My EdTech Life

Episode 312: Robby Cobbs

• Fonz Mendoza • Season 1 • Episode 312

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Episode 312: I Used My Boat Money to Start Tech My School with Robby Cobbs

What would you do if you saw an entire generation of students being left behind? Robby Cobbs saw the need for better technology, teacher training, and modern resources in Puerto Rican schools—and he took action. Instead of buying a boat, he used his savings to launch Tech My School, a nonprofit dedicated to equipping underserved schools with technology and empowering teachers to bring 21st-century learning to their students.

In this powerful episode, Robby shares his journey from EdTech leader to nonprofit founder, the shocking state of education in Puerto Rico, and how Tech My School is bridging the digital divide.

💡 Topics We Cover:
✔️ The challenges Puerto Rican schools face & why the education system is struggling
✔️ How Tech My School is transforming schools through technology & professional development
✔️ Robby’s international journey in education—from California to Africa & beyond
✔️ The Tech My School Conference in March—a game-changer for EdTech in Puerto Rico!

🚀 Get Involved & Make an Impact!
🔗 Learn more about Tech My School: https://techmyschool.org
🎟️ Register for the Tech My School Conference (March 15-16): https://techmyschool.org/conference/
📚 Check out Robby’s book Tech Centered Learning Driven: A Guide to Improving Your Educational Career with Technology: https://amzn.to/4hFtCya

🙌 A huge shoutout to our sponsors @EduaideAI & @Yellowdig for supporting this mission!

🔥 Don’t forget to LIKE, COMMENT & SUBSCRIBE! We’re so close to 1,000 subscribers—help us get there! 

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Fonz:

Hello everybody and welcome to another great episode of my EdTechWife. Thank you so much for joining us on this wonderful day and, wherever it is that you're joining us from around the world, thank you, as always, for all of your support. We appreciate all the likes, the shares, the follows, and thank you so, so much for interacting with our content. As you know, we do what we do for you to bring you some amazing conversations and amazing guests and, as always, guys, there's no difference, like today, we have an amazing guest and we always try and bring you some amazing perspectives, stories and viewpoints. And today I'm really excited to welcome to the show Robbie Cobbs, who is here today joining us, and he's going to talk about a nonprofit called Tech, my School and just the wonderful mission that they have. And so, robbie, how are you doing this evening?

Robby Cobbs:

Doing great. Thank you so much for having me Pleasure to be on your show. I've been a fan for a long time and, yeah, a bit surreal being on the show, so I'm ready to get going.

Fonz:

Awesome, robbie. Well, thank you so much. Like I said, it's great to have you on as a guest and it is great to just connect with you and then learn a little bit more about what you're doing and this mission that you have through Tech, my School. But before we get into that conversation, robbie, if you can share with us a little bit of your backstory, so we would love for you to just give us a little introduction and tell us what your context is in the world of education.

Robby Cobbs:

Yeah, like all the listeners and followers, I'm an educator at heart. I've always been an educator, started in 2000 in Hawaii working at some inner city schools there, then went back to California I'm from San Diego originally and started working inner city there for about five years international school systems and I was an elementary school teacher to start kindergarten second, third, fourth and then fell in love with technology really in my own core values. I love to learn and I love to serve and help others and with technology it just fills both of those buckets, because you're always having to learn all the time and then you always need to teach people how to use the tech. So I kind of shifted in towards that as a teacher, became the techie teacher and went back to Silicon Valley, got my master's in ed tech at San Francisco State and I was working at Yucheng International School there, right by Google. Campus was a phenomenal place to just, you know, expand as an educator, really to delve into the world of ed tech, being kind of at the epicenter right there, and spent three great years there and then went from a fourth grade teacher slash, you know, tech integrator on campus we were. It was a small school, so I was basically the tech guy to the American International School of JEDA in Saudi Arabia and I was the tech director there for four years and then, from Jeddah, went to the American School of Lagos in Nigeria and was a tech director there as well for a couple of years, during those COVID years, when I was in Jeddah.

Robby Cobbs:

That is a place that's I'm not sure exactly the exact term for it, but essentially it's a place where anything can happen and you have to be prepared and ready so that we're really there's a readiness there. And so we had remote learning plans and remote days of school and virtual learning days before. It was cool. Before, you know, covid happened. So B Cameron, who's kind of a legend, implemented that with all of the different schools in the NISA region and, yeah, so I became kind of a virtual or remote learning specialist, went to Nigeria to you know, kind of prepare the school for that.

Robby Cobbs:

But we were thinking more like Ebola or maybe like a political uprising or something like that could interrupt school, and so developed the remote learning plan before COVID and we're training teachers prior to COVID. And then, when COVID happened, we just, you know, we didn't have to flip a switch. We just, you know, continued on what we were doing. We just implemented the plan and it was a fairly smooth transition. We had a great leadership team there that helped really smooth things out. And in that process I burned myself and many teachers out because we were so good at, you know, replicating the physical classroom into the virtual one. And I moved to Puerto Rico with my family to take a one-year sabbatical to write my book on ed tech and just kind of take a breather, I guess you could say. And I'll leave the story there for the next question.

Fonz:

Wow, that is fantastic, Robby, just the level of experience that you have and, most importantly too, I'm just really so interested in the different viewpoints and perspectives that you were able to learn along the way. As educators, not many of us have that opportunity that you had to really go overseas also, and then, you know, come back here and then the work that you're doing in Puerto Rico now, and so I am just like in awe of that. And so my question, before we get into really the heart of the matter too, is was education something that you knew you wanted to do, or was it something that you kind of fell into and then just fell in love with it and just really, you know, just went all in on it?

