Feb. 16, 2025
Episode 312: Robby Cobbs
Episode 312: I Used My Boat Money to Start Tech My School with Robby Cobbs What would you do if you saw an entire generation of students being left behind? Robby Cobbs saw the need for better technology, teacher training, and modern resources in Puerto Rican schools—and he took action. Instead of buying a boat, he used his savings to launch Tech My School, a nonprofit dedicated to equipping underserved schools with technology and empowering teachers to bring 21st-century learning to their stu...
Episode 312: I Used My Boat Money to Start Tech My School with Robby Cobbs
What would you do if you saw an entire generation of students being left behind? Robby Cobbs saw the need for better technology, teacher training, and modern resources in Puerto Rican schools—and he took action. Instead of buying a boat, he used his savings to launch Tech My School, a nonprofit dedicated to equipping underserved schools with technology and empowering teachers to bring 21st-century learning to their students.
In this powerful episode, Robby shares his journey from EdTech leader to nonprofit founder, the shocking state of education in Puerto Rico, and how Tech My School is bridging the digital divide.
💡 Topics We Cover:
✔️ The challenges Puerto Rican schools face & why the education system is struggling
✔️ How Tech My School is transforming schools through technology & professional development
✔️ Robby’s international journey in education—from California to Africa & beyond
✔️ The Tech My School Conference in March—a game-changer for EdTech in Puerto Rico!
🚀 Get Involved & Make an Impact!
🔗 Learn more about Tech My School: https://techmyschool.org
🎟️ Register for the Tech My School Conference (March 15-16): https://techmyschool.org/conference/
📚 Check out Robby’s book Tech Centered Learning Driven: A Guide to Improving Your Educational Career with Technology: https://amzn.to/4hFtCya
🙌 A huge shoutout to our sponsors @EduaideAI & @Yellowdig for supporting this mission!
🔥 Don’t forget to LIKE, COMMENT & SUBSCRIBE! We’re so close to 1,000 subscribers—help us get there!
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Thank you for watching or listening to our show!
Until Next Time, Stay Techie!
-Fonz
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00:30 - Educator's Journey in EdTech and Service
07:44 - Journey From Journalism to Education
22:42 - Tech My School Mission and Values
35:37 - World-Class Ed Tech Conference Expansion
42:42 - Tech Transformation in Education
53:04 - Education, Impact, and Inspiration
WEBVTT
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Hello everybody and welcome to another great episode of my EdTechWife.
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Thank you so much for joining us on this wonderful day and, wherever it is that you're joining us from around the world, thank you, as always, for all of your support.
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We appreciate all the likes, the shares, the follows, and thank you so, so much for interacting with our content.
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As you know, we do what we do for you to bring you some amazing conversations and amazing guests and, as always, guys, there's no difference, like today, we have an amazing guest and we always try and bring you some amazing perspectives, stories and viewpoints.
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And today I'm really excited to welcome to the show Robbie Cobbs, who is here today joining us, and he's going to talk about a nonprofit called Tech, my School and just the wonderful mission that they have.
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And so, robbie, how are you doing this evening?
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Doing great.
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Thank you so much for having me Pleasure to be on your show.
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I've been a fan for a long time and, yeah, a bit surreal being on the show, so I'm ready to get going.
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Awesome, robbie.
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Well, thank you so much.
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Like I said, it's great to have you on as a guest and it is great to just connect with you and then learn a little bit more about what you're doing and this mission that you have through Tech, my School.
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But before we get into that conversation, robbie, if you can share with us a little bit of your backstory, so we would love for you to just give us a little introduction and tell us what your context is in the world of education.
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Yeah, like all the listeners and followers, I'm an educator at heart.
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I've always been an educator, started in 2000 in Hawaii working at some inner city schools there, then went back to California I'm from San Diego originally and started working inner city there for about five years international school systems and I was an elementary school teacher to start kindergarten second, third, fourth and then fell in love with technology really in my own core values.
