About Kathy Schrock

Kathy Schrock has been a school district Director of Technology, an instructional technology specialist, and a middle school, academic, museum, and public library librarian. She is currently an online adjunct graduate-level professor for Wilkes University (PA) and an independent educational technologist. Kathy is known for her practical presentations dealing with pedagogically-sound practices for the infusing of technology seamlessly into teaching and learning. Her passions are online tools to enhance classroom instruction, the role of emerging technologies in the classroom, infographics, tablets in the classroom, assessment and rubrics, copyright and intellectual property, and gadgets of any type! 

Connect with Kathy online at Twitter / Blog / LinkedIn / Website / Guide to Everything / Mastodon

Game On! – Guest Kathy Schrock - Transcript 

Adam Bellow (00:03): Hello and welcome to the Game On Podcast. My name is Adam Bellow. I am the CEO and co-founder of Breakout EDU, but I'm also a father, a serial ed-tech entrepreneur, and an advocate for positive change in the classroom. Each episode of the Game On Podcast is going to feature a new voice from someone who's making an amazing impact in helping to pave the way for the future of education. We're going to get to explore their ideas and opinions, as well as learn from the successes and failures of these amazing educational gurus. All right let's get started. Welcome to Game On, I'm your host Adam Bellow, and I am just so thrilled and excited to be welcoming an incredible friend and an educator, an innovator, and a pioneer with us today to the Game On Podcast. And that is my dear friend Kathy Schrock. Kathy, welcome.

Kathy Schrock (00:48): Thank you very much, Adam. I'm so glad to be here.

Adam Bellow (00:51): Awesome. I think we've known each other maybe 12, 13, 14 years or something that - for a long time, and I think that your work in space is historic at this point. I feel there's so much that you've done and really led the way for so many. So, I'll read a brief bio and kind of do the justice over here, but I feel there's just the whole show that could be a list of things you've done, so.

Kathy Schrock (01:17): Oh, thanks.

Adam Bellow (01:18): I mean, listen, it's true. It's pretty amazing.

Kathy Schrock (01:21): You can skip that part. I can introduce myself.

Adam Bellow (01:23): Well, that's fine too. I mean, we can, you know what? Let's do that instead. Actually, I think it's funny, you and I obviously know each other really well, and on paper, there are a lot of accolades and a lot of things you've done. So, how would you introduce yourself to someone that may not be familiar with the work?

Kathy Schrock (01:38): I would say that I'm a left-brain learner, I'm a gadget geek, I love to tinker with all things electronic, when I was growing up I was always in the garage, I went to Rutgers for undergrad and graduate, I learned how to create a webpage, Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators in 1995, and I started organizing the internet because that's what I do for teachers who are just jumping on. That turned into continuing to do that same thing on the Discovery School site until 2011.

Adam Bellow (02:13): That's awesome. I mean, what a long-storied history over there. I feel I remember watching a video, I think it was you and Chris Lehman. Was it The Today Show or something?

Kathy Schrock (02:23): We were on the Today Show. Yes, we were.

Adam Bellow (02:26): Talking about the internet and how this new-fangled thing called the Internet

Kathy Schrock (02:29): And how students could use these devices that had no, just had a direct connection to the internet to do their homework.

Adam Bellow (02:39): Yeah. It's amazing.

Kathy Schrock (02:40): Well, it was.

Adam Bellow (02:40): A little bit ahead of your time. I think it is kind of a short version of that. I feel you've always kind of been a bit bleeding edge, both in the gadget world, but also in terms of how technology could be used in the classroom. So, whether it be talking about the Handspring trio POM pilots, with Tony Vincent and way back when, or even I remember a couple of years ago you presented on TikTok at F.E.T.C, which I think became, well both all the rage, but also big news story right now as well.

Kathy Schrock (03:14): Yeah, right. I mean, good and bad. Yes.

Adam Bellow (03:16): Exactly. So, well always cutting edge and it's so nice to have you on the show and to chat. So, as this is a show with a standard set of questions, we'll kind of jump into that. Our level one question, our icebreaker, we to say play is super important and something we take really seriously here at Break Out EDU. So, I would start off by asking, what were your favorite games to play as a kid? And it could be something Hopscotch or playing in the garage or whatever it's that you remember. And then also now, do you play any games? What do you do to enjoy... what have you been enjoying recently?

