- [Announcer] Major funding for this program was provided by... (soft music) - From its inception, Philadelphia has been a hotbed of invention and expression, as embodied by founding father Benjamin Franklin.

In today's show, we explore how educators, artists, writers, and chefs in our region are using technological tools, new and old, to connect and communicate.

We start with flying robots.

Drones have exploded in popularity over the past decade for personal and commercial use, and for local STEM program, Drone Legends, their potential as an educational tool is limitless.

(upbeat music) - Drones was a hobby for me.

2014, I picked up a drone and flying around in here, and I don't know why, I just grab it, it was a toy.

But it's had this urge and my wife was like, are you crazy?

Like, what are you like a 40 something year old guy flying these toys.

I really got hooked, like my OCD kicked in and I was flying this thing all over the place, but I did scale up pretty quickly.

And I was now known as the guy around this neighborhood and this whole township as, Oh, it's that drone guy, you know, line around my son's Lacrosse games and all that stuff.

I worked in pharmaceutical, marketing and medical communications and I was a salesperson and really, truly, not fulfilled, one day woke up and was like, this just can't be it.

And drones, the commercial drone industry is mag...

It's huge.

It's billions and billions of dollars and it's not slowing down.

It's changing every industry as we know it.

(soft upbeat music) From delivering medicines to helping farmers with data, to agriculture, mining, search and rescue, real estate marketing, Hollywood, you name it.

There's a good chance a drone is disrupting it in a good way.

And so that caught up with me.

One of the things that I would always see when I flew my drone, is I would turn around and there'd be a gaggle of children.

"What are you doing?

Can I see it?

Let me fly it."

It was just a phenomena that I was really intrigued by that I said, well, now I have your attention.

Isn't this kind of unique?

What am I gonna do about that?

(soft music) Once I started thinking about kids and drones, a new world was opened up to me.

And I started to see the application in schools and it wasn't unique people were doing it.

But I wanted to put a unique spin on it.

Most people were focusing on the tech and I wanted to focus on the kids.

Does anybody know what kind of things we can do with drones?

Like what do we use drones for?

- You could help people?

- [Monica] I had been interested in drones for some time, but worried that the kids would have trouble with them and they would be large and break and be outside.

I happened to meet Scott.

(drone buzzing) He showed me his inside drone program, and I immediately fell in love with the curriculum, very hands on for the students to be able to work with missions that are real world applicable.

They see the videos in real time of what's going on with use of drones.

And then they can apply that in the classroom itself.

So, we're using it in eighth grade this year across the district.

All three middle schools have a chance to use this program.

(drone buzzing) - Go ahead.

All right, now, what I want you to do is just pitch it forward with your right stick.

- [Karen] The roles in the program are very cool.

The kids are either the driver of the drone or the observer taking notes and working very collaboratively in a team.

Each person in a team is equally important for the success of something to roll out.

So these are all great life skills for the kids to learn.

- Excellent.

Whoa, cool.

The curriculum comes in numbers of different pieces.

This is really the core of it.

This is the student mission guide.

It's a very student-centered approach to learning.

We want the students to take ownership of their learning.

Gimbal, the artificial intelligence drone is like, Hey, you guys are part of this amazing thing called Drone Legends.

We're gonna teach you how to fly.

We're gonna do some computer coding with drone blocks.

We're even gonna make movies.

So let's go, this is gonna be a great adventure.

And then Gimbal takes them on a series of missions throughout this entire book.

All of our missions are pulled from real world application.

If you Google it, a dog in the UK was rescued by a drone who tied a piece of sausage to a string and went into the flat lands and found the dog because the dog saw the sausages.

So, they rescued the dog.

There's a company called Zipline Drones.

And they did a webinar for us about a year and a half ago.

- So I'm going to give you a tour of one of the Zipline Distribution Centers in Ghana.

- They're using these big, they're called fixed wing drones.

So everybody thinks of the drone as the quadcopter, right?

