Welcome to make EdTech 100. I am LindyHoc Educator, K 12 Ed Tech Advisor, and your host. This is a podcast where we keep it real about what actually works in classrooms. No hype, no overwhelm, just practical strategies, honest stories and tools that make a real difference for teachers and students. So come along with me on a journey to make EdTech 100. In the last episode of Make a Tech 100, I shared the research behind teacher created video.
Spoiler alert, that research is really grounded in the teacher-student relationship and how important that relationship is. I shared that it is important for students to get to know their teachers, not on a super intimate level, but they need to know that you are human who enjoys things, and people outside of your teaching practice and your classroom. In that vein, I think it's important for you to get to know me a little.
We don't have the same relationship as you do with your students, but if I'm going to be in your ear, you should know a little bit about me. So here it goes. My name is LindyHocenberry. Think of the LindyHoc dance. I am the LindyHoc. Hawkenberry is a lot. Blame it on Chad Hawkenberry, AKA, my husband. So LindyHoc is a lot easier to remember. And you know, you could think of the Lindy Hop dance whenever you think of me. It's a good way to remember that.
On that note, sometimes people ask me if I can do the Lindy Hop. No. No, I cannot. I have many gifts in this life, and one of those gifts is not dancing. Even though I am a terrible dancer. I do have it on my bucket list to learn the Lindy hops someday. If any of you are dancers and are really brave and have a lot of patience, I'm game. Many of my listeners are teachers, so I know you have a lot of patience. I know the Lindy Hop is a very swingy type of dance. I've seen it.
I have very little confidence in my ability to execute it though. I am a lifelong educator. I've spent my entire career in education. I started as a middle and high school, CTE teacher, so career and technical education. That is a very broad field. I taught family and consumer sciences and business education in rural Montana. I am a Montanan. I've lived here since I was 11. I grew up in super, super rural southeast Montana, about as rural as you can get.
If you want to look at a map, you can find Koka, Montana. Yes, Koka. It is. It is a real place. E-K-A-L-A-K-A, if you need spelling of that. I Googled the population to make sure I was giving accurate information. And the population of AKA in the 2020 census was exactly 399 souls. And to give you an idea of just how rural it is, the entire county has 1,415 people. As of the 2020 census. I Googled that as well because the entire county is cows.
In fact, Montana is one of the few states that has more cows than people. FYI. Fun fact for you, joining Montana with a high cow to people ratio in case you ever wanted to know a South Dakota, Wyoming, and Nebraska. I think there's a few others, but those are the top four. I think South Dakota, I need to fact check this, but I'm pretty sure South Dakota is number one. Highest ratio beating Montana of cows to people.
Most people have no idea that Montana is the fourth largest state and only has a million people. If you've ever been around me, you know that. I like to give that little fun fact and educate people about this. I was just telling someone the other day that I was talking to from Texas, I think they lived in Dallas, and I said, I can't remember. I think Dallas, I don't remember how many. People Dallas has, but it's a lot. It's millions.
And so I was explaining to them that Texas is the second largest state. Montana's the fourth. So Montana's a little smaller but not much. We only have a million people across the entire state. They have a million people in one little dot of just one little part of one city in in Texas. So I like to say that I am one in a million. I am almost always the only montanan in the room when I am working outside of Montana. I was talking to someone recently and they said, we are over a million now.
Someone that lives here in Bozeman, we're over a million now in Montana. I was like, great. Just barely, just barely over a million, but I'm still gonna say that I am one in a million. I currently reside in Bozeman, which is in the opposite corner of the state that I grew up in the Southwest. So I grew up in the southeast corner of the state. I now live in the south. West corner of the state.
I used to say I was from Bozeman and people had no idea what I was talking about unless they were from Montana, of course. So then I just started singing Southwest Montana. But then in the last five years or so, Bozeman has become a destination, mostly thanks to the show that I will not name and know. People ask me this all the time. I do not watch that show. I tried it and made it about 10 minutes in, and if you want.
Your bubble bursts and you want me to tell you that it is nothing like Bozeman or Montana, then I am happy to do that if you wanna ask me. But I will only burst your bubble if you request that I burst your bubble and educate you why that show has nothing to do with reality of people that live here. So now moral of the story. When I say Bozeman, I can actually say Bozeman and not Southwest Montana. And when I say Bozeman almost. Everyone has heard of it, which is kind of weird.
