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Technology in education shouldn’t feel overwhelming, confusing, or disconnected from what actually works in classrooms. This show keeps it real. Each week, educator and K–12 EdTech Advisor Lindy Hockenbary shares practical strategies, stories from real teachers, and no-nonsense conversations about how to use tech in ways that feel human, joyful, and grounded in learning.
Whether you’re a teacher, a school leader, or an EdTech product builder, this show helps you Make EdTech 100 — real, relevant, and rooted in what matters most: kids.
Welcome to make EdTech 100.
I am LindyHoc Educator, K 12
Ed Tech Advisor, and your host.
This is a podcast where we keep it real
about what actually works in classrooms.
No hype, no overwhelm, just practical
strategies, honest stories and
tools that make a real difference
for teachers and students.
So come along with me on a
journey to make EdTech 100.
In the last episode of Make a
Tech 100, I shared the research
behind teacher created video.
Spoiler alert, that research
is really grounded in the
teacher-student relationship and
how important that relationship is.
I shared that it is important for students
to get to know their teachers, not on
a super intimate level, but they need
to know that you are human who enjoys
things, and people outside of your
teaching practice and your classroom.
In that vein, I think it's important
for you to get to know me a little.
We don't have the same relationship
as you do with your students, but
if I'm going to be in your ear, you
should know a little bit about me.
So here it goes.
My name is LindyHocenberry.
Think of the LindyHoc dance.
I am the LindyHoc.
Hawkenberry is a lot.
Blame it on Chad
Hawkenberry, AKA, my husband.
So LindyHoc is a lot easier to remember.
And you know, you could think of the
Lindy Hop dance whenever you think of me.
It's a good way to remember that.
On that note, sometimes people
ask me if I can do the Lindy Hop.
No.
No, I cannot.
I have many gifts in this life, and
one of those gifts is not dancing.
Even though I am a terrible dancer.
I do have it on my bucket list
to learn the Lindy hops someday.
If any of you are dancers and
are really brave and have a
lot of patience, I'm game.
Many of my listeners are teachers,
so I know you have a lot of patience.
I know the Lindy Hop is a
very swingy type of dance.
I've seen it.
I have very little confidence in
my ability to execute it though.
I am a lifelong educator.
I've spent my entire career in education.
I started as a middle and
high school, CTE teacher, so
career and technical education.
That is a very broad field.
I taught family and consumer sciences
and business education in rural Montana.
I am a Montanan.
I've lived here since I was 11.
I grew up in super, super rural southeast
Montana, about as rural as you can get.
If you want to look at a map,
you can find Koka, Montana.
Yes, Koka.
It is.
It is a real place.
E-K-A-L-A-K-A, if you
need spelling of that.
I Googled the population to make sure
I was giving accurate information.
And the population of AKA in the
2020 census was exactly 399 souls.
And to give you an idea of just how rural
it is, the entire county has 1,415 people.
As of the 2020 census.
I Googled that as well because
the entire county is cows.
In fact, Montana is one of the few
states that has more cows than people.
FYI.
Fun fact for you, joining Montana
with a high cow to people ratio
in case you ever wanted to know a
South Dakota, Wyoming, and Nebraska.
I think there's a few others,
but those are the top four.
I think South Dakota, I need to
fact check this, but I'm pretty
sure South Dakota is number one.
Highest ratio beating
Montana of cows to people.
Most people have no idea that
Montana is the fourth largest state
and only has a million people.
If you've ever been
around me, you know that.
I like to give that little fun
fact and educate people about this.
I was just telling someone the
other day that I was talking to
from Texas, I think they lived in
Dallas, and I said, I can't remember.
I think Dallas, I don't remember how many.
People Dallas has, but it's a lot.
It's millions.
And so I was explaining to them that
Texas is the second largest state.
Montana's the fourth.
So Montana's a little
smaller but not much.
We only have a million people
across the entire state.
They have a million people in
one little dot of just one little
part of one city in in Texas.
So I like to say that
I am one in a million.
I am almost always the only
montanan in the room when I
am working outside of Montana.
I was talking to someone recently and
they said, we are over a million now.
Someone that lives here in Bozeman,
we're over a million now in Montana.
I was like, great.
Just barely, just barely over
a million, but I'm still gonna
say that I am one in a million.
I currently reside in Bozeman, which
is in the opposite corner of the
state that I grew up in the Southwest.
So I grew up in the southeast
corner of the state.
I now live in the south.
West corner of the state.
I used to say I was from Bozeman
and people had no idea what I
was talking about unless they
were from Montana, of course.
So then I just started
singing Southwest Montana.
But then in the last five years
or so, Bozeman has become a
destination, mostly thanks to the
show that I will not name and know.
People ask me this all the time.
I do not watch that show.
I tried it and made it about
10 minutes in, and if you want.
Your bubble bursts and you want me
to tell you that it is nothing like
Bozeman or Montana, then I am happy
to do that if you wanna ask me.
But I will only burst your bubble if
you request that I burst your bubble and
educate you why that show has nothing to
do with reality of people that live here.
So now moral of the story.
When I say Bozeman, I can actually
say Bozeman and not Southwest Montana.