Robby Cobbs:

yeah, so as a child, you know I was the poorest kid in school. I was Kenny from South Park. I went to a public elementary school in El Cajon, california school, a school called Crest Elementary, and it was a great school, a really nice little town, little mountain town, kind of like South Park again. But yeah, I was the poor kid. School was kind of my sanctuary. That's where food was, electricity, was adults who cared about me, all those things that many kids go through if they have kind of a rough upbringing. But yeah, so school is always a sanctuary. I always felt very comfortable in school. I was good at school, I liked school, but I wasn't planning on being a teacher per se.

Robby Cobbs:

I went to Hawaii my freshman year of college because I wanted to be in Hawaii. I thought it'd be a great place. I was actually trying to follow Dan Patrick. I was with the sports editor in high school and loved writing, loved sports I still do and while I was there I got a job at a surf shop. You know it was like the coolest job you can get in Hawaii while going to university there. But I needed a little bit more money.

Robby Cobbs:

Went back to university I said, hey guys, can I, you know, get a job at the library, working at the library doing my homework, getting paid to do my homework? And they were like, well, that job's taken. But we have an opportunity for you to work in an elementary school through the America Reads program in the inner city schools in Hawaii. You know, would you be interested? No-transcript those positive memories I had at school. So it was just such a comfortable place for me and a place where I'm working with kids who really need the help and I'm serving them and it just felt so great. And that freshman year of university I knew I wanted to be a teacher. I changed my major and from that point forward I was just working in schools, like always interning, always working in schools, all throughout college and immediately after that.

Fonz:

Okay. So I got to ask, though, what was the major that you were intending to follow? And then, of course, now you moved to education. What was the major that you were intending to follow? And then, of course, now you moved to education.

Robby Cobbs:

So I got a journalism major because I thought I was going to be a sports writer. But again, it was my freshman year, first semester, and then within that first month or two I went to a school and then when I transferred I figured I would teach at the elementary school that raised me back in El Cajon. And so I transferred to San Diego State and I kind of asked the counselor like so what's a teacher major? What is the major? I don't know what the major is to be an elementary school teacher. Is it called elementary school teaching or what? And they said no, it's called liberal studies. You get a liberal studies degree. It's you know multiple subjects in every subject, so you're kind of knowledgeable in all things a mile wide and a foot deep or whatever. And so that was the major. I switched to and took all the classes and for me I really liked it simply because I was one of the few guys in the class, so there'd be like 200 women in me. So it was great and yeah, it was just, it was a great experience.

Robby Cobbs:

San Diego State is a phenomenal school. It's the top education school in the state of California for teachers and they, you know, huge student body. I think it's like you know, 30,000, 40,000 students, stanford, university of Texas, a&m. So she was at San Diego State when I was there. So it was great to be on campus when she was there. She was the head of the history department and, yeah, I just had such a phenomenal time at San Diego State and I'm a proud alumni, a proud Aztec, and I always, you know, follow the program and I had future siblings who went to San Diego State and I, you know, kind of encouraged them.

Robby Cobbs:

My brother, he's a teacher that came through San Diego State. He now coaches high school football in El Cajon at Granite Hills High School where we all went. All of the Cobbs family went to Granite Hills High School and he's kind of a local legend there. He won a state football championship and all that stuff. So, yeah, yeah, just a proud Aztec. And you know it was really early in my career. It wasn't one of those situations where I had, like you know, got a degree in history because I love history, and then fell into teaching. It was like I interned freshman year, you know, first semester, fell in love with it and went, you know, dove into the deep end straight into it.

Fonz:

I knew this is what I wanted to do. That's fantastic, you know. And so right now, what I'm picking up, though, too, is very similar to me growing up in a situation like that. You know, very, very poor. You know parents just my dad working out in the citrus farm, my mom just kind of doing odd jobs and everything. But I never thought I would go into teaching and, as a matter of fact, I always said I will never go into teaching.

Fonz:

But I went in just because of that dream of, hey, I need to take care of my parents, and being an only child pressure's on and I know many people have heard the story here because I've said it a couple of times but going into college, I was like, well, I'm going to go do business, you know business security, make some money, take care of my parents and so on.

Fonz:

And then, you know, fork in the road moment.

Fonz:

And then I got into teaching and I just absolutely fell in love with it.

Fonz:

But what I'm picking up, you know, and listening to your story, and I mean we'll definitely dive into the conversation but I think this really is also what, what I feel I'm picking up from you two in the conversation and your passion of what you're doing through TechMyyschoolorg is that being where you were, how you were brought up and how you know you went to school like you mentioned, like hey, adults that care about me, food and so on, and then going back and maybe kind of seeing yourself a little bit in some of the students just really ignited that passion for you two as well. So you know, I'm sure I just want to ask you know, did that have a tremendous role in what it is that you're doing now? And especially, you know, all the traveling and so on. Was that kind of like your mission to say, hey, I want to give everybody, or as many children or students as possible, the opportunities that I never had, or maybe now the opportunities that I have, so just to be that catalyst for them.

Robby Cobbs:

Yeah, no, thank you for asking the question and I wanted to quickly mention, before getting into it, my family were also, you know, they were farmers, that we were Okies. Actually, the Cobbs family has been in America since the 1620s, so a very long time Started out as tobacco farmers from England and they stayed in agricultural all the way from Virginia to Missouri, down to Texas and then Oklahoma, and then in the 20s the Dust Bowl happened and we were the Grapes of Wrath. We came to California and we, you know, picking fruit and all those kinds of things, and then my grandfather, you know, built an empire through construction. So all the men in my family transitioned from agriculture to construction and the message to me was always don't do this, don't be a labored worker, you need to work with your brain, and so I always envisioned myself wearing a tie. I knew I wanted to wear a tie and as a teacher, I always did wear a tie. So very, very similar in that sense. But, yeah, so I do have a unique lens in the sense that I've traveled to 60 countries, so I've been able to see a lot of the world Africa, middle East, I've lived these places East Asia, europe, latin America, you know the US, obviously. So I've seen a bunch of countries and you know, when I was in Africa, right before we came to Puerto Rico, we were at the American National School of Legos. It's a wealthy school. It's kind of where all the elites go the generals, the diplomat kids, the doctors, the business people. They put their kids in these elite schools because it's a pipeline into the US really.

