STEM Careers and Learning Technology with Joshua Sneideman
Episode 23 with Joshua Sneideman
Episode Topic: Women in STEM and Education Technology
Our guest for episode 23 is author Joshua Sneideman whose book Everyday Superheroes: Women in STEM Careers (co-authored with Erin Twamley) was recently awarded the Best Indie Book Award for middle school. We discuss his book and why it is important for both girls and boys to learn about women scientists. Joshua is also the vice-president of the Learning Blade technology platform, so we also discussed how technology could change teaching in the future, both the potentially positive and negative.
Outline
The book Everyday Super heroes: Women in STEM Careers
How technology could change teaching
The digital divide
Links
Link to Best Indie Book Awards site
Link to purchase Everyday Superheroes: Women in STEM Careers at Better World Books
Link to website for Dr. Michael Greger (suggested by Joshua)
Transcript
Scott Lee 0:02
Greetings, friends and colleagues. Welcome to The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast. I am Scott Lee. I hope you're safe and well. Today we follow up on our December episode and continue discussing technology and teaching. This time with Joshua Sneideman, whom we originally met in 2020. Joshua is the co-author of Everyday Superheroes: Women in STEM Careers, which recently won the 2020 Best Indie Book Award in the children's middle grades category. He also is the Vice President of Learning Blade an online toolbox for exploring middle grade stem and STEM related careers. We will discuss the future of how technology issues could impact teaching, but we will start off discussing his book. Welcome back to the Thoughtful Teacher Podcast. Joshua Sneideman, congratulations on your book being awarded the Best Indie Book Award for the middle school category.
Joshua Sneideman 1:09
Yes, thank you so much, very excited to be back on your podcast and excited to hear with all the progress you've made with the podcast and definitely excited that our books won an award book is everyday, Everyday Superheroes. It's about women in STEM careers. And, you know, it's just a, it's a timely book, obviously, about trying to motivate young girls to see themselves in STEM. As a father of three daughters. I call myself a feminist, right? So I really want my girls to feel motivated and have all the same opportunities in STEM as boys do. And the data suggests that that's not the case. And so I wrote a book to try and you know, make it seemed like it is it's totally possible for any girl to go achieve their stem dreams, which it is,
Scott Lee 1:53
you know, one thing I really enjoyed about the book is that a lot of the women that you focused on were action scientists, they were not working in a laboratory. I'm thinking just as an example, Vanessa Galvez, and Sonia Lo, you talked about a group of park rangers doing science out in the world. Was that an intentional decision that you all made?
Joshua Sneideman 2:17
Well, yes, yes, yes, definitely. We were trying to show a broad range of science careers, all of the women, I don't know if you noticed this, but all the women in the book are minorities as well.
Scott Lee 2:29
Now I did notice the diversity.
Joshua Sneideman 2:32
Yeah, so we're just trying to we're trying to expose students to careers they've never heard of, I like to say, you can't be what you can't see. And so if students don't know that park ranger is a real life career, or that, you know, weathering technicians like Jean Diggs in the book, who you know, helps families in remote places become more resilient for climate change. You know, if you don't know these careers exist, it's hard to pursue them. So the ultimate goal of the book was just exposure. But yeah, I mean, definitely hands on science. I'm a field geologist in my prior life. So I have an affinity for being outdoors and doing the work outside of the laboratory.
Scott Lee 3:11
Being a social studies teacher in my previous lives. You know, one of the things that I always wanted to do is sort of the same thing focus on we now call it action civics, but trying to get out in the world, you know, I kept thinking about most people, I would guess, do not think of a park ranger as doing science, but the amount of science that you do, it's not just giving directions in a national park. Yeah,
Joshua Sneideman 3:38
I mean, in careers, like cartographer, I would say many high school exellent, top number one in their class females, I've never even heard of a cartographer. So guess what, there's cool stuff you don't know about, you need to explore more. And that's really the goal, you know, is just to just start scrap scraping away at the, at the iceberg, so, so young women, but really all students, I'll say, I'll say this, Scott, really, truly, the book is written for girls, right? It's all about girls, women in STEM. But how great would it be for boys to read a book about women in STEM? Absolutely. They did that study in the 70s called draw scientist, and 99% of boys and girls to a man redone it in the 2,040% of girls, true female scientists so the needles changed. But 98% of boys still draw on men. So they don't envision girls in sight in STEM. So we all it's not just about addressing girls in STEM, it's about helping break stereotypes of boys who end up getting into STEM recognizing that this is a field for all
Scott Lee 4:44
right, that is a huge issue. We oftentimes don't think about the other people involved when we look at who are we focusing on and we leave other people out
Joshua Sneideman 4:54
but you know, you know, one of the highest in demand careers is in computer science skills across the board. Those are the jobs that are not getting filled females in computer science women in computer science, it used to be about, you know, 30 to 40% of the computer science careers in the 70s. And now it's 7%. So something really pugnacious, and nasty happened somewhere in the hiring process in the, in how we communicate computer science to ladies. And so what I what I really believe in you were talking about this civics, we need to show students how certain careers change the world for better Girl Scouts wrote a report called generation stem. And in it 92% of girls said they want a career that helps people and so we need to show in school, it needs to be a focus of educators to express this is how computer science helps people. This is how math helps people this is how science helps people not the scientific concept is a math concept is that you can use math to change the world and will attract more more girls to the to the STEM careers.
