know not had to be around like the smell or they had ones where God forbid but like cats and stuff where I was like yeah definitely not wanting to dissect that but I think like stuff like that or being able to like go places whether that's through your tablet whether that's a Chromebook or iPad like software is a big part of that and I think lastly kind of what you said about the Mac and Windows one that's not portable unless they're buying kids laptops which I don't see so often when we're talking about like Mac and Windows I think we're definitely talking more about like that computer lab style so kids are less likely to get up move around interact with their surroundings be able to record a video like you said so much more of like homework is being designed around like an entertainment slash interactive style because that's just what kids do and I think that's where things have changed immensely from you know when we went to school and I wouldn't be surprised to see maybe kind of going back to what we're talking about maybe budgets switching away from those things and being able to put more towards you know whether it's Chromebooks or iPads you know that type of hardware in the classroom yeah you know I really haven't been on a Chromebook ever for any real length of time so I think it's interesting your perspective that you know and I see them as very lucrative I mean I've kind of I've been around them I just haven't like had one that I've called my own and and so I see the lucrativeness from the perspective of just like they're kind of quote unquote throw away and so something happens to them it's like well alright we lost $150 or whatever and we go get another one it's very different than some of the other hardware that's out there but anyway when we talk a little bit about software and the OS is that run on these devices you know there's really there's Chrome OS which you know John you've kind of talked about a little bit here and it sounds like probably more familiar with and then iOS which I know we've all kind of hit on and then there's the Mac and Windows 10s and so I'm just kind of curious you know what are your thoughts in terms of limitations when it comes to software and what are the wins that are out there for software yeah so you know honestly like when I think of software especially with the state of things and the world we live in I think of like security and I think when it comes to putting this in businesses or schools securities definitely key and just from experience I think iOS is probably by far the more secure as far as all the care and thought that's taken for you know patching things updating things and I think with iOS on devices kind of going back to what you said you're opening more opportunity for people through I would say probably like the app store and there's a lot of content that's available now on Chrome OS Chrome OS is actually probably really well built as well it's the less likely though that we see updates for Chrome OS and a lot of that is because of the fact that you have multiple manufacturers building Chromebooks a lot of times these manufacturers can't do key updates for these Chromebooks or they're just not doing them as quick so the problem with that is you either have incompatibility issues you have issues arising around like security again and you know for me myself like the last thing I wanted something like that just won't update or can't update like I'm always the guy who I see an update on any of my devices and I'm like yep updating now I could care less that there's bugs or not but you know I want to I want to have the latest I want to be up to date I want to be secure and I would say the biggest thing too with Chrome OS that Chrome OS that they've tried is kind of adapting and changing towards something more like the app store where you can run essentially Android apps through Chrome OS and I know that's kind of started taking off this year and I haven't played around too much with it I know they've done it with a few applications but that's also you know probably one of the drawbacks is what's the incentive of actually doing that for developers and then lastly I thought I think it's kind of a joke but so Windows when they announced their service laptops they announced something called Windows 10s which was essentially like a a more secure slash slimmed down version of Windows 10 and it lasted maybe a total like five to six months and Windows decided to change their mind in that originally for these laptops that were kind of aimed at education it came with Windows 10s and then you could pay to upgrade to like the full Windows version where you can install and do things on a like a desktop client and they decided to roll that back and I believe Windows 10s is still a thing but it's not like a fee to upgrade anymore which just shows you that sometimes when you just boggle down things so much and you slimline it that it just becomes a limitation to its users and you know I feel kind of sorry because Windows has done this many times in the past and I feel like they just keep repeating the same mistake of like trying something new and then they have to go back on it but I don't really hear or see too much of people using like Windows and classrooms obviously and I think that's just because of the more readily available you know software ready Chromebooks and iPads but that's kind of that's kind of my take on those operating systems I'm kind of curious to hear your thoughts you know I said I didn't really ever use the Chromebook and so therefore Chrome OS is something that is completely foreign to me I mean I've kind of been around the Chromebook but I've never really played with it long term and so I get the idea of what the Chromebook does and how it works and you know I think for the most part it probably checks most of the boxes for that students need for their everyday but I that's where I kind of I get frustrated a little bit because I for me it's one of those things that it is only like meeting the expectations of what the students need it's not giving them opportunity to grow and learn beyond that and so I think it has some sort of ceilings to it that are big and won't let the students grow I think that's where things like the iPad is gonna you know really excel and you know the when