Kathy Schrock (03:49): So, my favorite game of all time is the Barbie Queen of the Prom board game. You had to, um, get a boyfriend, you had to get dressed, you had to get a ring, and then you would go to the prom. I always won because I'm very competitive, my first computer game was on my TI-994A and that was TI Invaders, which is interesting to me because I can know now go on the internet archive and play that game.

Adam Bellow (04:16): That's awesome.

Kathy Schrock (04:17): My first PC game was Wolfenstein 3D, which to my son's astonishment, I almost beat, and I got to the top level and the character opened the door and I was down at the beginning again, but I almost beat it. And now I'm just an Animal Crossing on the Nintendo Switch freak. I decorate for all the holidays and interact with all my friends and my real friends in real life. We go visit each other on different islands and such, so animal crossing's my jam.

Adam Bellow (04:50): That's awesome. That's really fun. Do you play anything else on the switch or it's just Animal Crossing?

Kathy Schrock (04:54): No, every now and then I have a pottery-making one and I have a... I don't know, the whole Mario stuff, it's on there, but I'm not big. I'm not a really good gamer, let's put it that way.

Adam Bellow (05:05): All good, no animal crossing. I mean, hey, I think that's really cool, and I know obviously, you and I have talked about you having a son who's also been done a lot of gaming and stuff that you just mentioned Rockwell doing, watching you play Wolfenstein. I remember that one, I remember downloading it on a BBS, it took forever to get that share wear version of it first level or whatever.

Kathy Schrock (05:28): Oh yeah. It wasn't in color, and he was sitting on the back of my chair watching me the whole time. He was pretty little at that point.

Adam Bellow (05:33): So, I'd imagine. Well, there you go. That's awesome. Well, kick it up to our level two question, and I think obviously we talked about obviously you having a long history and doing a lot of things in the ed tech space, but I think everybody has an origin story and I'd love to know kind of what put you on the path to becoming the EdTech guru that you are today.

Kathy Schrock (05:55): Well, so I was a public library, historic micro filmer, and children's librarian first after college. And then I was a middle and high school library media specialist, and I was the director of technology for two school districts, and at the beginning, I really didn't have any support to do anything, so I had to take care of wiring the districts, managing the infrastructure and providing teachers with support and professional development. So, as I said, I was always interested in anything electronic or tech. So, once there was some tech support available from others, though, I was able to try some cool stuff with teachers and students. So, I was an early adopter of Second Life, which was a virtual world, and I spent a lot of time in there on Education Island, which included discovery education. David Warlick was there, Alan November was there, and other education luminaries.

And I asked my superintendent if my district could buy an island. So, he bravely went into Second Life and traveled around and decided it was okay that we did that. So, we bought the island, and I built six school buildings because that's what I do. I created the space, and I asked other districts and educational agencies to help support the cost and buy a building. We had three school districts in Massachusetts and three educational agencies from Connecticut in the world. So, this is when I really first, I mean getting the actual, beginning of all my stuff was that Cape Cod had no dial-up access that didn't cost money, even AOL cost money to get to. And someone opened an internet provider opened a service that we didn't, we could get to without having to spend the phone time.

And he said to me if you learn how to create webpages, you'll be the Martha Stewart of the educational internet. And I was like, oh, that's pretty cool. So, he prompted me to put this page together and it was really early on, it was 95 and his goal was that he could point me out because he knew teachers would come to visit my site and then he could sell his service to businesses look, if you two live on the Cape, you could have a million hits on your site. So, nothing to do with content as far as he was concerned, but it really worked out. And so, that's really how I started. And then NEA today came to my school, and that's back when they were the big newspaper that you would get in the mail, and then it became kind of a household word.

One thing he told me, he was a really good marketer, so one thing he told me was to name it Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators. That was the name of the site. And I was like, oh, that's so self-serving. I don't want to do that. But he said, no, do that. I'm all right, I'll do that. And so, ever since then I've just been living off my name but I also, after I did the whole Second Life thing, I was there with Adam when Lucas Gillespie, who was recently interviewed by Adam, showed off his Oculus Rift at NCTIES way back in 2014.

