LVEC 15 Transcript

EPISODE 15

[0:00:00.1] NA: Thank you for tuning in for the La Vie en Code podcast. I’m your host, Nicole
Archambault.

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:06.7] NA: Welcome back to La Vie en Code, a podcast dedicated to the self-educated
web developer. I’m your host Nicole Archambault and today, I have a really great episode for
you. It’s not going to be too long but that’s a good thing. I’m really focusing in now on trying to
deliver the shortcuts and the deep understanding through succinct communication with you
folks.

These are all considerations when looking at how my audience best learns from the content that
I create. You know, length of content, whether it’s visual or not so much and much more. The La
Vie en Code podcast and blog are both actually examples of that type of educational media.

You can learn from my content whether it be through conveying my experiences, successes,
failures, whatnot or actually sharing factual information with you. On the topics you need to learn
in order to become a successful web developer.

All those forms of media make up the information that fuels our education. The podcast we
listen to, the tutorials we watch, the books we read, the blogposts we learn from, it’s all
educational material. Today, we’re going to be talking about one very important field within the
tech industry.

Whether or not you know it, if you’ve been teaching yourself to code, you’ve probably had
exposure to this field in some way or another. And that field is educational technology or EdTech
for short. It can be a bit difficult to understand exactly what educational technology is and what it
isn’t. Since it’s a relatively new conjoiner area between education and technology.

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We’ll be discussing what educational technology actually is and how it can or probably has
already benefited you in your web development education. Then we’ll talk about some of the
great career opportunities that EdTech has to offer.

We’ll save the more in depth topics for other episodes this month though because the entire
month of September is going to be dedicated to the topic of educational technology. Okay, let’s
go.

[EPISODE]

[0:02:26.7] NA: What is educational technology? EdTech is an area of the technology sector
that is dedicated to the development and application of tools including software, hardware and
processes intended to promote education.

Basically, we’re using technology to promote education, it’s pretty simple. And it’s very open
intentionally so. If you learn to code using an online service like Free Code Camp, Tree House,
Corsera or even something like Utumi courses or more text tools like W3 schools. You’ve used
educational technology to promote your own education.

Think about it, these are web applications which use web development technologies, they have
back end frameworks that render the information on the front end. In the form of perhaps
lessons or quizzes, you know, we’ve done quizzes and lessons within a curriculum a lot of us or
even a video like on Tree House for the student to watch.

It’s really kind of meta when you think about it, we’re using technology to learn about
technology. Even though the field of educational technology might seem to be super niched
down, it’s really not. The implications of education by extraction, educational technology, spread
into virtually every industry in existence today.

Caleb Clark, educator and EdTech expert summarized the importance of EdTech this way in one
of his videos, I can’t remember the name of it but it said “Geeks can’t teach and teachers can’t
geek.” What exactly does that mean? Well, the best web developers and more generally
programmers in the world are often not the best teachers.

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I mean, we expect that the people teaching a particular industry skills should be the people
working in that very industry. But what happens for example when someone doesn’t learn best
by doing or following suit. What happens when the expert is too far removed from that
beginner’s perspective? To understand these struggles of the beginners that they’re supposed
to be mentoring and overseeing?

That’s where the educators step in. By combining effectively the super powers of both
technologist and educators, that newly created potential is like boundless and it certainly doesn’t
stop at just teaching technology either. Though, that’s at least one thing that we’ve all seen or
used EdTech for.

If you work a full-time job, have you ever had to go through like on the job training that was web
based? That’s an example of EdTech at work. EdTech is really on a fast track to being
everywhere and in my opinion, that’s exactly where we need it to be.

I have personal experience with EdTech which is one of the reasons that I’m sitting here,
speaking so passionately on the topic on the podcast today. My personal experience with
EdTech began even before I first started learning to code in 2015.

Like my coding journey, it started with Tree House. I had used tools when I was first starting to
teach myself to code. Like W3 schools which is totally EdTech in its own form, it’s more of a
textual form. I didn’t respond really well to it though, however, that issue I mentioned before of
students learning differently, that one affected me really deeply.

Most of my listeners know by this point from my previous podcast episodes that I had a really
tough time with traditional education systems. I was still a great student but it was like an
intensely stressful and anxiety inducing process, learning anything for me.

At some point it just became less about learning for curiosity and more anxiety inducing, having
to learn for tests, competitive, it was just a lot. I didn’t figure out most of the details of how I
learned until I was 29 years old and already well established in the field of customer service at
that time.