it comes to Windows 10s like I didn't even know about that that's that's kind of that's like a joke to me that you know essentially they try to you know upsell schools or it sounds like to a degree like it was like okay well we can't sell the full version so we'll sell you this like really stripped down version and if you so choose you can give us some more dollars and you know at any point in time you know your budget changes come back to us give us more money and we'll happily give you more you know I don't know it's that's kind of a slimy tactic but you know I think the software is is probably the easiest piece to check off I think for most of these because technically the bare minimum is like right reports right you know spreadsheets make presentations and have an internet browser like those four things like every student needs to be able to do and any one of these can do that and that's the easiest piece it's the all the extra stuff that is the hard stuff to get to and you know what I mean by that extra stuff is just like you know the software updates the the management the the apps that are supported and all that good stuff because all of that is what really takes you know any piece of hardware from just bland and I mean we can compare this to anything like a phone right I mean I could have a no key a phone today still that is a flip phone and you know what it's gonna do the job of the phone needs it to do which is like make calls but in the whole another league you know or like text and I could text what you know I could do it if I do but in the whole of the league is something like an iPhone which is a computer in your pocket and so I very much look at this sort of problem through that lens and say you know it has the potential to do so much more but I think we should kind of move on to some of those things that I was talking about like management because I think this is really where you know some vendors have done okay and others have just like sell the way past it and in terms of just what they need it to provide the students and so I'm kind of curious what your thoughts are because I know for each platform and we've basically I'm going to use their sort of three camps here you've got you know the Google products and those are all kind of managed through G Suite to my knowledge when it comes to the schools and they provide them storage and all sorts of stuff and accounts and all that good jazz and then there's you know Apple stuff which is at the moment like a hybrid they're kind of getting better at it it seems like but I think they just announced this new thing called Apple School Manager which is kind of an attempt at G Suite but not a hundred percent perfect and then they have like you know companies they refer to and I know Adam hates this company but Jamf they kind of do some hacking of a lot of the software to make management actually happen on the Mac and on iOS and then and then on the Windows side of things there's there's Windows Server so I'm kind of curious what are your thoughts on this and and you know what what concerns if any do you have about the management side of things yeah so you know I'm not overly like I know all of the names that we just cited off I'm probably familiar with like two maybe three of them you know but when it comes to managing devices like I think I think there's a couple things that have to get check mark one is how easy is it like is this something that your you know IT guy can and can you know implement and roll out really quick two would be like if there's a problem how easy is it to like resolve that problem and then the third thing I would say would be you know as people are using it can it be broken so obviously like I remember there's a big issue with like schools and when they first started rolling out some of this newer technology in schools like kids with like bypass stuff and it was because like half the time the people who are rolling out this stuff didn't know how to like set it up correctly or like there wasn't a setting to avoid some of these things and kids were like totally bypassing like like certain locks and websites and stuff and it was just a big mess and then I think the fourth thing is like sustainability so like how like is this something that can be used over and over and over and I know Adam hates Jamf but I know they're probably like one of the larger companies who's kind of like roads and up and as far as like being able to be a go-to company but kind of to exactly what I was saying I know with I believe iOS 11.3 was coming out or it's out now and Jamf who is a management company was like oh yeah you know we're going to have day one availability for management when it launches like go ahead and update well a bunch of people did that and it broke some things and you know there's some people who weren't too happy with that and you can't you can't be a company who like sells this sort of like management for your devices and promise things and and having broken and you know that's technology on one degree but on the other hand you know if you're running a business or you're schooling off of this and something breaks like now you're really in trouble I'm a little familiar with the Apple school manager and just that that's really apple centric and I believe they're just trying to make it a lot easier to log into like the user IDs that are given to the students you can create like multiple accounts which I think is cool I think from my understanding there's a lot more a little more openness to it I know with like Jamf you can actually have it like update the devices themselves it pushes those updates I probably have to dig a little more into the Apple school manager window server I can tell you Adam probably can answer this for us but I have no clue I've never seen windows server truthfully or played around with it so not a not a good source on that one and then I assume G Suite is probably just all online based and I'm sure it's probably closer like Apple school manager and that is probably just related to Google products and and essentially like you're stuck with G Suite and Google devices like you probably can't use G Suite for cool manager or anything but yeah other than that what about yourself what's your take on these management suites yeah so the G Suite thing