S1E10 - S1E10 - Introducing Stanford EdTech with Teggin Summers

It's interesting to hear you tell your story and there's this movement from more acronyms to fewer acronyms and a focus on people.

Would you say that represents this, I don't know, it's almost like going from specific languages and specific technologies to like, broader just community and social impact of the things that you do

yeah that that is a really neat perspective I hadn't thought about yeah all of those acronyms and of course we still have so many here and in higher ed but yeah I think maybe one key piece of that is the the power of narrative and how that really builds all of these connections across the learning material the engagement of our faculty of the learners and you know there's like this common thread of narrative which really sort of surpasses acronyms and sort of specific technologies and just focuses kind of on that that deeper layer of connection and meaning and pedagogy

Definitely want to dig deeper into that storytelling thread.

But Adam, do you have any questions to kick us off as well?

Yeah, I think when you think about ed tech at Stanford Medicine, what do you believe we're really here to do?

That's a great question.

I love that.

I think we're advancing medical education transformation.

That is an easy line to say.

but a lot of it is this balance of meeting all of our educators, physicians, faculty, clinician faculty, and meeting them where they are and really understanding their goals and the objectives and the learning that they want to happen for their students, but also understanding being future thinking and being able to support advancements and growth for both the faculty and our learners because we are in a field that is very rapidly evolving.

And so kind of just being able to do this delicate dance of meeting people where they are but also fostering and supporting that advancement that you know is continually happening both like in clinical fields but also in the technologies that people use like we we have that ability to see both of that sort of that higher view of all of those things and then being able to provide that development for our community

Yeah, it really is a balance between, like you said, meeting them and providing the things that they want and making their wishes come to life, but also providing guidance in a consulting kind of way and letting them know what's going to be the best approach to bring that to life from our perspective and experience.

Right, because we have this pedagogical... expertise we have the creative expertise and I think part of our job is to really deeply listen and engage with the people that come to us with ideas and projects to to bring that expertise in helping them further define what their what their goals are and the best way of to really think about like how that content or those experiences will be received most effectively by the learner.

And that can be through technology or not technology, through creative approaches and art and storytelling.

There's so many different ways to achieve those goals.

And part of our job is helping people kind of find that path to the best way.

I definitely agree.

It's like our role is to ask the right questions and to maybe like shape the excitement that a faculty member has or the challenges that they're trying to answer.

and steer them toward something that is healthy and great for the learner and also sustainable.

We live in this, in the Silicon Valley, there's so many shiny new things and it seems like every year there's a new big thing.

We gotta do this, we gotta do this.

I remember a few years ago, everyone was trying to get VR into their work.

But you always bring it back to storytelling.

And every time I hear you tell somebody about EdTech, I feel like you say that word in the first couple sentences.