Adam Bellow (09:07): Oh, that's right.

Kathy Schrock (09:08): And then I began to investigate the power of 360-degree images and videos to support teaching and learning. So, I've been doing it for a long time. I've been there every step of the way. I don't feel that I'm a digital pioneer. I think I just love learn, and I love to find new things, and you said before, I try to stay ahead of the curve and think of things that are really good to support teaching and learning, even if they have nothing to do with education.

Adam Bellow (09:38): But I think, I mean, to be honest with you, I think that almost is the pioneer aspect where it's you learn about it first and share it. I feel that's always been something I love about watching one of your presentations. I feel it's deeply researched and thought through, but I also think it is ahead of the curve. It's not saying, oh, I'm going to talk about the tool that people have been using for 12 years. It's more about hey, this is something I've discovered, and this is how you could use it in the classroom. Whether it be early sessions you've done on my podcasting or other things that, I feel it so might not take the credit of being a pioneer, but I do think that there is a bit of that early adopters are by default that is just kind of part of that work.

Kathy Schrock (10:16): I guess so. Thank you for that.

Adam Bellow (10:18): Just take the compliment, Kathy.

Kathy Schrock (10:20): Okay. I'll take the Compliment.

Adam Bellow (10:21): There you go. Well, I mean, listen, I think that as we said, you've been doing this a long time and I think that in a lot of ways have kind of ridden with the ebbs and flows of the EdTech world, whether it be the new burgeoning of the internet or whether it be online spaces, which is so funny that it's coming around full circle again, where we talk about second life and now we're all of a sudden we're talking about the metaverse and whatever. I know, it's we've had that.

Kathy Schrock (10:43): I know we've done that; we're done with that. Let's move on.

Adam Bellow (10:47): But I'm sure Apple will reinvent it again next month or year when they launch their headsets. And we, we talk about this as a new thing. But anyway, I think that there's obviously along the way, especially for anyone doing it for as long as you have, is there have been obstacles and challenges you've probably had to overcome in your journey to get you where you are today. So, kind of... is there any particular thing you can point out that was an obstacle that you kind of had to overcome on your path?

Kathy Schrock (11:13): I think at the beginning, my biggest challenge was trying to get teachers to be excited as I was about the role technology could play in the classroom, in my school, I knew they already had full plates, so I looked at my teacher's schedules down to the day they had two preps and put a note in their mailbox that gave them time for their internet appointment. And they must have thought it was required because they all came when their time was due. And I showed them aspects of technology that hit upon their own hobbies and interests, nothing to do with school, and this was on an IBM PC 6160, which had a little yellow screen and was 1400 baud modem. And once they saw how much cool stuff was out there for personal use, it was not long until they made the leap to want to learn how they could support teaching and learning in their classroom with technology and the internet.

The funniest one was one person was going down to the Turks & Caicos and she wanted to know what time the ferry left, or something wanted to know. And so, we put it on...this was before the web actually, so we just put it in on a gopher and we got this note back in a half hour. We got a response, and I ran up to our classroom it was a woman who gave her the information but also said that her father owned the club Med on the Turks & Caicos. And she sent her tickets to use to go to Club me for the day. Oh wow. And she was like, oh my gosh, this internet stuff is great. So, I think if once teachers now it's not a problem. Everyone uses it for everything, but back in the day, they really could see how it could be used to support teaching and learning or even how it could be used to help themselves. So, I started them at a low level. So, I think that was really fun.

Adam Bellow (13:05): That's really interesting. I mean, I feel it's funny because I've been thinking about, and I've had conversations about Chat GPT or any of these quote-unquote new technologies that are trying to make their way into the classroom. Whether it's people pulling them in or it's society pushing them in or whatever it is. But I feel it's always that same battle of showing value and measuring adoption and excitement for something new versus the usefulness and the resourcefulness of what you can do with it. So, it's kind of interesting to see those challenges are just in different forms, along the way, whether it be cell phones in the classroom or calculators in the classroom or whatever comes next. That's really cool. Well, our level four question is all about passion, and obviously, we can tell that you're passionate about learning and I'm curious to know what you're interested in right now about education. What are you trying to teach yourself more about or what are you interested in teaching others about?

