How Schools Can Stretch Their Chromebooks

Welcome From CAST Louisville

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Welcome to American Book Company Spotlight for Success. I'm your host, Danielle Pintozi, and co-host Derek Pintozi. Today we are at the Cast Conference in Louisville 2026. And our special guest today, we have Kendall. He works with Vivacity, and he's gonna tell us a little bit of what brings him the cast today.

Google Services For Schools Explained

SPEAKER_01 0:29

Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, my name is Kendall Shemura. I work for Vivacity Tech, and we are a company that provides Chromebooks to schools. We're a Chromebook reseller, we are a parts provider, we're a service provider, we do repairs, we help schools basically keep Chromebooks in the hands of kids. We also have an asset management solution and a repair academy that allows its kids to learn how to repair Chromebooks on their own. So if you've got those little squirrely tech kids that don't know where to focus their energy, you can really focus them back onto doing repairs and helping you fix your fleet and make sure everything stays up to date. In addition to that, we provide Google services now as well. So it's a new service that we do. It's where we can provide technical services to schools with audits, supports, migrations, but we can also provide training and PD for all of their training needs for instructional and technical people as well. Cool. And can you tell us a little bit about your position? Yeah, my position is the Google Services Program Leader. So what I do is I consult with schools and make sure schools understand what our services are and align them to their needs in Google. Primarily right now we're looking for schools that are starting their Google journey or far into the Google journey, and anywhere they are, we kind of meet them on where they need their services, whether they need an audit to understand their domain better, or if they need support hours where they need projects offloaded from their plate and they just need somebody else to take over for them. And then the other things we can do is like migration. So, like a lot of schools in Kentucky are looking at going from Outlook to Gmail right now, so we can help with that data migration and support them with through training to make sure their teachers know how to use Gmail and how to use the services that are being turned on for them. So yeah, my my role is really to make sure that the services are the right services for the schools and also provide the training and training for the technical and instructional people on our team as well.

SPEAKER_00 2:14

That that's awesome. What pushed you to get started in your role?

Where Schools Can Find Vivacity

SPEAKER_01 2:19

Well, I was originally backing all the way up, I was a teacher to start my career. So I taught seventh grade science, and then I was a tech-minded teacher. So when the school asked who wanted to go to Google and Gmail, I was the first person to move. And when that happened, they decided that because I was the first person to move, that I should be in charge of the domain. So I had no technical experience in it, but I learned it and I've been doing it for like 12 or 13 years now. And for the last eight or so years, I've been consulting in the industry, and honestly, I just love having an impact on schools. I love being able to help schools, and any way I can help technical, instructional. I feel like I understand both sides of the house, and it's they don't always talk to each other really well, and I want to be that conduit that kind of helps re alleviate some of the friction in there. Great, and where can we find your product? Yeah, we are all over. Um we have uh we have our website, of course, VivacityTech.com, but um you know right now our products are Chromebooks, so it's kind of schools we reach out to schools that may need Chromebooks or are looking to purchase Chromebooks. If you need our services, you know, getting in touch with us as well through our website is probably the best way. Um but it's not in any, it's not, they're not out there right now, it's just Chromebooks, services, parts, repairs. Um, we have a lot of online assets as well, like our asset management solution that helps manage all of your Chromebooks and your repairs. So for us, it's more of a we want to have the conversation about being a partner rather than just providing the Chromebooks as well.

SPEAKER_00 3:50

And just like a fun question: what are some trends or issues you believe matter most in education right now?

Chromebook Pricing And Supply Pressure

Why CAST Community Matters

SPEAKER_01 3:58

Yeah, I think right now, I mean, there's the big push on AI and using AI and how to integrate AI, and I think we're past the point of accepting that AI is here. And I think right now the biggest issue and the thing that we should be pushing forward is how do we use AI and leverage AI to make ourselves more effective, more efficient in our roles, in our jobs. But whenever I teach about AI, I think the big part that we have to remember and keep in mind is it is intelligence, is the word we use for it, but it isn't thinking, right? It is processing extremely fast. There's a human component that has to be introduced as well. There's the ethos, pathos, all those things that have to come in when you're talking about intelligence. And I think the human aspect, the human in the loop, as Google likes to say, is super important right now. So I think that's probably the biggest thing. And then, of course, the biggest issue that we're running into with hardware is the prices and the instability in the market right now of when to buy Chromebooks and are there going to be enough Chromebooks and what's in stock. So, right now, schools are struggling with figuring out can they get the Chromebooks they need, in the time that they need, in the quantity that they need, and do they have the budget for it as well? Awesome. And there are there any last words you have for the cast community? Yeah, I love being part of the cast community. Honestly, I've been coming since I started my job as a consultant, and this is my favorite number one conference, and not exaggerating, I love coming here. I demand to come here actually when I join the company. So um, yeah, for cast, I just really appreciate the time to be here as a vendor and the time to spend with customers and opportunities to present and partner with a lot of the schools here.

SPEAKER_00 5:28

Well, we appreciate you coming on our podcast today, and that's gonna wrap up our podcast.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

Thank you.