Robby Cobbs:

But we would serve local schools in the community. We had a program where you'd bring in local teachers and we'd teach them about ed tech or just basic teaching pedagogy to help the community. We had a program where we were donating computers and stuff to local schools nearby, part of our purchase program cycle. And then also, just on a personal level, I would take my children and we'd go to orphanages and we'd donate toys and stuff like that to orphanages in Africa. And whenever I was in those countries and we donate toys and stuff like that to orphanages in Africa, and whenever I was in those countries whether it was Nigeria or India, kazakhstan, all these different countries that were, let's say, less fortunate we would do what we could to help them by giving things to them computers and services and things like that. But ultimately it was their country and we were a guest in that country, you know, and I'd lived as a guest in the country for, you know, a majority of my career living as a guest in other countries, learning these cultures and traveling and those type of things.

Robby Cobbs:

But when I came to Puerto Rico I didn't know a lot about the history of Puerto Rico. I knew it was beautiful and it was America kind of. But yeah, we just kind of came here with open eyes and open ears and open hearts and kind of took things as they came. And after my experience in Hawaii, working in inner city schools, I figured Puerto Rican education wouldn't be as strong as, let's say, new York or maybe even Florida, but it would be something similar, like when you're in a school in Hawaii versus a school in California. The schools in California typically are stronger, they're better performing, better resourced or those kinds of things, but they're not that much different. There's a drop off a little bit, but it's not, you know, of consequence, let's just say. But coming to Puerto Rico, I was absolutely shocked because I put my boys first. We were looking for schools to put them into and then we eventually, you know, bought a house and put our boys in a local school and we were just absolutely shocked at the state of education from the schools we visited and the ones we chose, simply because of that stark difference in quality from a US mainland school versus the US schools in Puerto Rico.

Robby Cobbs:

So for those who don't know the history of Puerto Rico, you know Puerto Rico became part of America through somewhat controversial ways, through conquest, in the late 1800s and right before World War I every Puerto Rican became a US citizen, so everyone has the blue passport. They've been America since then. There's been some controversial laws that have been kind of strings attached I guess you can say the Jones Act and those kinds of things. But ultimately everyone here is an American. You see the United States Postal Service, national Park Services, you've got US Dollar, walmart, wendy's, the whole thing.

Robby Cobbs:

Spain was here for many, many years, 400 years, 500 years. So we just kind of took it over after the Spanish-American War from them. But so they predominantly speak Spanish here, like most of the Latin world. But they're American. So they can come and work and live in Florida or Oklahoma or Nebraska tomorrow if they want. They just buy a flight, get on a Spirit Airlines flight or United Airlines or whatever. Go there, apply for a job, live and work the same way anyone else goes to any other states, and you really have the same voting power pretty much, except for the presidency. So you can vote all the way up into the primary, but after that there's no vote for president, which is kind of part of that original deal that they made.

Robby Cobbs:

So anyways, with that said, everyone here is an American and my lens is simply I'm new to this island, they're American, I'm American, they have a US passport, I have a US passport, and if I go to any of these 60 countries I've been to. That is how you are judged. You're judged by your passport, right. If I'm in Germany, it doesn't matter which town or province I'm in. If you have the German passport, you're German right, which town or province I'm in. If you have the German password, you're German right, and you'd see a similar level of education. You'd see a similar level, similar service of everything. And so coming here was shocking, because there is a stark difference.

Robby Cobbs:

And when I put my boys in the school, it wasn't that. And when I was in Africa, I was like this is their country. You know, I'll give them computers, but it's their place, you know, here in Puerto Rico I was like this is their country. You know, I'll give them computers, but it's their place. You know, here in Puerto Rico. I immediately felt like this is my country, this is my community. I need to do something to help these kids because I was talking with students who were 16, 17 years old. They were just graduating, or getting ready to graduate, high school. They barely spoke English, they had never used a computer before and if you look statistically where Puerto Rico is at, if you look at their PISA scores the last time they took it, I mean, puerto Rico is the outlier of outliers when it comes to testing. They score statistically worse than Mexico.

Robby Cobbs:

And me, being from San Diego, I was very sensitive to that because I grew up right on the border. I remember going into Mexico as a young person thinking, wow, I'm so fortunate to be born in America instead of being born in Mexico. Because of that disparity of, you know, three, four, five grade levels below the US national average was really shocking for me and it was really just a call to action because, as I was mentioning before, I grew up poor but I always had public school and if you go to an American public school. I worked inner city schools for many years. I've never saw a kid who worked their butt off, who didn't achieve Like if you worked really hard and just ignored the noise, the family, you know, traumatic things happening to you, friends who are, you know, in trouble and all that things.

Robby Cobbs:

If you can just block that out and just focus on study, pay attention to your teacher who cares about you, and just work hard, all of those kids graduate and become successful. I really believe that. And so they have that rope to pull themselves out of any sort of situation. And that's just the beautiful thing about America is the fact that no matter where you come from, what you look like, what you sound like, your accent, it doesn't matter. If you work hard, you play by the rules, you can get ahead. And I'm not saying everyone starts at the same place, but it's just that there is a system, there is a rope system where you can pull yourself out to have a good life.

