Kate Valenti: Tammie, thank you so much for sitting with me today to talk through your
experience and to share some insights. In my experience, there are two kinds of talent
organizations: those that think of people as interchangeable resources, and those who
emphasize the individual experiences of each consultant. A significant value of our organization
lies in the individuality of our people and the skills and experience that each individual brings to
their job. This is probably nowhere better illustrated than in our business analyst group. Our BAs
all tend to have similar core skills, and wildly divergent interests.
Kate (cont'd): Every time I hear feedback about you, it’s always: Tammie just jumped in and figured that out, or she did her job and then she wrote a whole bunch of documents so that the client would have what they needed. You are always jumping in there and figuring out what is needed and not waiting to be asked. My first question for you is, have you always had this personality of jumping in and filling in the gaps where needed or is this a skill you developed over time?
Tammie Helmick: I think it's something that developed over time, but I would say it comes back to the environment that I grew up in. Both of my parents were volunteer paramedics, so
oftentimes, they would have to just drop whatever they were doing when the radio went off and
just go. They had no idea what they were going to. They just knew that when they got there,
they had to help people. For me, seeing that, really changed my perspective on things because
I saw them as helpers. I always want to help people no matter what it is. Anytime somebody
reaches out to me and says, hey, do you know how to do this or can you do this? My answer is
either yes, I do, and here's the information or no, but I'll figure it out for you. Then that puts me in a better position the next time somebody needs advice or support or whatever the case is. I love learning things. There’s always an opportunity to learn something new and help other people.
Kate: You mention loving to learn, and I can certainly tell that factors heavily in how you
approach your work. In my experience, lifelong learners have some very common traits.
Curiosity is obviously a big one; persistence, adaptability, growth mindset, and then the desire
to share knowledge, the desire to be helpful, but also to leave people better than you found
them. When I think of all of those things, I think of you. What's the most recent thing that you've
learned, personally and professionally? Also, how do you talk to your kids about lifelong
learning?
Tammie: Personally, I've been working on learning 3D modeling, but specifically more
functional 3D modeling. When I was in the music video business, I learned to 3D model, but it
was all artistic pieces. They didn't need to function in the real world. Now I've switched, and it's
a whole other aspect. You have to have precision and measurements to know where pieces
might fit and how they might interact with each other. That's something I've been working on
learning now, how to build those pieces.
A lot of it's trial and error, printing it on my 3D printer and seeing what worked and where I have to change my design. I really love that because not only am I learning a new skill, but I can use it in life to build a functional object that improves my day-to-day or my kids’ day-to-day.
Kate: What is a functional object that you have designed and that improves your day-to-day?
Tammie: My son has a very small fish tank, and they don't sell a lid for it. For the longest time, we used Saran Wrap just to stop the fish from jumping out. I printed a mesh piece or a grid that would sit on top of it. It fits on the fish tank, but it has little notches in it where the light sits and where the tubes come out. It's a nice, perfect fit, and then we even built
a little pivot point so you can raise it to put the food in and close it. It's things like that I’ve built.
Kate: That's awesome.
Tammie: Yeah, I love it. I love building tactile things. Plus, it's great because you can build things for art too that you can 3D print.
Kate: Yes. OK, and now professionally?
Tammie: Professionally, I have recently been involved with a lot of CBE projects, and I've been learning a lot more about the different ways that people are implementing CBE. Some
implement with badges, some implement without badges. Others are doing a single module as
a full competency, whereas others are doing an entire course as a module or an entire program
is a competency. Those kinds of things have been a lot of learning for me.
Kate: That's great. How do you talk to your kids about lifelong learning?
Tammie: Learning is a big topic in our house. I've always taught them the most important thing about learning is to never be afraid to ask questions. I've taught kids and I've taught adults, and I find that a lot of them are embarrassed to ask questions because they feel like it makes them less knowledgeable than their peers. I've always taught my kids it's actually the opposite. We flipped that in our house. We've told them that asking questions makes you smarter. It gives you knowledge you didn't have.
On the other end of that question, you are now more knowledgeable, so try to ask those questions. That's what we focused on to keep them constantly asking questions at our dinner table, at our breakfast table, in the car. It doesn't matter where we are. Our kids are constantly asking us every question imaginable, and they're older. I know younger kids are usually more question-based, but they're in their teens and still, our entire car ride in a day will be them just asking random questions about how things work and what if. I really love that about our family.
Kate: That's great. Now switching to education technology, I think you've been in the space for
over a decade now. Given that you have a design background, and a winding education career
as well, how did you find the industry and what’s kept you here?
Tammie: My husband, Blaine, who works at 1EdTech, was working for the virtual school in
Florida, which is FLVS. He had a position there, and I was working at the time in the music video
industry. Our family had just started. I had a two-year-old and a newborn, and I really wanted to
stay home with them.