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I love to learn and I love to serve and help others and with technology it just fills both of those buckets, because you're always having to learn all the time and then you always need to teach people how to use the tech.
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So I kind of shifted in towards that as a teacher, became the techie teacher and went back to Silicon Valley, got my master's in ed tech at San Francisco State and I was working at Yucheng International School there, right by Google.
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Campus was a phenomenal place to just, you know, expand as an educator, really to delve into the world of ed tech, being kind of at the epicenter right there, and spent three great years there and then went from a fourth grade teacher slash, you know, tech integrator on campus we were.
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It was a small school, so I was basically the tech guy to the American International School of JEDA in Saudi Arabia and I was the tech director there for four years and then, from Jeddah, went to the American School of Lagos in Nigeria and was a tech director there as well for a couple of years, during those COVID years, when I was in Jeddah.
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That is a place that's I'm not sure exactly the exact term for it, but essentially it's a place where anything can happen and you have to be prepared and ready so that we're really there's a readiness there.
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And so we had remote learning plans and remote days of school and virtual learning days before.
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It was cool.
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Before, you know, covid happened.
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So B Cameron, who's kind of a legend, implemented that with all of the different schools in the NISA region and, yeah, so I became kind of a virtual or remote learning specialist, went to Nigeria to you know, kind of prepare the school for that.
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But we were thinking more like Ebola or maybe like a political uprising or something like that could interrupt school, and so developed the remote learning plan before COVID and we're training teachers prior to COVID.
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And then, when COVID happened, we just, you know, we didn't have to flip a switch.
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We just, you know, continued on what we were doing.
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We just implemented the plan and it was a fairly smooth transition.
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We had a great leadership team there that helped really smooth things out.
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And in that process I burned myself and many teachers out because we were so good at, you know, replicating the physical classroom into the virtual one.
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And I moved to Puerto Rico with my family to take a one-year sabbatical to write my book on ed tech and just kind of take a breather, I guess you could say.
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And I'll leave the story there for the next question.
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Wow, that is fantastic, Robby, just the level of experience that you have and, most importantly too, I'm just really so interested in the different viewpoints and perspectives that you were able to learn along the way.
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As educators, not many of us have that opportunity that you had to really go overseas also, and then, you know, come back here and then the work that you're doing in Puerto Rico now, and so I am just like in awe of that.
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And so my question, before we get into really the heart of the matter too, is was education something that you knew you wanted to do, or was it something that you kind of fell into and then just fell in love with it and just really, you know, just went all in on it?
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yeah, so as a child, you know I was the poorest kid in school.
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I was Kenny from South Park.
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I went to a public elementary school in El Cajon, california school, a school called Crest Elementary, and it was a great school, a really nice little town, little mountain town, kind of like South Park again.
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But yeah, I was the poor kid.
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School was kind of my sanctuary.
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That's where food was, electricity, was adults who cared about me, all those things that many kids go through if they have kind of a rough upbringing.
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But yeah, so school is always a sanctuary.
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I always felt very comfortable in school.
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I was good at school, I liked school, but I wasn't planning on being a teacher per se.
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I went to Hawaii my freshman year of college because I wanted to be in Hawaii.
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I thought it'd be a great place.
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I was actually trying to follow Dan Patrick.
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I was with the sports editor in high school and loved writing, loved sports I still do and while I was there I got a job at a surf shop.
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You know it was like the coolest job you can get in Hawaii while going to university there.
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But I needed a little bit more money.
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Went back to university I said, hey guys, can I, you know, get a job at the library, working at the library doing my homework, getting paid to do my homework?
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And they were like, well, that job's taken.
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But we have an opportunity for you to work in an elementary school through the America Reads program in the inner city schools in Hawaii.
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You know, would you be interested?
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No-transcript those positive memories I had at school.
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So it was just such a comfortable place for me and a place where I'm working with kids who really need the help and I'm serving them and it just felt so great.
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And that freshman year of university I knew I wanted to be a teacher.