Robby Cobbs:

And I feel here my fellow Americans, for these Puerto Rican kids who didn't have one. Because the state of these schools you know the first school I go into you know computers are not really adherent to teachers, kids don't have, it's mostly just it looked similar to Africa, honestly it was. You go into a concrete slab where there's a chalkboard, some old desk and a fan and you know that's it. That's all there is. And you know a teacher teaching in a way the best they can, but in a very traditional manner, you know copy off the board those kinds of things and you know and I see it as this tech person that I know I can come in and help support the school, and so that's what I did. I started going into schools and serving Wow.

Fonz:

Robbie, like that is amazing and very commendable, like just listening to your heart and your passion, and it's no wonder, you know, tech my School is doing what you're talking about right now, and just bringing you, just bringing professional development, bringing just resources to teachers, because there is a need there and, most importantly, like you mentioned, that rope, giving them a rope, and I love that. So, robbie, now that we're going to talk a little bit more about what the work well, you've described really the way the situation is. There's some why, and now your work through Tech my School. How did that come about? And one thing that I'm loving, though, is like on your mission statement and your core values and, of course, in the back, in the background, we see the parrot there.

Robby Cobbs:

And can you?

Fonz:

tell us a little bit about number one Tech, my School, what the mission and vision is, and then just kind of break down you know your core values so our audience members can know you know the work that you're doing and also how might they be able to also help in maybe extending a rope and extending that hand for the education system? So tell me a little bit more about that.

Robby Cobbs:

Yeah, so it started with the one school that we were serving and I went from new parent to training all staff the first month. And so for any parent who has kids, imagine walking into a new school and becoming the trainer for all teachers that first month and not a necessarily traditional or normal thing to do. But I think that speaks a bit to the state of where education is here and also just the fortunate lifestyle I've had to just learn so much in ed tech. You know, prior to my career I had been a tech director and presented at a number of great conferences and kind of been a leader in that sense. So there was definitely a big need here. So we just started out helping one school and you know I had this money for a boat coming to Puerto Rico. I wanted to write the book on ed tech and then buy this boat and I ended up not buying the boat and tech my school became my kind of my boat. I used my boat money to get computers, get software and just basically equip this school, tech, this school up to a place where it could be a little bit more on the 21st century side of things. So, for example, they didn't have an LMS, a learning management system. They didn't have a student information system. They didn't have emails for the teachers. Everyone was using a personal email, if they even had an email. There was no library, no public library, no school libraries. There was a few books in the classroom but not a lot. And so we just, you know, having that tech director lens, I just kind of came in and just did a needs assessment, you know, orally and visually, by talking with the teachers and the director and just looking through the school, and immediately got to work, you know, helping the school modernize and just using that money to give these professional trainings to the teachers. And I had, you know, spent the past nine years giving professional development to staff. So I felt, you know, really comfortable doing so and it became an official nonprofit probably a couple months into it. I had never worked, you know, as a nonprofit. I never thought I would start a nonprofit or anything like that. It was just the sense that, like, as I was helping the school, teachers in a church were talking to another set of teachers and said, hey, can you help our school as well? There's this, you know, they call the gringos. There's this gringo here. He's helping us with the computers and trainings. Can you help us? And so we did. We gladly took another school on and so we started to expand very quickly and so I started the nonprofit.

Robby Cobbs:

The name Tech my School came from just writing a bunch of names down, asking my friends and colleagues like what name should it go with? And when we go into a school we do a needs assessment and then we, based off that needs assessment, we then create a tech plan and then fulfill that tech plan in partnership with the school. We call this plan the ITP or individualized tech plan, kind of like a school has an IEP. You know, every student is different ITP, every school is different. And yeah, from this tech plan we go in and we do a complete audit. Now our lens that we had is one that is from some of the world's best schools. So it was a very comprehensive process that we went through to build these tech plans. Even though the school had relatively nothing. The documentation and the artifacts that we created in the process of doing these tech plans were very comprehensive Because in my mind I figured, if I'm going to start with this role and help these schools here in Puerto Rico, why not start to branch out eventually one day and help other schools, and so it had to be world class, not just a Puerto Rican-only type of system. So that's how it started. It started with building the tech plans and serving schools, trainings, all those kinds of things, donating tech.

Robby Cobbs:

As a former tech director I know and anyone listening who's a tech person what do you do with your old tech in your school? The answer is put into a closet. Because you buy, you know, 25% of inventory every year. From that 25% it's sitting there, you put in the closet in case something breaks nothing ever does and then after a few years the closet becomes full and you end up calling a recycling company to come take it all away and you pay them money. Recycling company to come take it all away and you pay them money. So I got on the phone and started calling universities, schools, just organizations, companies, meeting people, talking to them, saying, hey, if you have old tech, used tech, please give it to us because we'll repurpose it and put it into schools.