I think is super lucrative for schools because to my understanding it kind of sets up like an LDAP for the schools and it gives them you know a directory and allows things like sharing and you know emailing and contacts to be like saved and synced by accounts so and then there's just like the added like benefit of Google gives all of the students and the teachers like seen amount of cloud storage which I don't remember how much it is but I want to say it's like a terabyte or something ridiculous like more than any kid can probably ever fill especially considering they're only using primarily the you know like Word document kind of features I mean if you were storing you know pictures and videos it's all got to be totally different but that's not a thing it seems like so you know I think Google kind of gets like the check mark for me here like being like the win-win-win because there's no cost it comes with your you know Chromebook buy and and that's just you know being a school you know Apple kind of does this like hybrid approach and like you can lock some of our stuff down and and if you want more we've got you know people we can refer you to and that's where like Jamf is is cool and I think the problem I kind of have is that I feel like the bar for Apple is pretty low here that they could do better and that you know for most schools I don't see them being able to have a lot of iPads around or a lot of devices around without something like Jamf which comes with concerns and asterisks and all sorts of other issues because of the ongoing cost of these sort of things whereas you know G Suite 3 comes with it and now you kind of with these like Apple school manager things it's like it does some amount of management but it's very little it's it's not enough that that even like the like probably 80 percent of schools that do something iPad related are going to have to do something like Jamf and and that's the concern there is that you you don't make it you know enough for most schools it's kind of like insult injury I don't know it's like them still giving us you know five gigs of iCloud storage what can I say so it's it's it's an issue but I don't know it's it's something that I think they could they could work on a bit and Jamf is something that you know they're doing things they're doing cool things I think they've come a long way they're getting better I think it is I did hear about this like issue with with I guess they had some you know support for you know iOS 11.3 and then they I guess they had an issue I saw that in the headlines week so that is kind of sad but Windows Server man is like you know I think this used to be like the bread and butter for schools I mean you set up some Windows Server you know you run everything through through that and you set up you know like your AD and that gives you your LDAP and all this sort of stuff and and you can like create like networked users and everything and when I was going to school man this was like this was the thing it was like you know somewhere somewhere on the school is the giant servers and they're you know mapping all that you know all that information across everywhere and and that was Windows Server was pretty cool because there wasn't a whole lot of cost to Windows Server I mean there was some cost but it really wasn't a whole ton of cost and and really they didn't you didn't need like you know like yearly upgrades or anything like that you could run Windows Server for a while before you needed anything and and so I think this was lucrative for a long time it's just a problem with Windows Server is that there's not really devices that have worked with students you know we talk about the Chromebooks and the iPads and Windows Server just doesn't really work with those it's not it's not you know the right direction for them and they've done their surface tablets and I don't really know how well those integrate Windows Server but you know I also know the surface tablets in general cost are pretty petty they're they're essentially a computer so they're not as cheap as something like the iPad or the Chromebooks so I think on the management front they're probably pretty good when it comes to Microsoft but and they hands down have the best like office and and you know all that that that's sweet I mean they're just gonna easily win in that area but they're severely handicapped when it comes to hardware and you know let's face it they've never done hardware great they never first of all they didn't do it for a long time but now they're doing it and they're not doing it great and so they have some hurdles to get over there but you know I think it's something that to me management wise G Suite's kind of the logical answer and I understand why schools go that way a lot of the time or Google's you know sort of suite of software management but I'm curious though let's switch away from more the vendors and go to more the software that's that's out there because there's you know we've talked a lot about you know Chromebooks kind of lockdown the iPad brings the ability to bring in a lot more in the way of like apps and stuff like that but I'm I'm kind of curious you know what do you think these apps bring to the table on the Mac Windows and iPad and are there any apps that you are like this is something kids need to know about you know is there any of those that is you think would really help in education? uh yeah I um I uh you know when it comes to apps I think it's like I said earlier it kind of opens this whole gateway for learning but not just typing it into a web browser but actually like interacting and exploring um and um I think uh one that uh you'd probably agree with me on is uh do lingo which is a way to teach uh children uh you know different languages or I guess adults too we can include ourselves in that and uh do lingo is pretty awesome in that it uh it essentially has an array of uh different languages that you can choose from and you go through little courses and earn um I believe they're like little gems for every time you complete that course um and I've used it myself and it's actually really great there's uh auditory testing there's uh grammatory testing or like um actually like having to write it in the language that you're learning um and I think it just like instills it uh