Jimmy Bowens, Global Head of English at Education Perfect, chats to renowned educational leader and EdTech Consultant at Ignite EdTech, Craig Kemp. They explore social media as a way for teachers to connect and learn and discuss the implications of technology for students today.
Jimmy Bowens, Global Head of English at Education Perfect, chats to renowned educational leader and EdTech Consultant at Ignite EdTech, Craig Kemp. They explore social media as a way for teachers to connect and learn and discuss the implications of technology for students today.
Jimmy Bowens:
Welcome to the EPisodes Podcast where we explore the world of education, learning, technology and all the minutia of human knowledge acquisition. My name is Jimmy Bowens and I will be your host for today's show. I'm the head of Global English here at Education Perfect. Today I have the pleasure to be chatting with Craig Kemp. Craig is based in Singapore. He's a keynote speaker, workshop host, and global education consultant. He works with departments, ministries, school leadership, school communities, and educators to understand, design and implement digital learning solutions and transformations so that teaching practice can be improved and student learning outcomes can be maximized.
Jimmy Bowens:
Boom, we're live. Craig, welcome to the podcast.
Craig Kemp:
Thank you, excited to be here.
Jimmy Bowens:
We're here today because we want to talk about your position within the world of education and what you represent. We met recently in Sydney at the Education Perfect conference and I was so interested with many things you said in that talk, but I'd love to get a little bit more detailed today. So first of all, I want to know how you found your way in education. What was the catalyst in the beginning, what made you want to be an educator?
Craig Kemp:
Yeah, absolutely. Really my education journey started in my Seventh Form year in high school in Nelson at Nayland College and I was sort of thinking, "What do I do? What am I going to do with my life? I want to go and study. More importantly, I want to go party and have fun with my friends. Where can I go do that?" I really had no idea, genuinely no idea.
Craig Kemp:
So really my inspiration came from my mum who was a volunteer for a lot of her life in the local primary school. She was a teaching assistant, then actually later in her career after being a stay at home mum and doing an amazing job raising myself and my brother, decided that she'd retrain as a teacher. So when I was in Fifth Form she decided that she would retrain and she became a teacher. So that sort of gave me inspiration to get into education, so that's what I chose. I went away to Christchurch College of Education, studied there, and then sort of found a passion area within the technology scheme. My dad was the IT manager of Nelson Hospital.
Craig Kemp:
So, really the combination of my mum being an educator and just this amazingly amazing person, people person that built rapport really easily with anyone, and then my dad, the tech side of things, just loved technology and supporting people with technology. I sort of brought those both together and that's where the passion came from.
Jimmy Bowens:
That's really interesting. It's fascinating that you really are a product of your parents in terms of your path at the moment and mix. Yeah, they must be quite pleased that there's a 50/50 representation there.
Craig Kemp:
Absolutely. I think they are.
Jimmy Bowens:
So when you were starting out, I have such vivid memories of my first training year as a teacher in Ireland. I think many, many people can relate to how daunting it is and then the journey you go on as a teacher and the ups and downs. But I'm always keen to hear teachers' answer to this question and that is: What do you wish you had known when you started out as a teacher having been through many years of experience now?
Craig Kemp:
Yeah, that's a good question and that's something I recently wrote a blog post about, thinking about new teachers or starting the new academic year. I think for me it comes down to probably five things that I can think of, five or six things I think of off the top of my head. The first thing being a connected educator. I love Twitter. Twitter for professional learning - I can learn at my own pace anytime, anywhere, anyhow, and I can do it on the train or on the bus, but it's personalized for me. So Twitter for me is the big, the big thing that I would hope that teachers starting out would get into. They can ask any questions to get the information they need.
Craig Kemp:
I think the second thing is that as a teacher, we all know this, but it's really easy to get burnt out. We see it all over the world and in our jobs. But pace yourself and look after yourself, put yourself as number one. Teachers aren't very good at doing that. So I think looking after yourself is really important.