With the four... Well, they use, they look like airplanes.

And they deliver life saving medicines, medical supplies, vaccines to remote areas in Africa and other places around the world where vehicles can't get to efficiently and these drones can.

- That was cool.

That was really cool.

- We're approaching 50 schools around the U.S. We have programs running in New Zealand.

- Great engagement, the kids were coding, learning the language and the vocabulary, pitching your things I'd never heard of.

Learning about safety and drones in New Zealand and I thought, this is amazing.

- And you've got the code camp people out of Australia.

They've licensed in content and they're running Drone Legends for hundreds of kids in Australia.

- When we came across Drone Legends, a bit of a no brainer, like we had to bring this to Australia.

30 locations around the country and we'll be looking to ramp that up to a hundred plus locations in April.

- Yes, that's fantastic.

Here we are.

It truly is a global brand.

I knew that I had to create something that could be taught anywhere by almost anyone with the proper training.

- [Karen] Oh, Barrett, that was excellent.

- And they feel good about it because they're now bringing this, what we call the magical drone to the students in their school, creating little legends all over the place.

- Slide it and it goes up.

The kids today that we're working with, their jobs don't exist today.

Artificial intelligence is going to displace people outta work consistently.

Part of the program that we teach is failure based, learning through fail, iteration.

You're not always gonna get it right.

And that's good because that's where you learn.

Nice (indistinct) Give a clip.

- [All] Wooi.

- Anybody.

- I want these kids to be equipped to deal with that future and not only deal with it, but to excel in it, to take it head on.

To live life and not let life live them.

(drone buzzing) - Cool.

- For the past few decades, local newspapers have been shuttering across the country, unable to compete with digital news and giant media conglomerates.

But the husband and wife publishers of the Philadelphia monthly, The Local, have found that the appetite for hyperlocal news and in printed form is stronger than ever.

(slow trumpet music) - [Steve] The Local is a free monthly printed newspaper, 24 pages all color.

We basically try to reflect the community that we're in.

That's East Falls, that's Germantown, and now as we are reaching out to other grassroots partners.

They have their voices and their take on their community.

- We have a grab bag of like politics and I don't want dog poop on my step anymore.

Yeah, we got it all.

- [Naomi] The important stuff.

- [All] The important stuff.

- Exactly.

Yes.

- This is a draft of the March layout.

We go through and we just see what's where, we determine--- - We try reading it like you read it as a person.

You know, just, oh, I picked it up.

What do I got?

And then we try to see where our eyes are drawn.

If you wanted to be able to just use your eye to bump through a story, you can do that without actually having to read all the words.

So we try to say stuff in pictures.

Maybe some of these things should overlap on the picture a little bit.

I'm the engine.

Like I do most of the writing.

I do the photography when we need it.

I do a lot of design and Steve is more the like, if you're into astrology, I'm not Leo.

He's the Virgo.

- I took one journalism class at (indistinct), and I didn't really think it was for me.

I guess I was looking more towards fiction or playwriting, something more in that direction.

- I used to write editorials to the paper constantly as a small child.

So I kinda always knew that I wanted to have an audience of some kind.

- [Female Client] Hey guys, how are you?

- Alright.

You know when you're being sort of pushed online to certain content where the newspaper is more... what do you wanna read?

If you don't like it, you flip the page, but it's there.

It gives you that spectrum you normally wouldn't get online.

So I think that something to that, I think people realized, I'd like to break out of the normal reading habits I'm getting online.

- Got some Philly women's history.

- Yeah, that's great.

- [Steve] And look at something a little bit more diverse.

- I'm really looking forward to reading it.

- And our voice is fun too.

I think that's different.

Like you're gonna read a newspaper, there's a certain journalistic voice, you know, that everybody's familiar with and we don't do that voice.

If you're gonna give me an article, it's gonna be from you.

You're the one who's driving that.

- [Naomi] What are you looking for in stories?

When someone approaches you with an idea, what are you looking for?