better in in the brain um and it's super easy it's very like kid friendly um and then uh another one that um I just was playing with earlier uh today actually it's called um monster world and uh this app is available on iPad um and it sounds like a game but it's not but essentially you can like load dinosaurs in like real life uh through the augmented reality portion of like iPhone or iPad if any of you guys have that out there uh and uh what's super cool about it is it literally creates a whole world and you kind of like view it through the iPad and you can see these dinosaurs uh T-Rex, Teradactyl um and you can actually like interact with them um and kind of like get an idea of like what that might have been like um so I'm a sucker for like science apps um another cool thing in that app is you can like kind of read like a description of um of like what those dinosaurs were um so it has some detailed information around that um and then uh another really cool one that I really like um is uh what are they called the elements I believe um and uh the elements is a really cool app that teaches kids uh the element table and it shows 3d animations of the elements themselves and you can go through the whole table and interact with each element um and it gives you like really good descriptions of like uh their counterparts and like what what that element's used for and like everyday items we might use um and it's just it's just really awesome um it's probably would have made me care more about the element table when I was in school um I didn't have this luxury so um so yeah check that one out um I believe that full title is the elements of visual or uh or now it's changed in nova elements sorry about that nova element um cool app cool I will uh I want to check out that dinosaur one that one sounds pretty cool I think that would be just interesting and um you know I think that um you know the periodic table is something that like it's tough to get kids excited about and um especially because you're sometimes dealing with stuff that's like so small and you know beyond where they can even see it and how do you teach something when you can't see it touch it feel it you know all that sort of stuff it's a lot harder um but and and I think augmenting reality really brings a lot to the table for kids too you know it really gives kids the option of kind of seeing the past come to life and history and stuff like that it's gonna be really cool and you know I think with software one of the hardest hurdles to overcome is that licenses is is something that is really complex for big institutions and you know one of the things that I think apple has made fairly simple is that they have something called their volume purchase program and that allows schools to buy sort of a block of licenses and so that that block of licenses can be used um you know on any given set of you know devices and the cool part about it is the licenses can be revoked and you know applied to another set of devices you know sort of in a um pretty quick fashion you know basically the apps kind of disappear and then just appear on the devices that they you know got applied to then so I think that's very cool and I think that um you know it has a a lot of potential that way um to really support schools as needed so that they don't have to constantly buy you know say a thousand licenses of the periodic table you know it's like that that's really hard for us will to get you know wrapped around um but when it comes to like uh software and apps and things like that that are out there I think you know one of the biggest ones that comes to mind is Wolfram and um I really like Wolfram um there's a there's an app called Wolfram Alpha and Wolfram is part of a bigger company that makes um pretty sure they make Mathematica um but yeah they're I mean their their software is is really really cool um Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha in general are just um great math programs that can solve um really complex equations for you and show you in order step by step how they solve the problem which is super cool because from a learning perspective I mean well first I should say with a warning here kids kids don't cheat it's not worth it don't just use the calculator to you know do your homework but when you're stuck on something and you see how something solves something and the steps that it takes I think it really does um ingrain you know that into your mind and then you can you can work forward from there so I think that's really cool that we have you know sort of these tools at our disposal today to show us um how something is solved and then the other one that um you know comes to mind is Khan Academy and Khan Academy um Sol Khan is like uh he's a guy that was I think he was like a hedge fund manager or something like that and he he started doing some um tutoring sessions in his like closet for his like nieces and nephews and um I guess he was like doing all these for them while they were in like grade school and he would record it and then like save it as a video for them and and they could then rewatch it at any point in time so they could kind of you know go through it at their own speed and you know just really ingrain the topics into their head and um he was a really really smart person so he would coach them in like pretty much any subject mind they needed help in and um he was doing this from distance because they they lived like I think down south somewhere and he lived you know up in New York and one of the cool parts about him is that um he started posting these videos that he was making to YouTube so that they could uh watch you know him teach and it just started getting some major traction and um you know basically it took notice um of uh Bill and uh Melinda Gates and they basically the Gates Foundation made a huge charitable contribution to him and um the business he was starting essentially and he ended up leaving his hedge fund and he's like yeah I sit around in pajamas and make videos all day now and their app is like fantastic and the way he explains things and the way he goes through explanations I mean it makes anything sound just stupid simple which is which is great I mean I if I want to understand like I just a basic you know lesson on anything I definitely open Khan