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I didn’t have much upward movement available to me there. I started looking at opportunities to
teach myself new skills, just based off curiosity. I wasn’t a fixed mindset if you’re familiar with the
differences between fixed mindset and growth mindset. I wasn’t a fixed mindset exactly but I
wasn’t working with a total growth mindset either.

I think a lot of listeners can probably identify with that. My anxiety told me that I was going to, at
the very least, play hell trying to change careers at 29 and learn web development technology.
Once I found Tree House, all that changed. The difference for me really was in the high-quality
videos, it didn’t look like they were filmed with a potato.

The speed controls so I could kind of speed up through the parts if I had already watched
something. I already kind of knew of knew it and I became very good at processing double time
speed or even one and a half time. Close captioning, even though that’s more for accessibility,
it’s also a fantastic learning tool. Those are all key features, a video used in EdTech.

Being able to pause and restart whenever you need, it gives control to the student in an area
and a way that students traditionally do not have control. That control is not something that they
have even as young children, going through K through 12. With that control, plus the added
benefit of visual teaching, I was like off to the races man. It was incredible. Like EdTech gave
me back my life.

I feel like in so many ways, I owe EdTech my life for that reason. Since then, I’ve been really
focused on putting my entrepreneurial energy combined with the web development skills that
I’ve learned with the help of EdTech back into EdTech.

A lot of the listeners know that my first online course, 30 days to web development which is a
prep course for learning the technology tutorials and the lessons and the courses that you’ll find
out there. I found personally that when I jumped into it head on, I didn’t have very good success
because I had no idea what to expect from the process of changing careers into web
development.

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There’s still kind of bits and pieces as far as information out there. This is pulling all of that
together, it’s a course I wish I’d had. But it’s a course that you’ll want to take before you go out
into the world and start taking all those tutorials and watching YouTube videos and deciding
which course to take to me.

Did not intend for that to be a course promo but that course is going to be opening for presale in
about six weeks and so there will be a lot of free and paid flagship online courses in general
under the La Vie en Code brand, that’s my personal goal. Of course, I continue to write and
podcast and you’ll be getting a lot more of me on both fronts now.

That I’ve been able to delegate a lot of the stuff off of my plate to folks who can do it better than
me. Makes a lot of sense. I’ll be talking briefly about EdTech in entrepreneurship towards the
end of the episode in the careers in EdTech section.

But generally speaking, you have lots of options here, it’s a great feel for somebody who is
really interested in how people learn, really interested in giving back and mostly, you can pave
your own way.

For someone with an entrepreneurial streak like me, being given that creative license to play
with tech and help others at the same time is like, that’s my dream job. I’m sure a lot of you
have experiences with educational technology as well and I would love to hear them. Drop by
the podcast episode page at lavieencode.net/15 and let me know your thoughts.

I read and I usually respond to everything personally so please be sure to engage. What exactly
does EdTech look like though? Well, EdTech can look like a lot of different things that turns out
which is why it may be hiding in plain sight. One of the best definitions of EdTech that I’ve come
across was by an author named Hap Aziz and his 2010 article, The Five Keys To Educational
Technology which I’ve included in the show notes.

He defines EdTech as “The considered implementation of appropriate tools, techniques or

processes that facilitate the application of senses, memory and cognition to enhance teaching
practices and improve learning outcomes.”

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I know that’s a lot and in his article actually, he focuses in on the different parts of that statement
so if you're interested in digging in to that a little bit more, then go ahead and check out his
article. But basically, virtually anything using technology to promote education could be
considered educational technology. But further investigation into what truly constitutes EdTech
taught me that this is really a widely and openly discussed topic.

EdTech can look like you know, any web based learning platform that we know and love,
anyone of them. There are far too many in a name at this point which is quite frankly amazing. It
wasn’t like that even a decade ago. EdTech can be in the form of a mobile or console game that
teaches children and adults alike critical skills and even life. I ran into an amazing example just
recently actually when I discovered the game, Human Resource Machine which teaches
programming principles.

I think it’s available for a bunch of platforms but I’ll link it in the show notes too. You’re effectively
given tasks to filter and sort output based on criteria you’re given in a particular challenge. I
loved it. It was actually really challenging and I learned a lot about programming and looping
and just a whole lot of different stuff they pulled in.

Just while playing a game, that is the power of educational technology. Learning is so immersive
and occasionally so wildly different from the traditional methods of teaching in schools, that
you’re not even cognizant of the fact that you’re actively learning.

While that wasn’t one of the original goals really, it’s just to promote education. That’s certainly a
beautiful added benefit of EdTech. EdTech can actually be in the form of hardware as well.
There are many potential implementations being explored currently for the use of VR, virtual
reality and AR, augmented reality in EdTech. We’ll dig in to some more about that shortly.

