Interview: Director of the Youth Technology Academy

Students figuring out some programming issue or something.

George Bilokonsky, Director of YTA

Today I'm bringing you another interview, this time with George Bilokonsky, the director of a program called the Youth Technology Institute in Cleveland, Ohio. Yes, he's also my father, but that just meant the interview was easier to get. His program is really pretty cool - read through this and if you have any comments or questions I'll be sure to pass them along.

I was gonna try to summarize what YTA does, but he does that pretty well in the first few questions. He's aware that his statements about Al Gore in one of the later questions are based on fallacy but that from what he's heard about newsvine it would rile people up and so he thought he'd throw it in. I rolled my eyes but there you have it.

Ladies and Gentleman, my interview with Technology Director and Bilokonsky Patriarch George Bilokonsky:

Can you give us a comprehensive description of what YTA is? Why should people interested in science, technology and education be excited about what you're doing - what are you offering that nobody else is, and who are you offering it to?

The Youth Technology Academy (YTA) is an after-school pre-engineering program for high-school students that is designed for inner-city youth. Its goal is to offer an exciting program to expose students to technology, get them involved in hands-on technical projects, and encourage them to pursue careers in technology. The Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD) is one of the poorest in the nation, and Cleveland in general is one of the poorest cities in the country – twice earning the distinction of being the poorest big city in the USA (US 2003 Census and 2006 Census). The local economy is slowly dwindling away. Corporations are leaving this area in an alarming rate, and so is our pool of technical workers. If Cleveland is to survive, it must do something soon.

For the past four years, the YTA has been creating pathways of success for our CMSD students. These are not the best of the best students. Many of the students who start our program have a grade point average below 2.0 and have difficulty with reading and math above the 6th grade level. What we have found is that they are all interested in technology in some way. They love to be on the computer, listen to MP3 players, use cell phones, and most of them have a My Space site they share with other students. Most of them also have other issues they have to deal with: They do live in unsafe neighborhoods, have very little money, and do not have positive aspirations for their future. They live in poverty.

What is unique and exciting about our program is the fact that it works. We are taking the city population and, one student at a time, turning it into a technology savvy workforce. We are able to do this by using Robotics as a hook to draw students into our program and using robotics competitions as a learning tool.

YTA provides high-school students with several levels of training: first, participating students take engineering technology courses at Cuyahoga Community College through the state-sponsored Post Secondary Enrollment Options Program (PSEOP), earning college credit while they are still in high school. Students then have the opportunity to apply classroom-instilled skills in several hands-on activities: weekly hands-on robotics activities using either the VEX or FIRST platform conducted by participating teachers at their schools and focused on designing, building, programming, and operating a competition robot; participation in VEX, FIRST or other platform robotics tournaments; and mentorship of younger students in a summer LEGO robotics camp for middle-school students, an activity in which they teach younger youths the skills they have learned in the YTA program. In addition, participating students receive soft-skills/job-readiness training from career coaches. And finally, they participate in paid summer work experiences and paid internships. Part of the YTA experience itself is a paid experience, earning attendance- and performance-based stipends for the students and providing them with an additional incentive to excel in the program.

The YTA program offers unique benefits to participating students: the students are standing with one foot in high school and one foot in college, earning college credit while still in high school, and thinking about their future. The soft-skills training helps them mature into poised and success-oriented candidates for the workforce. The robotics competitions provide them with opportunities to apply the skills in exciting real-time activities. As an added bonus, the robotics competitions provide students with exposure to and with mentorship from professional engineers during construction of their competitive robots, making them begin to feel at home in the engineering environment. Besides being mentored, participating YTA students also provide mentoring to younger students, benefiting from this opportunity for reviewing the skills learned so that they can teach those skills to an audience. This mentoring activity also has positive consequences for our community: The older success-oriented students, while teaching robotics skills to younger students, help these younger students become interested in technical/engineering courses of study and careers. Upon exit from YTA and graduation from high school, participating students are well prepared to join the technical workforce and/or pursue a post-secondary degree.