Craig Kemp:
I think the other thing is building a rapport is critical, so making sure that my role on day one was not to leave school until I knew every kid's name. I think that's really important to building a rapport with your kids. Being yourself, but also getting your parents on board straight away and making sure that you're building your rapport with them as well. And that it's okay to let down that guard to be a real human being. That's something as teachers I think we try and put up this false wall a lot of the time.
Craig Kemp:
I think probably the last major thing is that that failure is okay, that it's okay to make mistakes. I think when I went to teacher's training college I learned the curriculum, I learned how to teach the curriculum. One of the things I didn't teach and that I learned from doing was that you're going to make mistakes and it's okay to make mistakes. I think more importantly it's okay to take risks and not to be scared of taking risks, of stepping outside of that comfort zone and trying new things is really important. And and using your own personality to make sure that you teach the way that you want to teach, not the way that that you are, "supposed," to teach, in quotation marks.
Jimmy Bowens:
Yeah, that's awesome. I think in general, education is an arena of judgment often where we feel like we're being measured, students feel like they're being measured and judged, and it's trying to operate without letting that dictate all of your decisions. It is difficult, especially starting out to - to do that. When you think back on your teaching career, do you feel you've got any particular personality traits or behavior traits which helped you progress and overcome some of these barriers that you now know exist for most of us?
Craig Kemp:
Yeah. I think for me it's probably just being positive. I'm sort of a person that tries to be positive with everything no matter how frustrating or negative or whatever the situation is. My aim is to always be an optimist, think things that could go well, be positive, give things a go. I think the other thing really is that I am a believer in trusting people, that you're put in a situation that if I trust people, people will trust me. Then that allows me to sort of go above and beyond. I guess it comes down to being positive and trust.
Jimmy Bowens:
Yeah, I completely agree, especially not only with colleagues, but with students. I had a person who would come in and monitor me and my teacher training, and one of the things that I was advised about from other teachers in that particular school was this kind of, "fake it 'til you make it," mentality, and I never agreed or felt good about that. I thought to myself that the students, they know, they always know. Making mistakes as teachers is natural, as you said. But one thing I learned about this particular issue about your demeanor is that you can't fake it with students, they just know. I think that being what you said about being positive is so powerful. Even in a negative situation with students, if you're positive ...
Craig Kemp:
Absolutely.
Jimmy Bowens:
... with them. That is so much more powerful than trying to appear really professional. It's quite a profound thing I think is just being real and hard. It's very, very hard.
Craig Kemp:
Yeah, really hard.
Jimmy Bowens:
Many teachers find this profession overwhelming. I'm sure some of our listeners who are teachers are at this very moment feeling the pressure of this time of year, exam season is upon us. Why do you think some people feel like they have to pack it in and there's too much to handle thinking about the modern teaching era?
Craig Kemp:
Yeah, I recently ... this time last year I was in London actually speaking at a summit about teacher stress and, "Why do we have so many good people leaving the job?" I did a big survey with my Twitter community, had about 3000 responses, and the things that came up were that, "We're underpaid and we're worked too hard." It's as simple as that. I think teachers are busy, we all know that. I always say to people that say to me, "Oh, you've got it so easy, you work 9 til 3." I've given up fighting it now, I'm just like [crosstalk 00:09:23] ...
Jimmy Bowens:
That old nugget [crosstalk 00:09:23] ...
Craig Kemp:
"Yeah, I do, I think it's a great job, I love it," and it shuts down that conversation. But I always say to people that, "I'd love for us to do a job swap. You come and be in a room with 30 kids all day, every day, getting paid a pretty rubbish pay scheme if I'm honest, globally, and then answering to parents who want to pick every fault in everything you do, and then going home and then continuing to work and mark and grade. It's one of the most stressful jobs in the world, and I think how it's one of the most rewarding jobs in the world as well. The issue for teachers is that we put in so much heart and soul into our jobs, we teach because we want to make a difference and we love what we do. If you're a teacher and you're in it for the money, you're in the wrong career, that's what I always say.