In general, just know that EdTech is still a really nebulous and largely uncharted frontier. It’s truly
education at the speed of technology so it’s like we’ve attached education to a rocket of sorts
because technology, we all know as web developers is moving so fast.

I still have lots of questions about regulations and standards, especially after speaking With
Tree House CEO Ryan Carson in our July interview at the intersection of technology and

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education with Ryan Carson which I believe was episode 11. Ryan talked about how Tree
House sought accreditation but were ultimately unable to secure it due to requirements that they
froze their curriculum for two years. Obviously, in a fast-moving industry like web development,
that wouldn’t make for a very relevant curriculum at all.

That obviously kind of limits the opportunities that EdTech companies have to validate and
certify their products through the traditional routes of doing so. Accreditation, namely.

I really personally want to help us get to the point where EdTech is looked upon as a different
and unique iteration of education. For bureaucratic institutions to stop trying to shoehorn it into
the limitations of archaic educational standards. They’re one and the same with education as a
route but they’re very different and need to be treated as such.

The beauty of EdTech is that it can take so many different shapes and be so closely tailored to a
particular field or niche and really be super relevant as supposed to books. Which go out, they
become irrelevant eventually and need to be updated in newer additions which cost money, or
are difficult to get places.

The cost of exploring it all and like everything that EdTech has to offer is so much less than the
traditional K through 12 post-secondary and vocational routes. By embracing that uniqueness
and keeping students and learners at the center of everything that we create in EdTech, we
stand an excellent chance of changing those limiting rules and regulations for the greater good.

That should be what we’re all here for. Now, we’ve been talking about EdTech mostly as a
facilitator for learning to code and building the skills to do your job to the best of your ability. But
you know, what about EdTech for kids in the classroom? We can certainly build products that
are geared toward children as well.

I don’t personally have children but from what I’ve seen and what I’ve heard from people with
kids in school currently, classrooms have changed a lot since even when I graduated from high
school back in the early 2000’s. Of course this depends on the accessibility of technology to the
school or the school district and in a lot of ways, that’s a topic for an entirely different episode
too.

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But, with the cost of technology dropping tremendously, the expansion of broadband internet
access and the advent of microcomputers like the Raspberry Pie, that accessibility gap is
shrinking. Probably the biggest obstacle is appropriating funding to technology and
understanding the massive improvements it can bring to education overall.

Education should be centered around the needs of the student. However, students are limited in
their educations by factors that should not be factors at all. Like where they live and their school
district’s funding and their funding priorities, their family’s socio-economic status, the relevance
of the material available to them. We’re saying with older versions of books, that can be an
issue.

Their differences in learning and the availability of teachers to attend to these differences just to
name a few. With the advent of internet connected technology and EdTech, there is no reason
for these to be factors any longer. Children can have access to the information and the books
that they need in the most relevant additions required without being required to ship expensive
books at exorbitant rates to less populous regions.

EdTech also contributes in making the classroom infinitely bigger. I mentioned differences in
learning as a factor as well and this is really an enormous benefit that EdTech can offer. Special
education teachers and teachers skilled in delivering information via particular teaching styles
are all over the world.

However, they might not be available in a particular school district. Can you imagine like a
classroom where there were multiple teachers for each learning style? One may be, you know,
for the same topic, drawing images on the white board and another connecting ideas to help
more associative learners, another working through a book for textual learners.

What if we could have the teachers pause whenever needed? So, students could take the
breaks they need to absorb information without overwhelm? That was a huge issue for me when
I was going through at least middle school and high school and absolutely through college. In
the case of home schooling even, EdTech not only delivers options for parents who first off,
aren’t teachers and don’t know everything.

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But also has great potential to provide that same accessibility to special education teachers for
their own children. Without having to depend on a school district or paying somebody what
would probably be incredibly high amounts of money. To teach their child one on one in person.

I mean can you think of some applications on your own? I’m sure you can, perhaps I thought of
a teaching assistant can even be replaced by an AI shop bot that’s available by all hours or AR/
VR technology could allow children in remote areas to virtually visit important world landmarks
that they may not have a chance to visit otherwise.

So you can see, I’m so excited just talking about these topics because the potential benefit is so
damn big. So let’s talk a little bit about EdTech and open source education specifically EdTech in
privatization versus open source education. Or I’ve called it open end, for short. For newbies out
there, privatization in this context basically means educators and technologist working for
companies to create proprietary for profit products as opposed to open source to promote
education.

