Spotlight 4 Success
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Spotlight 4 Success
Teaching Tech and Podcasting with Richard Curtis
Meet Richard Curtis, a passionate educator who transformed his background in news and radio broadcasting into a 15-year teaching career at Lancaster High School. In this enlightening conversation, Richard shares how his industry experience perfectly positioned him to teach digital media and emerging technologies to today's students.
Website: spotlight4success.com
Welcome to Spotlight for Success by American Book Company. I'm Devin Pintosi, your host. We are here at the ISTE ASCD conference in sunny San Antonio, Texas. We are here with our special guest, Richard Curtis. Richard is joining us with Lancaster ISD, Lancaster High School. Richard, nice to see you today. It's good to see you. All right, Can you tell us a bit about what brings you here to ISD A-S-C-D?
Speaker 3:I'm a tech teacher, I teach tech, I teach emerging tech. So I've got to know tech, I've got to know emerging tech. And so what do teachers do? They come to these things to learn and to see all the new things and to take all that stuff back to their students in the classroom. That's what I'm doing.
Speaker 1:Awesome, and can you tell us a bit about your journey here in the journalism? How long have you been in teaching directing journalism in your high school?
Speaker 3:I've been teaching for 15 years. I've been at the same school for 15 years. Okay, I absolutely love it at that school and at that district. I could not imagine being anywhere else. I love those kids, I love the district, I love the community. It is awesome. It is wonderful. Before that, I was in news, I was in radio. So being able to teach digital media is right. Where I grew up anyway, that's amazing. You came out of industry, came out of industry, moved into educating and then I'm able to start teaching basically radio again. Just, we're not pumping over the airwaves, we're pumping over the interwebs.
Speaker 1:Oh well, wonderful, I understand, you do podcasting as well.
Speaker 2: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 investments. 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 3:We do. We have under the banner of Webo Podcast Network, w-e-b-o Webo Podcast Network. You can look that on your favorite podcast app. We have two that are going right now. Well, we're on summer break, but we have a sports podcast right, because sports are his low-hanging fruit Tiger Sports Page. That's been going on for two years. And then we have one that started last year which is called A Different Pod, where we have our Gen Z students watching A Different World, which is from my generation. It's a Gen X program, okay, and normally watching it for the first time and then discussing it and analyzing it with their Gen Z thought processes and Gen Z ideas about social, how society should be, and it turns out wonderfully. But that's a different pod and we did the entire first season of the program last year and that is all out and it came out wonderfully. We're going to launch two more next year.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow, that's wonderful, that's ambitious getting all of those programs going and what are you hoping to get out of the ASCD ISTE experience here this weekend?
Speaker 3:I'm open to just about anything. I am an open book. I am a sponge. I just want to learn. I am a lifelong learner. I just want to learn. If there's something I don't know about, I want to figure it out. There's plenty of AI here, brand new, emerging. I'm going to learn about that. I want to talk to people about podcasting, about promoting podcasts. I want to talk to people about whatever I can talk to them about.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's wonderful. Wow, this is great. So that's great. Is there anything else you'd like to share with the ASCD SD community?
Speaker 3:I'm just happy to be here, man. This thing is amazing. This is amazing and it's nuts. This place is huge. It's huge, man. This is like walking around your classroom for four straight days, getting around this convention center.
Speaker 1:No kidding, it's really awesome.
Speaker 3:I'm having the time of my life. I'm having a ball. I'm loving it.
Speaker 1:That's great. Thank you so much. This is Richard Currious, again with Lancaster ISD, Lancaster High School. Thank you for joining us today, Richard, Absolutely Thank you.