Build Momentum - Thought Leadership for Education, Global Workforce Edition

3 Reasons to Niche Down in EdTech | Matthew Downing

June 03, 2021 Season 1 Episode 34
Build Momentum - Thought Leadership for Education, Global Workforce Edition
3 Reasons to Niche Down in EdTech | Matthew Downing
Show Notes Transcript

In this episode of Build Momentum, We are joined by Matthew Downing, an educator and a podcast host who is interested in the way how technology transforms the learning process and engages students in authentic learning experiences.

Matthew is from Philadelphia where he is a part of a large, urban, diverse public school district. He is passionate about helping teachers integrate technology in transformative ways while engaging students to use different technological tools in the classroom to promote a deeper learning experience.

Some Questions I Ask:

  • Who you are, what you do, and your passion for education?? (1:11)
  • Have you talked with others who are kind of working across different district sizes? And I don't know if the same tools would work in those districts? (2:16)
  • What is your dissertation about, what you're covering, and what you're researching? (3:35)
  • When you say attitudes and beliefs, you are talking about their attitudes and beliefs towards technology, and how they're feeling? How are you proposing that we improve those or address that? (5:38)
  • What is your take on merging entrepreneurship and education? (9:34)
  • How to set up education to blend with innovation and entrepreneurship (19:42)
  • Your conversations with many of these individuals on your shows that you have on your podcasts? Do you have any thoughts on how they can build awareness for themselves? And how to do that effectively? (15:25)

In This Episode, You Will Learn:

  • Similarities between the Rural and Urban districts in dealing with technology. (2:27)
  • Matthew's overview of his dissertation about how we can use professional development to technology integration in schools. (4:10)
  • How to improve the attitude and beliefs of students, teachers, and administrators towards technology. (5:53)
  • Setting up education for innovation. (12:10)
  • Matthew's insight on thought leadership and how to build awareness effectively through his podcast. (15:36)

Quotes:

“I've noticed through the process is that attitudes and beliefs play a huge role within professional development and within technology integration.

“Trust is universal.”

"It's starting small and then iterating, and allowing that to grow."

"I would just encourage them to one start small. But if you're going against the stream and the stream is too heavy, and you can't break it, you might have to get out and Get into a different stream that has the flow where you want to go."

Connect with Matthew Downing:
RethinkingEDU Podcast
RethinkingEDU Website
DivingdeepEDU Podcast
DivingdeepEDU Website
Matthew Downing's LinkedIn




Stay in touch with Sarah Williamson:
Free Case Study Guide
SWPR GROUP Website
LinkedIn

Stay in touch with Chad Bolser:
LinkedIn

About "The Secret to Transformational Leadership," which Sarah co-authored with Dr. Quintin Shepherd:
Transformational Leadership Secret website
Purchase the print or ebook

Sarah Williamson:

Hello, and welcome to build momentum where we make PR easy for education organizations. This show was created to help edtech startups, research institutes and schools learn how to develop simple, replicable PR strategies and how to execute on those strategies. I'm your host, Sarah Williamson. And I've spent the past 15 years working in PR, where I've been able to understand what works and what doesn't when it comes to making an impact. I will share my tips for success and interview others who have done the same to provide you with the framework that you can use within your own organization, be sure to grab my free guide how to create a killer case study, even if you don't have data at casestudy.swpr-group.com. That's casestudy.swpr-group.com And on today's episode, we have the pleasure of chatting with Matthew Downing an educator and podcast host who's interested in the way technology transforms the learning process and engages students in authentic learning experiences. Matt, welcome to the show. It's great to have you on today.

Matthew Downing:

Yeah, thanks for having me. It's great to be with you. I'm excited for this conversation.

Sarah Williamson:

Yeah, me too. Okay, so I shared a very brief bio with our listeners very brief, do you mind providing a bit more context about who you are, what you do, and your passion for education?