Kathy Schrock (13:59): Well, when I moved from Kathy Schrock's Guide to Educators, which was really just a site that had sites for teachers to Kathy Schrock's guide for everything to everything, which allows me to do anything I want. I moved my passion, or I moved my target toward assessment rather than technology. I try to showcase the power of technology, but I want to show all teachers how easy it is to provide alternative assessments for students to showcase their acquisition of content knowledge. So, basically, I use technology as the way to do it, but I really, it's all about pedagogy, before it really wasn't. And now it is. And concentrating on that one aspect of technology really helps me hone my and learn deeply and then be able to share what I learned.

Adam Bellow (14:51): So, what's one specific thing that you're interested in now? Something that's a passion project, maybe something you'll present at ISD or something in the near future?

Kathy Schrock (15:00): Yeah, I mean, I've been doing the podcast one and I keep changing it, and I really that one because teachers, it's very easy to show them how to use why podcasts are useful for students, whether they're just consuming them or they're creating them, and also how to make them too. The other thing is I have a new TikTok that's just about professional development using TikTok and I'm presenting that at Isti.

Adam Bellow (15:28): Oh, that's awesome.

Kathy Schrock (15:28): So, that's again, it's fun to go through all the teacher talks and all the other versions of that hashtag and find things that I think are useful for teachers and hopefully when they see them, they think so too.

Adam Bellow (15:42): That's really cool, that's awesome. And I think you and I have obviously talked about this a lot in IRL as the kids would say, which ages me even more that I just said that, but your guide for everything or prior, I guess, your Guide for Educators is very in some ways that when I was building eduTecher, which was a repository of websites, it's almost funny because I had no idea I built it in isolation. I didn't know at the time of the site that you had, and it was one of those things where it's there are people that have done this before, and that's again, going back to that pioneer thing, it's really interesting to see just that people have similar ideas trying to help other educators and it comes as I know it did for you, and the same was true for myself. It just came from wanting to find it and share it and it was just such a fun thing to do.

Kathy Schrock (16:37): And it was, and back then it was hard to share so you could only do it through a webpage really true, and I mean I was a librarian. Trained librarian so, and very left-brained. So, for me, when I first started, and it was pre-internet, pre-web, I had a little shoebox with the organization of all my sites because you had to put in a, you went through a number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and then you got something that you wanted to share with your students. And so, I've been there since pretty much the beginning of the actual internet itself, not way back when they started it but when it started going out. And so, I just wanted to arrange it for myself and then for everybody else.

And really first it was just sites for teachers in various subject areas. And then I realized I'm not a physics teacher, I think it's a great site, but I know nothing about physics. But then I started thinking about as I was evaluating the sites, I was thinking, well, if I go through these 27 criteria in my mind when I evaluate a site to see, see if it was credible and useful and up to date and so on and so forth why don't I just create some documents for teachers to use to go when they go through sites for the first time and try to evaluate them. So, then I started all that critical evaluation of information, and then the followed by the information literacy just kind of flowed easily for me.

Adam Bellow (18:10): Well, that makes sense. I mean, I think that there's such a surface and I think everyone, I don't know if it's everyone, I know I started this way as well, I was very surface and it was very much, I'm going to find something, I'm going to share it. And it also became almost, I think as you grow as a learner yourself, you become much more critical about not only what you're sharing, but also the value that it can provide to others. So, I feel it's kind of a similar history of that, and I know I've seen this with other people that, that have been on the ed tech circuit as well, where it's like they do tool sessions and then it evolves to I'm going to go deep on one thing.

Kathy Schrock (18:41): Exactly. Because you find something that you think is important. And every tweet that I've ever tweeted goes into a Google, um, spreadsheet, and people are why do you do that? I'm so I can get back to something that I recommended to somebody that I now forgot about. So, I always have it with me.

Adam Bellow (19:00): You program that with If This, Then That, or do you actually manually put it in?

Kathy Schrock (19:03): Yes.

