Kids Dreams Matter: Transforming Lives Through Technology

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Let's get started. My guest career in technology started the moment that he first took apart his first computer as a kid. He's currently the founder of the open doors movement and co founder of a fantastic organization called Kids Dreams Matter. He's on a mission to unite the world around one North star where kids dreams must guide how we open doors to the future of AI and technology. He also runs a nonprofit called technology for the future.

where he has delivered over 20,000 laptops to students in need of and has impacted more than 100,000 children worldwide. He currently leads a global effort to protect children's mental health, reframe big tech, and ensure AI serves humanity instead of exploiting it. It is my pleasure to bring on Adrian Martinka. Adrian, how are you today? Welcome to TeacherCast.

Thank you, Jeffrey. Thank you for having me. I'm doing wonderful.

Tell me a little bit about yourself. How did you get started with everything?

My journey in technology began as an immigrant from Slovakia moving to Canada and here. And in the pursuit of freedom and the freedom to dream, technology became my biggest adversary. Because while we came to a country that was much more free than where I came from at the time, technology became the obstacle. we're needing to be a master of a computer and design software and different things.

You know, couldn't really pursue your dream and freely grow without knowing how to be a master of these different tools.

And do you remember what it was like when you got your first computer? What was it? I you know, I read that you started taking things apart at an early age, we kind of have a little bit in common there. What were those early days looking like? And did you ever think that you would be sitting here helping out so many students through technology?

I honestly never really thought this is where it would all lead. In the very beginning, I started it all to help my own family because we were entrepreneurs and technology started coming in the way of my family, being able to, you know, essentially like thrive or survive even at times. And so the relationship was really around preserving, protecting my family and surviving and growing and...

As I grew older, I started noticing how many children and people were so far removed, like that technology gap that we all are so familiar with. And then as a little kid, having seen that and witnessed that and grew up with that, because as an entrepreneur family, you kind of all work together to survive and to be okay and do well. So you start having a relationship with technology in a much different way.

Did leave Slovakia for Canada? And when did you leave Canada to come to the United States?

I think was around eight or nine when we moved to Canada. And then I think I was in like middle school or high school. I forget. It was like the end of middle school when we came to the U S and

Talk to us a little bit about your organizations. You've got a lot of things going on, but you also have this mission to support students by am I saying this right? Donating technology.

Yeah, so we partner with foundations, corporations, and just organizations that want to do something positive for children. And then we come into a community focusing on celebrating dreams. So the idea is to create a conversation about what kind of future the children envision, give them priority and being able to define that vision and lead with it while bringing together people that we call champions who care about them, want to support them.

and do like a big celebration and reward them with different gifts such as computers or Kids Dreams Matter does bikes. We've given away over a hundred thousand bicycles. But it's about prioritizing the conversation about dreams, right? Because right now the world is so incredibly distracted. There's so much things going on and it's very easy for us as parents and even as educators. Well, it's not easy. It's easy for us to.

lose the ability to maintain focus for our kids, as I'm sure you know, which it makes it hard for us, right? Because we're battling so many things that are coming at students over the internet. And in the context of all of that, the one most important thing that's lost is essentially that the internet has taken control of dreams into its darkness in a way, right? Because it's so vast. it has efficiently

separated parents and families away from being able to actually nurture the dreams of their children because of the technology gap, which now is so incredibly huge and is out running not only our kids, also everyone like normal occupations, careers, whatever, which is where this whole movement and advocacy originated, which was, you know, we used to be able to fight the technology gap with just

providing devices and ensuring connectivity. And at this point, we're facing this pivot in society where it's no longer our children are dreaming the future, it's starting to shift where technology and AI itself is starting to curate destiny. And then now we have to be very cognizant and proactive in realizing that we're facing a time and a fork in the road currently where children have 13 plus years in education and they face

the threat or possibility of losing the value of that education to being replaced by this artificial system.

When you're working with a school district with the goal to provide the technology to the students, how does that process work? Do you have a registration process? Do school districts reach out to you? How does it start and how do you determine where your mission is going to be?

