1. What makes New Tech work so well?

New Tech is a collaborate network, and here is no single inventor. “The best companies are companies that are teams of people”, claims Lydia Dobyns. Every school is different in a Network, but we all share similarities. ‘’It is really putting students at the center’’, says Lydia Dobyns.New Tech relies on pillars, and one of them is culture. Students discover personal growth and responsibility, which is what New Tech focuses on. It also prepares students well for the real world. ‘’Project based learning is the most powerful way students can experience teaching.’’ As they work to see how the students are doing in school, the Network learns from the projects too, and that helps them decide what is best for students.

 

   2. What could improve about New Tech?

‘’What can we do to make the New Tech models a little more acceptable’’? asks Lydia Dobyns. If we could make the first year easier for teacher and students, we could help teachers move quickly and allow teachers to be able to work with every student. ‘’Could it be possible for students to work together with teachers and collaborate with them?’’ ‘’My wish is every project had an opportunity for students to work with other schools’’.

 

  3. We discussed the importance of goal setting at Bulldog New Tech. How do you guide setting goals for the Network?

‘’The Network chooses what it wants to do, we do not really get to choose’’. They are doing a lot of work connecting to research. They set target for themselves, like how New Tech projects are impacting the students. ‘’We take students doing better in life very seriously’’. Their decisions depend on students results from projects.

 

  4. A failure and what did you learn from it?

Echo has been the biggest challenge to make. ‘’We’ve had four major upgrades to Echo, and things didn’t go very smoothly’’. They had to address issues over a six-month period, after they realized they needed to re-visit their development process. This helped Echo later become a better program. ‘’ I am happy to say the difference and progress of Echo between 2010 and 2016 in Echo, was better upgraded, and more advanced’’. They will use what they’ve learned to have better Echo upgrades in the future.

 

  5. What are some of the Best in network projects?

There are many best in Network projects, but the results on other projects could possibly improve. ‘’We open the submission time and the information on what the project was’’. ‘’ We love to learn from what the students did on projects and how they improve’’. The result of the academic performance, and how we improve from the beginning of the year to the end, matters. ‘’The better the connection the better we think it is’’, meaning the better students can collaborate with teachers and partners the better the results of the project. Students had trouble when it came to low agency. They noticed students would give up and not have confidence in themselves. This was a third-grade class, and they wanted to challenge them more. ‘’We decided we would do a 5k, which is a five-mile run. The mission was not to win the race or beat for friends, but to step up and encourage each other not to give up. Every student, knew what agency was, and the outcomes and results improved because of the project. The project gave them confidence, and encouraged them to try harder, which made the students understand and show good agency.

 

 6. How does the Network get feedback from parents and students?

There are lots of ways the Network communicates; the Networks share what they hear from visits to schools. They don’t have direct opinions, but they often do surveys for parents and students. The surveys often happen about two to three times a year. The surveys help get a very specific suggestion and opinions. There aren’t many parent feedbacks too often, except on surveys, so they rely on students and how they feel about New Tech.