EdTech Startup Showcase

[00:00:00] Welcome to the EdTech Startup Showcase, an original series produced by the BE Podcast Network. On this series, we spotlight and amplify some of the most innovative emerging companies in edtech. We also have the opportunity to speak with a number of the educators who put those tools into action to support student success.

I'm your host today, Tanya Sheckley. I also host the podcast Rebel Educator on the BE Podcast Network. Reigniting wonder and reimagining the future of education are among the themes we explore on Rebel Educator, and I plan to bring those ideas to this series as well. I'm pleased to introduce today's guest, Ted Cuevas.

Ted is a physics and engineering teacher at High Tech High Chula Vista. He was the first teacher to start using Inquire two years ago, pioneering innovative projects with students and contributing significantly to the shaping of Inquire's platform with his pedagogical [00:01:00] vision around learning and assessment.

Ted, welcome to the show.

Wonderful to be here.

I'd love to start and hear a little bit of the background. Hitech High is a unique place to be teaching. So I'd love to hear about your journey becoming an educator and a little about your philosophy of education and, and how you teach at Hitech High.

Sure, so I started, well, I was a mechanical engineer prior to being an educator or in education. I had a lot of really interesting and fun projects that I did in college. And we, one of them was going to a local orphanage here in Tecate, Mexico. And I just really kind of had a positive experience working with the, the young people.

And after I graduated, I had this opportunity to kind of be a tutor. I lived in Tudor there for a number of months. And once [00:02:00] that, that happened, it kind of stuck with me. And so I went out to be a mechanical engineer for three years. found that I wasn't really happy with what I was doing and contributing.

My wife was planning on going back to graduate school, so we were moving back to San Diego, so I just said, hey, let me try teaching, you know, doesn't hurt to try. And then now, 26 years later, I'm still doing that. Uh, I taught in a comprehensive, uh, junior high, 7, 8, 9, for about six years. And I left because I was trained in, with Rick Stiggins assessment for learning and it made a lot of, it made a huge impact on me.

So, I had opportunities to do student led conferences portfolio development, and this was in 1996, 97. and it was kind of a, I don't think it was a [00:03:00] new thing, but it was an important thing for the empowerment of our students, and I found that I was on a team, and the team was an English teacher, myself as a math teacher, and a world cultures teacher, and we had a lot of support from our principal, and that was probably the best years of my teaching, or beginning of the best years of my teaching.

Uh, was incredibly impactful, and once No Child Left Behind happened, that really messed things up with, uh, they broke up the teams I was frustrated, and I didn't think, okay, so this system is, you know, just too solidified and has so much momentum that we can't do innovative things. And so I was very, very sad, but I decided to leave education.

And, but [00:04:00] I had this opportunity. I've bumped into the CFO of Haithakai when I was building a house with, uh, for Habitat for Humanity. And he goes, Hey, come and check us out. Take a look. And, uh, I did. And so I've been here since, uh, the beginning of, uh, 2004, I believe, and we started High Tech High International.

That was the newest school. And then I helped to start, uh, High Tech High Media Arts, uh, right the year after that for two years. And then I had worked in the the South Bay, uh, of San Diego before, and I love the community. So when they opened up High Tech High Chula Vista, I jumped ship and went to High Tech High.

And in terms of philosophy, uh, both Atash and I really connected on equity and [00:05:00] empowerment. I think I would love any student that graduates from High Tech High. to be able to say, I can learn anything. And I feel personally like I can learn anything. And so I really want them, the students to feel that and feel, be able to know that they can, they have a lifelong journey of, of learning.

And I want every student to be able to feel that, that power, that empowerment.

So you, you mentioned connecting with Aatash and you mentioned, you know, having a similar philosophy and really wanting students to feel empowered. What did that look like from when you two connected and, and really the co design process on building Inquirer?

Yes, Aatash had been a GSE grad and he was at our school for a year, connected with him then briefly, but then [00:06:00] COVID happened and the summer before we were online learning, he was telling me, you know, we connected a lot about assessment, specifically, that's one of my passions. I think it's something that is not addressed well in education and in credential programs.