I mean, we are the gateway to Yellowstone National Park, so if you go to Yellowstone, you likely fly into Bozeman. We have the best airport now have for a while, so that's part of it too. Big Sky is also a big destination for skiers. In particular. So usually you also would find a Bozeman if you're gonna go ski Big Sky Resort. So they've heard of it through that as well. So it's not just the show that shall not be named, but that's definitely, , a big part of it.
We are super lucky to live in an outdoor mecca, so in the summer, any free time, Chad Hawkenberry and I have, we're in the mountains or in or on some body of water as far away from people that we can possibly get. My husband also grew up in rural southeast Montana, and when you grow up in rural Montana, you get really used to not being around other people, and it's hard to outgrow that. I am the go-to person for helping plan Montana Vacations.
I don't charge, so reach out to me anytime you want to plan a trip here. I am more than happy to give recommendations and ideas and to-dos and not to do. When I taught business education in my classroom was a computer lab, and this was in the mid to late two thousands when one-to-one was not a thing. I'd never even heard that term. Actually, pause for a second. I wanna tell a story.
My husband and I were sitting in our hot tub the other day because when you live in Montana, you have to have a hot tub. There's a few things when you live in Montana that you have to have or do. One of them is you have to have a way to get outside in the nine months of winter, so we do a bit of skiing. That's a great way to get out and get some sunshine. Number two thing that you have to have is a Subaru. If you've ever been to Bozeman, it's kind of a joke, but it's true.
Everybody drives either a Subaru or a Toyota Tacoma. I have one, the Subaru. I have the Subaru, not the Toyota Tacoma. And the third thing that you have to have to live in Montana is a hot tub, I swear by it. So. Back to my story. We're sitting in the hot tub and somehow we're talking about something. And I was reminiscing about my teacher prep, my college when I went to school to become a teacher, and I said I had one educational technology class. This was in the early two thousands.
So the fact that I even had an educational technology class period is kind of surprising, but it was one class and literally the only thing we did in the entire semester. Was build a Netscape website for a WebQuest. Yeah. Anyway, back to when I taught business education, I had a one-to-one classroom, and I led to that story because the only educational technology. That I had had in school was building a Netscape website, so I'd never even heard the word one-to-one.
And when I say that my classroom was a computer lab, I am talking literal computer lab, old school computers with the big tall towers and the deep monitors. I don't think flat screen monitors were a thing. If they were, we did not have them, and they took up my entire tiny classroom in rural Montana, one-to-one laptops weren't really a thing. I think there were maybe a very small handful of schools across the world that were kind of getting into that. But very uncommon.
Google apps for education didn't even exist. Chromebooks DI definitely didn't exist. iPads didn't exist. I think the I first iPad came out about 2010, so I was teaching in the literal OG one-to-one environment. And because of this, using technology as a learning tool came natural to me. I didn't know any different and I was always the techie person. Even in college, my classmates came to me for tech help. The school I taught at co-opt with a nearby larger district to provide our tech support.
And when I say larger district, I think that I need to fact check this, but my guess is that that town probably only has about 5,000 people. Just to give you an idea, but it was the larger district, so they actually had a technology team and they would contract us, and we were supposed to have a person from their tech team onsite once a week. We were luckily to get help once a month, and I literally taught technology. My classes, not all, but most of my classes were computer applications.
I had yearbook, so everything we were doing was in Adobe InDesign. So I got really good from the very beginning at DIYing Things. Now I've rarely met a teacher that tells me that they are fully supported in every way, shape, and form. In their classrooms. So every teacher has to DIY in some form or another to make things happen. I did a lot of DIYing, especially from the technology side, just to literally get my classroom working. This was a really formative experience for me.
Really early in my career, I knew the power of using technology as a learning tool. And I knew that for the sake of our students' futures, we had to teach them how to use, understand, and evaluate technology. And I, when I first started teaching, I was very young. I was only a handful of years older than my seniors that I was teaching, and I'm an elder millennial. It's, it's okay. We can embrace that term. Fellow elder millennials. We're like right on the cusp of a xal too.
So some people feel like they are more xal. I definitely feel like I land like in the elder millennial area, so my students who are middle school and the high school. We're solid millennials, so I was in the same generation as them, and I had already had experiences going from high school where I was taught to use a card catalog and then entering college when we were expected to know how to do an internet search. For research instead of a card catalog.
I had already had that experience as a learner of not getting the skills that I needed, and it was nobody's fault. Rural Montana, right? But not getting the skills that I needed in a changing world, in a quickly changing world. So I knew that I had I, and I wanted to do better for my students. I knew I had to do better, and I wanted to do. Better for my students. And I also knew that teachers, especially in small rural schools, you see a, a theme here of small rural schools in my life.