Robby Cobbs:

One of the things that we noticed was when we were going into public schools, the public school district here gave teachers computers. Once COVID happened, they gave everyone kind of computers but they didn't give them a lot of training and so after COVID was over, they kind of just took those old computers and stuck them in a closet and went back to their old ways of teaching. And as an ed tech leader, you know, when it comes to tech professional development it's not a one-time thing, it's got to be continual, it's got to be ongoing. Even the tech teachers need support and learning because things are evolving so quickly. So that model of just training teachers all the time and, you know, ensuring the technology we do get from schools that is repurposed is going to be not only just given to a school. We're not just going to give them a fish. We're going to teach them how to fish. We're going to be using the tech with them all the time, every month, going in their classrooms, observing the teachers, like really becoming that tech department that they don't have, and just ensuring we get maximum value of the tech that's donated. So over the past four years we've been able to donate over 1,000 computers to schools. Yeah, and it's all thanks to the great donors and partners that we've met along the way who helped us. We're predominantly funded through donations, so we've now been going, for this is our fourth school year and we've been able to serve 30 schools. So we started with one, and then two, and then four, and then 14, and then 30. And so when I say serve, what we do is we again go in, we do this ITA, the analysis, we do the ITP, the plan, and then we just deploy it. So we're in schools every single month giving all staff professional training on ed tech and best pedagogy. We are following those trainings up by going into classrooms and observing teachers and giving them, you know, instructional coaching type notes and those kinds of things. We're doing parent trainings. We're doing tons and tons of work with these schools and, you know, we've just been really fortunate to have just a great team. We have a team that spans from, you know, the Middle East Africa In Texas we have a guy working with us and then also here in Puerto Rico, we have a lot of local teachers as well. So, yeah, just a phenomenal experience and just we're so happy to be a part of this and to be serving teachers and kids in schools.

Robby Cobbs:

You asked about the parrot. The parrot is the Puerto Rican green parrot. Puerto Rico is known for this indigenous bird, and the city I live in in Rio Grande. That's on the flag. So part of that branding. I was like, oh, I want it to be something cool, something techie. I I wear polos just in my life I always wore like Ralph Lauren polos or Nautica or whatever, and so I wanted to make it a logo to where it'd be cool to wear, like I could just wear it, and you know whether I was wearing it as a the CEO of the company or just wearing it because I just like the logo, wearing it as a the ceo of the company or just wearing it because I just like the logo. And so, yeah, it's kind of like this techie green parrot. And if you go on our website, techmyschoolorg, you look at our core values, um, you know it's the parrot. So obviously you have a puerto rican focus.

Robby Cobbs:

We're trying to up, bring up the education in Puerto Rico, which is America's lowest performing, most underserved, underprivileged. Again, from anything I've seen, nothing compares to Puerto Rican education in terms of the amount of need, the amount of, statistically, where they score the campus when you walk through the school, the programs or lack thereof A lot of times in inner city schools. The schools will be funded. There'll be grass fields, there'll be sports programs, there'll be art programs, there'll be teachers who are getting a decent salary comparative to, let's say, a gas station worker. The problem is really like within that community there's a lot of like poverty and crime and maybe like culturally, they don't really value education as much per se.

Robby Cobbs:

I'm again painting with a very broad stroke here.

Robby Cobbs:

But in Puerto Rico it's like you have kids who have great families, who value education, who want to improve their life, but it's a system of the schools that are kind of failing them and so there isn't that rope for them to pull themselves out of.

Robby Cobbs:

And that's not to disparage any of the hard work that the teachers are doing here in Puerto Rico. It's just the reality of comparing, you know, a school in New Jersey versus a school in Puerto Rico, new Jersey versus a school in Puerto Rico, and so that's why you see a huge outflux of Puerto Ricans who leave, because they're just like the schools aren't the same quality as they are in the States. I'm an American, I'm just going to go to Florida or New York or wherever, and the kids end up growing up stateside rather than on the island, and because these parents are, it's either go to a public school that's not going to serve them to a degree they deserve as an American or you know leave the island and just have that kind of feeling of something left behind. And any Puerto Rican listening to this will know what I'm talking about, because, again, before coming here I really didn't know that difference.

Fonz:

Wow, robbie. Well, let's continue with that, because not only the work that you're doing is phenomenal Wow, Remy. I mean you're bringing some amazing knowledge and you're helping the educators out but you're also looking beyond you know Puerto Rico and looking into bringing in people that are going to provide professional development, different perspectives and so on. So tell us a little bit about the you know Tech, my School conference that will be coming up next month.

Robby Cobbs:

Yeah, so kind of in that same spirit of you know, thinking of the teachers in Puerto Rico there's 750 public schools, 750 private schools and you know a lot of teachers, you know, let's say, half are working in these private schools where they're getting paid $1,500, $2,000 a month. You know, milk is still seven, eight bucks a gallon here due to the Jones Act, and just it being America and a beautiful island that people want to visit, to the Jones Act, and just it being America and a beautiful island that people want to visit. So because of that, teachers are not living in the same kind of, you know, demographic, financially as you know teachers do in the stateside, and so they, they are scraping by literally to teach kids. And you know, I was coming from this place prior to coming to Puerto Rico, where I was again very fortunate, but working at some of the best schools in the world, these American diplomat schools that had phenomenal budgets. My tech budget was like a million dollars just for my school. It had like 700 kids or something like that.

Robby Cobbs:

And so, yeah, I would go to all the conferences, I would travel the world, I would do all these great things and I just felt like every teacher deserves to go to, you know, a world-class you know conference where you can network, where you can learn, where you can become inspired and you can come back to your school and just kind of spread that you know, that joy, that excitement and just breathe life into your school. And so that was something that I really enjoyed, both as an attendee and also as a speaker. I'd spoken at lots of different countries and conferences around the world, so I just felt like the teachers deserved that here. So Tech my School serves these local poor schools in Puerto Rico for free and we're providing these tech, we're providing the services, we're providing all these things. But another part of the profession is getting that networking ability and going to these conferences. So I was like they deserve that too, and I don't want to just put on some like low budget thing. I want it to be the best. I want to put together a five-star, world-class conference for these teachers. That's forward thinking and ed tech conference. And so it's exactly what we did and we hosted every year at the Wyndham Rio Mar and Rio Grande.