What makes you say yes?

- Authenticity.

If they're really passionate about it and it's something that it really means a lot to them, then I think that I want to get that out.

I want to express it for them.

I think another key thing is not just I wanna do it for them.

We wanna capture them as they're talking, as they are.

So if they sound like they're super authentic and they're in, then we want to reflect that.

We're not looking for pitches.

You don't have to gimme a pitch.

You are your pitch.

- I grew up right down this street.

Originally, I was supposed to be inside of the paper as a cartoonist.

And then like, I guess they loved my work.

So they put it on the front cover, which was amazing and a blessing.

- They're gonna be the same colors or they're gonna... - It's just, it's gonna pop.

I tell them all the time that it allows me to express myself, creatively like, actually view myself as a doodler.

So to draw each month, it challenges me to think outside the box and put what I feel on paper.

- [Andrew] The snow was a buffer, falling heavily and silent on Indian Queen Lane.

It seemed to tuck the world in, letting it drift off to sleep under the caring watch of the streetlamps.

My name is Andrew Jaromin.

I'm a teacher.

I live here on Indian Queen Lane and I am also a writer.

I actually hadn't seen any fiction in their paper at all, but I loved their way of telling stories and stuff so much that I kinda just sent them a couple of my writing.

I said, Hey, I think this might be a good fit.

Steven and Carolyn were great and said that they thought I would be a real good match for them.

So they put it in.

- It wasn't really until like 2020 that we really considered this like a career.

I mean, we always kinda wanted it to be but every couple months we were like, this is it.

And then like 2020 happened and Oh my gosh.

And then it was just, you know, we have something here that needs some nerve.

We recognize that there's mainstream, there's social, there's nothing in between where people are still accountable, where there's sources, where there's actual factual information that you can trust.

So we just figured we needed that so bad.

- [Naomi] What do you think it is about newspapers that some of us just can't seem to let go of?

- I hope you never do, right?

- Yeah.

I think it's that it allows you the time, you have time to sit and peruse it from front to back.

There's no interruptions.

There's no bells going off.

There's no alerts.

Nothing to distract your attention.

It's not algorithm driven.

We've heard from readers that when they open a paper, they say, well, I never expected to see this story next to that story.

So for us, that's a high compliment.

- Thank you so much for dropping it off.

- Of course.

(soft upbeat music) - Matthew Cramer was diagnosed with autism as a toddler.

Today, with the use of an alternative method of communicating, Cramer is flourishing as a student at the String Theory School in Philadelphia.

(soft upbeat music) - Philadelphia Performing Arts is a STEAM model, which means it's fully arts, fully STEM.

And basically when you take the word STEM, which is Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, and you add Arts to it, you come up with the term STEAM.

It is a K12 school now and the largest single charter school in Philadelphia with over 2,500 students.

Every student has an opportunity to choose a passion that they're interested in.

(smooth upbeat music) We also really believe in multiple intelligences and allowing kids to figure out what type of learners they are, what type of creatives they are.

And that's really the environment that we have for kids that supports them at every age.

- I've had lots of experience with students on the autism spectrum using other forms of non-verbal communication.

But Matthew is my first student using a letter board.

Everything looks really good.

How is French class?

- Julie And I are grateful to String Theory for giving him a chance and saying, you know what?

This is experimental, but we're willing to experiment.

- (speaking in foreign language) He's called it in French.

- Cool.

- I'll give you more (indistinct), if you want more, honey.

He was a beautiful child, beautiful baby.

I was able to connect with Matthew and a mother knows that.

You can look into each other's eyes and he was responsive.

He was aware.

He was not necessarily in his own world.

He was sort of heading towards 15 months, 18 months.

His language was not developing the way it should have.

Also seemed to be doing some repetitive behaviors.

And what's called stemming where he'd watch, let's say baby Einstein videos.

He loved those videos and we found him, you know, sometimes flapping his arms while watching the videos.

