From Brooklyn to PhD: Transforming Education Through Podcasting with Dr. JRod

You know , we last talked and the biggest thing that happened is that Professor J-Rod is now Dr J-Rod . You heard that , right , that Professor J-Rod is now Dr J-Rod . You heard that right . I've been doing this whole time and some of you may or may not have known I've been working on my doctorate and I graduated .

I graduated May 15th and I was busy finishing up the dissertation and then I presented and then I had to do revisions . It was an extremely , extremely stressful time in my life . This is one of the hardest things that I've ever done in my life .

You know , there was a point in this journey that I almost quit , and it's funny because I always tell my students quitting is the easiest thing in the world to do . Right , quitting is easy , right , you just stop doing . What is it that you're working on ? Putting in the work , trying to finish , is the hard part , and I wanted to give up .

I really did Just , you know , doing a PhD is not easy . It takes a lot of your life , it takes a lot of your time away and I'm already doing a lot . You know , if you follow me on LinkedIn , you can see all the stuff that I do .

And you know , just to , you know , burning myself with this thing , I was , I wasn't , you know , I didn't want to do it . You know I I didn't want . You know , I was just so stressed out . But here I am . You know I finished . I'm Dr Rodriguez . So you know that's that's what's been happening . You know I was busy . I was busy with that .

You know , busy with work and stuff . So you know that's that's what's been happening . You know I was busy . I was busy with that . Um , you know , busy with work and stuff . So you know it , it something had to give right . I had to . You know , at one point I had to decide what is it that you want to do ? Do you want to finish the podcast ?

Do you want to ? You know I was doing TikTok for a little bit and you know I stopped doing that because I just had to focus my whole time on my dissertation . And you know , let me tell you it was tough and the funny thing is , ironically , I did it on podcasting . My dissertation is titled Using Podcasting as a Tool in Higher Education .

That's my dissertation , that's my thesis that I did it on . You know , this whole thing has been because of this . You know , doing this podcast , you know it has inspired me . I wrote a whole 150-page dissertation on can we use podcasting as a tool in higher education , and I found out that we can During the way , I met a lot of people .

I had to interview people and do surveys and I've learned a lot from other people who are using podcasting as a tool . And this is this is what I wanted to do .

I wanted to learn more and I was fortunate enough to interview a couple of people , fabulous people you know , who gave up their time you know , saturday or Sunday or one time at night and let me interview them for this .

You know , for my dissertation , which you know , of course , you know that I'm going to pay forward , but you know I learned a lot and hopefully I can you know , hopefully one day become a subject matter expert on podcasting . And you know how do we do it , how do we use it for school . So my next plan is to do .

You know how do we do it , how do we use it for school . So my next plan is to do , you know , uh , try to take the , the dissertation and kind of cut it up into different uh journal articles , which is that's my next goal . And , uh , you know , just be , yeah , I want to be on cnn when they talk about podcasting and education . I want to be on c .

I want to be the person that they're interviewing Fox News , msnbc . I want to be on the news when they talk about that . Oh , let's talk to Professor Rodriguez . He's a subject matter expert on podcasting . That's my long-term goal with this . I still want to continue doing research .

I still have my other research where I do cultural relevant teaching , and I'm actually going to Kansas City in late July , early August , to present at a conference , at the HITECH conference . You know just , you know spreading , trying to spread my wings , guys . You know just trying to get involved in more and more .

You know , trying to help my community , trying to help those who you know are afraid to go to college or don't know how to navigate the system for colleges . You know , I grew up poor in Brooklyn . I grew up poor in Brooklyn . And now , I would have never dreamed I would have a PhD hanging on my wall . I mean , never , never , would have thought of that .

I'm so blessed . Of course , my family has a lot to do with it , but my , my , you know the guys who listen to me I could not have done it without you guys , you know , pushing me .

I had one student , I remember he told me at the graduation , because not only did I have my own graduation , I had students' graduation and since I work at different schools , I had kind of several . So that's another reason why I kind of had to put this on pause . You know , one student told me he goes .

Oh , professor , I was going to quit , he goes , I was going to quit school and you gave a speech one day . You know , just , you know , I like to do a lot of rah , rah , rah . Right , one of the students called it preaching , that I like to preach .