Who pays for this? Is your program affiliated with the school system? The community college? The city of Cleveland? Do you accept sponsorship from corporations or individuals?

YTA is a program operated by Cuyahoga Community College. It is affiliated with the CMSD insofar as our pool of students comes from the school system, as do the full-time teachers (Tech Ambassadors) who work for the program on a part-time basis after school and during the summer. CMSD supports our program whole-heartedly and works with us to provide interested students with technology training that the school system cannot afford to make available to its students.

The bulk of the support for the YTA program comes from the Cuyahoga County Workforce Development Department, which distributes the US Department of Labor's Workforce Investment Act funds to local programs that prepare youth to be effective members of the workforce. The next largest chunk of funding comes from a three-year National Science Foundation grant in support of increasing CMSD student participation in the Youth Technology Academy by supporting expansion of a Cuyahoga Community College Engineering Dept. C-Programming distance course to CMSD high schools, increasing the number of high schools served by five in each of the three Project years.

The third largest supporter of YTA has been NASA, which granted $25,000 in each of the last four years to support YTA participation in the FIRST Robotics program. George Gund Foundation granted $50,000 to help the program start up and also granted $8,000 this past spring in support of YTA participation in FIRST Robotics regional tournaments. The Dolphin Trust granted $10,000 last fall to support math tutoring, which YTA provides through an interactive on-line tutoring program. In the past, the McGinty Foundation, the Martha Holden Jennings Foundation, Ford, Ronald McDonald House Charities, and Parker-Hannifin have granted money to support various YTA activities. A number of smaller private donors have provided support as well.

We are always looking for funding to assist us in reaching our goals. Support from private funders and corporations are very important aspects of our program as we prepare the next generation students for the technical workforce of tomorrow.

How did you get involved with something like this? You were a history major - what're you doing directing a youth technology program in Cleveland?

I have always liked working with my hands. As a kid, I used to spend my summers working on my grandfather's dairy farm in upstate New York. To me it was exciting. It was very hard work, but at the same time I got to do things that were very special. I learned to weld my go-kart frame back together again, take motors apart, drive a tractor, bail hay, milk cows. I also got a chance to play baseball, go hiking, fish, and eat baloney sandwiches. It was the best time of my life and it was the best education I could ever hope for. It's an education that everyone should get a chance to experience. It taught me that I could do anything I set my mind to. It taught me the value of hard work. It taught me to look at every day as an opportunity to do something new and exciting. It instilled in me family values that I can only hope I as an adult I was able to share with my own family.

My core values are what I bring to work every day. At night I can relax, knowing that I have been able to make a difference in some young person's life. I know that if I work hard and never give up, I will be able to reach my goals. The students get a chance to learn this, too, by participating in our program. As a result, they will be able to make positive contributions to Northeast Ohio's technical workforce.

Times have changed quite a bit in Northeast Ohio since I was a kid. In high school, during the 70s, many of us had no choice but to follow a college-bound curriculum. Going to college was the only best option we had. In the 70s you either went to college or you started working at the Ford plant – if you could get in. Getting into Ford was not easy. It was one of the best-paying jobs available in Cleveland at the time, and everyone was trying to get in. During the 70s, Cleveland was a big manufacturing city. The steel yards were in full swing, and we were shipping our steel all over the world. The economy was thriving, and the world was still "round." Technology as we know it today was considered science fiction, something you saw on Star Trek. We had no idea that the world was about to change.

Yes, I am a history major and an educator, but I have always like working with my hands. I look at every day as a new opportunity. Today I find myself immersed in a world surrounded by technology and still teaching. The world is now "flat," and Star Trek is no longer science fiction; it is more of a blueprint to our future, as we prepare to "boldly go where no man has gone before." I am simply a product of my environment and am doing my best to survive the changing world we live in. A new renaissance man?