Matthew Downing:

Yeah, so I'm coming from Philadelphia, I'm in a large, urban, diverse public school district, and I help teachers integrate technology into the classroom. So I'm not IT, a lot of times I get confused with an IT person, you know, come fix this thing, which I don't mind doing. But that's actually not something I'm really that good at. And that's really not what my passion is either. So I'm passionate about helping teachers integrate technology and transformative ways. So engaging students in sort of new ways with using different tools. So some of the tools don't have to be always the newest, but it's leveraging technology in innovative ways in the classroom to promote deeper learning.

Sarah Williamson:

Thank you for sharing that. That's fascinating. I think it's interesting, the difference between people who are working in big, large urban school districts too, and the differences you might have with someone who's doing kind of a similar job and more of a rural district. Have you talked with others who are kind of working across different districts sizes? And I don't know if the same tools would work in those districts? Obviously, we'll get into more of that. But I'm just curious after you shared that,

Matthew Downing:

Yeah, that's interesting, especially that you brought up the rural component, because I've connected with a couple rural, like the rural collaborative who's doing a lot of interesting work. And there are a lot of similarities. So you know, you're in a big urban district, you're thinking that's totally different than a rural district. But there's a lot of similarities such as access. So rural schools are dealing a lot with access, how are we going to get our kids access, they don't have access into their homes or whatever the Wi Fi can't get there? How are we going to get the kids the materials and we deal with the same issues? You know, how are we able to get access to every kid at home and you know, hotspots is the common thing this year is like, let's get as many hotspots as we can afford and get those to the kids. Right? And then yeah, just trying to have technology the most accessible, affordable way that we can get it out to the kids. But yeah, there's definitely some similarities there. And there's a lot of stuff that we can learn from each other.

Sarah Williamson:

Yeah, totally agree with you. It's interesting to hear from large to small, how districts are dealing with technology, because we're all facing kind of the same challenges. So we can learn from one another, it kind of doesn't matter if you're rural, small or large. We're all facing the same challenges right now. Yeah, unique time and like, hopefully, it's gonna get better. We'll see about that. But I'm curious, Matt. So I know you're in the midst of your dissertation. And I would love to learn, because I actually, we haven't talked about this. So I want to learn what you're talking about what you're covering what you're researching. But could you share that with us today?

Matthew Downing:

Yeah. And I'll try to keep it brief. I don't want to bore anyone. I don't want anyone that hit fast forward. Stay with us. Yeah, don't worry. I'm gonna keep it brief for your listeners. So yeah, I'm in the midst of the dissertation, actually, at the end. So I have my dissertation date set, my defense date is about two weeks out. So I'm right there sort of finalizing my result. Basically, to narrow it down to a sentence. I'm researching the way we can use professional development to integrate technology into schools. So professional development is like the hinge right? That I feel if we get that hinge right, we can move the door and the door will close appropriately. And it's a really effective hinge but it's oftentimes not used correctly. So the hinge is a lot of times we like put some like Silly Putty on there, like some glue and then the hinge falls off and we're wondering sort of what happened. And so that's what I'm sort of looking at, and I've learned a lot from the process and through my findings, and a couple things that I've noticed through the process is that attitudes and beliefs play a huge role within professional development and within technology integration. And if we bypass that our foundation becomes unstable and a lot of times that is bypassed very rarely our teachers and students are we interacting with their attitudes and beliefs towards technology use. And by doing that we're not building a strong foundation. Another thing I've noticed is trust trust between the teacher and the student. If the teacher takes the student on this crazy yo yo ride of technology integration, the students not going to trust the teacher and they're not going to be able to go down that path. And same thing with the teacher and the administrator.

Sarah Williamson:

Oh, yeah,

Matthew Downing:

if there's not that relationship that trust. So those are a couple things that I've noticed, I have, you know, hundreds of pages of stuff. But you know, those are two, I'll just throw out to the audience right now.

Sarah Williamson:

Well, I don't think you can throw those out and not tell us a little bit more. I'm super fast. Okay. So okay. When you say attitudes and beliefs, you are talking about their attitudes and beliefs towards technology, and how they're feeling? So what how are you proposing that we improve those or address that?