Academy so I definitely recommend checking that out if you haven't seen that yeah I I've used Khan Academy once um and it kind of blew my mind because I think just like he said it makes things that are maybe a little complex or something maybe you don't have a real grasp on seem really easy but it's that's really an interesting story about how it came to be I did not know that I uh go from running a uh you know a hedge company uh to teaching interpajamas that sounds like life yeah life goals there life goals real real life goals so I think we should kind of talk about other tech because we we get so wrapped up in this idea like tech is is what we put in the kids hands or you know but there's so much else that goes into like tech in in schools and so one of the big ones that I can think of is like uh smart boards I know these were just catching on as I was kind of like leaving school but I don't know if you have any familiarity with smart boards John or you put this other thing in here called a Jamboard I'm not familiar with it but what's up with that yeah so uh essentially uh yeah I when I was leaving school smart boards were becoming a thing um and the the problem with some of these smart boards is um like how you interact with them again and uh Google actually created something called the uh Jamboard and essentially is a Google connected smart board which is obviously something that's really interesting and that it takes all the Google services and kind of throws it into the smart board that um probably more aimed at businesses but it costs five thousand dollars by the way so not a talk about budgets for school but uh essentially it's a it's another way to have a connected device through a service but also making it you know interactive in a way that you know if you think of like back in the day you had a chalkboard or at least uh uh you know the marker board uh being able to go up and like draw on it and like you're presenting to a class in that way um essentially these smart boards are kind of doing the same thing and uh I don't know what else is like really doable on smart boards at least but like I'd like do you know if they can like pull up websites and photos and stuff I'm assuming yeah to my knowledge they can do you know sort of all that above they can you can write on them you can pull up websites you can sort of like I'm gonna call it like your like a device to it um that sort of learning really I think helps because you can you know kind of instantly toss something up there and then you know grab a marker and write over top of it and you know really kind of dig into something um and you can do all sorts of kind of um you know like write text down and hide it or you know circle it rescale it you know and do sort of things like that which allows I think just um different types of education and um you know you can use one marker with multiple students and change colors and do all sorts of stuff so I think it it has good potential especially for students who are going to struggle to um sort of keep attention um and and need the um the sort of interaction of of interacting with the content that they're working with um you can make the learning much more engaging so that's kind of cool Google did it sounds like their own kind of knockoff smartboard if you will that is like five grand which I think is probably still cheaper than than an actual smartboard because like secret fact here I guess I would say like whiteboards aren't cheap like I was I was in college and and like just even like a three-foot whiteboard for my dorm room was like 50 bucks um the ones you see in classrooms that are like I think they're 16 foot long or something like that um are like a thousand dollars each and usually there's two in a classroom so I mean five grand I don't know it doesn't really seem that like wildly outlandish to spend considering you're spending a couple grand on whiteboards I'm sure like every couple years and in most of these classrooms so I think that's uh that's pretty cool but one thing I actually have some use with is something called the LiveScribe and so LiveScribe is a company that makes a series of pens and well yeah pens not pencils but they make a series of pens that allow you to do just normal writing in a notebook but it's kind of a specialized notebook and that it has what's called dot paper in it and so it has these like really imperceptible dots on the paper and as you write on the page there's essentially a small camera that is right at the bottom of the pen that is also taking photographs of the writing that you're doing and it's sort of stitching this into a giant image that basically turns your entire note page into a PDF and it can now do things like um you know some like machine learning on it to kind of like get to the bottom of like or like machine learning slash ocr to like what did you write and what were you talking about in your notes and and that's pretty cool what it also does is it um it records any like I'm gonna call it a lecture because that's where I had it was in college but I mean you could record anything any note session you're doing could even just be a meeting um and so the paper has on it like a um like I'm like uh what I want to call it's like a glossary or like a like a control panel there you go that's a better word for it but anyway you push record or you like just tap record on the paper with a pen and it takes the picture of the record button and goes oh I need to turn the pen on and start recording and it records the whole lecture and then like when you're done you click stop recording and you just literally tap it where it's a stop on on the paper and it stops recording it knows that lecture is over and it literally saves all those notes and all those recordings and for learning purposes it's really great because when you're reviewing your notes at some later time you can tap on any section of your notes that you were writing and wherever you tap it starts playing the audio of what the person that was talking and doing the teaching was saying at that moment and so it lets you kind of um relive the lecture and um focus on not it allows you to like write in the lecture and not uh have to constantly worry about the auditory learning as much and listen to it all later and um this is something I