Scott Lee 5:57
It's not just about coding
Joshua Sneideman 5:58
that know exactly. It's not well, even like when you think about a pandemic, right, all the data that's collected, it's a big data set. There's big data scientists, there's mappers, and GIS professionals. There's the there's the epidemiologists, and all the different people who are working to solve a pandemic. It's not just health professionals, it's, you know, it's so many more careers involved in right now. It's logistics engineers, right? logistic, of course, is its own field. And that's critical to a pandemic, who would have thunk it right. So
Scott Lee 6:29
right. And that's all about big data.
Joshua Sneideman 6:31
Yeah, exactly.
Scott Lee 6:33
also wanted to discuss something else not related to your book with you.
Joshua Sneideman 6:38
Yeah, let's change gears.
Scott Lee 6:39
Tell us a little bit about the work that you're doing right now. So Learning Blade just briefly, and then I want to follow up, have a reason for asking that I want to follow up with something else right after that. So
Joshua Sneideman 6:52
your learning blade is actually similar to the conversation about the book because it's all about STEM career awareness. So what we're doing right now Learning Blade is providing online STEM career pathway lessons aligned to standards, grades five through nine. And so we have, you know, millions of lessons being completed by students around the country, actually around the world. And so what students do is they log in, they read and learn about STEM careers, and answer academic questions online, as well as there's offline engagement resources for both teachers and students. So the program is actually free for any student or any school in Tennessee, Arkansas, Alabama, Missouri, and South Carolina. And then we have large pilot project projects going on in other states as well. But you know, those states, you can find more just by going to learningblade.com,
Scott Lee 7:47
of course, and we'll put a link on our website for that as well. The The reason I wanted to ask about your work with Learning Blade, one of the things I keep thinking about is, and this goes right along with the pandemic, maybe at the end of the year, at the end of the school year, 20-2021 school year, by next school year, the 21-22 school year, we may be and I'm holding up air quotes back to "normal," but I don't think back to normal is going to be back to the way we were even two years ago, will never be the same really never will be the same. There have been policymakers erroneously, I believe, who have stated that there's a huge advantage with the pandemic and getting learning online and almost that, oh, maybe we can start completely moving schools online and out of school buildings. Now, of course, the problem with that is learning is an interactive process based on a relationship between a student and a teacher. How do you see technology changing the work of teachers and changing education in the future?
Joshua Sneideman 8:58
Well, that's a that's a really interesting question. I'll answer that from a couple of different angles. Let me start with my own students, my daughters they're at home, and we chose to just do the virtual school option. Um, it's been a challenge. I think the one skill that gives me the silver lining for their experience, the quality of education is not the same. It's not the same as in person. You know, they're missing the emotional social side of it. But the one silver lining is that they're learning the skill of following a course online, teaching themselves to learn and be able to pass an online exam through their online classes. I think they're much more prepared for future where maybe college university postgraduate, associate's degrees, where you could get a lot of your credits working right from your home cost saving thing. So I think terms of leveling the playing field for pov, you know, students in poverty or low incomes, it could be a huge game changer. And that's what they used to say about what was the free online classes that were given by Coursera and things Oh,
Scott Lee 9:59
yes. MOOCs and,
Joshua Sneideman 10:02
yeah, and all those. But I do think that shift is they say it's advanced on, you know, education, technologically speaking five to seven years in the year, that's the silver lining. I think it's also changing teaching in a really negative way, I would say perniciously. Bad, which is that it's taking the joy out of teaching. And so what in that aspect, two things need to happen. One is we've got to really figure out how to make online education fun for elementary, middle school, high school in case these situations arise again, but too, we're losing teachers. I mean, I, my job is to talk to teachers, Scott. So I talked to a couple maybe 1000 teachers in a school year, if not more, so many of them are overwhelmed, under satisfied and stressed out. And so that's, you know, but that's partly because some of them are are multitasking doing in class and, and virtual, but it's also even the virtual teachers are not it's just it's a lot of screen time. How has it changed the field? I think it's, it's helping school districts get everyone wired up, right. So that's a real positive to digital divide. And I'd love to tell you what we did a learning blade about that in a second. So that is a huge positive is the billions that have gone into leveling the playing field, providing broadband access to rural communities and low income communities. So that's a game changer that hopefully just remains. And then I think it's forcing districts to really look at digital technology, and make make better choices. At the beginning of the pandemic, they were making rash and rapid choices. Now they're making more well educated, more thoughtful choices. And so hopefully, some really great programs like ours and others will rise to the top and be value add. It's tough, man, it's tough out there and learning land.