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I changed my major and from that point forward I was just working in schools, like always interning, always working in schools, all throughout college and immediately after that.
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Okay.
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So I got to ask, though, what was the major that you were intending to follow?
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And then, of course, now you moved to education.
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What was the major that you were intending to follow?
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And then, of course, now you moved to education.
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So I got a journalism major because I thought I was going to be a sports writer.
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But again, it was my freshman year, first semester, and then within that first month or two I went to a school and then when I transferred I figured I would teach at the elementary school that raised me back in El Cajon.
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And so I transferred to San Diego State and I kind of asked the counselor like so what's a teacher major?
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What is the major?
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I don't know what the major is to be an elementary school teacher.
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Is it called elementary school teaching or what?
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And they said no, it's called liberal studies.
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You get a liberal studies degree.
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It's you know multiple subjects in every subject, so you're kind of knowledgeable in all things a mile wide and a foot deep or whatever.
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And so that was the major.
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I switched to and took all the classes and for me I really liked it simply because I was one of the few guys in the class, so there'd be like 200 women in me.
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So it was great and yeah, it was just, it was a great experience.
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San Diego State is a phenomenal school.
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It's the top education school in the state of California for teachers and they, you know, huge student body.
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I think it's like you know, 30,000, 40,000 students, stanford, university of Texas, a&m.
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So she was at San Diego State when I was there.
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So it was great to be on campus when she was there.
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She was the head of the history department and, yeah, I just had such a phenomenal time at San Diego State and I'm a proud alumni, a proud Aztec, and I always, you know, follow the program and I had future siblings who went to San Diego State and I, you know, kind of encouraged them.
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My brother, he's a teacher that came through San Diego State.
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He now coaches high school football in El Cajon at Granite Hills High School where we all went.
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All of the Cobbs family went to Granite Hills High School and he's kind of a local legend there.
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He won a state football championship and all that stuff.
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So, yeah, yeah, just a proud Aztec.
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And you know it was really early in my career.
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It wasn't one of those situations where I had, like you know, got a degree in history because I love history, and then fell into teaching.
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It was like I interned freshman year, you know, first semester, fell in love with it and went, you know, dove into the deep end straight into it.
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I knew this is what I wanted to do.
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That's fantastic, you know.
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And so right now, what I'm picking up, though, too, is very similar to me growing up in a situation like that.
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You know, very, very poor.
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You know parents just my dad working out in the citrus farm, my mom just kind of doing odd jobs and everything.
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But I never thought I would go into teaching and, as a matter of fact, I always said I will never go into teaching.
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But I went in just because of that dream of, hey, I need to take care of my parents, and being an only child pressure's on and I know many people have heard the story here because I've said it a couple of times but going into college, I was like, well, I'm going to go do business, you know business security, make some money, take care of my parents and so on.
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And then, you know, fork in the road moment.
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And then I got into teaching and I just absolutely fell in love with it.
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But what I'm picking up, you know, and listening to your story, and I mean we'll definitely dive into the conversation but I think this really is also what, what I feel I'm picking up from you two in the conversation and your passion of what you're doing through TechMyyschoolorg is that being where you were, how you were brought up and how you know you went to school like you mentioned, like hey, adults that care about me, food and so on, and then going back and maybe kind of seeing yourself a little bit in some of the students just really ignited that passion for you two as well.
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So you know, I'm sure I just want to ask you know, did that have a tremendous role in what it is that you're doing now?
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And especially, you know, all the traveling and so on.
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Was that kind of like your mission to say, hey, I want to give everybody, or as many children or students as possible, the opportunities that I never had, or maybe now the opportunities that I have, so just to be that catalyst for them.
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Yeah, no, thank you for asking the question and I wanted to quickly mention, before getting into it, my family were also, you know, they were farmers, that we were Okies.
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Actually, the Cobbs family has been in America since the 1620s, so a very long time Started out as tobacco farmers from England and they stayed in agricultural all the way from Virginia to Missouri, down to Texas and then Oklahoma, and then in the 20s the Dust Bowl happened and we were the Grapes of Wrath.
