CANDID
Every month, Grant Greeff shares his professional learnings, experiences, and ideas about business, leadership & culture through a South African lens.
Watch or listen on Spotify and read on LinkedIn newsletters.
RSSVERIFY
CANDID
Bonus: Navigating the World of Digital Education: An Impromptu Conversation with Robert Paddock
In this informative discussion, the co-founder of Get Smarter, Valencia Institute, and UCT Online High School, Rob Paddock, shares insightful thoughts on tech-facilitated education and parenting in the digital age.
Rob comments on how technology should be interspersed into early development and underscores the importance of parental involvement in a child's academic progress.
He also gives a personal recount of facing public criticism and death threats, and how he dealt with the emotional toll of it.
The talk prompts parents to introspect on their approach to technology in children's education and their role in their child’s learning progress.
00:00 Introduction and Importance of Blended Learning
00:37 Parenting in the Digital Age
02:29 The Role of Parents in Child's Education
03:19 The Power of Learning Analytics and Data
04:47 Facing Criticism and Challenges as an Entrepreneur
05:34 Dealing with Personal Attacks and Threats
06:36 The Emotional Toll and Healing Process
I'm with Rob, the co founder of Get Smarter and the Valencia Institute, as well as you'll probably know UCT Online High School. And Rob, thank you so much for delivering on the panel discussion. I really found it insightful, but specifically along the lines of the fact that we need to understand in this era, That blended learning is not just giving someone an iPad, not just giving them, um, you know, internet connectivity, but really looking at how we can merge technology and infrastructure in a way where there is the opportunity to draw, uh, learning data. And then from that learning objective data, we're able then to tailor and personalize education for individuals. But I think there's a lot of people watching that are parents and, um, I'm a parent of two girls under two. What should I be looking forward to in the future now? How should I be preparing myself, my family around my two girls going into this era? Because I think for a lot of parents, there's an unknown factor here. And, uh, what, from what you have seen is really important practically for us to start considering as parents. That's a really good point. And as a parent of a three year old and a one year old, you and I are living in the same world right now. I would say be very cautious of too much technology too early in your child's development; there is cognitive and socio emotional development that's happening in the early stages where we really benefit from Not overstimulating our children not giving their their creative imagination potential a lazy route out to just be overly stimulated by these high velocity Technologies that said we've all as parents got to find the balance at what point do you make sure that your child can still integrate into the world can still be part of this digital world Which is very much the world that they're all increasingly going to be in And a view and this again is really just based on the literature that exists is that if you can keep your kids mostly off technology until about 10 years old, it will be a fundamentally good thing for their, for their cognitive developments and particularly for their socio emotional developments. After that, disciplined use of the technology. Um, and really what we can do here is we can lead by example. Don't sit here on your phone when your kids are talking to you and show them that the technology gets their preference. How on earth are we going to ask them at a later stage then? to do the same thing when they walk into a room and they've decided that we're not cool anymore and they're 13 years old and the entire thing. Um, but I think, again, this is such a personal thing for every parent to figure out. My view is try keep them off until about 10, then use it in a very disciplined way and lead by example. And also what, what I find is that in, in, in the area that we're living in now where parents are very much involved, uh, in their, in their child's school and sport and all of that. There's two approaches that a parent can take when, uh, Trying to seek guidance from the educator and whether that be the school or the individual, um, You know guiding their their their child either what can I as a parent do? to help my child develop or Placing the blame then on the educator, whether it's the institution or the individual going, what are you going to do, right? To change my child or develop them. For you, in terms of that type of options that parents have ownership or, or just kind of delegational blame, what for you have you seen in terms of the data now of whether parents actually do get involved versus not get involved? This is what's so cool about learning analytics and data right now is we can test different types of interventions and see what actually has a positive academic impact. What's interesting is that simply providing parents with report cards that are very high level that just say I've got a C for mathematics I've got a D for social sciences and so on Almost useless in terms of the parents ability to play a proactive productive role in their child's education However, we can now compare that to interventions like you've written a particular biology exam you've done exceptionally well with a concept in cell biology and Give the parents that particular information in a push notification through the parent portal Now they can go to their child and say, Oh my word, you did so well in the cell, cell, cell biology, like very specific, very tangible and something that, that parents can use to celebrate wins as opposed to just get numbers that mean almost nothing. So for us, this is the sort of thing that again, the learning analytics, we try a lot of different things. We see what actually has a productive impact and we zoom in and we zoom in and we zoom in, but the more tangible that parents can be and the more. Um, specific they can be in their interventions, in the interest that they take, the more productive it seems to be for the child. Because now you're really seeing me, you're not just saying like, Oh, you didn't go to class today. It's like, no, you actually saw a very specific thing in me and kids want to be seen. They want to be seen. They want to be known. And it's one of the biggest gifts we can give our children is to really see them. Excellent. And I, and I want to take a quick digression on, you know, this is all impromptu, but for me, you experienced quite a very in, from my perspective, quite a very. Um, critical and negative coverage when it comes to the usage to online high school. And in, in my opinion, it was an attack and, uh, an attack on, you know, being an entrepreneur and really, you know, experimenting and going through what is natural, which is challenges and, and, and looking to solve them. When you were faced with that level of, um, you know, personal attack and, and, and questioning of what it. What it is that you're actually doing when you have a true belief in in driving education forward in the country and beyond How do you actually deal with that when someone does experience that because a lot of other people in different spheres that is that experience That how did you handle that? How did you you know kind of respond to that? And thanks for the personal question It was it was an attack and it was deeper than what you would have seen in the public media I mean there were death threats to my family there was I mean, basically campaigns against us that were happening in the background that were atrocious, truly. Um, and I think one of the kind of sober realizations that this is a very political area. There's no bigger political force than the teachers unions in our country. And it's wild out there. Um, to answer more personally, at the time that it was happening, it was kind of November, December, and it kind of spilled out into January, February. As a leader, I felt my role is just to stand firm and to be a beacon of hope, to be sure and assuring. In what we're doing and why we're doing it. But it's take, it's busy simultaneously taking an emotional toll. You know, like you're getting, you're seeing letters sent to my father with his face with like, oh, I mean, you know, when they cut out letters out of a mag and like threatening. It's just as, as as terrible as Anthony, you can imagine. And I didn't actually start processing that properly until about April. And for me, that was then very deep therapy, very deep. I've got a wonderful men's group that I work with that holds a huge amount of space and, um. Support which has been very very helpful and it's been a process man. Like it's not been easy It's at the time I just stood tall and did what I needed to do But there is a price to pay and you have to deal with it And emotionally it was to really feel into the depth of those emotions to feel the pain to feel the disillusion and to come through the other side, you know, to know that what we're doing matters. And if this is part of the price to pay, as long as I honor the feelings and the healing that needs to happen as part of it, we've got an important job to do and we won't stop. Won't stop. And it just shows you how important having a belief, like knowing that what you are doing, you truly believe in and it's unconditional in nature as well, because I think for me, massive cheerleader. So looking forward to the next chapter. All right. Thank you.