And when I say Bozeman almost.
Everyone has heard of it,
which is kind of weird.
I mean, we are the gateway to Yellowstone
National Park, so if you go to
Yellowstone, you likely fly into Bozeman.
We have the best airport now have for
a while, so that's part of it too.
Big Sky is also a big
destination for skiers.
In particular.
So usually you also would find a Bozeman
if you're gonna go ski Big Sky Resort.
So they've heard of it
through that as well.
So it's not just the show that
shall not be named, but that's
definitely, , a big part of it.
We are super lucky to live in an
outdoor mecca, so in the summer, any
free time, Chad Hawkenberry and I
have, we're in the mountains or in
or on some body of water as far away
from people that we can possibly get.
My husband also grew up in rural
southeast Montana, and when you
grow up in rural Montana, you get
really used to not being around other
people, and it's hard to outgrow that.
I am the go-to person for
helping plan Montana Vacations.
I don't charge, so reach out to me
anytime you want to plan a trip here.
I am more than happy to give
recommendations and ideas
and to-dos and not to do.
When I taught business education in my
classroom was a computer lab, and this
was in the mid to late two thousands
when one-to-one was not a thing.
I'd never even heard that term.
Actually, pause for a second.
I wanna tell a story.
My husband and I were sitting in our hot
tub the other day because when you live
in Montana, you have to have a hot tub.
There's a few things when you live in
Montana that you have to have or do.
One of them is you have to have a
way to get outside in the nine months
of winter, so we do a bit of skiing.
That's a great way to get
out and get some sunshine.
Number two thing that you
have to have is a Subaru.
If you've ever been to Bozeman,
it's kind of a joke, but it's true.
Everybody drives either a
Subaru or a Toyota Tacoma.
I have one, the Subaru.
I have the Subaru, not the Toyota Tacoma.
And the third thing that you
have to have to live in Montana
is a hot tub, I swear by it.
So.
Back to my story.
We're sitting in the hot tub and
somehow we're talking about something.
And I was reminiscing about my teacher
prep, my college when I went to school
to become a teacher, and I said I
had one educational technology class.
This was in the early two thousands.
So the fact that I even had an
educational technology class period
is kind of surprising, but it was
one class and literally the only
thing we did in the entire semester.
Was build a Netscape
website for a WebQuest.
Yeah.
Anyway, back to when I taught business
education, I had a one-to-one classroom,
and I led to that story because
the only educational technology.
That I had had in school was building
a Netscape website, so I'd never
even heard the word one-to-one.
And when I say that my classroom was
a computer lab, I am talking literal
computer lab, old school computers with
the big tall towers and the deep monitors.
I don't think flat screen
monitors were a thing.
If they were, we did not have them,
and they took up my entire tiny
classroom in rural Montana, one-to-one
laptops weren't really a thing.
I think there were maybe a very small
handful of schools across the world
that were kind of getting into that.
But very uncommon.
Google apps for education
didn't even exist.
Chromebooks DI definitely didn't exist.
iPads didn't exist.
I think the I first iPad came out
about 2010, so I was teaching in the
literal OG one-to-one environment.
And because of this, using technology
as a learning tool came natural to me.
I didn't know any different and
I was always the techie person.
Even in college, my classmates
came to me for tech help.
The school I taught at co-opt
with a nearby larger district
to provide our tech support.
And when I say larger district,
I think that I need to fact check
this, but my guess is that that town
probably only has about 5,000 people.
Just to give you an idea, but it was the
larger district, so they actually had a
technology team and they would contract
us, and we were supposed to have a person
from their tech team onsite once a week.
We were luckily to get help once a
month, and I literally taught technology.
My classes, not all, but most of my
classes were computer applications.
I had yearbook, so everything we
were doing was in Adobe InDesign.
So I got really good from the
very beginning at DIYing Things.
Now I've rarely met a teacher that
tells me that they are fully supported
in every way, shape, and form.
In their classrooms.
So every teacher has to DIY in some
form or another to make things happen.
I did a lot of DIYing, especially
from the technology side, just to
literally get my classroom working.
This was a really formative
experience for me.
Really early in my career,
I knew the power of using
technology as a learning tool.
And I knew that for the sake
of our students' futures, we
had to teach them how to use,
understand, and evaluate technology.
And I, when I first started
teaching, I was very young.
I was only a handful of years older
than my seniors that I was teaching,
and I'm an elder millennial.
It's, it's okay.
We can embrace that term.
Fellow elder millennials.
We're like right on the cusp of a xal too.
So some people feel
like they are more xal.
I definitely feel like I land like in the
elder millennial area, so my students who
are middle school and the high school.
We're solid millennials, so I was
in the same generation as them, and
I had already had experiences going
from high school where I was taught to
use a card catalog and then entering
college when we were expected to
know how to do an internet search.
For research instead of a card catalog.
I had already had that experience as a
learner of not getting the skills that
I needed, and it was nobody's fault.
Rural Montana, right?
But not getting the skills that
I needed in a changing world,
in a quickly changing world.
So I knew that I had I, and I
wanted to do better for my students.
I knew I had to do better,
and I wanted to do.