Robby Cobbs:

It's a beautiful, you know, five-star resort right on the water. The conference center is great. The people who work there are awesome, fantastic. There's two golf courses. El Yunque is right on the base of El Yunque, america's largest rainforest I think it's the only rainforest, so beautiful place in this world. And yeah, so for the teachers, we pay for their tickets. Well, the first 200. So for the first 200 teachers that sign up we pay for their tickets, we pay for their food and the attendance and all that kind of stuff. And then obviously we're flying in speakers from across the states, internationally and locally as well. So we want to get a blend of just both the best talent on island and really the best talent from the states who can make it. And so it's a bilingual conference and it's the biggest ed tech conference in the Caribbean.

Robby Cobbs:

The way we structure it is any presenter who's presenting in English will have Spanish slides so the attendees can follow along, or vice versa. When we do breakout sessions, you know whether you want to do BrainPop in Spanish or Curipot in English. You get to choose which you know breakout session you want to go to and which language you prefer. But all the slides are available to you so you can kind of follow along and keep track, and then our keynotes will do the same thing. So if they're presenting in Spanish, the slides will be in English. We also have we use Time Kettles X1 to do the translation, the live translation as you're speaking, so you can see both languages. So, yeah, it's great. We had great speakers last year 27 speakers last year. We're going to have right around 27, 30 speakers this year. And it's a phenomenal event and we're so excited to have it.

Robby Cobbs:

For teachers who are not under the Tech my School umbrella, we subsidize their tickets. So for them it's only 150 bucks for, you know, a five-star experience all the food, the great speakers and again in a great spot. And then, if you're off island, if you're coming in from Florida or New York or Houston or wherever, we only charge you what the hotel is charging us for food, which is $400 for food, and space, right, av, space, all that, the internet. So we're just charging, basically at cost. So it's again a subsidized event. It's the lowest price, highest quality ed tech conference in America. I'll just say it highest quality ed tech conference in America. I'll just say it. And then the reason it is is because it's subsidized through these donations that we're able to pull, because we want to bring educators to Puerto Rico so they can really understand that this is their country too and care about the island, meet the teachers here, and we want the teachers here in Puerto Rico to be exposed to, like you're saying, just phenomenal educators and for them to get a world-class experience. And so that's what we're doing.

Robby Cobbs:

And yeah, it's March 15th and 16th. This was for 2025. If you're listening to this a year in advance, just go to our website techmyschoolorg backslash conference to see the latest you know thing. And then also, if you're a vendor, you know I had went to the fptc conference last month and it was great. You know lots of speakers and lots of uh. It was. It was phenomenal because when we are there, we're talking to everyone. We're talking to other vendors because we're looking for partnerships to try to find ways to get teachers low-cost, free software so we can push it into schools here, because they, you know, can't afford it. Um, but at the same time, we're reaching out to teachers, trying to get them to go to the conference and just spread awareness and that whole thing.

Robby Cobbs:

We're serving schools in the states because we do have this world-class uh tech plan process product and uh, but it costs a lot. I mean, they nickel and dime you when you go there, you got to pay for carpet that costs over a thousand dollars. You, you want a trash can, that's going to cost you a hundred bucks. You want a TV? That's 800. It's like it's very expensive as a vendor. The space itself is, you know, four or $5,000 or whatever it was. So it's very expensive to have these spaces.

Robby Cobbs:

And for the vendors who are here, we want the teachers to be exposed to these, you know, tech companies coming in. So if magic school is there, if fax is there, if you know seesaw is there, we love that because we want the teachers to see these softwares that we've been bringing to them and for them to meet people in these companies, because it kind of brings it to life, it makes it a little more real and, uh, because of that, again, we charge them basically what the hotel charges us. So it's for a I think it's like 500 bucks and that includes everything. You just have to bring your banner or whatever and you get your food and you get all that stuff too. So it's the most affordable spot for a vendor as well.

Robby Cobbs:

And again, we don't just have poor schools. We invite every school in Puerto Rico public schools, charter schools, the you know expensive private schools, because there are some very high quality private schools here on the island as well, and those teachers and directors and superintendents are going to be here as well, either speaking or attending the conference. So it's just we're trying to make it the best ed tech conference in the Caribbean. I think it already is, but like we would love for it to be like an FETC, like an ISTE, you know something like that, where people in the region or on the Eastern seaboard, or even you know central or even California, they just know this is a world-class experience. We're coming out to Puerto Rico it's beautiful, you know we're supporting it to Puerto Rico. It's beautiful, you know we're supporting for a great cause and super affordable and it's just really, really high quality. So those are kind of the goals that we're targeting.

Fonz:

That is amazing, robbie, and I mean just being here on the show today and just for all our listeners that are going to be catching this episode, we'll definitely make sure that we link the webpage. But for any platforms, all of you that are on my network, all my friends that are listening and you're listening to this episode, please, you know, get in contact with Robbie. Like, let's help out Puerto Rico, let's make sure that we throw that, that rope, that line, that help, whatever it is, because I mean we that's what we're here for is just to help serve our community, and when there's a community in need, that we definitely love to help. So, robbie, thank you so much for being here this evening and sharing the work that you're doing, and it amazes me that this all started because you were taking a break to write a book, right yeah, and now look at what has become. That's wonderful.

Robby Cobbs:

Absolutely. I learned something about myself, and this is kind of true for a lot of tech guys, uh, or tech gals, um, I feel like, and my former superintendent, who's a board member and a close friend, um, he used to call me like his, his sports car, and so, as tech, you know people, we have all these great ideas, we have we're high energy and we're in the garage of the school and they're like, okay, we'll have you spin around. They're like, okay, we'll have you spin around, we'll have you. You know, we'll drive you a couple times a year, but that's it. You got to sit in that garage all year and just kind of grind your gears, thinking of things, of trying to ways to make an impact. Most of the time they're taking the minivan to and from school, right, and that analogy in that sense. And so I was always kind of pent up creating ways when I was working in these schools to do more. And by coming here and having this opportunity, there is no ceiling, and because of that I've just been able to explode and, you know, serve so many schools and, you know, create so many great products.