Scott Lee 11:47
Oh, yeah. Well, and that's kind of what I'm thinking is if I'm a teacher, and if I'm a science teacher, or maybe I'm not a science teacher, maybe I'm a middle school specialist, let's say. How can technology help them do better from a content standpoint, on a day to day basis, compared to where it was even five years ago,
Joshua Sneideman 12:10
the way technology is shifting is to totally fully packaged programs that are self guided student directed learning platforms, where the teacher truly is a guide on the side. And so I don't know that it increases the teachers content knowledge, rather than takes the burden off of them to know everything. In that sense, that sounds like a positive and negative because what it's doing is taking the burden off of quality teaching and putting it on technology company. So you might you might have a effect where the quality of teaching actually, you know, the the slope of the line starts to curve down, because I'm reliant on too many crutches.
Scott Lee 12:51
That's a very interesting thought and not one I'd really considered.
Joshua Sneideman 12:55
Yeah, I mean, I'm concerned, I'm just concerned that teachers that there's always going to be jobs for teachers, right. I mean, it's an in demand career. There's a lot of openings, a lot of openings, and it's a great profession. You and I both know, absolutely, incredibly rewarding, so gratifying. The pay is raised rising around the country, the more you make it online, the less the teacher needs to become an expert in classroom, you know, pedagogy,
Scott Lee 13:21
that is an interesting thought and a very concerning one.
Joshua Sneideman 13:24
Yeah, I mean, I think there's there will be great technologies. I personally, there's another one I really like there's you know, adaptive learning, I think, is probably the most it's the most expensive type of technology. But as it as it grows into the AI future, it knows where each student is individualize it, you just got that ratio problem wrong. Let me give you three easier ones. Great, you got them, right, let me up it. So it can constantly change the throttle and the and the levers on each student's learning. adaptive learning has a chance to really take student learning to a whole nother level. So that could be and I think the billions that have gone into the gear money and the COVID for schools is probably fueling adaptive learning at a pace that is going to benefit student learning, as well. So there's our pros as well,
Scott Lee 14:12
that there was something else you wanted to add a minute ago.
Joshua Sneideman 14:15
So so what we did is we realized there was a digital divide.
Scott Lee 14:20
Yes, the digital divide. Yes,
Joshua Sneideman 14:21
yeah, we took and so maybe you want to talk about what the digital divide is for all your learners.
Scott Lee 14:25
Yeah, briefly, just the digital divide people have access to or people do not have access to high speed internet, or problem with speed. Sometimes there are a lot of areas where you have high speed download, but you don't have high speed uploads. And so you know, you can't really video conference, if I can get 600 megabits down, but only a second download, but only three megabits a second an upload. I can't participate in a video conference. I can get I can stream But I can't, can't have a conversation.
Joshua Sneideman 15:02
And not only that, but imagine a family with three students trying to use the internet simultaneously, mom, and women have been adversely affected by COVID, relative to men is now at home with their children. And so mom or dad's at home with their children, so you got to have two, three for people using the internet. And then that causes bandwidth issues, for sure. And then just access to the technology, right. But what we did at learning blade was we we made our learning blades, an online platform, it's about logging into the website, and doing online lessons very early in March. We're like, Oh, my God, this digital divide is horrible. The equity issue is incredible. How do we what do we do as a company to level the playing field. So what we what we did was we created an app in the Google Play Store, just for Chromebooks currently. But Chromebook users can download the app. And it allows students to download the lessons to their Chromebook, they can work on them offline. And as soon as they reconnect to the internet, the teacher gets the data for their performance. And so we went with a decidedly low technology solution, which was to make downloadable offline access, where it functions and forms just like your live online student doesn't really know that they're not online, but they do. But then they work in the platform, they have hundreds of hours of learning, and then they can go and use it online. And I actually had a student feedback that said, instead of having to rush on Fridays at school to finish all her work, she now knew that you could go home and do some of her work at home, offline, and that made her feel like a normal student.