learned in in college that you know um I think I've talked about it on the show before is I have a little bit of learning disability and then I'm very much an auditory learner and not very much a visual learner so I would always be super worried about like writing everything down in college and I needed to be more focused on the audio and i just kind of allowed me to like flip that a little bit like I could still focus on writing all the notes so that I had them all for later but I could go back and listen to the lecture at a later time so it was pretty cool I I don't know man it was like it also needed some work it wasn't perfect um and um there have been apps that have come along since then that like for the iPad like I think Notability does this that it works way way way better but um but it was a pretty good like first approximation at an app that did a decent job yeah I remember seeing uh seeing that at the store always and I always wanted it but I couldn't afford it and I just cried but now now I have it I have uh apple pencil on my iPad and note taking by the way quick uh as Lou was talking there about uh the cost of uh white boards and and and boards for the classroom I went online and um I'm on a website called school Outfitters and you weren't joking Lou for a standard kind of like white board um this one's almost three thousand dollars yeah man it is like serious business I mean you want to wear these schools budgets go to and you're like look if I want a white board I we could buy 10 iPads they're like oh my god it is ridiculous um some of these things are super super super expensive so you know I'm sure there's good quality ones and all that good jazz but man it is not cheap for some of this stuff and textbooks are not cheap and all that stuff so it all adds up I get it that they're not cheap but um but yeah I mean the we sort of live in the in the dreamy world that we all wanted with apple pencil today it's it's uh it times of change man and if I was in college today I don't think I would have had a computer at all I probably would have just been iPad only yeah I'd probably have to agree with that uh like when I was in college I just got in like one of my first iPads and like started doing stuff on it but um but then it was like a short lived thing and since I didn't wasn't doing that any longer so had I like started college originally using it I probably would have used it more with uh or used the iPad one but um but obviously as we as we use these devices and as we continue to in you know inject these into our lives every day including family and children and and so forth I know one of the biggest topics as of late was screen time and like how often we spend on these devices specifically with like kids in the classroom and outside of the classroom so I'm kind of intrigued on your thoughts on like do you feel like uh you know these devices and having them every day is just kind of like a normal thing or is being in front of these devices uh you know a concern for our times now uh just in that you know they always show the funny joke of like a family sitting at a table and no one's talking to each other and they're just like entrenched in their devices um kind of curious to hear your thoughts yeah so I mean I think this is this is actually really funny when you actually brought up the idea that you know family sit at tables and and a lot of times everyone's not talking to each other and it's so funny because I mean 10 years ago if I was sitting at a table with my parents um you know and just eating dinner hanging out and I pulled out my phone oh my god my parents would have gone off on me and it's so funny because we have flipped that so much to today where I can now sit at a table and complain about them pulling out their phone to show me their latest Facebook post and I'm like look can we just have a civilized easy dinner please I do not want the phone to enter the dinner table and it's so funny I get all worked up about it because I'm like look when I 10 years ago I had to put my phone away now you need to put your phone away now um I let my parents kind of slide on it but it is it is something that just I noticed but um screen time is a uh I don't know man it's an interesting subject it's something that I think the jury is still out to a degree on screen time I don't know that we have the correct answer here um my personal opinion is not so much that we need to monitor and police screen time but that we need to monitor and police screen time um in what is on the screen you know I'm not so concerned about that the kids are using the devices if they want to use it for 10 hours use it for 10 hours if you're using it for 10 hours to read and your textbook is on the iPad yeah I don't care you know or you're you're on your Chromebook and you're just reading your eyes out sure that's fine um if you're researching something in writing your paper that's fine if you're playing games for 10 hours then I have concerns so I think it's really important that we focus on that content they're doing um and also I think to a degree pacing them because they're 10 hours on something is gonna get old you know at some point so giving them the ability to you know at least every you know hour to set it down for five to ten minutes and just get up and walk around and move you know no different than my app watch tells me to stand up and move they need to do the exact same thing with kids and so I think my biggest concern is the content that's on the screen and making sure that the content is appropriate and it's something that is nurturing their education then my concerns about you know it being games or something else that is probably hindering them yeah that's uh that's really interesting I probably have to agree with you I mean it's pretty crazy how like I'll run into people in my everyday life where like they're still at home you know doing nothing no job like they're just you know playing video games and I'm like like man like if they were my age they must have started you know they must have been in front of a TV probably and that's like all they did and now these devices are in our hands I see like you know the the moms running around and they're handing their like two-year-old baby just a screen and the child just sitting there looking at videos