Robby Cobbs:

I did write the book. It's called Tech-Centered Learning Driven. You can check it out on Amazon and it's for any one of your audience members. It's intended for your audience. You know, those teachers who are looking to use technology to get ahead in their careers, to discover new pathways of how you can, you know, expand your career or do more. For those new teachers who are just trying to learn, like you know, what's the best way to integrate technology, or to you know what's the best way to integrate technology, or to you know, stay ahead or stay ahead of the curve. That's what the book kind of goes through and it's really just a combination of 15 years of my experience as a tech leader through the lens I've had in you know, all these different places California, asia, middle East Africa and, yeah, and interviewing I interviewed 20 different. You know tech directors and tech specialists and educators who own companies in the ed tech space. So all of their kind of knowledge and wisdom is in the book as well. So hopefully it's a good read and I look forward to writing the next book as well.

Robby Cobbs:

My aunt's a very distinguished author. She's a New York Best Times seller and there was a time period and your listeners may have experienced this. I'm not going to say I doubted myself, but you kind of second guess, like, am I good enough to write a book? You know, become an author, you know this pedestal person. And so I wrote the book and then went through the editing process and it was on my computer for two years after I wrote it. It took me about a year to write and then it just sat there for two years.

Robby Cobbs:

I didn't click publish, I didn't try to, you know, make it happen, kind of for self-doubt reasons. And I was just, I had to tech, my school, it was blowing up and I was. That was my excuse. But my aunt always said you know, publish, hurry up and publish your first book, because it's just getting in the way of publishing your next. And so because everyone has that imposter syndrome at some point, and uh, yeah, so once I did, it was just such a sigh of relief and I could just move forward on my life, with my life. And uh, my aunt was right. Her name is Elizabeth Cobbs. Look her up, she's great, she's a very, uh great educator. But uh, yeah, yeah, tech, tech center, learning driven is the name of book and I'd love for you guys to check it out.

Fonz:

Excellent, and we'll definitely link it up in the show notes and everything. So, guys, please check out the website, check out the work that Robbie's doing, check out the book, too, as well. And Robbie, like I know, you say you're, you're, you know you're going to get started on that second book. So are you going to write the second book there in Puerto Rico, or are you going to find another place to rest for a year? And then all of a sudden, a new tech revolution is going to show up.

Robby Cobbs:

Yeah, no, I love Puerto Rico. We bought a house even before Tech my School started. We just bought the house and we love it. After traveling so many different places we were like where in the world do we want to live? And Puerto Rico was a place that we chose. We knew we wanted to live here. So I think we might be here for a little while and just the level of impact we've been able to make on the community, all the friends and all the schools we're serving I couldn't turn my back on them.

Robby Cobbs:

But I have the next book ready to go. The first book has been kind of more of a generalized book about like how to get into ed tech and kind of the purpose of you know what's the difference between ed tech and tech ed. The next book is going to be far more niche for the tech director and it's all going to be about that ITA and ITP process, what we're doing at Tech my School and how you do it Basically. How do you, you know, modernize your school and ensure you're looking at all the right lenses and that kind of thing. Because, starting from humble beginnings in Puerto Rico, let's just say we've had the privilege of testing, you know our methodology out in some really great schools in the States. One of the schools the first school we tried it out on that was of high power. Let's just say it wasn't the first school we worked with in the States, but there are schools in the States that pay us for our services of creating tech plans for them and working with their teams and that helps fund our mission. It was a school called Episcopal High School in Houston and for those who aren't in the Houston area or don't know Texas, it's one of the top schools in Texas and, yeah, we went into that school. I mean you go to that campus. It's and. And yeah, we went into that school. I mean you go to that campus. It's unbelievable, beautiful campus. They have literally everything money can buy and so for the students who go there, you know very fortunate kids, great kids, great staff. And so we were.

Robby Cobbs:

You know I walked in or you wouldn't tell, I came in very confident, but because I had done the process, you know a number of times and you know I reviewed the process with, because I had done the process, you know a number of times, and you know I'd reviewed the process with great schools outside of. You know that I knew would do well, but still, it was my first time doing it at just a first-class school, five-star school, and you know my friend Kyle will tell you he was a director of technology innovation there and his thinking and I told him I'm like listen, I'm not going to tell you the process, I'm not going to tell you anything about what we do. I want you to experience it as a client and then give me your feedback and just be honest, if we're terrible, we're terrible. We'll get better. This will help us get better when we move to the next one. And he's like, okay, and he was thinking you know this little nonprofit from Puerto Rico with a guy that I've worked with in the past, like what's it going to do?

Robby Cobbs:

Like I'm just doing this guy a favor, almost.

Robby Cobbs:

And we went in there and, sure enough, we blew them away.

Robby Cobbs:

He was like this is the best professional development we've gotten all year.

Robby Cobbs:

We were able to help them build a really comprehensive tech plan that really looks at the three facets that we really focus on, and that school had all the money in the world so they were able to solve all the problems that you could solve with money.

Robby Cobbs:

But when it came to professional learning and for student empowerment, that's where we were able to find some gaps and really add value to their school. And you know, I was fortunate to be there for a couple days and work with their tech team to help them build out their tech plan and we just had such a great experience doing it and, yeah, it was just a great confidence booster for us, just because we're like we know if we can add value to Episcopal High School, we can add value to any school in the world and we have. We've just done that. We've helped schools in New Jersey and Texas and Oregon and Washington State, so we're looking at to add more. So if you're a listener and your school needs a tech plan, you know, give us a try, give us give a little little nonprofit in Puerto Rico a chance and let's see what we can do for your school.