Matthew Downing:

Yeah, great. I think that starts with a conversation. So I had a conversation with a bunch of teachers, you know, I led some a bunch of professional development sessions as like a action step. And then I took that data and put it into the research. So through that, I would start off the professional development for a whole hour or so. And we would have conversations, and I started off with sketch a time that your attitudes and beliefs impacted a situation. So they sketched it out all our teacher artists, and they made their stick figures. And we went around and shared that wasn't about technology, but it was about our attitudes and beliefs. And then next we went to I said, while we're all artists here, draw a shape that best resembles how you view technology. So we drew a shape, all different kinds of shapes, we went around and we share. Then we talked about how our attitudes and beliefs impacted that shape that we drew. And then we talked about that, and we shared and we listened. And we spoke, and we were heard. And then what I did was this Professional Development Series was about five, six sessions, we came back to that, because that's the foundation. So now we're talking about Google Slides and how we interact, but we didn't just throw it out. And then teachers were bringing up Oh, well, I kind of believe this about technology. So that sort of impacted the way that I'm using it in the classroom. Oh, I see something differently. But I see what you're saying. But like my attitudes and beliefs impacted here, so it wasn't a one time fit all but it was a foundation. And then it was a weaving through throughout all of the sessions. So like, we want to throw stuff at teachers, we want to throw stuff at everyone, and people consume it. But if we're very specific on the most important features, and then we weave them throughout, it's not only going to build a strong foundation, but then the structure that's supporting it is going to be strong as well. So that's sort of what we did. And it was very successful. I sort of tried it out. I was like, You know what, I want to try something and then the teachers loved it. And then it was really helpful. And then I did it a bunch more. And it was helpful, and it became one of the key foundations of the dissertation.

Sarah Williamson:

That's pretty awesome. It's almost like the 80-20 rule. Don't throw a bunch of stuff at someone. Yeah, focus on that. 20%. Yes. So they learn it inside and out. And then they know how to use that. So you said trust is the second part of that. Is that how you built trust when you did those five to six initial conversations?

Matthew Downing:

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that was part of it. Right. The other part was, I told him what I was gonna do. And I did it that way. And I laid out the plan, and we follow the plan together. And if I said I was gonna do something, I did it. So if I said, we're only going to look at one tool today, we only looked at one tool, I didn't throw 10 tools at them. If I said, we're going to end at 4:50. We ended that for 4:39. If I said, I'm going to ask for people to talk at the beginning, and then the middle and the end, I did that. And I listened. And I didn't just talk for 40 minutes, you know, I'm talking a lot now. But that's not normally what I like to do.

Sarah Williamson:

I like you to talk so it's okay.

Matthew Downing:

So that's part of it, you know, and it's so important, you know, and you deal with that in your field, too. But trust is universal. Yeah. And a lot of times we want to look at technology integration. And I'm really not interested in the tools as much as I'm interested in these other things like trust relationships, attitudes, beliefs, tweaking, leveraging iterating, bringing about transformative change. And yeah, and that's interesting to me.

Sarah Williamson:

That's so cool. And so funny, because the more people I talk to, we're talking about marketing, we're talking about education, but we're not really, we always end up talking about people, and how to work with people, and how to build relationships. That's what they're always comes down to, and all these conversations, so you're right on with all that stuff. So I totally agree. Okay, so one of the other things I know you're super passionate about is entrepreneurship and merging these two worlds of education and entrepreneurship. And that's something I absolutely love talking about as well. So I'm curious to get your take on that.

Matthew Downing:

Yeah, entrepreneurship is sort of near and dear to my heart. Apart from education, I've been an entrepreneur. So I've flipped houses I've been in real estate, I've had businesses and so forth have been successful. For, but my passions in education. So I sort of end the the flipping houses was very lucrative, but it wasn't my passion. It wasn't where I was getting at. So I had to come to a decision. Am I going to flip houses for the rest of my life? Which I actually there's a lot of it I enjoy about it. And it was it went, well, where am I going to go into education? So I went to education, I sort of have sold off almost everything. Well, now I just sold off the last property, and then whatever, I might pick that up again in a couple years, but so entrepreneurship is at the core of who I am. But a lot of times it's difficult to get our heads around entrepreneurship, right. It's this fancy word that a lot of us mispronounce and so forth.