Craig Kemp:
I think teachers need to get better at looking after number one. Teachers need to get better at looking after themselves and communities, and our communities need to get better at learning how to treat teachers like professionals. This is not even just being biased, but I see the people that I work with all day everyday and I get to travel all around the world now with people, some of the most talented people I've ever met in any profession and par by par I think probably the hardest working profession that I've ever seen as well. I think for teachers, we just need to look after ourselves, look out for each other, and take one thing at a time, and don't get too stressed out when things go wrong. We just move on and carry on with it. I think we need a lot of help from our communities to do that, too.
Jimmy Bowens:
We do. It seems as if there's a PR crisis with the teaching profession. So that that brings me on to some of the things that you're doing. You have quite an impressive resume in terms of your ICT qualifications. I think that's the right term, it might not be. That sounds like an old fashioned term to ICT now. You're a certified Google innovator, a common sense educator, Seesaw ambassador, and an Apple teacher. You've done it all. You just went, "All right, I'm going to do all of these [laughs] so that I don't have to worry if I did the right one."
Craig Kemp:
Well, yeah, I think I've always loved learning, that's sort of what drew me in, I guess, to the career and the ... In the end it was I love to learn new things and I love being in the know, I guess, from a very early stage in my career and knew that I loved to learn. I knew I wanted to push that out to my students, too. If I expected them to continue learning, and as I got into a coaching role within my school, if I speak to my staff to continue learning, then I had to also show that same level of passion for wanting to learn. So for me the certificate really means nothing, it's really context specific. So I guess to single one out over another doesn't really work, because every context is different.
Craig Kemp:
So I went through my Google certification level one and level two really recently, because my school was moving to be a become a Google school, a G-suite school. I went through the Apple teacher certification because I was doing it with our whole faculty. We wanted to upskill our whole faculty to the point where everyone had this basic level of expectation. I think we rolled out Seesaw K through 5, all of our teachers and all of our kids for portfolios and sharing of learning home. So we went through that certification.
Craig Kemp:
So it really fitted in with what I think we were doing at the time. So the Google certification is just a good example of useful and thought-out set of learning process, because it's pedagogy based and it's useful for teachers to implement immediately as well. I don't like going through certifications just for the sake of doing it, I like to know that there's an end game that I'm actually going to use this stuff. I'm not going to a PD day just because I get the day off, I'm going there because I want to implement a change or make a change.
Jimmy Bowens:
Yeah, so it sounds like it's a responsive approach, it was strategic. It wasn't ... as you said, not ...
Craig Kemp:
Absolutely.
Jimmy Bowens:
.. "just get this certification for my resume", it was in response to a need. That leads me to the next question about it. I'm looking at the question now and thinking about what you've said and how you've answered that question going, "This is the exact thinking that gets people into trouble probably," is because I was going to ask you if you had to choose one Edutech qualification or certification for teachers to pursue this year, what would it be and why, but inherently in that question, there's some thinking that needs to be unpacked.
Craig Kemp:
Absolutely. I think it's 100% I think it should be context specific. "What do you need in your school?" I think it always comes back to, "Why? Why would you do it? How's it going to add value? What is it going to impact?"
Craig Kemp:
So I think for me, if, depending on what sort of system I was in, most schools are either going towards sort of a Google-esque sort of environment, being a G-suite school or being a Microsoft school ... that's sort of the two environments they go on, devices they use doesn't matter. A lot of schools using Apple, Dell Tab, whatever, not important. Google or Microsoft, both environments provide really pedagogical knowledge training, and that's what I like about them, so that sort of thing that teachers can implement immediately that's context specific is critical.
Craig Kemp:
That's a lot of the work I do now with schools is looking at strategy, and supporting them, develop, "What do they need to do?" and developing a professional learning plan for the faculty. It's all well and good investing in tools, but what's most important is investing in professional learning, and that's sort of the message that I try to get across.