Anyway, we connected a lot on that and we're both techy geeks and we connected there as well. So he got a hold of me and so from I think we started in, like, July, and of 2020, I think, and we would meet every weekend, every Saturday, and, uh, we, several hours, and I was the first user. I used it online, actually.

It was something that I, uh, I saw the Google Classroom, which, uh, I think just is a reflection of our Curtin, [00:07:00] uh, system, and I didn't want to have, you know, I didn't want to immerse myself in that any longer in terms of tech tools, and so we designed it from the ground up with that in mind, you know, we wanted to have portfolios, we wanted students to be able to have choices for how they share their learning and be able to communicate their learning.

And we built it , from his start. And it was just amazing. And I was the one who just got to use it first and put it through its paces. And that first class that did it was is graduating now. And they're a big supporter of Inquirer. And it's, I really appreciate them also diving into it as well. So they were, the students there, they were huge in terms of.

the design of Inquire. And I really want to highlight that because it was, we used students to make [00:08:00] the videos for tutor tutorials and wherever we could include students, we always did in terms of design ideas. So that, Pretty much was, was, uh, the whole experience, you know, and since then we meet every weekend, pretty much, and, uh, that has been, I found a best friend.

I didn't think I was going to find one in, uh, online, but, uh, Natasha and I are good buds, and that, that has really ignited my learning, uh, my learning as well as just My teaching, I really feel excited now, and I think I was kind of not feeling that anymore. And so the past few years since then, it's just been exciting.

It's been just a dream, developing a tool that I've always wanted to use with, uh, with students.

I want to dig more into assessment in a minute because it's something that [00:09:00] is near and dear to me as we're struggling with it as a school, and I want to talk more about that. But first I want to hear a little bit more about the first graduating class that's used Inquire. Like, what did that look like?

you know, you mentioned that they were really involved in the design process and helping to create a lot of the tool and its functionality and what they needed and what they wanted it to do. How are they like able to use it as they were moving on? Did they use it in college applications? Are they using it to get apprenticeships or internships?

You know, what does that look like? How has it really benefited them?

So I would think for that first class, they didn't use it because the teachers weren't using it just yet. I think it was possibly, well anyway, the students themselves really didn't use it until their junior year. We have an internship for the students every spring, and they're [00:10:00] out in the workforce for a month.

with a mentor, and a few of my students that had done it before, they were like, and they'd been in 10th grade, and it was like, it was so easy, can I, you know, can I use it still? And I was like, you can use it, you still can log in and do whatever you need to do, just let me know how I can support, and, but they already knew how to use it, so it wasn't a problem, so they were able to upload their work, be able to easily create, uh, portfolios.

They wanted a way to archive, and that's part of it, their, their work, and they did that on their own. And they wanted to also kind of collect their process of their internship project and create a portfolio. And now, I'm working with four students, seniors that are doing a senior project, and that is also something we do here.

And that is an experiment to try to find a way for students to communicate their [00:11:00] entire learning from the beginning, from ninth grade, all the way now to 12th grade before they graduate. We're in the process of talking with our college directors of each school about figuring out ways to create a like a profile, a graduate profile, and putting that into something that they can add to, you know, even from kindergarten because we have kindergarten through 12.

How exciting that would be just for a student to be able to say this is my reading and, you know, fourth grade, I mean, and writing. And this is how it's grown since then, and this is my writing now. And being able to, to have that archive work over those years would just be fantastic. So, they're asking for it, even though I haven't, you know, told them that they could use it or anything.

And they're also still helping with it. I have one student that's decided he's building a 3D printer, [00:12:00] and I, I said I would support him in that. If he can, uh, help me design a senior project, uh, space that's in inquire and how to document the process of a project and it's implementation and flow.

So has it been adopted school wide?

It has not, no, we're still trying to organically do that. It's a, it's ground up for high tech high. There's a lot of excitement in the admin realm, but, finding the right way to release it to Ha Chi Kai is still in the works.