So conversely open source education communities would provide this information for free.
Wikipedia style perhaps, from educators world-wide to create a global living repository of
knowledge and in many ways we’re already there. Wikipedia is in fact a great example.
However, while the future of education requires more than the opinions of the average
Wikipedia contribution, we need teachers.

We need educators that are trained and certified. You know there are definitely options at the
very least though for being verified to join these communities. I also want to make the note at
least. There is nothing wrong at all with privatization. With privatization often comes the funding
for example, required to bring in the best talent from both the educational and the technological
sides.

And create overall better products sooner even than the open source communities are often
capable of doing. Personally, I would love to see open ed welcome professionals and specialists
from all walks of life not just certified educators to freely provide information that technologist

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can adapt into useable EdTech software and web applications effectively just create a repository
of this information.

So that it can be adapted openly by people using technology. Input can always be filtered and
validated but it needs to be contributed first. We need people to actually be willing and to want
to build this repository of information. So it’s my personal dream to be an open source
contributor on the technology side which is why I began flexing my entrepreneur muscle.

Kind of to open up my schedule more in order to do so. While I am sure working in EdTech, it
would be an absolute blast. As far as working for a company, it would have to be a really
forward thinking cutting edge company with a truly hefty mission, to pull me away from open
source in order to build proprietary apps and products.

If you are listening to this and work in open ed, I would love to hear from you and potentially
have you from the podcast even as a guest. We need those perspectives of really dedicated
educators and technologists to show us how important the world of EdTech is and the incredible
things that we can build in it.

So let’s talk about careers in EdTech. First off, are you excited about EdTech? I am and you
could be but you don’t need to be and it might be something that you’re particularly interested in
and that’s okay if not. But EdTech is huge and it’s an area so many people don’t even know
about. We use these tools all the time but we have no idea about the very industry behind it and
their goals.

It’s also an extremely fulfilling career to work in and you know that you are making a big
difference every step of the way. If you want to work in EdTech, fortunately, EdTech brings in all
areas of technology including even technological design. Every aspect that is required in for
example, the building of a native mobile desktop software or web applications.

I think that should cover all of it as well as hardware design and development is desperately
needed to make EdTech the world changing field it’s going to be. But with the help of talented
professionals like you or if you’re not there yet, it gives you a goal to be able to work towards.

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With the help of all of us, it will happen even sooner and really, we’re headed there anyway but
it can happen even sooner.

A lot of job seekers out there want to find work that is both fulfilling and profitable and it was
actually just recently that I found out that I was even completely wrong about what I thought
about EdTech, which was limited in it of itself. Well the open source world may not offer many
opportunities to get paid for your work.

There actually has been a dramatic increase in venture capital investment in education
technology startups in the last 10 years. In a 2013 Forbes article by Ellie Sheriff called EdTech
Dream Jobs, I’ve liked it in the show notes as well, ‘EdTech Dream Jobs: Doing Good By
Getting Paid.’ She remarked on the topic:

“Where do teachers generally tap out?” At around $80,000 a year and only if they get master/
doctoral degrees. Educational entrepreneurs have shown that making money and doing good
are not always misaligned. So we have some options here, if you are interested first at getting a
job in educational technology here are some places to start.

First off, see if there are any local events for EdTech now. That are centered around EdTech.
They’ll likely be open to everyone but with the special focus on building connections between
specifically entrepreneurs, technologists and educators. There is a very particular reason that I
am suggesting in-person meet ups first.

These kinds of conversations that you are going to have surrounding EdTech and the goals of it
and where you might fit in, are really incredible to have in person. It’s this amazing opportunity
to make a truly deep connection with someone over a passionate meaningful topic. Sometimes
you get that when you are talking tech alone and sometimes not.

Typically I find the most passionate and interesting people in tech, are the ones doing
something meaningful with their tech skills. I am super bored by most conversations about pure
tech anyway unless it is based on a question that I specifically asked. So my best advice is to let
yourself be interested in asking questions.

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And finding people who have great answers embedded into their overall experience and their
perspectives. It’s also probably worth noting that even if you are not naturally curious, that is a
pretty good indicator that EdTech might not be for you and so that’s perfectly fine too. It’s really
valuable information to have.

So you can pivot and find something that you really love. I have pivoted many times before I
came on to EdTech finally. So you can also join some EdTech communities online which I highly
recommend. Try the meet ups first but the EdTech communities online are pretty vibrant and
introduce yourself as someone who’s interested in the field.

You don’t have to misrepresent yourself or represent yourself as anything more than that. It’s
okay to be brand new at something. So see if forums have pinned posts with useful information
for new comers. If you have never contributed even especially to an open source community, it’s
a very much the same kind of process when you’re looking for jobs.