Fonz:

Excellent. Well, thank you, robbie. I really appreciate it. But before we wrap up, we always love to end the show with the last three questions, and so hopefully, robbie, you're ready for those questions. So question number one as we know, every superhero has a pain point or something that weakens him. So, for example, superman kryptonite just kind of weakened him. So I want to ask you, Robbie, in the current state of education, what would you say? Is your current edu kryptonite?

Robby Cobbs:

night.

Robby Cobbs:

Um, I would say currently it would probably be uh, bureaucracy and bureaucracy sometimes like, uh, the over regulation of things and just the slow process of things, and sometimes it's important to go slow and obviously it's important to dot your i's cross, your t's the whole, the whole thing.

Robby Cobbs:

But, um, we have a very unique lens of being able to work with private schools, charter schools and public schools, and I can tell you, when you work with a private school or a charter school, what's great about it is you can go in there and talk about your vision, how you can support the school.

Robby Cobbs:

The principal or director can look at you and be like we love it, let's go, let's move.

Robby Cobbs:

And then we're going in there making phenomenal, drastic changes that are really empowering that school, that are just, you know, we're lighting things up and it's you just see, immediate impact, whereas you work with the public schools and it's like you got to take a lot of steps to get to the decision makers and then, when you get there, it's like, okay, you can do it, but you can do, like this, much of what you wanted to do and so, because of that, you're less impactful, because of these bureaucratic steps, and so I'm not gonna say it's complete kryptonite. We're still able to, you know, work within those boundaries, but it's definitely something that slows us down. And when you see the impact you're able to make in the schools that say yes and you work with them, the impact you're able to make in the schools that say yes and you work with them and they make these changes, it's tough because you're like, well, just say yes, so we can just make these great changes and help empower your kids and teachers. So that's kind of the challenge.

Fonz:

All right.

Robby Cobbs:

Question number two.

Fonz:

Robbie is if you could have a billboard with anything on it, what would it be and why?

Robby Cobbs:

If I could have a billboard that could say anything on it and let's just stay on it what would it be and why? If I can have a billboard that could say anything on it and let's just stay on topic, we're sticking with the education realm here it would probably say something along the lines of Puerto Rico is America too, let's build some ropes together, and it would have some sort of rope and kids getting pulled up. You know to be at the same level, as you know New York or Massachusetts or Texas or California or any of the great states on the mainland Love it.

Fonz:

That's a great message, robbie. You know kind of that underlying message throughout. Everything that you've shared is just really helping students, helping teachers, just giving them that opportunity for success.

Robby Cobbs:

So that is definitely a great sign and the last question, Robbie, is if you can trade places with one person for a single day, who would that person be and why? That's a great question Do we have?

Fonz:

to stick to education. No, no, you don't have to stick to education. It could be anybody.

Robby Cobbs:

I mean, there's so many great people you can choose. It would probably be I'm going to say Elon Musk. And the reason I'm going to say Elon Musk is because, in my opinion, he is one of the most you know for good, bad the other. Whatever your opinion is on the guy, I think he's one of the most impactful humans on the planet in terms of the companies he's been able to build, the way he runs his businesses and just the way he communicates, the way his brain works. So this is someone who, um, he's the number one diablo three player in the world or whatever in america. He's, uh, building spaceships that can be caught by by rockets. Uh, they can be, you know, be reused and and caught. He's got tesla and he's rejuvenating that. He's got neuralink he's rejuvenating that. He's got Neuralink. He's got that tunnel business Boring Company.

Robby Cobbs:

He's doing Doge now, and I'm not saying that I agree with everything he's doing, but it's more so that just this is someone's brain that is so high powered, or just it's not to give him credit for everything, but I just think he's such an interesting human and I think he's pushing humanity forward in his own way, and I just think it would be interesting to see whether I'm spending a day with him to like, how do you do it, how do you manage all these companies and tweet a thousand times a day and you know, know so much about the brain and know so much about digging and engineering and all those kinds of things.

Robby Cobbs:

Or if I was inside of his brain and just seeing how fast is that computer running right. So yeah, someone I think that would be very interesting to spend one day with I'm not saying a whole life, just definitely one day. It'd be interesting to shadow him to see how he's able to accomplish so much in one day. It'd be interesting to shadow him to see how his he's able to accomplish so much in one day.

Fonz:

Excellent great answer, robbie. Robbie, thank you so much. This has been a wonderful conversation, just definitely bucket filling. Just because just hearing your story and what you've been able to do based on what you saw, and then bringing in the experience that you've had you know, international, international experience, local experience and bringing all that to the people of Puerto Rico and the work that you're doing through Tech my School, I definitely applaud you. It's an honor to have you here and I definitely look forward to this conference that will be coming up next month.

Fonz:

So, appreciate the work that you're doing and, for all our audience members, make sure that you connect with Robbie, connect with techmyschoolorg. All of the information will be in the show notes as well. And, guys, also, please make sure you jump over to our website where you can go ahead and check out this amazing episode and the other 311 episodes, where I promise you that you will find a little something that you can already sprinkle to what you are already doing. Great. So, thank you, as always, always for all of your support. If you haven't followed us on YouTube, please make sure you head over to YouTube. We only need I think it's 33 subscribers now to hit a thousand. Give us a thumbs up, subscribe, share all our episodes, I promise you. Like I said, we definitely wanna get to a thousand. And, as always, my friends, don't forget until next time. Stay, techie, thank you.