I went to one, I taught in them. They were going to be hard pressed to receive any technology support, and I knew that if support on the technical side of technology was hard pressed, like we can't even get. The computers to work that receiving instructional technology support, and what I mean by that is how to actually use technology as part of your instruction and your curriculum was going to be extra hard to find. It. Started really focused on Montana.
I'm really honing in on those small Montana schools and expanded from there to supporting schools and educators nationally and internationally. I've been to schools all over the world. I have a lot of stories. If you ever wanna sit down, have a drink and chat, I'd love to share. If you know me, I, I love to talk, so I will chat with you about that stuff at any time. I've seen what works. I have seen what doesn't work.
I have a very unique perspective on K 12 education, specifically the educational technology side. Of K 12 education. My perspective's not the only perspective out there by any way, shape, or form, but I do think that it is unique and it's a really needed perspective in the space. Every district's different, every school and every district is different, and I bring together a lot of different experiences, discussions on the dos and the don'ts when it comes to educational technology.
When you work in EdTech, tools are unnecessary. It's not all about tools, but they are a means to an end. As I ventured more and more into working in EdTech, the more I talked to the EdTech companies about what was working and not working with their products. 'cause I was living it firsthand by helping teachers use those products, I was able to provide a unique perspective across many different schools on what was working and not working with those products.
So a lot of what I do with the K 12 ed tech companies is make sure that their products meet the needs of K 12 . Personally, I'm an animal lover. I love all animals. I have a particular place in my heart for animals, but my particular affinity is for dogs, really any dog. But my favorite type are the squishy face dogs. See right here. Uh, I've had four Boston Terriers in my life. I currently have one Boston and I now have a French bulldog. So I diversified my squishy faced. Dog pack.
They make appearances quite often in my work, so you might hear them on a virtual training or see 'em on a social media post. Even in my newsletter, my French bulldog Guinness is really good at crashing my teaching and my newsletters and stuff with Frenchy brain breaks. So you might see him. Appear every now and again and my boss, interior Dublin will eagerly share his ball with any human being that is willing to partake.
I am also a sucker for kids, so as much as I'm a sucker for dogs, I'm a probably about well animals in general. Kids and animals are what get me. So that's all I need to say about that. I am a bit of a swifty. If you follow my work. You may find some Easter eggs scattered all over the place, maybe even in this podcast. Hint, hint. I am the pedagogy person when it comes to technology and education.
I'm a firm believer that the technical and the pedagogical sides must work together and listen to each other, and often when things go wrong, it's because that's not happening in some way, shape, or form. I know a lot more about the technical side than I tend to give myself credit for because some technical knowledge is critical to making tech recommendations to schools and teachers. But I do not wanna drag wires. Do not ask me to set up an access point or create a network or anything like that.
Nope. Don't wanna do it. Doesn't interest me. I really don't wanna enjoy troubleshooting technology, even though I'm the tech person. I don't enjoy it. I have to as part of my work and I can do it, but I do not wanna spend my days just troubleshooting technology that does not hit my soul at all. So moral of the story, whenever I get, I tend to get drug over to the technical side. I try to , drag myself right back to the instructional side, although.
I always have at least a toe in the technical side because like I said, it's really important that we all work together, talk together to do what's best for teachers, students, and also make sure that they're safe at the same time. As much as I know about a ed tech, and I will talk your ear off about ed tech and dogs and Taylor Swift is about how little I know about sports. Don't ask me. Somebody said to me the other day, are you an NFL person? Nope. I know the Super Bowl is coming up here soon.
Don't know when exactly. In the next couple weeks. I have no idea what teams are even in the running to be in the Super Bowl. So yeah, don't ask me, I promise I won't know. My brain just doesn't have the capacity or frankly the desire to keep track of sports. I, it's nothing against it. I have no problem with sports. Like you do it, you do you. I'm all about you. Do you? That is a good thing to know about me. That is one of my mottos is you, do you, so there you have it.
A little bit about me, a little bit about me professionally. Personally, what I like, what I enjoy, what I know about, and what I know. Nothing about. So now you know if you find me at a conference or invite me to your school, you know what to ask me, what to not ask me. I will come wearing and giving friendship bracelets. I hope to spread a little fun and joy to education and make Ed Tech 100. Thanks for joining Make EdTech 100.
I know educator time is valuable and I'm honored you choose to spend yours with me. For more EdTech strategies you can use tomorrow and ways to bring me to your school or event, head to LindyHoc.com. If this episode resonated, hit subscribe so you don't miss the next one. I'm LindyHoc. Go forth and make EdTech 100.