Yeah, that makes sense. And any organization you want to find the The people who are the ambassadors and the champions and who are using it and who are excited about it and then get other students and other teachers excited about it. And that's really the best way to, to try and introduce something and, and make it stick.

Yeah, yeah. And [00:13:00] it's a hard, it's a hard area. You know, you, you asked about assessment. And I think a lot of what Atasha and I, that it's too radical. All of these ideas have been around since, you know, 70s and probably earlier. But it's being put together through technology. Technology should be doing the things that we don't like to do.

It's a powerful tool and we should be using it for, for that reason. And we're not really exploiting it. And so I think teachers may not be quite ready for it. But maybe the new teachers are kind of thinking about the new teachers being exposed to it right away and being able to work with it.

as a, as a tool. There's a new artificial intelligence AI module that Atash is developing with our graduate school and the project based learning cohort that is [00:14:00] designing that tool, and that has a lot of excitement because it's a tool for designing projects, helping to design a project using our kaleidoscope installed as a wheel of all the aspects of design.

for a project. And so there's a lot of excitement about that. And so that might be the way to kind of introduce it to teachers and see how it, see how it develops organically. I'm not going to push it on anybody.

I do want to talk a little bit more about assessment. So, running a school and running a competency based, project based learning school, figuring out how to do assessment the right way and share the right information with families and showcase our students strengths in the ways that we teach. want to showcase them because we're not, we're not giving students tests.

We're not saying they got all A's on their American history unit because they memorize the dates of the American revolution, right? We're, we're [00:15:00] doing in depth, you know, project learning where they're involved, they're engaged, they're field trips, they're talking to experts, they're creating material, they're, you know, digging through lots of different ways of learning.

Yeah. And so we're assessing, you know, the curiosity and the community mindset and the metacognition and the empathy and all of these other pieces and skills that go along with project based learning and working as a community. And it's one of the things that we've really struggled with is how to showcase that and how to make that happen.

And I know one of the things you mentioned and one of the things that Tosh mentioned is that, you know, you're, really have a perspective of assessment as a form of empowerment. So if you want to talk a little bit more about that and how, how Inquirer or how the platform or just how you view assessment in general as being, you know, not something where we're grading and ranking and, you know, You know, trying to [00:16:00] put kids in some sort of order, but instead as a way that it can be empowering for students.

Yeah. You, you mentioned grading and it's something that is a very, uh, if you think about it as an assessment of, Did the student turn things in? Did they listen to the teacher? And, uh, did they turn in on time? And so what my journey for assessment was through assessment for learning at an early stage, and I was extremely passionate about it.

I got caught up in the problem that was created from No Child Left Behind, which is still kind of hanging around. But I wanted students to be able to communicate all this stuff. You gave me chills when you gave me that, that list of what you want to, uh, that you do, uh, through projects. And we want to somehow capture that.

And so the tools that we have, right, are video, we have audio, we have all these, uh, ways to, to capture it and give students choice of how they [00:17:00] want to communicate that learning and document that learning as they go through this project. And so if I'm going to, for me, if I kind of, we, we did this a long time ago in our ninth grade.

It was the, we call it learning domains and their skills, processes, knowledge, and social emotional learning. And so we wanted to do that because we wanted to highlight the processes and find ways for us to assess those processes of a project. of how you write, any way, any of these processes, the design process of engineering as well as their social emotional learning.

And so we did that and that's where I kind of like start with. I start with what do I want my students to take away? What are the big ones? We use, we call them badges, Atosh and I and Inquirer, and those are the things that are non negotiable. We really want them to take this [00:18:00] away and be able to communicate their learning in the project.

And I think when we try so hard to do so much, and to find ways when we could really just, let's do deep from things, really, really deep things that we really want them to take away from the project. So we start, I start there and kind of almost work with the assessment. I'm going to call it claim evidence reasoning.