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We came to California and we, you know, picking fruit and all those kinds of things, and then my grandfather, you know, built an empire through construction.
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So all the men in my family transitioned from agriculture to construction and the message to me was always don't do this, don't be a labored worker, you need to work with your brain, and so I always envisioned myself wearing a tie.
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I knew I wanted to wear a tie and as a teacher, I always did wear a tie.
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So very, very similar in that sense.
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But, yeah, so I do have a unique lens in the sense that I've traveled to 60 countries, so I've been able to see a lot of the world Africa, middle East, I've lived these places East Asia, europe, latin America, you know the US, obviously.
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So I've seen a bunch of countries and you know, when I was in Africa, right before we came to Puerto Rico, we were at the American National School of Legos.
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It's a wealthy school.
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It's kind of where all the elites go the generals, the diplomat kids, the doctors, the business people.
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They put their kids in these elite schools because it's a pipeline into the US really.
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But we would serve local schools in the community.
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We had a program where you'd bring in local teachers and we'd teach them about ed tech or just basic teaching pedagogy to help the community.
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We had a program where we were donating computers and stuff to local schools nearby, part of our purchase program cycle.
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And then also, just on a personal level, I would take my children and we'd go to orphanages and we'd donate toys and stuff like that to orphanages in Africa.
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And whenever I was in those countries and we donate toys and stuff like that to orphanages in Africa, and whenever I was in those countries whether it was Nigeria or India, kazakhstan, all these different countries that were, let's say, less fortunate we would do what we could to help them by giving things to them computers and services and things like that.
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But ultimately it was their country and we were a guest in that country, you know, and I'd lived as a guest in the country for, you know, a majority of my career living as a guest in other countries, learning these cultures and traveling and those type of things.
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But when I came to Puerto Rico I didn't know a lot about the history of Puerto Rico.
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I knew it was beautiful and it was America kind of.
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But yeah, we just kind of came here with open eyes and open ears and open hearts and kind of took things as they came.
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And after my experience in Hawaii, working in inner city schools, I figured Puerto Rican education wouldn't be as strong as, let's say, new York or maybe even Florida, but it would be something similar, like when you're in a school in Hawaii versus a school in California.
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The schools in California typically are stronger, they're better performing, better resourced or those kinds of things, but they're not that much different.
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There's a drop off a little bit, but it's not, you know, of consequence, let's just say.
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But coming to Puerto Rico, I was absolutely shocked because I put my boys first.
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We were looking for schools to put them into and then we eventually, you know, bought a house and put our boys in a local school and we were just absolutely shocked at the state of education from the schools we visited and the ones we chose, simply because of that stark difference in quality from a US mainland school versus the US schools in Puerto Rico.
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So for those who don't know the history of Puerto Rico, you know Puerto Rico became part of America through somewhat controversial ways, through conquest, in the late 1800s and right before World War I every Puerto Rican became a US citizen, so everyone has the blue passport.
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They've been America since then.
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There's been some controversial laws that have been kind of strings attached I guess you can say the Jones Act and those kinds of things.
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But ultimately everyone here is an American.
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You see the United States Postal Service, national Park Services, you've got US Dollar, walmart, wendy's, the whole thing.
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Spain was here for many, many years, 400 years, 500 years.
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So we just kind of took it over after the Spanish-American War from them.
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But so they predominantly speak Spanish here, like most of the Latin world.
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But they're American.
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So they can come and work and live in Florida or Oklahoma or Nebraska tomorrow if they want.
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They just buy a flight, get on a Spirit Airlines flight or United Airlines or whatever.
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Go there, apply for a job, live and work the same way anyone else goes to any other states, and you really have the same voting power pretty much, except for the presidency.
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So you can vote all the way up into the primary, but after that there's no vote for president, which is kind of part of that original deal that they made.
