Building Esports Programs in Schools: An IT Perspective with Matthew Ketchum

Summary

In this episode of the Autonomous IT Heroes of IT podcast, Ashley interviews Matthew Ketchum, the Director of Educational Technology at Modesto City Schools. Matthew shares his journey into technology and education, highlighting his initiatives in eSports and the integration of educational technology with IT. He discusses the importance of resilience and adaptability in educational projects, emphasizing user feedback and collaboration across departments.

Transcript

Ashley: 

Welcome to the Autonomous IT Heroes of IT podcast. This pod is where we get to speak to people who we consider our heroes of IT. Today we have joining us Matthew Ketchum, who is the Director of Educational Technology at Modesto City Schools. Welcome to the podcast.

Matthew Ketchum: 

Thank you for having me, Ashley.

Ashley: 

Thanks for being here. I like to start off every podcast with asking my guests, how did you get into technology and how would you describe your current role?

Matthew Ketchum: 

I got into technology it was my bachelor's degree was computer science and had some internships during that year. Wasn't sure if I wanted to be a programmer with those opportunities. So when I graduated college with my bachelor's degree, I'm from Illinois and I joined what's called the AmeriCorps VISTA program through the government's domestic version of the Peace Corps.

And they match you up with a program that matches your degree. And so I got matched up with a program out in California called the Central Valley Digital Network Digital Divide issue, a social justice issue for those that don't have access or how to use a computer or the internet was the mission. So they moved me out to California, never been out this way before. And it was a year of national service. And it's really about creating a sustainable program that's really in the end what you're trying to create. And so I developed a free workshop for the community how to use computer, how to use the Internet, and I partnered up with government agencies, the unemployment department, the library, and I'm really happy to say even to this day they offer those classes. then in the end it was a volunteer management program that I created that kept it going.

But that got me into the educational technology Avenue or. Technology and teaching and adult learning. And so from there I went into teaching adults office technology with vocational schools. I obtained my in California. I obtained my teaching credential for CTE credential for computer science in high schools and became a tech trainer first in Modesto City Schools District where I'm currently at. It was first a tech trainer and then became a tech coach. The districts had tech coach and then from there became the director of Ed Tech in our IT department and I've been with our district for 12 years in January.

Ashley: 

Wow, I love that. That is a very cool background into technology and education. I'm a native Californian myself. My family's been there for four or five generations, so that's awesome.

Matthew Ketchum: 

Yeah, I guess before I came out here, I always thought of California, what we probably saw in the movies of what's Southern California, really. I'm, Modesto is in the central California, a little bit more Northern California, about 80 miles just east of San Francisco or just south of Sacramento. But I had no idea there was all the agriculture. So there was a lot of

Ashley: 

Yeah.

Matthew Ketchum: I don't think it's coming to learn that way, but I was very happy. No snow, no humidity and decided to stay out here.

Ashley: 

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. My hometown's claim to fame is oranges. Like they're famous for their orange groves and orange productions and everything down there has like an orange on a street sign and they're everywhere. So I definitely I resonate with that.

Matthew Ketchum:

Wow.

Ashley:

Okay, awesome. Well, for those of you who are listening in, Matthew and I originally met when he was directing an education initiative for employees in his school district. Matthew, can you talk a little bit about some other initiatives that you're in charge of developing and their goals?

Matthew Ketchum:  (04:20)

Yeah, yeah, no thank you. Automox and yourself have been really great helping initiatives that we were supporting with cybersecurity awareness in our district. Cybersecurity month there in October, so we really appreciate that. Other initiatives that we have here in our district. We have a district wide esports program that I lead, which I'm very excited to be part of.

So we have esports in elementary, middle school, and high school. And 13 of our schools, all middle schools, all high schools, have a fully furnished esports room. And this is full on gaming PCs, the esports chairs and desks. We are also doing shout casting and streaming on Twitch, game matches. We're part of a Northern California league. It's very competitive.