You are coming into a new environment. You want to be respectful, you want to observe, you
want to ask questions, good questions is the key. You know for a good hack that I have been
using in particular, you can also search the entire forums domain in Google for terms like “new”
or “first time” to read feedback that others have gotten.

And doing that also shows others that are already established in the community that you know
how to utilize information that’s already out there available to you. Which will make any
community at least a little bit kinder in response to a new comer. Networking though is still the
best way to get a job, way far more effective than applying to jobs online.

Just bottom line, that’s the way it has always been. Plus, you get to establish some wonderful
connections with EdTech in particular really forward thinking, creative, exceptional people
especially EdTech entrepreneurs which I am now one. I found there just some of the coolest
people that I’ve ever met. So it is important to note that EdTech needs even more diversity than
tech in general.

Both in the educator and the technologist roles. Every product created to promote education
stands this enormous potential to be a game changer and reach millions of people. Many of

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those people are children who are still learning the world. We have this amazing ability and
opportunity to form minds and do the right thing.

This is not just an important but like a critical responsibility of both educators and technologists
alike, that unfortunately often goes overlooked. The only victim in that case is the student or the
learner truly. So EdTech is also an incredible field for entrepreneurship opportunities. We’ll be
talking more about entrepreneurship in web development in the month of October.

But generally speaking, if you create a solution that solves the pain points of the education
world, you could very well be on the path to a very lucrative entrepreneurial career. Also I’ve
realized fairly recently, it makes sense though, grants are often available to individuals and
organizations that are looking to solve problems with their tech skills.

I have included some links to the office of educational technology which is dedicated to helping
anybody that’s interested and contributing to EdTech to get informed and to make the
connections they need to get involved. My current career has largely pivoted from freelancing
and front end web development to building web development courses.

Web development topic based courses, using a web based learning management system or
LMS. Rather than recreate the wheel and build my own LMS at this point, I am using one that
already exists, Teachable. Teachable is an EdTech company. Learning management systems
are an amazing example also of a successful business idea.

If you can manage to solve the pain points of the people who are going to be using it. One
fosters individuals abilities to share the information that they possess, even if they don’t think
they are a total expert on the subject. I know that is something that we all wrestle with and as an
end result it helps to promote education.

So personally, I blazed my own entrepreneurship trail and for the past year, I have been
gradually making progress after committing myself to closing the information gap between self-
educated students and traditionally educated four year CS degree students. I’ll be sharing a lot
more about that experience for anyone who might be interested on the La Vie en Code blog and

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also on the podcast. So be sure to subscribe to the La Vie en Code newsletter on the website
for post updates.

[OUTRO]

[0:34:41.8] NA: So I hope today’s episode helped listeners to understand what educational
technology does and what it looks like and what it holds as far as career potential. It’s nearly
impossible to summarize so much of what I’ve learned about EdTech in a single episode. So the
entire month of September is going to be dedicated to educational technology and web
development in particular.

Over the next three weeks, we will delve into some more juicy EdTech topics and actually, I
want to give everybody an update too kind about what’s going on with me. I am in the process
of building up an episode backlog of podcast episodes while also creating 30 Days To Web
Development. The course has pivoted quite a bit.

I have a lot more information than I have before so it’s a lot but I also have some badass women
entrepreneurs by my side now to help me out with everything. So in a couple of weeks, you’ll
start seeing more about 30 Days To Web Development as I ramp up for the actual course pre-
sale. Announcements about the course pre-sale will probably be coming out in the next few
weeks.

So if you haven’t already, be sure to go over to 30 Days To Web Development’s course page at
www.30daystowebdevelopment.com and sign up for the course pre-sale notifications. This
course is everything that I wish I had had before I wondered out into the vast expanse of the
inter webs, trying to teach myself web development and change my career.

I had no idea what I was doing and the expert advice that I received over the past two years,
showed me everything I could have done differently. I can’t go back and do it differently and I’m
continuing to use the things that I’ve learned now to further my education even though I have
already completed my career transition.

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So what I would like to do instead is take that knowledge and help to transform other people in
their careers and 30 Days is going to transform some lives. I hope you’ll check it out and get
those notifications so you don’t miss out on the A, super limited time and B, super limited space
offer that I’ll have only for the subscribers.

Again, that’s www.30daystowebdevelopment.com and you’ll probably be seeing the page

change soon actually as I refine some of the copy. To really show you folks how much of a
transformation you are going to get for the value.

Thank you again everybody for sharing my EdTech joy today. Be sure to keep learning and until
next time, peace, love and code.

[END]

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