Better for my students.
And I also knew that teachers, especially
in small rural schools, you see a, a theme
here of small rural schools in my life.
I went to one, I taught in them.
They were going to be hard pressed
to receive any technology support,
and I knew that if support on the
technical side of technology was
hard pressed, like we can't even get.
The computers to work that receiving
instructional technology support,
and what I mean by that is how to
actually use technology as part of
your instruction and your curriculum
was going to be extra hard to find.
It.
Started really focused on Montana.
I'm really honing in on those small
Montana schools and expanded from there
to supporting schools and educators
nationally and internationally.
I've been to schools all over the world.
I have a lot of stories.
If you ever wanna sit down, have a
drink and chat, I'd love to share.
If you know me, I, I love to
talk, so I will chat with you
about that stuff at any time.
I've seen what works.
I have seen what doesn't work.
I have a very unique perspective
on K 12 education, specifically
the educational technology side.
Of K 12 education.
My perspective's not the only perspective
out there by any way, shape, or form, but
I do think that it is unique and it's a
really needed perspective in the space.
Every district's different, every
school and every district is different,
and I bring together a lot of
different experiences, discussions
on the dos and the don'ts when it
comes to educational technology.
When you work in EdTech,
tools are unnecessary.
It's not all about tools, but
they are a means to an end.
As I ventured more and more into working
in EdTech, the more I talked to the
EdTech companies about what was working
and not working with their products.
'cause I was living it firsthand by
helping teachers use those products,
I was able to provide a unique
perspective across many different
schools on what was working and
not working with those products.
So a lot of what I do with the K 12
ed tech companies is make sure that
their products meet the needs of K
12 . Personally, I'm an animal lover.
I love all animals.
I have a particular place in my
heart for animals, but my particular
affinity is for dogs, really any dog.
But my favorite type are
the squishy face dogs.
See right here.
Uh, I've had four Boston
Terriers in my life.
I currently have one Boston and
I now have a French bulldog.
So I diversified my squishy faced.
Dog pack.
They make appearances quite often
in my work, so you might hear
them on a virtual training or
see 'em on a social media post.
Even in my newsletter, my French
bulldog Guinness is really good at
crashing my teaching and my newsletters
and stuff with Frenchy brain breaks.
So you might see him.
Appear every now and again and my
boss, interior Dublin will eagerly
share his ball with any human
being that is willing to partake.
I am also a sucker for kids, so as
much as I'm a sucker for dogs, I'm a
probably about well animals in general.
Kids and animals are what get me.
So that's all I need to say about that.
I am a bit of a swifty.
If you follow my work.
You may find some Easter eggs
scattered all over the place,
maybe even in this podcast.
Hint, hint.
I am the pedagogy person when it
comes to technology and education.
I'm a firm believer that the technical and
the pedagogical sides must work together
and listen to each other, and often when
things go wrong, it's because that's not
happening in some way, shape, or form.
I know a lot more about the technical
side than I tend to give myself
credit for because some technical
knowledge is critical to making tech
recommendations to schools and teachers.
But I do not wanna drag wires.
Do not ask me to set up an access point
or create a network or anything like that.
Nope.
Don't wanna do it.
Doesn't interest me.
I really don't wanna enjoy
troubleshooting technology,
even though I'm the tech person.
I don't enjoy it.
I have to as part of my work and I
can do it, but I do not wanna spend my
days just troubleshooting technology
that does not hit my soul at all.
So moral of the story, whenever
I get, I tend to get drug
over to the technical side.
I try to , drag myself right back
to the instructional side, although.
I always have at least a toe in the
technical side because like I said,
it's really important that we all work
together, talk together to do what's best
for teachers, students, and also make
sure that they're safe at the same time.
As much as I know about a ed tech,
and I will talk your ear off about
ed tech and dogs and Taylor Swift is
about how little I know about sports.
Don't ask me.
Somebody said to me the other
day, are you an NFL person?
Nope.
I know the Super Bowl
is coming up here soon.
Don't know when exactly.
In the next couple weeks.
I have no idea what teams are even in
the running to be in the Super Bowl.
So yeah, don't ask me,
I promise I won't know.
My brain just doesn't have
the capacity or frankly the
desire to keep track of sports.
I, it's nothing against it.
I have no problem with sports.
Like you do it, you do you.
I'm all about you.
Do you?
That is a good thing to know about me.
That is one of my mottos is you,
do you, so there you have it.
A little bit about me, a little
bit about me professionally.
Personally, what I like, what I enjoy,
what I know about, and what I know.
Nothing about.
So now you know if you find me
at a conference or invite me
to your school, you know what
to ask me, what to not ask me.
I will come wearing and
giving friendship bracelets.
I hope to spread a little fun and joy
to education and make Ed Tech 100.
Thanks for joining Make EdTech 100.
I know educator time is valuable and I'm
honored you choose to spend yours with me.
For more EdTech strategies you can use
tomorrow and ways to bring me to your
school or event, head to LindyHoc.com.
If this episode resonated, hit subscribe
so you don't miss the next one.
I'm LindyHoc.
Go forth and make EdTech 100.