and on one hand I get it like that's the easiest babysitting but at the same time like when that iPhone leaves that baby's hand like all of a sudden you know baby starts crying and it ain't happy and I think that's where we got a as a society kind of a curb like what we're doing how we're you know allowing our kids or even ourselves to like just sit on a device you know even for myself like you know being stuck into like what's on your screen and you know whether that's checking your Twitter or like the news or or something like that and I've had to kind of get in the habit of like limiting what I'm doing on my phone just so that I can not be so reliant on it all the time but you know I think it'll be interesting because you know this topic has been brought up in recent because it is of concern to parents and the schooling associations and you know a lot of companies are being asked who make specific technology to kind of start considering you know how they can solve some of these issues whether that's a way to like report it back to you know parents or teachers or you know family members whatever that may look like but I think it's becoming something where we're not passively looking over it but at the same time it's kind of scary because like is it too late to turn back and I say that I listen to like a really good interview about someone who had helped build one of the more modern social networks that exists now and essentially his concern was like you know did I help build something that has like kind of deterred society and torn it apart from you know the fabric of what we you know how we socialize and how we you know do things differently now than what we used to and he kind of had that like oh no moment and like I'm just hoping like we don't have that oh moment and I think you know with what like Spider-Man says with great power comes great responsibility so you know this technology is a lot of power and we got to be responsible with it yeah you know I think that kind of hits the nail on the head for me is that it is a luxury to have a lot of these items and you know with that luxury comes out of responsibility and at a burden and you know I think this kind of segues into our next like section here is like do kids really learn better with technology and you know for me the answer is I think yes they do learn better I don't know that I would say they learn better with technology than other than they just they learn faster with technology technology allows you to overcome deficiencies in areas like in learning so you know I mean what someone's a visual learner someone's an auditory learner someone's a kinesthetic learner tech can generally help in these sort of areas kinesthetics can be tough sometimes but even kinesthetics if you're within an app where you know moving objects are doing things like that it can help and so these sort of you know devices I do think overcome some of the gaps that we face in these areas and allow sort of the brain to connect some apps and and really function at another level and I know you dropped a couple articles in here John so I'm gonna let you kind of speak on this because I think this is something that you have a little you know bit to add here but overall I think tech generally propels kids to understand concepts faster as far as mastery of those concepts I'm not a hundred percent convinced that the mastery is any better or that the retention is any better years down the line but I think just the the speed of which they get there is probably improved yeah I just like you know I probably agree like I think technology definitely helps individuals learn better all across the board and in some of the articles I had posted here you know it kind of talks about like how like back in the day it was such a luxury to have a book and like to be able to learn and to be able to you know really move up in society you had to like go somewhere to get books and that was the library you know it ended up becoming the library where it was a public place for people to go and essentially if you go went to the library you were given access to all this wealth and knowledge that sat there and and you know some people either didn't you know before the libraries you know it came down to whether you were wealthy or not libraries made it so that non-wealthy individuals could have access to this information and now essentially with the you know with the dawn of the internet and you know this all this information now being in our pocket access to that knowledge has become tenfold and I think I think that that just shows that like you know with being you know having access to all of this you know there's really no excuse not to like you know learn better but kind of like what you said everyone's different so now there's other ways to learn whether that's audibly as well like you said I know for myself I've become more of that individual who learns better by listening and then the other thing I was gonna just add was like with technology as well before where you had like one teacher you're in a classroom the teacher is presenting and you know teaching the whole class school's done for the day you essentially in my case you went to daycare until your parents could pick you up when you went home there may have been little to you know you know no interaction around homework for others it was differently and then you didn't see teacher until the next day and now technology when kids have all this you can essentially have constant communication with your teacher parents have access now to the teacher whether that's through a school website or through an app even in some cases there's email they can email back and forth to know how your kids doing and essentially at no point are you kind of ever leaving the classroom which I think just allows for those kids who actually are striving to learn and parents who want their kids to learn that just have more of it whereas probably back in the day of me and you was kind of like you went to school all right school's done like there was no more school whatsoever and you know they're then maybe doing just your homework but if you got stuck on a problem or something you were stuck you couldn't do anything and now like kids can hop on and be like hey I'm stuck and you know they have someone instantly