Sarah Williamson:

Misspell!

Matthew Downing:

And Misspell. Yeah,

Sarah Williamson:

Thank God for spellcheck.

Matthew Downing:

Yeah, yeah, I still don't know how to spell that.

Sarah Williamson:

I know.

Matthew Downing:

But it's like starting small. So do we want to start a school? That's too big, right? Let's start a club, if that's too big for you start a meeting. So it's starting small and then iterating, and allowing that to grow. And we've done that, too. I have some friends. And we started this educational entrepreneurship incubator. Those are a lot of fancy. Oh, yeah. So all we did though, was we got people together. And people attended these conferences, and they brought an idea. And throughout the day, we went through protocols, and they left with a clear path forward. And they brought about change. So some of their changes were big. And we brought it all the way down to the most elemental point. And then they did that. And then it grew. And people have had great success with that. And I love entrepreneurship. And I love entrepreneurship in schools as well, because there's so much to do. There's so much ability to create and change and start stuff and impact with people and tweak it and see, did that work? Oh, if it didn't work? Let's keep it going. If it didn't, why not? And then we can change and figure out a path forward.

Sarah Williamson:

Yeah, I know. I'm curious though, in some ways, education isn't really set up to blend innovation is kind of an antiquated system. So how do we do that? And how do we do that? Well, can you answer that question for me?

Matthew Downing:

Well, I can try. I've been thinking about that a lot. And I appreciate that question. Because I think it gets to the core of why innovation and entrepreneurship doesn't happen in education. The words you use antiquated, and I think that's a wonderful, beautiful word to describe much of the education system going on it's 100 year old system that was founded in 1911, by a panel of like, 11 people out of these prestigious schools, and it's pretty much stayed the same. And it was formed out of the backing of I believe Rockefeller, Carnegie are one of them to create assembly line workers. That's basically what it was for. And we've kept that model. And it builds a lot of frustration, because people want to bring about change, right? We see something, it's not really working. But there's frustration because change is very difficult in an antiquated bureaucratic system that doesn't want to change. So let's think about it this way, let's think about it, I'm going up a stream, and the current is going the other way, you are never going to be able to defeat that current. And I think that is a situation a lot of us are facing in these schools, we're going up a current in a school that doesn't want to change. And what I've seen, and the pessimistic side of me is seeing is that we can't bring about that change within a school that doesn't want to change within the institution that doesn't want to change, I don't feel that we can bring about that change. So what do we do? Well, there's the idea of disruptive innovation coined by Clayton Christensen, and Michelle Weiss, and Shawn kanungo. And a lot of these guys, and you sort of have to start something new. And it's scary, and it's different. But you either got to team up with like minded people and join hands, or you have to start something new from the edges for an innovation to occur. Let's take a look at the army. Right, the army is one of the most bureaucratic systems in the world, right? And it's set up like that for a reason. And you can't bring about change in the army you're not supposed to. But the army is set up research and design Institute's outside of the structures of the army that allow for innovation that allow for change and then if the army agrees with that, then they'll bring it into the bureaucratic system. So democracies You know, sometimes can be helpful can protect, but that's where schools are at. They're very similar to that, but we don't have an r&d we don't have a research and development thing where we can test stuff out. It's just like, you know, innovative dude's trying stuff out maybe that works maybe they got a backer maybe they got like a million dollar, you know, Sugar Mama, Sugar Daddy or whatever. But yeah, so those are issues and like I feel the frustration a lot of educators are feeling try to bring about change, and I would just encourage them to one start small. But if you're going against the stream and the stream is too heavy, and you can't break it, you might have to get out and Get into a different stream that has the flow where you want to go.

Sarah Williamson:

Interesting. I love that advice. Yeah, that's great. people haven't talked about, like from that perspective. So I appreciate that. So let's switch gears for a minute. on this show, we talk a lot about thought leadership, and helping build the profiles for some of today's education organizations at tech companies. That's who a lot of our clients are. So I'm curious, your conversations with many of these individuals on your shows that you have on your podcasts? Do you have any thoughts on how they can build awareness for themselves? And how to do that effectively?