They have to be able to claim, let's say they can, uh, build a circuit and they have to have a claim that I can build a circuit for a certain situation. What evidence do I need to collect? And that is where I try to help them have the activities and all of the tasks and all of the learning opportunities to find evidence of them creating a circuit.

And one of the assessments could be a performance assessment. Here's a [00:19:00] situation. Draw a schematic and make the circuit and record that through video. And show that you made it work through the photos, through anything, a Google Doc, whatever you did to process through that, and document that in, in a assessment, several assessments.

and then you kind of submit it for getting a badge, for the badge. And so I have to create all those things, right? But I have to know what I want them to, to learn. And I try to tease that, that out. And for example, skill would be soldering. Every student, every single student in my class has to know soldering.

I don't know, sometimes I don't know why, but that's super empowering to them. They always go away just feeling so proud of themselves with that one

Yeah, I, I need to have you over. I bought my daughter, uh, like, mini soldering kit for Christmas, like, two years ago. It's this little light, like, Christmas, or I think it's a special edition. It might be a snowflake that lights up, but it, [00:20:00] it, it needs to be soldered together. It was like the next step after a breadboard, like what, and it's, you know, it's designed for younger kids, but I don't know how to do it.

And she doesn't know how to do it. And we haven't found the time to like YouTube how to do this and figure it out together. So it's yeah, super useful scale. You can make really cool things but also have the ability to fix and create a lot of things. But that's my mini soldering story. Sorry.

Yeah, no, I agree with you. I want students to be able to say it's so exciting when they're juniors or, you know, they have another project and they want to extend it, you know, want to make, they have a robotic product or project. uh, in 10th grade or something like that. I want them to be able to come and say, Oh, Mr.

Ted, can I borrow all the soldering equipment? I know how to do this. So, and that's, that's empowering, right? That's empowerment right there, you know, and soldering is just a, it's, it's a really cool, oh my gosh, my students love to solder and they will spend, you know, they will do it, [00:21:00] you know, they'll stay after school until they get it right.

And it's funny because my, uh, I give them the hardest thing to solder and They have to get an A or an A and there is some criteria for that, and they will just keep on going until they get it. And so we have a student, every student, it's so cool to be able to have, we're full inclusion, and so we have some students that, you know, have only the use of one arm.

And they can solder and that is with the help of each other too. I can't do it all. So I have badge leaders, other students that want to teach others and stuff. So, that also gets documented. So that's an assessment thing. If they're a badge leader, they can also teach others. And that also is something that they can document and put into their portfolio in InkWire.

So it's, it's a lot. [00:22:00] About them having choice about how they communicate, what they've learned, and that, that to me is the choice piece, I think, is important. something. So if you do a reflection, do you have to, do you have to write it? Sometimes you need, you can think about that. Do they have to write that reflection?

Could they just give an audio? Could they give a video? Could they do screen recording showing the work that they've done? And so it really expands what you can think of. Uh, to give students the choice to be able to, to talk about what they're, what they're doing and how they're doing. And we're talking about that metacognition too, you know, that's, that happens a lot through the performance and personal communication.

And a lot of it, how do you write some of these things, you know, it's a challenge, but if you have tools that can expand your, your repertoire of what tools you use for assessment, it's and the students can use them [00:23:00] easily, then I think that is my dream and getting closer to that. And that's why I'm so excited.

You know, that's why I'm so pumped every day. I can come to school and students, I don't, uh, they're the ones giving feedback to each other through Inquire. They're the ones that help each other post stuff. I got a story. Maybe I can, I have to tell you later, but there's a story there too. So, all of that community building is something I'm really passionate about as well.

We're the co op, and that means something at this school. You know, they all are part of the co op. One's a co op member, always a co op member, and they come back and help. And so, all of the things that you're, you're excited about as well, I'm excited about.

Yeah. I love how you talked about badges and the idea of what do I take away? And it kind of circled back at the end of that. And you know, how do [00:24:00] we share our learning? What was the, what was the point of the thing that we did? What do I want them to get out of it? And it's not necessarily. You know, sharing back the thing that you want to hear from them, but it's all the different ways that they can share and reflect on what they've learned and what they've done and creating that opportunity for student agency.