To answer the question, I enjoy teaching and building things. When people ask me what I do for a living, I tell them I play with robots and travel the country to compete. Now, how cool is that?

What were some of the most significant challenges you had to overcome as you got started? What are your greatest challenges today?

Assembling a team with the same vision was the most challenging aspect of this program. The team consists of a core YTA staff, CMSD teachers we call Tech Ambassadors, and students who are willing to work. Once the high schools were selected for participation and the students were recruited and the program plan was in place, it was simply a matter of monitoring the process and continually communicating. We needed to function as a team in order to be successful. This was the greatest challenge. It will continue to be a challenge as we continue to expand.

What's it like for someone in your generation, having been born into a world without computers, to be building robots with high school kids? I guess that's a pretty vague question - what I'm getting at is, has the emergence of technology changed the way education works on a fundamental level? Restated, are we dealing with a brand-new educational paradigm or are we still using old 20th century pedagogy but with some fancy new toys that weren't available when you were in high school?

Come on now, in the words of the infamous Al Gore, "I invented the Internet." In fact, I was building my Timex Sinclair computer the night you were born. I was there at the beginning, and I can see why Al felt he could take credit for the Internet. When it all started, we were all part of some huge experiment. No one knew what direction it was going in (except for Bill Gates), and everyone had a hand in the open-source concept -- something you youngsters will never understand :) We were all working together in building the technological infrastructure we have today -- one big happy and chaotic group of techies moving en masse in the same direction and not knowing where it would lead. This movement is what made the world flat and what is making it still flatter and smaller with no end in sight.

As far as education goes, you present an interesting question. What you are asking is if technology has entered the classroom and, if so, to what degree. It is not easy to answer this. There are many factors to consider. First, teaching will always find its roots in pedagogy that has been proven and works. For instance, there is a reason we memorize poetry and show all our work while figuring out algebra problems. The change in education is in the way we deliver the lessons. We make use of new technology that assists us in teaching. Computers revolutionized that process.

Building on the previous question a bit, in what ways do our operational educational paradigms need to evolve to better take advantage of the technology we're surrounded by? More broadly, in what ways do you as an educator feel that public education in America needs to change? Feel free to answer in vague platitudes if you don't feel comfortable publicly discussing such things.

The student is the center of education. The student is the client that we are trying to work with. The student is the future, and we should treat education as if our future depended on the student's success. Unfortunately, we probably spend more disposable income per child on useless video games than we do on education. I guess what I want to say here is that education should be of paramount importance, and society should treat the teaching profession with greater respect. Teachers should be on the same plateau as doctors and lawyers (maybe not lawyers) and be paid accordingly. Then we would see better teachers entering the profession and hopefully see more technology used to teach students.

Imagine if you could sit in a classroom studying the battle of Gettysburg while viewing the field on the big screen TV in front of the class and having a live conversation with an authority on the subject. This could easily be done with the technology that is currently available to our schools. Setting up a distance-learning session is simply a matter of turning on a computer and using an LCD projector. Why is this methodology not part of everyday teaching?

We are on the threshold of changing the way we teach. It is inevitable that eventually distance learning will be an everyday occurrence in our schools. We will be able to see and hear from the experts in the fields that we study, and the classroom teacher will act as a facilitator of the information and technology needed to conduct the broadcast. After the broadcast, the teacher will follow-up with lessons that help reinforce the information taught.

We have received funding from the National Science Foundation to do just that. We are setting up distance learning labs using PolyCom in 15 different high schools in Cleveland. The professor teaches a C Programming class heavily embedded with Algebra to help CMSD students get a better understanding of math. Hands-on robotics activities using the versatile VEX robotics platform teach students how to design, build, and program robots using various sensors in preparation for participation in a in a city-wide robotics competition. Upon successful completion of this class, the students get college credit that will count towards an engineering degree.

In a nutshell, students are learning math, teachers are providing the support required for the professor from Cuyahoga Community College to teach the class over the Internet, and everyone is happy. This is the future of education!