Matthew Downing:

Yeah, I mean, this is something that I'm trying to grow in as well. But just some of my thoughts are, you know, you have to create, and you have to create content, we're in a new economy, and we're in a creation economy. So even our physical money is different now. Right? We have cryptocurrency and NFT's and all this stuff that's sprouting up, you know, every day, well, you know, every week or whatever. But it's a new economy, and there's a creation economy, and we have to create it to bring value. And that's hard for people, they're like, well, if I bring value, they're not going to buy from me. But no, you bring value, you bring value to them, you bring them into your network, and then they're going to want to purchase something that you have for them. So those are two things I think about a lot. The other thing is authenticity. Yeah, there's certain thought leaders that do things, and we want to follow them. And that's great to have like role models, but at the end of the day, we have to come back to who we are. And then the third thing that I've been thinking about a lot is niche, like niching down is very difficult. And I haven't expressed that really well in my life, you know, running around doing a million different things, but to niche down takes a lot of focus and a lot of accuracy. And the more we can niche down, you know, maybe the better. So those are some of my thoughts to take an example of the niche down, let's say there was an artist, right? And they're in the school system. And you could apply this to whatever but like, let's say you're an artist in school system, and that's too broad, right to be a K 12. art teacher. So then you're like, well, I want to do portraits. Well, that's still kind of broad, right? You want to provide support for people, art teachers to do portraits is still kind of broad. So now we want to narrow down a little bit more, we'll do mosaics. So now this art teacher is going to become an art consultant for just mosaics. And they're going to teach people and they're gonna have YouTube, and they're gonna do a podcast, and they're gonna write blogs, and only about mosaics. And now that one person becomes the expert for mosaics across the world. And then everyone knows they can go to that person. So it feels like you're limiting. And again, I haven't expressed this, this is something I'm wrestling with. It feels like you're limiting when you niche, but you actually expand your network.

Sarah Williamson:

Yes, you're saying everything we talk about all the time in our sector. And that's what I did about a year ago, I did VR for b2b, I thought I was focused because I did b2b No, no, no. And that over the summer, I've always worked with education, technology, companies throughout my career, decided to go deep on edtech, which was timely and huge difference, because you're playing in a smaller pool. And you're working with you can really take the time to get to know the leaders of the sector and become known for what you do within that business. generalists are really technically not that successful.

Matthew Downing:

The other may ask you a question on your podcast. So how did you do that? Like, what was the toughest thing to niche down because a lot of people struggle with that, including myself.

Sarah Williamson:

It's scary. It took me a long time to decide that I could pull the trigger. But I felt like I considered who I felt were my best audience. And I thought, where am I most passionate? Where can I share my expertise on the deepest level? And I thought about it for months, actually, I can say I wasn't a quick decision. I did read a lot of books. I actually read a book called expertise. I think I can grab it and put in the show notes. But I can't remember it's something business of expertise. That's what it is. And it really got me clear on where I needed to go in terms of my career and my time. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, thanks for asking me question. Appreciate it. All right. So what are the strategies? Okay, so we talked about thought leadership, we talked about niching down? That's a big strategy for sure. In terms of getting clear on your role as a thought leader, are there any other strategies that you've seen brand leaders in the education space, do well, like I have a couple that come to mind companies that I think about and know that are really kicking butt in sharing value, and authentically telling their story about you? What do you think?

Matthew Downing:

Yeah, I mean, I guess telling their story, right, exactly what you said sharing value through clear and concise ways, whether that be through sort of a mixture, so video, blogs, podcasts, and saying things in a way that you feel are thought You know, I've been thinking about Mr. Rogers a lot lately. He's actually gonna end up closing my dissertation. So I love him. Yeah. Anyway, I don't know if this is a weird rabbit trail, but like, what was the main thing about him? Well, he's so thoughtful like the way that he constructed Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, the way that he started it, the way that they yellow light flash at the beginning was to pause, people, the music was slow to get you eased into it. And it was so so thoughtful. Was it the best production value? No. Was it slow at times? Yes. Was it thoughtful, of course, and my dude, there's a million people come in for our attention. And I'm attracted to the ones that are thoughtful, and they provide things in a couple different mediums that I can interact with.