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So anyways, with that said, everyone here is an American and my lens is simply I'm new to this island, they're American, I'm American, they have a US passport, I have a US passport, and if I go to any of these 60 countries I've been to.
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That is how you are judged.
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You're judged by your passport, right.
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If I'm in Germany, it doesn't matter which town or province I'm in.
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If you have the German passport, you're German right, which town or province I'm in.
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If you have the German password, you're German right, and you'd see a similar level of education.
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You'd see a similar level, similar service of everything.
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And so coming here was shocking, because there is a stark difference.
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And when I put my boys in the school, it wasn't that.
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And when I was in Africa, I was like this is their country.
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You know, I'll give them computers, but it's their place, you know, here in Puerto Rico I was like this is their country.
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You know, I'll give them computers, but it's their place.
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You know, here in Puerto Rico.
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I immediately felt like this is my country, this is my community.
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I need to do something to help these kids because I was talking with students who were 16, 17 years old.
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They were just graduating, or getting ready to graduate, high school.
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They barely spoke English, they had never used a computer before and if you look statistically where Puerto Rico is at, if you look at their PISA scores the last time they took it, I mean, puerto Rico is the outlier of outliers when it comes to testing.
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They score statistically worse than Mexico.
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And me, being from San Diego, I was very sensitive to that because I grew up right on the border.
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I remember going into Mexico as a young person thinking, wow, I'm so fortunate to be born in America instead of being born in Mexico.
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Because of that disparity of, you know, three, four, five grade levels below the US national average was really shocking for me and it was really just a call to action because, as I was mentioning before, I grew up poor but I always had public school and if you go to an American public school.
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I worked inner city schools for many years.
00:20:17.640 --> 00:20:29.768
I've never saw a kid who worked their butt off, who didn't achieve Like if you worked really hard and just ignored the noise, the family, you know, traumatic things happening to you, friends who are, you know, in trouble and all that things.
00:20:29.788 --> 00:20:38.078
If you can just block that out and just focus on study, pay attention to your teacher who cares about you, and just work hard, all of those kids graduate and become successful.
00:20:38.078 --> 00:20:39.221
I really believe that.
00:20:39.221 --> 00:20:43.739
And so they have that rope to pull themselves out of any sort of situation.
00:20:43.739 --> 00:20:50.526
And that's just the beautiful thing about America is the fact that no matter where you come from, what you look like, what you sound like, your accent, it doesn't matter.
00:20:50.526 --> 00:20:54.403
If you work hard, you play by the rules, you can get ahead.
00:20:54.403 --> 00:21:03.158
And I'm not saying everyone starts at the same place, but it's just that there is a system, there is a rope system where you can pull yourself out to have a good life.
00:21:03.239 --> 00:21:24.116
And I feel here my fellow Americans, for these Puerto Rican kids who didn't have one.
00:21:24.116 --> 00:21:35.398
Because the state of these schools you know the first school I go into you know computers are not really adherent to teachers, kids don't have, it's mostly just it looked similar to Africa, honestly it was.
00:21:35.398 --> 00:21:45.439
You go into a concrete slab where there's a chalkboard, some old desk and a fan and you know that's it.
00:21:45.439 --> 00:21:45.839
That's all there is.
00:21:45.839 --> 00:22:05.020
And you know a teacher teaching in a way the best they can, but in a very traditional manner, you know copy off the board those kinds of things and you know and I see it as this tech person that I know I can come in and help support the school, and so that's what I did.
00:22:05.020 --> 00:22:08.896
I started going into schools and serving Wow.
00:22:08.936 --> 00:22:35.064
Robbie, like that is amazing and very commendable, like just listening to your heart and your passion, and it's no wonder, you know, tech my School is doing what you're talking about right now, and just bringing you, just bringing professional development, bringing just resources to teachers, because there is a need there and, most importantly, like you mentioned, that rope, giving them a rope, and I love that.
00:22:35.064 --> 00:22:41.425
So, robbie, now that we're going to talk a little bit more about what the work well, you've described really the way the situation is.