So looking at what you've built here so far, what's next? Where would you like to take YTA from here? Do you see your program as something that could be copied and reimplemented in other cities? Would you like to expand your current operations?

We want to be a regional center. Our program works, and we are getting ready to submit a proposal to the National Science Foundation that would allow us to become a regional center. This means that we would help and support other cities with setting up a training program like the Youth Technology Academy. Our goal is to have an exciting technology training program available to everyone, especially to those in the urban setting. Without our program, they may never have an opportunity to become part of the technical workforce.

Branching out a bit, you're on the cutting edge of IT Education - do you have any sort of insider's insight as to how the IT field is going to be changing in the next 5 years? Do you watch any trends on the Internet, that sort of thing? Do you talk to post-secondary educators in the field? How do you see the face of the Internet - and information technology at large, I suppose - changing in the next few years?

Distance learning will be key in education. As the cost of getting equipment comes down and training for the teachers improves, we will see this area of education explode. The process of education follows the same trends that we see in society. Communications has been going through some big changes over the past few years. It costs less per minute now to call Kiev, Ukraine than it costs to make an intrastate phone call.

The problem with this rapidly changing technology and education is that it is not a primary concern for school systems to keep up with change. It is a massive undertaking to introduce anything new system-wide in the schools. It also costs money. So you see, change is slow, and even if you could implement the changes, teachers are not in a hurry to do anything new for a number of reasons -- the biggest reason being that it requires training, time, and a change in the way they do things. Writing new lesson plans for a subject you have been teaching for several years is a major undertaking in the minds of the teachers. Remember, this is a job with no incentive to change.

How well do you relate to the kids? Last time I talked to you on the phone you were in the process of figuring out how they'd circumvented your latest attempt to keep them off of Myspace in the school labs - have you thought about perhaps co-opting the social networking craze and accepting it as an emerging and significant part of youth culture?

We encourage students to use computers as much as possible. Most of our students do not have access to a computer at home and try to steal computer time whenever and whereever they can. We do monitor the sites they visit and will not tolerate their accessing any porn sites or racist sites. If we catch a student at the wrong site, he/she is automatically banned from the computer for an indefinite time.

We tolerate My Space because it is impossible to keep kids off that site. We look at it as an educational tool. Once we finish a competition, we post all our competition photos on the YTA site. Students are then downloading the photos they like and posting them on their own My Space site. So, without much effort, we have helped the students master downloading, uploading, editing, and sharing information over the Internet. I seriously doubt a structured class would be as successful in teaching these kids the process. They feel they are getting away with something, and we are glad they are learning – it's a win-win situation for all.

One more thing: Since when is sharing information over the Internet exclusively part of the youth culture? Everyone uses the net for networking, and it is a technological phenomenon that affects everyone. It's how it is used/abused that may be considered exclusive to the youth. I do not know many people of my generation burning and trading bootleg music CDs.

What have you learned from your experience directing YTA? With regards to working in public education, from the children, about robotics, whatever - what are a few things that this program has taught you that you didn't know going in?

I was really surprised at how little the teachers knew about basic everyday IT stuff. Many of the teachers use email, but many more look at it as a chore, as something that complicates their life, and not as something that makes life easier. Many times when I have sent out an email broadcast, I have had to call half the teachers and ask them to check their email. One of our teachers doesn't even know how to check her email or use her CMSD account – or a cell phone, for that matter. This really surprised me.

Something else that surprised me is the fact that the schools have brand-new computers, but no one uses them because the teachers can't incorporate them into their lesson planning due to the layers and layers of security protecting the CMSD system. One teacher who wanted to use a particular tutoring program has waited a year for the IT Department to install it. As far as I know she is still waiting.

Don't get me wrong. CMSD is on the threshold of changes with the brand-new superintendent, Dr. Sanders. But it is going to take a while, since this is one of the largest school systems in the country.

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