Sometimes he'd sort of get engrossed in shadows and walk back and forth repetitively, watching the shadows on the walls.

Classic autism, mild to moderate is his diagnosis.

- It's frightening to hear that because you're unprepared.

- Yeah.

- And I was thinking, you know what?

It's not the end of the world.

And it's going to be a huge challenge.

But I felt in the end that we would be successful.

- Bye Mommy.

- Bye, I love you.

I love you, chuck.

(slow, soft music) - He was at a public school in Elementary School and he was in an artistic support program.

Academically, there was always a problem.

Speech pathologist had said to me, "I have another client who has had tremendous success with a program called Spelling to Communicate."

And we went down to Virginia to Growing Kids Therapy Center and met with Elizabeth Vosler, who is the person who basically has developed this methodology for communication.

- D, move that arm, elbow out.

- And she started by having him spell her name, spell out Elizabeth on the letter board.

She gave him a choice as to what to read about.

And he chose amber and how amber fossilizes over 130 million years.

She says, oh, what are we learning about?

And she gave him the pencil and he spells out amber.

She also said, "And Matthew what's happened to the resin over time?"

And he spells out out fossilized.

I said, can someone be intellectually disabled if they're answering these questions?

And she looked at me and she said, "No."

I went to the Special Ed Administrators and I said, you have to let him use this letter board in school.

The reaction was quite honestly, he couldn't use the letter board in school because it was not scientifically proven technique.

- He's intellectually, I feel above where a lot of the kids are.

He's in honors classes.

- He's come up with proofs and ways that I don't even think of sometimes.

He's looking for to different ways because of the way his brain is viewing things versus the way that the majority of my other math students and myself are viewing things.

- He participates constantly.

He's always on top of all of his assignments.

So he's a very positive, presence in the class.

I love having him in the class.

- Kids actually go to him and ask him for help instead of going to a teacher because he's just so kind and will help a lot of other students.

- Bye.

- Bye Matt.

(smooth upbeat music) - Matthew has a rich imagination which was fascinating to discover.

- [Karen] Do you have any artists to inspire you or your artwork?

- Vincent Vanko, because his art always has... His art always has a double meaning.

Because he has apraxia, all motor challenges are really difficult.

I have to learn to coach the body and not necessarily like, yes, that's correct.

No, that's incorrect.

It's more of like, keep pushing your body, move your eyes to where it needs to go, too soft, too hard, prompts like that.

You ready?

- String Theory has allowed him and accommodated him.

Of course, they allowed him to use the letter board in school.

They knew that he needed a communication partner to be with him in school, to hold the letter board and to help regulate him.

Before this, he was not able to share his thoughts, his ideas.

- [Andrew] We think that this is a model that really is reflective of what urban education can look like.

They're growing into the world's next creative leaders.

- [Karen] What do you like the most about attending this school?

What does this school mean to you?

- The amount of acceptance is real.

Everyone has one motive, and that is to progress as a community.

(soft upbeat music) - Decorated Chef Eli Kulp was aboard the Amtrak train that crashed in 2015 and as a result was left paralyzed.

Unable to use his hands to cook, Kulp spent years searching for a way to stay meaningfully connected to the Philadelphia restaurant scene.

In today's profile, Producer Monica Rogozinski talks to Kulp about his latest endeavor, The Chef Radio Podcast.

(dog barking) - Hey Eli.

- Hi.

Oh, sorry.

- [Monica] How are you?

- I'm great.

How are you?

- So where are we going today?

- We're gonna head over to Radio Kismet Studios over in Spring Art Section.

And we're gonna do a podcast recording with Eric and Ryan Burley of the Franklin Fountain and Shane's Confectionary.

- Oh, that's awesome.

- Yeah, let's do it.

- All right.

Let's go, Oop, dogs first.

- Smokey first, I guess.

So I'm gonna tell you this story that's gonna go back to 2014.

I usually would get off work around 10:30.

I'd catch the 11:04 train up to New York City.