Jimmy Bowens:
Yeah, I love that. It's incredibly strategic. So the context, and understanding the context, understanding the needs in as much detail as possible is going to be what helps people decide on the resources that they want to pursue. Wonderful. Now you're very prolific on social media as you mentioned about Twitter before. I'm really starting this journey this year, I've opened up a professional Twitter account and I'm trying my best. Really I've been inspired by people like yourself. I've launched into the world of LinkedIn, which is slightly smaller than Twitter I think, but it has been enjoyable. Can you talk a little bit about #WhatIsSchool, and your experience with Twitter, and a little bit more detail how it came about, because I think that's a big point in your career.
Craig Kemp:
Yeah, definitely. It's been a game changer for me for sure. I sort of describe my journey with social media and being connected educator as going from lone wolf to hunting with the pack.
Jimmy Bowens:
[Laughs] Good analogy.
Craig Kemp:
Yeah, that a colleague of mine in New Zealand said to me. It's really what it is. It's 8, 9, 10 years ago now, I sort of went into a conference in Dunedin, met a couple of ladies who said to me, "You need to get connected. You need to get connected. We're sharing all sorts of things on Twitter." I thought, "Twitter? What a load of rubbish. I have no idea what that is. It's the Kardashians and yoga and food " I was so wrong, and I missed out on two or three good years of using Twitter for learning, because I just didn't know how to use it. I didn't know my 'why' and understand that it could really add value to me as a learner, as an educator. So that's when I sort of got into it about seven, eight years ago properly and started using it for my own learning. Then I grew my professional learning network to what is now over 40,000 educators and people from all over the world, which is just an amazing learning opportunity and environment.
Craig Kemp:
So from there I co-founded a Twitter chat called 'What is School?' with a friend called Laura Hill from the U.S. We'd never met, we sort of chatted about what a Twitter chat could be that could support everyone, that it wasn't just exclusive to a subject or a specific location. We wanted a time zone that could bring people together, so we started 'What is School?' Every week, every Friday 7:00 AM Singapore time, 9:00 AM Australian Eastern standard time, 11:00 AM in New Zealand. Every Friday morning we'd run this chat. It's Thursday evening in the U.S., the UK.
Craig Kemp:
It provides people the opportunity to come in and talk about different topics every week. I bring in different moderators with me every week. If I'm away, I have other people running for me. But it just is the opportunity for people to come and share. Every week we have anywhere from 30 to 80 people coming and talking live about the topic using the hashtag. For me the hashtag is just a really simple search term. If I want to find something, I use hashtags to search for things. I think teachers get bogged down with social media about follows and followers. Whether you've got 10 followers or 10,000 followers, it makes no difference. The number of my followers makes no difference to me. I don't really even think about them in that way. "Use it like you own it," is sort of what I say to people, "Take advantage of it. Grow a professional learning network and crowd-source learning."
Jimmy Bowens:
Wonderful.
Craig Kemp:
That's the way I learned, by sharing and connecting with others.
Jimmy Bowens:
It's very refreshing to hear that, especially about the metrics not being the focus. "Use it like you own it," I love that, because it immediately made me think about when my father was trying to teach me how to drive. The only thing I remember about that experience other than finding it really difficult was he said, "You control the car, the car doesn't control you." I think that resonates with me in terms of social media and probably how young people perceive it as well. It's a good message. Now I have to ask, and I'm going to sound so ancient and out of the loop here, but can I just clarify something? I hope listeners out there, they're going to empathize with me here. I am just learning Twitter. So if people wanted to get involved with #WhatIsSchool, do they type in that hashtag and press search and they'll find these conversations? Is that how it works?
Craig Kemp:
Yeah, yeah, so there's all sorts of information out there about Twitter chats and what times they're on. If you go to my blog mrkempnz.com and type in, "Twitter chats," I've got a whole bunch of information about what they are, how they work, because they are daunting and confusing to start with. But if you come on at that time, use the hashtag #WhatIsSchool and search for it ... if you're on the Twitter app, you search the latest and it will just continue the stream. You use the hashtag and everyone will be able to see it and follow that. I use a tool called Tweetdeck, and that allows me to see multiple streams of hashtags at any one time that's a live feed so I can follow along with multiple proportions. It's free to use as well.
