This past summer (2017) I had the pleasure of attending the ISTE conference in San Antonio that brings together the best and brightest in the world of education technology, including teachers, administrators and members of the EdTech business community.
During my time there, I had the opportunity to visit with Jon Phillips, Education Industry Strategist and Technologist for Dell EMC. Jon has some interesting and refreshing perspectives on technology, learning, and how a large company like Dell EMC fits into the educational landscape. I asked him what surprised him and what he learned about the industry that he didn’t expect when he joined Dell six years ago.
“The first thing that we had to learn is that technology is a means to an end, and we need to understand what is learning transformation.”
“That helped our mission and our journey at Dell EMC to be less of a vendor and more of a partner. We were able to step back and say, ‘Okay, what role could we play? What role do we currently play? What are we doing well? What are we doing not so well?’ There are a lot of learnings that we were able to gather from just being part of a bigger conversation.”
“We ─ as in everybody in the EdTech industry ─ encounter passion about a technology that will come and go; and, sometimes, it will even come back. Part of the reason we see those cycles is because it is one thing to understand the technology, but then there is: How do I implement it? How do I scale it?”
I also asked Jon about the dynamics of working with such a large and well-established brand, including how they approach innovative startup EdTech who are breaking into the education market.
“As a large company, we've learned that it's fun to see the innovators and startups that are passionate about what they're doing that's specific to a piece of education and then bring them along. We spend a lot of time working with startups mainly because they're part of the ecosystem and they're important.”
“They're doing the little things that bigger organizations have not done and often will not do. But the market demands and needs these types of things. We focus on trying to work with the startup community as much as possible. We try to be as start-up oriented as we can for such a large organization. We spend time incubating, innovating and bringing in different voices to make sure that we don't get so big that we're trying to serve everybody with very few things. And that's really the challenge.”
Jon also addressed the evolution of the industry and how the IT departments and the curriculum departments are starting to come together to work toward the common goal of effective teaching for greater learning.
“In the early days, there were discussions between the technology side of the school and separate discussions with the curriculum instruction side and then all of a sudden, a big implementation would occur and it became two ships passing in the night. I think we're better at making sure our conversations are held across all parts of the organism of the school district, including curriculum instruction, coaching, leadership, and technology.”
“We're maturing in that process. It’s not just meeting with the CIO and saying, ‘What can we do with technology?’ It's meeting with a whole conglomerate of constituents and saying, ‘How are we changing learning through the use of technology? It's profound. It's evolving.”
And finally, Jon gave me his view of the overarching philosophy of Dell EMC and how it relates to their work in education. His words are inspirational.
“At Dell, we're constantly in this process of evolving ourselves. We like to call ourselves the world’s largest private startup. For us, it's an evolution process. At the center, our leader, Michael Dell, is all about our company enabling human progress. And, in education, it really lives out. His heart is with education. The Michael & Susan Dell Foundation is very active in education and all of us ─ not just Dell, but other organizations ─ will benefit from the work that's done there in terms of understanding learning analytics.”
“We've been very successful as a partner in education. We don't stop challenging ourselves.”
About Jon Phillips:
Jon Phillips is Managing Director, Worldwide Education, at Dell EMC, where he directs Dell EMC’s Global Education Practice. In this role, he leads the global strategy for Dell EMC’s education services and solutions, as well as a team of education experts focused on driving innovative technology solutions specifically designed to personalize learning for students and to increase efficiency in schools and universities around the world.
Follow Jon Phillips on Twitter
Further Reading:
About Rod Berger, PsyD.
Dr. Rod Berger is President and CEO of MindRocket Media Group. Berger is a global education media personality and strategic influencer featured in The Huffington Post, Scholastic, AmericanEdTV, edCircuit, EdTechReview India and Forbes.
Audiences have enjoyed education interviews with the likes of Sir Ken Robinson, Arne Duncan, Randi Weingarten, Sal Khan along with leading edtech investors, award-winning educators, and state and federal education leaders. Berger’s latest project boasts a collaboration with AmericanEdTV and CBS’s Jack Ford.
Follow Dr. Rod Berger on Twitter.