Is something that I think as, as educators, we need to continually find more and new and different ways to do and create for our students. Just because there are so many ways of being in the world and so many ways of living in the world and so many ways of communicating with each other and giving them that opportunity to figure out.

You know, what works best for them? What's the easiest way for them to share? Or also, what's the most challenging way and how do we get better at those skills so that we can build our skillset is, is just a really unique way of, of looking at how we're assessing, you [00:25:00] know, not just our work, but our process and our learning and what we've come through to get to where we are.

We're, we're, uh, I think many years ago, right? I think that the piece about knowledge, you know, where we had these learning domains, knowledge, skills, processes, and social emotional learning I think we're still stuck in this, uh, uh, assessing knowledge, you know, just, just what do kids know, but what can they do, what can they, how can they process what they're doing, and how can they show that, uh, we've done that.

I've always done portfolios, and that is a built in thing, and so at the, we have student led conferences, students make a portfolio of their work for the projects that they've done, uh, through periods, uh, we have presentations of learning, which is an amazing opportunity for students to share their work through a portfolio, and with, and it's meant to be easy, that, you're right, [00:26:00] you know, it should be easy, and should also highlight a lot of the, the tech that they can learn.

to use that exists right now. And one thing that I really, really want to emphasize is the community aspect of Inquire. And I think that's something that we really wanted students to be able to work together and support one another.

Looking ahead, how do you envision continuing to use Inquire or how do you envision Inquire continuing to grow, to enrich teaching methods and student outcomes? You know, what, what's your dream for what it could be?

Oh, yeah, I kind of explained it a little bit, but I really want students and I think our organization, too, really wants to see students be able to collect their evidence of their [00:27:00] learning, starting in first grade, kindergarten, or whenever. Kind of build up this portfolio of work over, over time, and each year being able to reflect on, on that, that story, you know, they have a learning story through school, and it means so much and it's different and to hear it is amazing.

It keeps you really excited about what we do in education. So I think that's one thing that I would love to see. I would love to see since we are going away from testing for admissions into, uh, college and universities, that we can go to more of a profile or portfolio base or website base or something to that effect.

where students are actually showing, if I say, and I apply for an engineering major, how cool would it be for an [00:28:00] admissions officer to be able to click on this portfolio and look at the actual work that they did? If I said I built a an electric car my senior year, you know, how, how awesome would that be to actually see the whole process of them building that car and the people that they work with and the people that they got support from, That, that would be amazing, you know, and so I, I see, I hope that we can get to an assessment for admissions to colleges where it's more evidence based and I know that the colleges must be struggling with that.

So , maybe, maybe this is something I know. It's not an original idea by Atosh or I, but I know it's, it's out there. So college admissions, anywhere where students, they present with us. We've always brought to conferences, we've brought students and [00:29:00] they're the ones that should be talking about the the learning they do and how they learn through Inquirer.

And so we've always had students presenting, and I've always had students present with me. They're the ones that actually, you know, should be sharing the most and instead of a talking head, you know, me just, you know, all the time, it should be the students talking. So every opportunity I have students to, to, uh, be empowered and to be able to express themselves.

In their, and their learning and their whole development I think is exciting and really what's important for for us, and I think hopefully, hopefully we can get there. I know that the grades thing is really difficult. System. It's a systemic it's a, it's a sys, it's a reflection of the system and the system we know is inequitable.

Unempowering [00:30:00] and, there's so many things wrong with it, but we have to do something somewhere. And I really have kind of focused my whole 25 years on, on assessment and. trying to find tech tools to support me in that. And they were all over the place. You know, you had all these ways to record videos, you had another place to, you know, put together websites, and none of them were really done well.