Jimmy Bowens:
Oh, that's cool. Okay, I'm going to find it and take part. So yeah, I'm determined to become a Twitter ... a competent user of ... a competent owner of my social media. So what lessons and tips and advice, speaking about that, could you give for educators to use social media effectively considering how the one thing we will constantly hear from teachers, and it's very valid, is that they're short on time? But it seems to me from listening to you speak and reading through some of your ideas and advice that this is a perfect way to use time efficiently and effectively to learn. So what kinds of things would you advise the novice users out there?
Craig Kemp:
Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah, I think start small. Baby steps are okay. You've got to start somewhere. Start with zero followers and just build it up. You'll connect with people. There'll be people in your building, start by connecting with them, getting your leadership team on board. Putting time to meetings where your school has a hashtag and you start sharing learning with your hashtag. Making sure that when you go to conferences you use those conference hashtags, because that's a big part of learning now, that you don't have to physically be in a room with people. You can actually use those to crowd-source information. But small is okay, start small, connect with people.
Craig Kemp:
I think that another thing is consume content, that's what it's all about, but don't forget to create content. You can lurk for as long as you want, but if you lurk around for too long, it gets a little bit creepy, so jump in. People don't mind, people are out here to help. Twitter, I think, gets a bad name for being negative, but you know what? The educators on Twitter are nothing but positive. People know that there are people coming on all the time, and people like myself are happy to share and connect you with other people and help share reasons why we use it and how we we get involved with it.
Craig Kemp:
I think the other thing is for me it's Twitter, but for you it might be LinkedIn or Facebook, whatever it is, choose the social media that's right for you. I don't work for Twitter, I just love Twitter, right. So I share that message because it's right for me, but a lot of people I work with in school say, "I don't have time for another thing. I use Facebook." I say, "Well, great. Jump on Facebook, use groups, jump in with communities on Facebook." Get in there, because there are groups on Facebook or LinkedIn that just have great content sharing all the time. Use what you know.
Jimmy Bowens:
I've been a part of some of those groups on Facebook and I have really enjoyed watching how they flourish with the collaboration. It's amazing when you see teachers realizing how much they benefit from these groups, and then they start to participate more actively, and then it just becomes a richer and richer experience for everybody. It really is about the teachers empowering and enriching themselves. What we're talking about here is teachers learning from each other and giving to each other. We usually talk about the teaching profession around topics that are student centric, but what I'm finding really refreshing about what you're doing is it's very teacher centric, because you realize that the wellbeing of the teachers and the efficiency of the teachers is naturally going to benefit the students.
Craig Kemp:
Absolutely.
Jimmy Bowens:
Now as a consulted speaker on these topics, you've had exposure to school wide systems, you've been to a lot of schools I presume, and you've experienced how they operate, and how they work, and the strategies they try to implement. Is there any memorable stories you could share with us about some big things you've learned through that experience of visiting schools?
Craig Kemp:
I think it's been a really big journey for me. I sort of decided to leave the school and go full time consulting about 12 months ago. I sort of left my school here in Singapore in June, and it was a big decision to make because I've never been out of a school before and I never wanted to, but I realized the impact I could have by supporting multiple schools and being involved in the journeys of multiple schools. So that journey's been really exciting. I wanted to make a bigger impact, I wanted to help schools have the same successes that myself and my team had done here at Stamford in Singapore. I guess now I get to work with so many schools leading professional learning, developing digital strategy.
Craig Kemp:
One of the biggest mistakes that I see schools making is throwing technology into classrooms without developing a plan, without thinking about professional learning in particular, and how to support their teachers, because teachers need time to play and explore and learn. I think that's a huge part of the strategy is give teachers time, let them play, let people like myself help schools do that. You don't have to have in-house expertise in everything.