Sarah Williamson:

Yeah, I agree with you. I also find myself when I listen to podcasts or just for my own personal development. I love relating to people and when they make me laugh, and I could just feel like I'm sitting in the room with them when they're literally being themselves on a show. Like, we're just having a fun time and giggling about stuff. I think that's so important to not be too polished.

Matthew Downing:

Yeah. But what's, what's the like extreme to that, because then I have some people that are like, totally unpolished. I'm just like, Yo, I don't got time for all.

Sarah Williamson:

Cut to the Chase, right? Cut to the chase with the value. That made me laugh.

Matthew Downing:

Yeah, yes. So you have to be authentic. But that's still you know, you got to be thoughtful in how you're putting that out there because I've had some people just rambling on and on and on, which is cool. Like, I get to know who they are.

Sarah Williamson:

Maybe you didn't want to know that much about who they are. Right. Keep so that yourself. Okay. Okay, that I know you have a bunch of shows. Tell us all your podcasts and we can listen to you.

Matthew Downing:

Yeah, so I'm on a podcast with a couple co hosts rethinkingEdu. RethinkingEdu no spaces. It's Mike Dunn, Julie cook, Janine Dunn, their fellow Northeastern dissertation friends and we just talk about innovative education ideas, and it's a lot of fun. And we have different people on and you can find this anywhere where you get your podcast and also rethinkingedu.co. And then I have a podcast diving deep Edu diving deep edu, no spaces, you can find it anywhere where you get your podcast and also divingdeepedu.com. And so I'm sort of interacting with a wide range of people. I've had Olympic athletes, gold medal winners, to educational leaders to children's book authors to you name it. And it's a lot of fun. I'm just trying to interact with people about important issues. And maybe we'll find the type education the original Hamilton cast I've had on so maybe we can find a tie in to education. Sometimes we do. Sometimes don't.

Sarah Williamson:

I was wowed by your guest list. super impressive guest list on divingdeepedu. Really, by the way, I'll email you later for those interests. Those guests. Just kidding. Yeah. You know, really fascinating. I had so much fun in this chat today. I think it's good to bring different perspectives about what's happening in education, especially right now. And how we can be better marketers in this space. And authentically tell our stories. That's really the premise of the show is to authentically tell her stories and provide value.

Matthew Downing:

Yes, Sarah. Can I add one more thing?

Sarah Williamson:

Yeah, Please do.

Matthew Downing:

So listeners out there. You want to interact with different people on podcasts? like Sarah, you want to interact with Sarah and you don't know how? Well the first thing you should do is go on Apple podcast and leave a review. Right? Five? Write something nice, specific. Yeah. And then you email Sarah or messaged her on LinkedIn, or different social media platform and you say, I really loved your podcast, I left the review. Here it goes. And then you comment about something. So we mentioned earlier, and I didn't get to say this. But we mentioned earlier about like marketers and different things. A lot of times we're getting thrown emails and there's no like interaction. There's no genuine banter back and forth. And so if you're going to ask for Sara to do something for you, then we should start that ask by leaving a review by interacting by you know, making someone smile. And then that's the foundation for a good relationship. So Sarah, thank you for having me on. I hope everyone listening will go to Apple podcast, leave a review five stars, write something nice and make Sarah smile.

Sarah Williamson:

You're the best. You're the best that they give you and I know they're all gonna follow you on your podcast too, because they're awesome. So hope to have you back again soon. Can't wait to hear how everything goes with your dissertation. Let's stay in touch. Cool. Thanks, sir. Yes and build momentum listeners. Don't forget to grab my free guide to creating a killer Case Study even if you don't have data, again, that's available at case study.sw pr kadesh group comm case study.sw pr dash group comm thanks so much for tuning in today. And if you've enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to our podcast and write us review on iTunes, Spotify, or whatever platform you choose to listen. We will be back with another episode of build momentum next week. Thanks so much and have a fantastic day.