00:22:41.425 --> 00:22:46.203
There's some why, and now your work through Tech my School.
00:22:46.203 --> 00:22:47.728
How did that come about?
00:22:47.728 --> 00:22:56.506
And one thing that I'm loving, though, is like on your mission statement and your core values and, of course, in the back, in the background, we see the parrot there.
00:22:57.055 --> 00:22:57.415
And can you?
00:22:57.455 --> 00:23:17.250
tell us a little bit about number one Tech, my School, what the mission and vision is, and then just kind of break down you know your core values so our audience members can know you know the work that you're doing and also how might they be able to also help in maybe extending a rope and extending that hand for the education system?
00:23:17.250 --> 00:23:19.041
So tell me a little bit more about that.
00:23:19.815 --> 00:23:26.766
Yeah, so it started with the one school that we were serving and I went from new parent to training all staff the first month.
00:23:26.766 --> 00:23:37.965
And so for any parent who has kids, imagine walking into a new school and becoming the trainer for all teachers that first month and not a necessarily traditional or normal thing to do.
00:23:37.965 --> 00:23:47.949
But I think that speaks a bit to the state of where education is here and also just the fortunate lifestyle I've had to just learn so much in ed tech.
00:23:47.949 --> 00:23:55.479
You know, prior to my career I had been a tech director and presented at a number of great conferences and kind of been a leader in that sense.
00:23:55.479 --> 00:23:58.288
So there was definitely a big need here.
00:23:58.288 --> 00:24:05.097
So we just started out helping one school and you know I had this money for a boat coming to Puerto Rico.
00:24:05.097 --> 00:24:14.345
I wanted to write the book on ed tech and then buy this boat and I ended up not buying the boat and tech my school became my kind of my boat.
00:24:14.345 --> 00:24:25.850
I used my boat money to get computers, get software and just basically equip this school, tech, this school up to a place where it could be a little bit more on the 21st century side of things.
00:24:25.850 --> 00:24:29.725
So, for example, they didn't have an LMS, a learning management system.
00:24:29.725 --> 00:24:31.602
They didn't have a student information system.
00:24:31.602 --> 00:24:34.443
They didn't have emails for the teachers.
00:24:34.443 --> 00:24:37.304
Everyone was using a personal email, if they even had an email.
00:24:37.304 --> 00:24:40.703
There was no library, no public library, no school libraries.
00:24:40.703 --> 00:24:42.663
There was a few books in the classroom but not a lot.
00:24:42.663 --> 00:25:05.039
And so we just, you know, having that tech director lens, I just kind of came in and just did a needs assessment, you know, orally and visually, by talking with the teachers and the director and just looking through the school, and immediately got to work, you know, helping the school modernize and just using that money to give these professional trainings to the teachers.
00:25:05.039 --> 00:25:09.977
And I had, you know, spent the past nine years giving professional development to staff.
00:25:09.977 --> 00:25:20.003
So I felt, you know, really comfortable doing so and it became an official nonprofit probably a couple months into it.
00:25:20.003 --> 00:25:23.092
I had never worked, you know, as a nonprofit.
00:25:23.092 --> 00:25:25.638
I never thought I would start a nonprofit or anything like that.
00:25:25.638 --> 00:25:33.938
It was just the sense that, like, as I was helping the school, teachers in a church were talking to another set of teachers and said, hey, can you help our school as well?
00:25:33.938 --> 00:25:36.744
There's this, you know, they call the gringos.
00:25:36.744 --> 00:25:37.586
There's this gringo here.
00:25:37.586 --> 00:25:40.600
He's helping us with the computers and trainings.
00:25:40.600 --> 00:25:41.302
Can you help us?
00:25:41.302 --> 00:25:43.448
And so we did.
00:25:43.448 --> 00:25:48.776
We gladly took another school on and so we started to expand very quickly and so I started the nonprofit.
00:25:50.319 --> 00:25:57.700
The name Tech my School came from just writing a bunch of names down, asking my friends and colleagues like what name should it go with?
