Spotlight 4 Success
We're shining a light on education success stories and talking about current trends and topics of importance to the education community. Join us in conversation!
Spotlight 4 Success
Turning Old Tech into New Opportunities
Ever wondered what happens to all those outdated iPads and MacBooks stacked in school storage rooms? Shayna Winstead reveals the surprising answer that's putting money back into education.
Website: spotlight4success.com
Welcome to Spotlight for Success by American Book Company. I'm Devin Pintosa, your host. We are here at the Alabama Educational Technology Conference in sunny Mobile, alabama. I'm joined by our special guest, shana Winstead, with Second Life Mac. Hello, welcome, shana, thank you. Thank you for having me. All right, tell me a bit about what brings you here to this conference.
Speaker 2:Yes, so at Second Life Mac, we purchase Apple devices from school districts pretty much any company but we focus on school districts. So you might have iPads and MacBooks just stacked up in a warehouse somewhere collecting dust, or you might buy the latest technology or the latest edition, and so we'll buy the older devices and bring money back into the school district, into the school building your technology budget. So we're giving money back to the schools.
Speaker 1:How awesome is that? I bet you get a lot of takers.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, it is big business, and I had never heard of this industry before working here. I've been here since February, so just over four months. Wow but it is a great industry and I'm giving money back into schools. We're helping children, we're helping educate the next generation, we're helping schools purchase new technology. So it's been a great experience, oh wow.
Speaker 1:So how could people contact you if you've got a school system that's like, hey, I've got a boatload of Macs and I need to make some money fast?
Speaker 2:How do they get in contact with you? Yes, so they can find us at SecondLifeMaccom.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Or you can email us at SLMProcurementcom and then that will be routed to one of the six directors of procurement. I'm the director of procurement in the Southeast. So, if you're in the Southeast, then it will come to me and I'll reach out to you via telephone. Hopefully we have a conversation. I can understand what devices you have and I'll provide you with a price quote, tell you how much they're worth and 90 days later you get a check. It's a very simple process. That's awesome. Love that. Yes, very, very simple process.
Speaker 3:Thank you for watching Spotlight for Success. I am Devin Pintosi, chief Operating Officer of American Book Company. We are located here in our headquarters in Woodstock, georgia. All of our materials are printed in USA. We have course books, e-books and online testing in grades K-12 in mathematics, ela, science and social studies. These materials are all designed to help students achieve higher scores on their state-specific high-stakes assessments. We guarantee score improvement. You can get free samples of our materials either in print or in electronic formats at abck12.com. We look forward to hearing from you.
Speaker 1:That's great, shayna. So tell me about your journey. Before this you were doing other things and your journey in this space of the educational technology space, Awesome, yeah, so I've been in corporate technology sales for over 20 years.
Speaker 2:I don't like to say you know, stating myself, but the first device that I sold was the BlackBerry BlackBerry with the keyboard, even before it had internet access.
Speaker 2:So it was purely an email communication tool. So I sold the BlackBerry and I sold VoIP, data hosting, voice over IP and mostly technology sales. And then in the middle 2008, when things got a little wacky in technology and the companies AT&T, verizon, lucent, all these companies were buying each other up MCI, worldcom. So then I switched over to education technology and I sold one of the first digital curriculums. I sold one of the first digital curriculum apps where you can communicate with your parents on your phone get your grades communicate with the teacher soccer practice on Tuesday.
Speaker 2:So I pretty much rode the wave of education technology for the last about 15 years and then most recently I was selling corporate sales and education sales for the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Franklin Covey. So we would help people develop their leadership and development internally in the school districts, with the students developing their capacity for leadership, and also on the corporate side. And then just about four months ago, you know, I started here at Second Life Mac and it's been awesome to be on the procurement side. So I'm no longer selling to schools or corporations, I am actually buying from school districts. Now we also buy from organizations. So anyone in the Southeast if you have Mac devices that you would like to sell, you know, reach out to us and we can set up a quote and we send them through our processing. We audit the devices, we clean them, make sure that they're secure, that no student or employee data is on them, we refurbish them and then we sell them on Amazon and internationally.
Speaker 1:Gosh, that's awesome. Shayna, tell me again what's the name of that website, if people want to make that money.
Speaker 2:It is SecondLifeMaccom.
Speaker 1:All right, shayna Winstead, secondlifemaccom. Thank you for joining us today.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me. I appreciate the opportunity.