Scott Lee 16:34
That's a very clever way to way to approach it. Because bandwidth that's access, in many cases, besides, there's policy issues as well, in many states, particularly around us here in the south. But even without that the actual physical infrastructure of getting it to homes is as daunting or maybe more daunting than rural electrification during during the Great Depression.
Joshua Sneideman 17:05
Well, exactly. And and you know, that's why you hear stories about school bus hotspots driving around and be connected and all these different strategies. So we said, let's, what's the easiest strategy to connect to the hotspot once you have all your resources to use? So that's what we did. And we're excited about it. Actually, today, Scott, I'll send you a link it was it was national news today, our app, so I'll send you a link on that. So you can share with your audience your amazing.
Scott Lee 17:32
Thank you. Yes, yes. And I just want to say
Joshua Sneideman 17:35
that because you it's probably hard to save this yourself, although I'm sure you do. But your audience should share their podcast. If they listen to an episode they like, share it. Well, thank
Scott Lee 17:42
you. Yes. Yes, please do that. Thank you for that. One other thing that just want to ask real quick before we go is have you been reading any good books lately?
Joshua Sneideman 17:53
I have. And it's changed my life. So it's not about education. But yet, I think it might be. And I might be changing paths, you know, in terms of I'm gonna stay learning, but I love what I'm doing. In terms of my emphasis in life. It's called how not to die by Dr. Michael Greger. And it's all about how to eat healthy, whole food, plant based diet. Really, it's 400 pages of scientific studies on the negative consequences of eating meat and dairy and things that have eyes. And so it's the research basis for healthy eating. And since I started it, I've been a vegan to have my, my personal health issues have improved tremendously. Actually, that's what my doctor said to me. He said, you know, Josh, I'd like to help you with this situation. You haven't. I can't, there's no surgery options. There's not this try being a vegan in four weeks. It's It's It's remedied my situation. And I've actually bought the book for like eight people. Now I keep sending it to everyone. I'm glad you asked. And here's what I would like to in terms of education speak. It made me realize as an award winning educator, 45 years old, I know nothing about nutrition. I don't even know what a serving size of nuts looks like. Right? And my lack of basic, just fundamental addition and subtraction as it relates to nutrition is absolutely missing from all the education that I ever taught in the schools I've been in. So we are not teaching kids the real true story of nutrition. And I think it should be in schools. Well, that's interesting. Yeah, we'll
Scott Lee 19:22
definitely pass that along to our listeners. And yeah, put that on. I'm very interested myself.
Joshua Sneideman 19:28
Yeah. I mean, it's one of the best reads, um, just it's been life changing for me. And I won't go into all the details, but who knew eggs were so bad for your health? You know, I thought they were great. I used to eat up about 10 of them a week. Good read, how not to die by Dr. Greger and he's got his own website called nutritionfacts.org that has lots of videos on whole plant whole plant fresh food diet.
Scott Lee 19:50
Thank you very much. Once again, congratulations on your own book. And I look forward to your books in the future as well.
Joshua Sneideman 19:59
Yeah. If I could have a last word, you know, in terms of you were talking about technology and how it's changing education, and I referenced how teachers are really stressed out, I think I think parents, educators and society need to recognize teachers for what they've been going through. So I appreciate your thoughtful teacher approach. I know you love social emotional well being for students. Right now, teachers should be of utmost concern as well. So thank you, Scott Lee, for Dr. Scott Lee, for the work you do, and for having us on the show again.
Scott Lee 20:32
This has been episode number 23. The Thoughtful Teacher Podcast is hosted and produced by R. Scott Lee, who retains copyright. We encourage diverse opinions. However, opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of producer, partners, or underwriters. Guest was not compensated for appearance, nor did guests or guest's organization pay to appear. Transcripts are available following podcast publication at our website, thoughtfulteacherpodcast.com, sponsorship opportunities, or other inquiries may be made on the "Contact Us" page at our website, thoughtfulteacherpodcast.com. Please follow the Thoughtful Teacher Podcast on twitter @ drrscottlee, and on facebook @facebook.com thoughtful teacher podcast.
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