there to like help them and you know in some ways I'm jealous but at some ways I also think that for us and you know people who maybe didn't grow up with that it also taught other life skills that you know I think kind of go back to kids might be learning better but you know are they are they moving throughout society with other you know beneficial tools as well yeah I mean I think those are all really valid points so I don't know about you but I feel like we did a decent job of summarizing the education space at the moment but I want to just give you a moment here is there anything else you want to bring up no not really other than like I just will say that if I ever end up having children like my children are probably gonna have because I'm the guy who has all the technology so they're probably gonna have a pretty dope setup and I'm gonna expect a lot out of them for learning so future children you better watch out yeah I have to say I think my kids will have iPads at a very young age like to to default maybe but like you know at like two or three years old I'm gonna be like yo you better be mastering that doulingo right now because you got you best be speaking like five languages by the time you're like six so yeah I will be I'll be hounding the kids but so in a little bit of wrap up this week I think I think I should bring up to something that Adam and I discussed a couple weeks ago which was we talked about that Adam still thinks I'm a hoarder and that's the jury's out on that I don't know that I agree with that statement but okay whatever I'll entertain it and Adam says that you know he would like to get me to a place where I watch episodes of hoarders and to see if I could sort of have a reality check if you will and so I sort of made a truth to that and said hey if I can remove one movie off my list I'll watch an episode of Horrors and he turned it into I think like two or three episodes of Horrors which by the way I don't know how long Horrors is is an hour or a half hour I don't know anyway regardless of what it is I kind of was curious from your perspective so I have a couple movies left obviously I have time to land Star Wars a new hope snatch saving private Ryan Ip man what are the rings the fellowship of the ring the Exorcist playing strings and automobiles and die hard what's on the what's on the list for for you John that I that I should remove so for me looking at this list of movies where I'm like you know what like we can make a sacrifice for Lou to watch a few episodes of Porter's which I believe last I watched them they were like 30 minutes I want to say but could be wrong I don't watch orders in a long time but be prepared I feel like we could I would probably either go with Ip man like I don't know if I really could see you getting that into it like I don't know if you're like a martial arts kind of guy or not and the other one I would probably say would probably be um planes trains and automobiles it is a comedy it's just like a dated comedy to degree and I feel like you could probably do without it whereas the other ones there's enough pop culture stuff in it that like I feel like it's important to know okay oh this decision doesn't get any easier I'm not gonna lie the two that were going in my head was how can I get out of watching either Star Wars or Lord of the Rings and so in my head I was just like I don't know Star Wars I feel like I could last through Lord of the Rings really sounds like it's gonna just I don't know man I'm I'm dreading it a little bit but I have some decisions to make I feel like on this front I'm not ready to pick one episode or when I show I'm sorry what movie I'm I'm not gonna watch but um but yeah oh Lou Lou did he say you can do any movie because if he did I'm okay with you sacrificing one of those movies I really am because I feel like in the end if you're gonna have to watch a show like orders you really should be able to pick any of them off the list so right yeah yeah oh yeah and Lord of the Rings just doesn't sound like my cavity at all you know I mean it's it's up there with like Harry Potter for me like like just like oh man this is so far like beyond my ability to hold my attention but we'll see I'm gonna I feel like I'm gonna before I make this decision need to like literally sit down and watch the trailers for like mostly and and decide from that so hopefully I'll have an answer in the next like a couple weeks here that's a dangerous game though Lou sometimes trailers they might be like really lacking and then they're really great or they look really great and then they're really lacking so I've forewarned you on that one sir okay that's fair I think you know it's I don't know I don't know how exactly I'm gonna you know pick this you know this this option you know it's it's such a tough choice and you guys swear the hoarders is like that bad and so I you know I'm like kind of worried but I guess I don't know what I'm even getting into there so you know I really want to pick like a movie I hate now yeah for sure for sure well it's been fun Lou it's been fun thanks for having me again yeah man it was a pleasure to have you back and and it's a pleasure to just chat with you and chat movies and education and again Adam should be back next week so you know you guys get to hear Adam bigger at me again and it's been a couple weeks of silence so that's that's been nice for my years but again check us out online at creativegeniuscast.com and you know find us on Twitter at cgfmcast and if you can rate and like us an Apple podcast that would be great give us any feedback and don't hesitate to reach out to us on the website we'd love to hear your feedback thanks again later I guess notifications still come through the computer even though you're in I have headphones on or something I don't know how that works this this movie thing is really is really stressing me out what I need to to pick I'm I'm whether whichever one you give up whichever one you're forced to watch I will watch it with you if you want to come over I'll watch it with you we can we can watch it movie night with the boys movie night with the boys tell the ladies to stay at home and I'll get you know I get the popcorn popped in and I got the hue light so we can set the mood see I'm so terrible I don't even like popcorn