We host tournaments and championships in person as well for Northern California. We're really excited in this area, especially Northern California, be one of the first districts to offer it district wide. So it was a huge initiative, a lot of great support from our superintendent, from our CTO, from school sites. And the program had just seen where the students that are participating, 79% of them have never participated in after school program or club or sport activity. So these were definitely hard to reach students that didn't have any interest to be anything part of that school site once the bell ring at the beginning or end of school to participate. So we're really excited on that. We're starting to look at the attendance and academics. So they'll say, you you'll start to see some improvements in attendance right away, but.

They say about two to three years to looking at the academics, but we've already seen some increases in GPA for students that do participate before they were part of it and then now that they're part of the program. So we're still looking at those student outcomes with the program. But if you go into any of those rooms, the students are excited to have an offer. The SEL components are off the charts, team building, working with others. They'll share, yeah, I could play these games at home alone.

I like playing here and making new friends. They like the social aspect of it.

Ashley: 

That's awesome. remember growing up, computer lab was always like the best class of the day and like playing the little games there. When you say esports, what are these kids playing? Like is it Fortnite? Is it NBA 2K? Are they playing Madden? What's going on in the computer lab?

Matthew Ketchum: 

Yeah. Yeah, in the high school we have two seasons, almost like if you split up the semesters of a school year. So the first season we have Overwatch 2. And we have League of Legends. And then in the second season or spring season here that we're in right now, they have Rocket League and they have Valorant. We are mindful of the ESRB ratings on games that matches, know, we don't have anything past the T or teen, so there's no Call of Duty or the "M" type level games in the system. We're also very mindful that these games are free to play, so all of the games that they compete in are free to play, and that these games are close to the two teams joining. It's a larger community. One thing that we're looking to partner up with Epic, is Fortnite. Fortnite is probably the most popular game being requested by the students. That's not like a larger world community, right? Global community that can be part of that. So we're starting to work with Epic on what would be more of a like a lobby key to get in or a little bit more closed, walled environment that we could have just the schools that are competing, maybe a couple of teams of four within Fortnite working on objectives.

So we are looking to bring Fortnite in. It's not part of the season games yet.

Ashley: 

That's cool. I have a little sister and she loves Fortnite. This past weekend actually was my first time playing Mario Party, which is maybe like a little sacrilegious to say in this space. I had never played it before and my friends were shocked and they were like, we need to rectify that immediately. We can't let this go on any further. And it was so much fun. We ended up playing it for like hours and hours.

Matthew Ketchum: 

Yeah! No! That's awesome. That's we do have Nintendo Switches right now. That's pretty much where elementary programs built on is the Mario Party. The Smash Brothers and Mario Kart we do offer in middle school and high school as well for and we do have also with the sports besides the team I mentioned we do have before and after school. So when the teams not using the lab any student can come in and use the esports lab and that social gaming aspect like the Nintendo like.

Ashley: 

Okay.

Matthew Ketchum: 

Pretty much all I'm going in there to see is they're playing Smash Brothers together or Mario Kart. Yeah.

Ashley: 

That's so fun. That's awesome. I love that. Okay, awesome. Well, kind of talking about this educational piece of technology initiatives, Modesto City School also has IT under the same department. Can you talk a little bit about that partnership and that decision to join those departments together?

Matthew Ketchum: 

Yeah, that's a really great question. We're somewhat unique having the EdTech component within IT and a lot of our work is definitely the curriculum, instruction, certificated teacher side of the house that we serve. was the intention, our CTO, Russ Selkin, when he came in, he had this vision of Information Educational Technology Services, IETS, and that's what we're called today, and bringing in EdTech from the curriculum side, bringing it over into IT and being part of it. And I think it's been really great because IT would have their lens and their perspective, you know, the networking or the computer techs and the hardware. And then there's the users out there as well.

in their lens, if it's management, classified, teachers. But being part of this division, we can put on that lens of the end user. What are they going to want? What are they going to need? What are some decisions that we need to make to make this work for them as well, not just the IT side of the house? So I think it's been a really great vision ever since I've been director of EdTech that's been, EdTech has lived here in the IT department.