00:25:57.700 --> 00:26:07.316
And when we go into a school we do a needs assessment and then we, based off that needs assessment, we then create a tech plan and then fulfill that tech plan in partnership with the school.
00:26:07.316 --> 00:26:14.876
We call this plan the ITP or individualized tech plan, kind of like a school has an IEP.
00:26:14.876 --> 00:26:18.950
You know, every student is different ITP, every school is different.
00:26:18.950 --> 00:26:23.304
And yeah, from this tech plan we go in and we do a complete audit.
00:26:23.304 --> 00:26:30.788
Now our lens that we had is one that is from some of the world's best schools.
00:26:30.788 --> 00:26:36.164
So it was a very comprehensive process that we went through to build these tech plans.
00:26:36.164 --> 00:26:38.249
Even though the school had relatively nothing.
00:26:38.249 --> 00:27:03.144
The documentation and the artifacts that we created in the process of doing these tech plans were very comprehensive Because in my mind I figured, if I'm going to start with this role and help these schools here in Puerto Rico, why not start to branch out eventually one day and help other schools, and so it had to be world class, not just a Puerto Rican-only type of system.
00:27:03.144 --> 00:27:06.196
So that's how it started.
00:27:06.196 --> 00:27:11.477
It started with building the tech plans and serving schools, trainings, all those kinds of things, donating tech.
00:27:11.938 --> 00:27:18.499
As a former tech director I know and anyone listening who's a tech person what do you do with your old tech in your school?
00:27:18.499 --> 00:27:21.244
The answer is put into a closet.
00:27:21.244 --> 00:27:24.698
Because you buy, you know, 25% of inventory every year.
00:27:24.698 --> 00:27:39.787
From that 25% it's sitting there, you put in the closet in case something breaks nothing ever does and then after a few years the closet becomes full and you end up calling a recycling company to come take it all away and you pay them money.
00:27:39.787 --> 00:27:43.700
Recycling company to come take it all away and you pay them money.
00:27:43.700 --> 00:27:53.696
So I got on the phone and started calling universities, schools, just organizations, companies, meeting people, talking to them, saying, hey, if you have old tech, used tech, please give it to us because we'll repurpose it and put it into schools.
00:27:55.661 --> 00:28:04.500
One of the things that we noticed was when we were going into public schools, the public school district here gave teachers computers.
00:28:04.500 --> 00:28:16.361
Once COVID happened, they gave everyone kind of computers but they didn't give them a lot of training and so after COVID was over, they kind of just took those old computers and stuck them in a closet and went back to their old ways of teaching.
00:28:16.361 --> 00:28:26.169
And as an ed tech leader, you know, when it comes to tech professional development it's not a one-time thing, it's got to be continual, it's got to be ongoing.
00:28:26.169 --> 00:28:30.355
Even the tech teachers need support and learning because things are evolving so quickly.
00:28:30.355 --> 00:28:45.038
So that model of just training teachers all the time and, you know, ensuring the technology we do get from schools that is repurposed is going to be not only just given to a school.
00:28:45.038 --> 00:28:46.843
We're not just going to give them a fish.
00:28:46.843 --> 00:28:48.046
We're going to teach them how to fish.
00:28:48.046 --> 00:29:01.365
We're going to be using the tech with them all the time, every month, going in their classrooms, observing the teachers, like really becoming that tech department that they don't have, and just ensuring we get maximum value of the tech that's donated.
00:29:01.365 --> 00:29:07.327
So over the past four years we've been able to donate over 1,000 computers to schools.
00:29:07.327 --> 00:29:15.148
Yeah, and it's all thanks to the great donors and partners that we've met along the way who helped us.
00:29:15.148 --> 00:29:29.422
We're predominantly funded through donations, so we've now been going, for this is our fourth school year and we've been able to serve 30 schools.
00:29:29.422 --> 00:29:34.078
So we started with one, and then two, and then four, and then 14, and then 30.
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