Oct 5, 2026 · 31 min · 8 segments
What does AI adoption look like when you're the principal, counselor, tech director, and social studies teacher all at once? In this episode, Guy sits down with Nick Ziegler, EdTech Specialist at…
Nick ZieglerGuestGuyHostAzadehHostYeah.
I think it's a good place to pause for a second.
And Andrew, if you can give listeners who are not familiar with ESUs two words about ESUs and what they do.
Yeah, so an ESU is an Educational Service Unit, which are known as ESAs, maybe in other parts of the country.
And I think a little bit of that framing that we were doing as Nick's comment started there, I know that there are states that would, let's even go for instructional materials, maybe narrow to five sets of instructional materials for ELA, for example.
So in Nebraska, those service agencies provide a breadth of services, as the name would suggest.
But it's not intuitive because there's 44 states with ESUs or ESAs, I should say.
And so for us in Nebraska, we're really fortunate to have a strong network that focuses in on a number of different areas, including professional development for both teachers and administrators, technology integration, cybersecurity and kind of that tech support.
You can go on to our smart site and look at all the different services we provide.
And what's great about that is that ensures that regardless of where you are, that you have some foundational and fundamental expectations with regards to education.
And the more we can collaborate, the more that that opportunity, I would say, is there consistently.
It certainly doesn't mean that we prescribe anything, that ESU's work really at that intermediate level to where when the Department of Education has guidance or policy or standards, we try to carry those to the districts and support as best we can.
Most of our ESUs do a data dig annually with leaders at the local level that leads to an identification of what they would like to primarily learn and need.
And sometimes we work in service to the legislation as we're sort of identified to do.
Yeah.
I think it's a good place to pause for a second.
And Andrew, if you can give listeners who are not familiar with ESUs two words about ESUs and what they do.
Yeah, so an ESU is an Educational Service Unit, which are known as ESAs, maybe in other parts of the country.
And I think a little bit of that framing that we were doing as Nick's comment started there, I know that there are states that would, let's even go for instructional materials, maybe narrow to five sets of instructional materials for ELA, for example.
So in Nebraska, those service agencies provide a breadth of services, as the name would suggest.
But it's not intuitive because there's 44 states with ESUs or ESAs, I should say.
And so for us in Nebraska, we're really fortunate to have a strong network that focuses in on a number of different areas, including professional development for both teachers and administrators, technology integration, cybersecurity and kind of that tech support.
You can go on to our smart site and look at all the different services we provide.
And what's great about that is that ensures that regardless of where you are, that you have some foundational and fundamental expectations with regards to education.
And the more we can collaborate, the more that that opportunity, I would say, is there consistently.
It certainly doesn't mean that we prescribe anything, that ESU's work really at that intermediate level to where when the Department of Education has guidance or policy or standards, we try to carry those to the districts and support as best we can.
Most of our ESUs do a data dig annually with leaders at the local level that leads to an identification of what they would like to primarily learn and need.
And sometimes we work in service to the legislation as we're sort of identified to do.
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