And so, Tasha and I go, why, why shouldn't it just be in one place? One place, make it easy for teachers, make it easy for students get all the other, you know, stuff that you don't need. And make it easy for students to do what they're, they're happy about doing, I hope. And teachers, too. So, I think it would save a lot of time for teachers.

However, the hard part is, uh, the, the system, the systemic thinking of, and it, of, [00:31:00] I, I, I'm going to pick on Braids. I, I, I think. Grades, to me, are one huge barrier for change in education, and I don't know, I don't know how that's going to change. I think it's really something stuck, and we value it. You and I both went through the system and we all had grades and they mean something, right?

Oh my gosh, I got straight A's in high school. I worked hard for those. And so,

they, like, nobody's asked me in probably the last 30 years, what grade I got in high school history. Like, I know they, they mean something and they're a means to an end. And it's, I find it disheartening to see colleges going back to the SAT and the ACT. But I love seeing opportunities like Inquire.

And, you know, there's a few other, you know, Mastery based transcripts that are out there [00:32:00] and building portfolio builders, and I'm hoping that the more we can create of that, the more that'll create the desire to see that and use that as a way for, for admissions and for sharing learning and for sharing work and capabilities and understanding and competencies and, and all of those things.

You know, in full disclosure, we looked at several different tools as well, and we're also an inquire school and are figuring out ways to incorporate that into our project learning, into our middle school, and into right now as low as fourth grade for us, so our students will have it 4th, and then have it to take with them is, is, is our goal and our vision.

But yeah, I think it's, it's a phenomenal tool. Thank you for the work that you and your students have done to build something that is all in one place and so easy to use for educators and students. Is there anything else that you want to share about your experience or about Inquirer [00:33:00] before we

I just got, I want to tell you the one story It doesn't make me cry as much as it used to, but When Inquirer, the second year I was using Inquirer it was, like, there was a lot going on. Natasha was throwing so many cool things in there, so many cool features. And I, of course, didn't know what they were all the time, you know, I helped give maybe the philosophy of it, you know, working that out and making sure that it kept to our, you know, our, you know, the base equity and empowerment and So, anyway, there was a student, his name is Michael, he got really sick with COVID, was out for about a month, and when he came back, we were doing this project, and we were having student led conferences coming up, and he was trying to do a lot of the work when he was sick and also, he had previous work that he didn't get to document, So, yeah, that's pretty much it.

And so, he was just sitting [00:34:00] there, just so, like, sad, and it looked so, I was so sad, and this student also had a, uh, individualized education plan, and he was so sad, and I was going, hey, you know, there's a, you know, a little binder feature that has all your work that you've posted to Inquire. that makes it easy for you to make your portfolio for student led conferences.

And he goes, what? I don't have anything. I, you know, I don't have nothing. And I said, well, press the button. You know, I'm sitting here going, oh my gosh, does he have stuff in there? You know, I don't know. And sure enough there was all of his work and what had happened, there's a feature in there, so you can tag him.

You might know this too, right? Where students can tag each other. His partner for the project. Actually was documenting everything for Michael and tagging him in it so that he would have everything there for him to put it in there and made me [00:35:00] at the moment. So within 30 minutes, he had a portfolio.

And so at that moment, I was, yeah, I didn't know about the future and the kids figured it out, and how cool is that, you know, so that was a, that was a tough day, you know, I was about to cry and stuff like that, but that's all that you can hope for. The kids are finding things and giving Natasha, and you do, you will too, give him feedback, how cool is it to just be able to have some voice in the shape of this tool.

Thank you. So I'm glad you're using it and I hope others do as well. And if there's other things, it doesn't matter to me, you know, I mean, I'm sure it matters to the Inquirer. However, if there's other, if this starts and supports any kind of movements, that's all we can dream about. And so I'm grateful for the opportunity that Tasha has given me.

And thank you for [00:36:00] having me. talk today. This is I always get excited. I have chills when I, when I have an opportunity to talk about my journey with the Tosh and Ingbar.

This was great. Thank you so much for sharing your story and your thoughts and for your time today, Ted.

Absolutely. A pleasure.