Adam Bellow (19:04): Okay, good.

Kathy Schrock (19:05): No, manually put it in, but just... and it's funny to look back because a lot of the things that are no longer even there that I shared.

Adam Bellow (19:12): But yeah, for sure. Well, that's the blessing and curse of the EDU textbook.

Kathy Schrock (19:17): Oh yeah. You're not kidding, trying to take care of a website back in the day, every day there was something that was gone.

Adam Bellow (19:22): Yeah, it's crazy. Well, let's bring it to our level five question, which is, what's the best piece of advice you've gotten in your educational journey? And then I'd like to ask that, but also what's a piece of advice you could share with our learners as well?

Kathy Schrock (19:40): So, the best advice ever given is going to sound kind of odd, but after student teaching, and when meeting with my advisor, she said, you would be really good in educational sales. Which seemed to me to mean that I was not very good at teaching second grade. So, I did not go into educational sales, but I worked for an education agency in New Jersey, and I drove a van to six schools every day in a hundred-mile radius and delivered educational items for them. In addition, teachers would spot each other and come out and check out books and manipulatives out of my van. So, it was an educational library on wheels, but it got really cold in the winter, even though it had a little heater in it. So, I decided to go back to Rutgers for library school for my master's. So, if she had never said to me that I would be good in educational sales, I never would've wound my way around to being a library media specialist or teacher librarian or whatever I want to call myself now.

And my one piece of advice for educators is to really hone a professional learning network on a social media channel, any social media channel, follow those with great ideas and contribute your own to help others. Teachers are inherently creative and love to share their successes, so you need to take advantage of that. And everybody has something to share, don't just lurk, and please share.

Adam Bellow (21:02): I mean I think that's, that's great advice because I think without that, obviously all the work you've done for so many years has been about sharing what you find, and I think the other piece of it is being, being open. I remember I think I met you... I actually don't remember exactly, but I'm pretty sure we met for the first time and talked in Denver ISTE 2010. And I had seen you in 2009 and probably was not, I was like oh, that's Kathy Schrock. And I remember distinctly what you're doing, you're collecting all the ribbons for your badge.

Kathy Schrock (21:37): But, of course, I was.

Adam Bellow (21:39): But I remember bumping into you in some convenience store in Denver and we started talking and it's one of those things where you already obviously had been established and been doing this in a long time. I was not at the time. I was still at the beginning of my ed-tech journey for sure. But it's one of those things you were extremely approachable and extremely willing to share in real life as well. And I think that that's one of those things where I'll echo your advice, but I also think it's reach out if you need help is my two cents on that. Because I think you've been incredibly helpful. Obviously, someone who shares as you would... that's just part and parcel for the course. People are looking for others to kind of help promote them and share their stuff with them.

Kathy Schrock (22:23): But another little secret that I have is I'm not in the classroom anymore. I teach graduate school, but I'm not physically in the classroom. So, when I meet people at conferences and there's Kathy Schrock, and we start talking, I always turn it around and ask them questions so I can learn from them. At that point, they don't really realize that they're sharing and they're teaching me something. But every now and then I'll get this glimmer. I'll go, oh wow, that's really cool, I have to go find out more about that. And then I'll turn it into... if it's something that I think is worthwhile for education and useful for education and easy for teachers to do, or students to utilize, I will turn it into something and then spread it. So, I always give credit to the person that told me it also.

Adam Bellow (23:13): That's awesome, that's really cool. Well, obviously people should say hi to you at conferences and I'd be willing to share and ready to share. I think speaking of which, you're going to be at ISTE as you said, presenting on TikTok for educators, which is going to be awesome. Well, Kathy, thank you so much for taking some time to chat with us today. It was really awesome to not only hear the original story, but also some of the things you're working on currently and are passionate about. So, welcome. It was really amazing. Where can people find you online if they want to connect with you and follow your stuff?

Kathy Schrock (23:41): Twitter (still), Mastodon my website, Schrock.net or KathySchrock.net or any variation of those together, just type in Kathy Schrock and you'll get my socials. I have them everywhere.

Adam Bellow (23:59): Awesome. Well, again, thank you so much. Until the next time everyone, Game On!