About nine minutes into the train ride, I felt like unusual shutter, a little bit more than you would normally feel.

And in a split second, the train had derailed.

The next thing I know I'm catapulted into the air and this is it goes through my mind.

Is that Andrew?

- Good to see you.

Good to see you, bud.

- Hey guys.

How are you?

- How are you?

- Good to see you.

Hi brother?

- [Monica] Why did you decide to tell your story in the beginning of the podcast?

- My identity has always been a chef and it will still, in my mind, it will always be I'm a chef.

However, when I decided to do a podcast to try to help tell the stories of other chefs and other restaurant tours, you know, I think that was important.

So that individuals that find the podcast that don't really know who I am, they can learn a little bit more about me.

The next thing I know my neck smashes into a luggage rack at over a hundred miles an hour.

And I fall to the ground and I hit.

And at that moment, while I didn't know severity of it, I did know my life had changed pretty drastically.

I think that story and the way that we did it kind of gets you feeling a certain way as if you were there and as if you were kind of witnessing it.

All right everybody, welcome back to The Chef Radio Podcast.

We are in the Radio Kismet Studios, here in the Spring Arts Section of Philadelphia.

I have two really great guests in front of me right now.

We have Ryan and Eric Burley.

For the listeners full disclosure in this, I am both a supporter, friend and neighbor to these guys.

I have to tell my son, least 10 times a weekend.

We can't have it again.

We started working on the podcast in December of 2019.

It was on March 15th was when we were planning on releasing the first episode.

At that point, everything was going on.

So COVID hitting, so we were like, okay, what do we do now?

So after we released them, we did a quick sort of update so that people could hear where that chef was and where that restaurant, sort of how they were handling the COVID at that point.

- I went in with one of my chefs and we cleaned out all of the walk-ins, anything that we can give away to the staff, proteins and vegetables and stuff that we can give to people.

We kind of just left them out.

There's toilet paper, disinfectant, wipes, you know, all this stuff.

- [Eli] Well, you're giving away toilet paper, man.

The boss of the year award.

- [Nick] And then we closed up and it was sad.

- People follow these chefs and people wanna know what's going on.

And then we sort of evolved it into bringing four or five people together and saying, how can we use COVID as an opportunity to sort of reset some of the expectations.

- [Tess] Breweries are inherently places of community.

I think all of us sort of have that mindset about the work that we do which is one of the reasons that being shut down is so hard.

- I don't think there's a podcast that went by that we did not bring up COVID.

- [Nick] Are we gonna be out for a month?

Are we about for three months?

Like nobody still know.

And that's the worst part.

Like is the not knowing for a business owner and a restaurant owner.

- Right, yeah, absolutely.

And if you listen to them in order, you'll hear how people are evolving and sort of applying their new normal, you know, as each chef was.

So you can kind to get an idea of what the restaurant industry itself was thinking over the last 12, 18 months.

- You have a very busy, active life and you still have to manage your restaurants.

How do you feel that being focused on all of those activities that you have to do helped to recover physically and emotionally?

- I remember distinctly coming home from the hospital in 2015.

I remember being so depressed and sad over time.

Ensuring that I'm staying busy is really ensuring that I'm happy.

So yeah, there's days that are still tough because there's still challenges.

Every single little thing that you do on a daily basis in able body, you have to grieve in and your brain has to adjust.

And it takes time for it to adjust like being a father, right?

Like kicking the ball around, throwing the ball around.

These are things that I always imagine myself doing, but you know, so those are hard days.

You know, spring is here and the city's starting to buzz again.

So outdoor events, concerts are back and I'm really looking forward to taking advantage of those again.

There has been opportunity for me to sort of realign my values and I think that was, you know, that was a blessing in disguise for sure.

- Smokey likes them too.

Here you go.

- We hope you enjoyed today's show and perhaps learn something new about the way technology operates in your life.

I'm your host Anne Ishii I'll see you on the next Movers and Makers.

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Major funding for this program was provided by