Craig Kemp:
I guess one success story that comes to the top of my mind is the school that I'm working ... a group of schools actually, I'm working with right now in Malaysia who are rolling out a one-to-one device program across all three of their schools' geographical locations. I'm supporting them with the strategy and implementation of that. I think they've been successful so far because they listen, they take risks, they adapt. They invest, they invest in their teachers, they invest in the technology, they invest in time to learn. I think one of the best things is that they worked with me to develop a three year plan of what this is going to look like over time, that they know that stuff's not going to happen now, but they've got this plan in place. The plan really is that my job is to make sure that they are sustainable so that they have people on site that can lead learning when I'm not there, that they are going to become the sustainable environment of integrating technology authentically and purposefully so that they can continue to make great change, and they're invested in that. It's been really exciting to see.
Jimmy Bowens:
Is there inbuilt flexibility in a strategy like that so that they are ready for when they have to, for example, abandon a resource or completely pivot in terms of how things are going?
Craig Kemp:
Yeah, absolutely. I think a lot of the time it's budget related, so making sure that there is room in budgets to move or adapt and change if needed, and making sure that when they're doing things like signing contracts with companies that they really think quite heavily about what impacts they're going to have. "Is signing up to a single subject, specific tool going to be beneficial? Or am I going to be better off working with a company that's going to provide support for me in English and maths and languages and PE?" Think about this holistically and not just as a subject specific teacher, making sure that there's people on staff like curriculum directors to ensure that they think about the bigger picture and not just those silos.
Jimmy Bowens:
That's certainly a paradigm shift that we're seeing is more and more focused on bridging those gaps and dissolving the silo walls, really. It's very interesting. So having said that, what are some of the myths that you've run into quite often with regard to implementing education technology or strategies around education technology?
Craig Kemp:
Yeah, I think there's a couple of things. I think a lot of leaders think when I go and talk with them and share things like, "Oh no, we don't need help. We've got this." I think the biggest issue is that schools get really stuck in their ways and it's really easy to say, "We've been doing it this way, or, "This is the way I've always done things," and that just doesn't fly. Technology changes so fast that you must have people, not just one or two people, but majority of people moving with that change and making sure that you're keeping up, because schools get left behind so easily, particularly when you have leaders not willing to change and adapt.
Craig Kemp:
I think the other thing that's a myth, I think, in schools is that technology is going to provide the answer to every problem. By dumping technology on kids desks, they're going to be fine. I think that's also the same lines as, "Kids are digital natives, they know how to do that already." They know how to do a lot, but we still have to teach them, we have to educate them. They're in this constant world of change, too. They know more than we do, we can't just let them be the leaders, we need to help them as well.
Jimmy Bowens:
Yeah, absolutely. I have heard that being bandied about quite often, the fact that there's a presumption there. We're still dealing with young people who are learning how to think and how to use tools just as we are as adults. You can get into traps that way. That's awesome. I am conscious of your time, so I've got a few quick fire questions if you are keen to [crosstalk 00:30:13] ...
Craig Kemp:
Let's do it.
Jimmy Bowens:
Okay. Some odd ones in here, bear with me. I am an English teacher so this first one is just dear to me. I learn a lot from people by this this question. Do you have any favorite word or words? What are they and why do you like them?
Craig Kemp:
Yep. The first one is, "why." I think everything in any business comes back to, "why?" For me in my world it's, "why?" with technology, like, "Why are you using technology? Why you choosing this tool?" If you can't justify it, then don't use it. I think the other word is ... probably one more word ... ignite. My company's name is Ignite EdTech. I love, "ignite," because I'm all about igniting passion in other people. I think ignition or that starting point is really important.
Jimmy Bowens:
Ignite and why, fantastic. What are you most curious about right now? This could be anything, we don't have to limit it to what we've discussed today.
Craig Kemp:
Yeah, I was just talking about this actually at the Australian International School of Vietnam. I was there working with them and I got asked a very similar question. I said, "Honestly, my biggest curiosity right now is Instagram" with the decline, and all sorts of other social media tools like Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, they're all declining in use. Instagram remained steady. In fact, it grows. That's a really curious point. I just don't get Instagram. I really want to, but I find it so hard...
Jimmy Bowens:
Is it?
Craig Kemp:
... and my big learning point is that right now.