And he said you know , you said that quitting is the easiest thing to do , right , quitting is easy , trying to work through it is the tough part . And he told me you said that , that , and I said to myself I'm not gonna quit , I'm not gonna quit , I'm gonna , I'm gonna stay and listen . I'm not that young , right , I'm .

You know , I'm a little older , um , but I got my phd at this age , which I'm not telling you , um , and it's a . It's a hell of a accomplishment , um . Let's see where it goes , right , let's see where this goes .

Hopefully it would open up a lot of doors for me and , in turn , open up a lot of doors for me to help people , because , at the end of the day , that's why I'm here , that's why I'm doing , you know , that's why I do the podcasting , that's why I do a lot of stuff .

I want to be able to , you know , help people and help my students and anybody who is listening . So now my question is do I change it to Dr J-Rod or should I leave it , professor J-Rod ? Honestly , I'm more inclined to leave it as Professor J-Rod , because I kind of like it , it kind of flows very well , as opposed to Dr J-Rod . But we'll see .

We'll see what happens . I mean , I like the Professor J-Rod persona that I have within the last couple of years . So , listen , you tell me , right , should I keep it ? Should I change it ? You know , email me , professor J-Rod , right , that's J-R-O-D , right , professor J-R-O-D ?

At gmailcom , and let me know , should I change it to Dr J-Rod or should I leave Professor J-Rod , kind of like Professor J-Rod ? You know you guys will still know me as Professor Jayrod . I guess Now I got to do a lot of work

to bring you know you guys back . You know the ones that are still listening . I see a lot of people still hitting my website for the questions that I have . I'm going to get back to that . You know , this summer usually I don't really do a lot of podcasting during the summer .

But you know , one of the people who I interviewed gave me an idea that he has his students as their final to convert their project into a podcast and that's their final . So I decided to do that and I got a lot of students who did a lot of excellent work on cases . We did case studies of companies that I got hacked .

So I'm thinking like I do like a kind of like a summer series right um of and I'll post my students' episodes that they created right their audio file .

I'll clean it up the best I can and , you know , add the intro and the end to it , but I want to see how that works , see if you guys would be interested in hearing about companies that have been hacked , right ? So I'm going to start doing it .

You know this , in June and you know this month I got a couple of episodes already that from students that I want to play . You tell me if you like it or not . Right , if you don't like it , then next summer we don't do it , we'll do something else . But I also want to get back to what I regularly do , right ?

You know there's a lot of things that's been happening since I've been gone . Comptia has changed Again . Security Plus is almost . It's the 601 . It's almost done , right ? So those of you who study , I think you got up to the end of July to figure out what you're going to do .

If you're going to take the 601 or the 701 , you still have a shot take the 601 . But don't procrastinate . You know this is is it . It's almost over . And then we have uh , network plus . They announced that they have a new version of network plus , right ? So I gotta do a little research on that . We'll do an episode on that .

They change itf those of you who don't know what itf plus is , that's the CompTIA fundamentals . They revamped it . It's now called Tech Plus , which I think is a better name Tech Plus , right ? You know , kind of like help desk , and I'll do an episode on that . I took down some notes and I have some stuff that I you know some opinions on on Tech Plus .

I think it's better , it flows better . You know they have some new ones , that it's . You know it's been a while since they came out , like Data Plus and Data Sys Plus . Don't know anything about that . I don't know if I'm interested in that . I don't know if you guys are interested in that . You know you let me know . If you are , we can about it .

I just want to get back to our core . You know taking a topic and exploring it and then doing the questions right , and then on TikTok , I'll get back on TikTok . I was at , you know , professor J Rod on TikTok and I was going in there and you know , doing rapid fire , three questions a day I think I was doing and that was working out well .

But I needed to get 1,000 to go live and it's really hard to get 1,000 people to like to follow you . You got to get 1,000 followers . Some people get 1,000 followers . You know they trip down , you know they slip on ice . To get a thousand followers .

You know I'm working my , you know , doing these questions and answers , and it's hard for me to get , you know , a thousand , a thousand users .

So , once I get a thousand followers because the whole thing is that I can go live Right and if you're having a particular problem with a particular topic , maybe I can go over it during the live right you tell me , oh , I'm , I'm having a problem understanding subnetting , right , then we could do a whole thing on subnetting .