We tried for a really long time to have kids, so when we had them, nights
and weekends just weren't working out for our new, growing family. He said, hey, we have a
web development position open. I had been doing web development freelance for years before
that, so the transition was really easy for me to jump into that role.
From there, I did a little bit of web development, but my primary goal there was to start creating
courses for other states. Even though it's a Florida-based company, they also sell their products to other states for their online platform. That's where I started to work in content, work with the
subject matter experts, and do web development, which was great.
Those courses had to be loaded into an LMS platform and that meant I had to learn six LMS platforms that we supported at the time. Then that's where you mentioned my winding career. I jumped to a migration company and the primary goal of that company was to migrate courses from one platform to another. I had to know how to translate and ask how the quiz looks on one platform versus another platform. If you wanted to translate from one to the other, what transitions or what transformations would you have to apply to make sure that you kept all the content?
That's where my knowledge came in really well there. Then I came to Unicon and I love it here. We get to do different things all the time. I really get to spread out all of my skills, which is what I love. I don't do the same thing twice in a week. But I've stuck with it, because I really, really enjoyed my time in the music video industry. I have an artistic background, and that is great, but I didn't feel fulfilled at the end of the day. Something that I gained from education that I hadn't expected was that feeling of fulfillment.
One of the things I did when I was at FLVS was I started a video production club. I did that
primarily to be able to work with who I see as my clients, the students and the parents. When I
started that video production club to share my knowledge, I also wanted to understand who are
these kids? Where are they? Where are they living?
Some kids were traveling across the state in RVs, and some kids were in juvenile detention. We had the gamut there. I loved knowing who my clients were and I got to see that these courses allowed them to continue living and continue their education no matter what they were doing. If they're on a tennis tournament in Europe, they still get to go through their day-to-day learning without having to miss a beat.
Normally, when you sit at your desk every day, you don't necessarily understand how much you're impacting the end user. Having that club really showed me what kind of effect it had on students and what they could do. Some of them were gymnasts in the Olympics and they were taking our courses. Knowing that they could pursue their dreams but still get the education they needed was just amazing to me.
I think about that still all the time when I'm developing a tool or a product or working with a
client. I'm constantly thinking about, how does this affect the end user? How is the parent going
to see this? How is the instructor going to see this? How will it affect administration? That is
what has kept me in education for so long, just knowing that I'm affecting other people's lives positively.
Kate: Last question for you: What fascinates you in EdTech today?
Tammie: There are two things that I would say I'm really watching. One is this collaboration that
I see happening between a lot of EdTech companies in the industry. Then the other part is CBE.
The CBE part I mentioned earlier, I've been on a lot of projects, but I'm seeing it pop up
everywhere. I really love that because I went to high school and I learned video production, but I
didn't have anything that was tangible, other than my high school diploma, to say that I had
those skills. I started on the path to go to film school, but it was so expensive and so time-
consuming that I just couldn't continue to do it. I knew I had those skills, but I couldn't prove that
to an employer.
This has a personal effect on me as well, because I know there are so many other people out
there who have skills, but they just can't prove it to the employer. Having this new method, this
new route they can take, whether it's at a local college, or if it's just a work-based learning
program, where they can come out on the other end with a certificate or badge they can then
show to an employer, I really think that's starting to grow. A lot of people don't want to take on
that extra debt of a full two-year degree or a four-year degree. These smaller programs make
more sense. They're more financially sound for them and the time commitment is much less,
too, especially with online learning. They can do it as the pace happens for them. I really am
excited about that CBE portion.
Then the other thing is the collaboration that I see happening in EdTech companies. I see that
C-BEN is working with 1EdTech. 1EdTech is working with Ed-Fi. Education Analytics is working
with Ed-Fi Standards in multiple states to deploy these ODS systems with all of this data that is
highly structured, which is amazing because now the data isn't just this cloud of information. It's structured in a way that's usable, which is great. Then that leaps back around to Unicon.
Unicorn is helping EA with these things, Unicon is helping C-BEN with these things, Unicon works with 1EdTech. It feels like a cohesiveness is happening where the standards are starting to really click and more people are starting to use them, more people are starting to implement them. To me, it means that there's this synergy happening between all of these people for a common
goal: a better education. I really love that we're a part of all of that.
Kate: I describe that as the network effect. If you start in one place and then draw all of the
connections from that one place, then draw the connections you have by virtue of that initial
relationship, you build a connected community. And when you take the community in total, with
all the connected interests and efforts, it becomes really powerful.
Tammie: Yeah, Unicon needs to be the Kevin Bacon of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.
Kate: That's right! Thank you so much for spending some time with me. It was wonderful to get
to learn more and to be validated in my understanding of who you are and what you bring to the
space. I appreciate your emphasis on really understanding the learner and doing things for them
that are going to benefit them and the impact that creates. Super happy to have you on the
Team.
Tammie: Yes, thanks for the time.