Jimmy Bowens:
Yeah. Okay, what top two or three or even just one books would you recommend every teacher should read and why?
Craig Kemp:
All right. Yeah, this is an easy one for me, I love books. The two books that hands down stand out for me in my frame of work is around strategy, passion, why, technology integration. The first book is George Couros's The Innovator's Mindset. The second book is by an incredible passionate, engaging educator is Dave Burgess, Teach Like a Pirate. For me those are hands down the best two books I've read.
Jimmy Bowens:
Yeah, I've heard Teach Like a Pirate is certainly worth a read. I need to. I haven't read either of those, so thank you for that. If you could advise educators to adopt one daily habit or practice to help them enjoy, progress and succeed in their career, what would it be?
Craig Kemp:
Again, I think for me it's Twitter. I guess it's not just Twitter, it's any social media, but use your spare time to learn the way you want to learn. Again, use it like you own it. I learn more in five minutes on the train or on the bus from Twitter than I often do in a full day conference, because I get to own and personalize my learning. I think the biggest piece of advice is just to learn how to harness your time better and be more effective with the way you learn.
Jimmy Bowens:
I can't help but recognize the power of that, "use it like you own it phrase." If you haven't already hashtagged it or put it on a t-shirt, Craig, I think there's another, "What is School," there brewing. What is the best educational quote you have ever heard? We're going to leave, "use it like you own it," out for this.
Craig Kemp:
Yeah, quote Craig Kemp, 2019. I think this is one that I always share. I never go and share and speak without using this quote is from Simon Sinek and it's, "People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it." I think the why drives change, the why is everything. If you can't justify what you're doing, then you shouldn't be doing it.
Jimmy Bowens:
Fantastic. I think that is the perfect note to wrap up. Before we go, can you tell us, where is the best place to find you on the internet if people wanted to reach out or get in touch?
Craig Kemp:
Absolutely. My blog website is mrkempnz.com. On Twitter @mrkempnz. Facebook, if you type in facebook.com/mrkempnz it'll take you to my Facebook page. LinkedIn, Craig Kemp, Singapore. People can email me if needed as well, you can connect with me through my website.
Jimmy Bowens:
Awesome. Any speaking engagements or events will be available on there, I presume?
Craig Kemp:
Yeah, if people go to mrkempnz.com, click on, "Speaking," you can find it there. I've got a lot on in the next sort of 6-12 months traveling around Asia, just about every week. I'm planning on being in Australia in October 2019, December 2019, and then late January 2020. There'll be more to be announced as well. Then I have a confirmed trip to New Zealand in December actually as well as April 2020.
Jimmy Bowens:
Great. I'm sure we will catch up again on the road somewhere.
Craig Kemp:
Absolutely, absolutely.
Jimmy Bowens:
Thanks so much. I have to mention some of the takeaways for me for sure. It has to be your emphasis on the why. I think having a robust rationale for implementing any resources in education is vital and I really appreciate how much you drive that message. I also like the emphasis on strategy, the whole school emphasis on strategy, the context of the school and how that dictates what educators should choose. The third thing is how compassionate you are and how much you want teachers to think about themselves and to look after themselves. I think that is a wonderful message.
Craig Kemp:
Thank you.
Jimmy Bowens:
It has been a pleasure talking to you and thanks so much for taking the time. I look forward to meeting you again soon hopefully.
Craig Kemp:
Absolutely, Jimmy. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. Thank you very much.
Jimmy Bowens:
You're welcome. Take care.
Craig Kemp:
Thank you.
Jimmy Bowens:
Bye.
Craig Kemp:
Bye.
Jimmy Bowens:
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider adding a review and rating. We would very much appreciate that. If you want to get in touch, you can find me on Twitter. Just search EPjbowens. That's capital E, capital P, and lowercase J-B-O-W-E-N-S. We'd love to have your participation in our LinkedIn discussions. You can find our group Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age. There's some great articles and discussions on there on the regular, so feel free to comment, get in touch, and participate as you wish. Thanks so much for listening and look out for the next episode coming soon.