Or I'm having a problem , you know , talking about risk , and then you know we can go over and I can give you examples and stuff and you know , and help you . Uh , again , that's that's my , that's my whole goal , but I need 1,000 followers , guys .

So , if you're on TikTok , look me up , professor J-Rod , and start following me , and I need to tighten up my stuff . Again , I've been all over the place , but I have a valid excuse . Right , I got my PhD , so you know . But now that that journey is over , I want to be able to get back to this and again grow this community .

Like I've always told you guys , I want to grow it , make it better . You know , I kind of see if I can get my . You know , you guys involved , my students involved , more . This is something . This is my passion project , right ? This is something that you know that I really want to do . I'm not making any money off of it .

I'm actually , you know , spending money . You know doing all this paying for this stuff , so it's fine money . You know doing all this paying for this stuff , so it's fine , I don't mind .

But I just , you know , if you can get you know , follow me on TikTok , get your , you know , your friends , your family , just to you know , you don't have to watch my videos , but just follow me , right , and then , you know , we'll see where we can go from there . So'll do that .

So what I'll do is I'll do the ITF podcast and then I'll throw in a student podcast , and then maybe I'll do Network Plus and then maybe I'll do questions and then I'll throw another student podcast in there for the summer and then , when we come back in the fall , we'll start with the answers .

It's tough getting people to take exams during the summer and then , when we come back in the fall , you know , we'll start with the answers . It's tough getting people to take exams during the summer , but it could be done . You know , this week it's been a really good week for me professionally . I got five students to pass their Security Plus exam this week .

The key thing that I believe in the CompTIA stuff that would help you and this has been proven by many people who have worked with me on these CompTIAs is you have to have a study group . You have to have somebody who's pushing you and kind of holding you accountable for the stuff that you don't do or procrastinating it .

So these people , they work together and they studied and they all passed five Well , four . One girl she did it on her own because she already had taken the course and she had all the material and a lot of the time . One of the big reasons why they did it is because I was able to get them certifications and those certifications were expiring .

They had to take it by Friday , if not it was going to expire . So they took it . I think we need more of that . We need more of hey , I'm going to push you to take it because if not , you know it's not going to work right . We need sometimes to push people because they always say like , oh , I'm not 100% ready .

Sometimes you don't need to be 100% right . A plus you only need to be 72% ready , right , if you , you know 75% ready . If you are 75% ready , then you take the exam . You're probably going to pass . You don't need to be 100% ready because guess what guys ? You might never get there , you might never feel like you're 100% ready .

That's the sad part , right , you know ? The other thing we talked about this is the big barrier is the money for it . I think what happens is people are afraid to take the exam because if they fail , right , they got to pay for another exam . And people don't have . You know , people struggle . You know struggle is real . I have these amazing students .

You know that they were studying together and they were amazing and I kept telling them hey , you ladies are ready . They were ladies and I was telling them ladies , you're ready , take the exam , don't wait , don't wait . And to this day I don't and this is in December , when I last spoke to them . I don't think any of them have taken the class .

I just feel that it's . You know , the money for the exam is a barrier for a lot of people . So that is something that I need to figure out . What am I going to do ?

Because that's what's holding a lot of people back is the ability to pay for the certifications , because they worry that , hey , if I pay for this and I fail , I got to pay for it again . So now that we should be giving out , you know , vouchers , right , but if you're ready , and if you prove to me that you're ready , why can't I give you your voucher ?

So you know , I'm just a little man sitting here in my living room doing this thing , doing this thing , but hopefully somebody there out there hears me and you know , you know somebody who has a foundation or something and wants to , you know , donate some money , for we can get all these students you know who want to get certified but cannot afford it , because

that's a shame , that's a shame anyway . So , yeah , so I'm back and we're gonna get this right , we're gonna get this back on track and hopefully you know more , a little bit more consistent . Alright , that's gonna put a ball on this one . Thank you everybody for listening and remember , keep listening , because I got a lot of stuff coming up .

All right , guys , until next time .

This has been a Little Cha-Cha Productions . Art by Sarah , music by Joe Kim . If you want to get in contact with me . You can email me at professorjrod that's J-R-O-D at gmailcom .