I do like it because he has assessment and evaluation. has my department at tech. He has all the programmers. He has networking. He has help desk. has an application specialist. And the computer site techs are out at the site's help and troubleshoot. We're all under the one umbrella and the one lens. And I think it's really good when we come together each week for our planning and manager meetings that we each have those lenses on the decisions that we're making.

Ashley: 

Yeah, it sounds like there's a lot of communication and transparency with that structure.

Matthew Ketchum: 

I think you're right on. I think that's exactly the objective he wanted. He felt he had been consulting with other districts and you could see that there wasn't that communication or that collaboration between those different departments and he knew like bringing them together under one that's going to happen. And we do. We share a lot of different programs like especially where a big power school district and so there's so many different products under that that know, the assessment has that I have that the information support system has, but we're all together. When we rolled out a communication district wide communication tool again, we could all come together in our different elements to work together to make that happen for the whole district.

Ashley: 

Yeah, I think that's cool. If you think about it from, you know, commercial perspective, people who are listening to this podcast, that might not be in the education space. sounds almost like someone from like go to market ops or someone from tooling, someone who owns that space working really closely with, you know, the IT people who are going to implement it, roll it out across the org, but you have different owners of the technology and they're all working really closely together. That's awesome.

Matthew Ketchum: 

Yep, that's exactly, yeah, good way to put it.

Ashley: 

so this month at Automox, our podcasts are talking about IT resilience and adaptability. what does that mean to you? I think particularly that piece of adaptability, you've talked a lot about how, you know, your org communicates, how your org has a lot of transparency going on, a lot of new initiatives to make sure that everything is up to speed. So I'd love your take on that theme.

Matthew Ketchum: 

No, that's a great. You said that's your theme for this month? That's awesome. I like that. That you have those visions and reflections. So really important here over in IETS in our division is that it's looking at the different lenses of the users in any project that we're doing.

Ashley: 

Mm-hmm.

Matthew Ketchum: 

Looking at what the evaluation process is, bringing those educational partners that would be impacted, involved in the decision making that is not just IT making these decisions. So we're really big on evaluation committees of educational partners coming in. When we're starting to look to roll software hardware out, we like to do what's called test as a user with a user.

So we're making sure that before we roll it out larger scale that we're getting that feedback on the actual implementation with those pilots with the test user as a user. And I know for our Ed Tech Department, know when we're designing training or self paced courses or videos that you know we're learning always and getting feedback from.

Our customers, the teachers, the students, the parents, the staff. And what are things that we can iterate on? What can we improve on? What can we try again? So I think with the resilience, come to that where here's that the design thinking model, but in CTE world we have the I have a poster here that engineering. Design and pretty much that that is resilience that.

You know you're planning, you're creating, you're testing it out, you're improving on it. You're learning from it and you're iterating and you're always approving. You're asking questions and it's a cycle. So it continues on.

Ashley: 

Yeah, definitely. That reminds me of when I was in college my very last year, I took a design thinking course. And they took you through like the entire process of how to construct these ideas and then create like actionable steps to work towards it and

I wish I remember the book, but there is a really great book that was recommended on design thinking and how to implement it in your day to day. I'll have to look it up after this and we'll have to put it in the show notes. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, hey, we're talking education here. We're school district. So it's perfectly on theme.

Matthew Ketchum:

Yeah, I'll give you homework. I think that would be a great idea. Yeah. Yeah.

Ashley: 

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us this month. Your answers have been so awesome. I've loved talking the eSport initiative. It's so cool. Hopefully there are other people who are listening to this podcast who work for school districts who will be inspired to maybe start an eSport initiative of their own.

Matthew Ketchum:

I love it. Thank you Ashley.

Ashley: 

Awesome. Well, yeah, of course, my pleasure. For those of you who are listening and you're not familiar with the Autonomous IT podcast, we release episodes every Tuesday and Thursday each week. We rotate topics from CISO IT to our product talk at Automox. And we've loved having you listen in on our conversation. Thanks all.