So it's kind of like a two, there's two different areas that are collaborating. So one is providing enough insight for districts or schools to have a sustainability model that helps maintain the life of devices and stretch it, which brings an incredible amount of value. being like, for example, like, and this is the standard, right? So four years past, a district starts having more issues with their devices. They get rid of, say,

20,000 computers, but the truth is, that end of like, is that 50 plus percent of them are fine. Right? So we're, creating an incredible amount of inefficiency in a way, right? Where connectivity prices, as well as the cost of maintaining connectivity can be much lower. So on what, on that one part, we come in and even, and consult districts and schools.

at no cost to help them create a sustainable model while at the same time being able to provide through our, we have over 300 different partners across the country. So we're able to provide a infrastructure of support that includes being able to get devices out of their schools, get them refurbished and get them back, minimizing costs. And then a component of that is also being able to work with different

organizations, partners, sponsors, when necessary, if dollars are not as readily available. But a lot of times that we can bring in a lot more life to their technology infrastructure, as well as a little bit more insight as it comes to like AI technology. So that way the framing of the mind for the student, as well as the thereof protecting that space is a little bit more aligned to where we're going rather than where we are.

and the school districts that you work with, is that local to where you are? Or do you have opportunity to work around the around the country?

Yeah, it's around the country. We've been in, think, 20 different states now, but we're actively expanding and looking for more partners. The tough part on our end, a lot of times it seems too good to be true, but we really just want to be a hand-in-hand partner to support children and that being the priority to supporting tech. we're not here to support technology. We support technology because we want to support children.

very cool.

and ensure that their dreams are encompassed in how technology infrastructure is embedded, as well as the long-term planning of how it's going to curate and shape education into a future.

And if a school district or a company wants to reach out and partner with you, how do they do that?

They would reach out to us on technology for the future, which is the letter T, the number four, the letter T, the letter F dot org. If it's technology related or then if they want to celebrate dreams of children in their community, it's kids dreams matter dot org. we would.

We're going to make sure that we have the links to all of these amazing resources over on our show notes. You can find everything over at teachercast.net slash podcast. Adrian, talk to us a little bit about the other things you had said that you give away a lot of bicycles and you're I mean, you got a lot of stuff going on over here that is all providing for students. Did that?

Yeah.

ultimately start? I mean, you said that your family was all entrepreneurs. But where does this whole you know, giving back at a tremendous level? Where did that really come from?

I would say that a lot of it came from...

What might sound a little bit odd is that my parents grew up in a version of society that was socialist with a communist party. So there was always this reference that humanity has the capacity for everyone to be happy and to have everything. Of course, back in the day, the ability to have that kind of society without corruption was very, very difficult.

but then moving and having grown up in a space where.

If I had a dream or something that I wanted, always had, there was always the village of people that were able, accessible to me and resources that were available for me to freely feel supported and believed in. And when we moved in pursuit of the American dream, and I saw that that was much harder in our society. And I saw, and I started seeing that a lot of that difficulty came not from the people themselves, but from the disconnect.

of the relationship between the parent and the child due to technology, it started driving me to want to live in a world where dreams and meaningful connections and family are really what matters most.

Do you have any story that you'd like to share about a connection that you have made with the school district, maybe changing the lives of several students or maybe with one or two students that when you gave them that, you know, that device, maybe their world just changed completely. What stories do you have that you can share with us?

I think one of the most important stories that I've seen that also seems to be repetitive and common is meeting students that did not feel like their dreams or their path in life was supported or believed in, which does reflect across a parent's ability, which is why I fight for this so hard, because I don't think it's fair.

for a parent to be unable to support and nurture their child's dream just because technology stands in the way. And coming in and being able to provide a computer for that child to achieve their dream when a parent could not, or being able to provide a student with a path forward digitally. You know, like while it is incredibly memorable for me, it makes me want to fight for it even more so because I don't...

because I think that dreams should exist in every family. You I grew up in a family where my parents were always able to support and fight for my dream, even though after we moved, it became harder because of tech. But I always wanted to live in a society where families, like families and dreams kind of coexist, you know, which is what led to that whole, Open Doors Movement, which is an advocacy campaign to...

basically advocate for Big Tech to take responsibility of our children's dreams and the relationships we have with our parents and our communities. Because if technology and social media is taking away on average, I think now it's grown from like seven and a half hours per day to like over 10 hours per day on average, then there has to be a degree of responsibility because that means you're exposing our children to a degree of influence that

essentially makes you almost like our family members. So social media is a part of our human family and it has to propagate the values that we believe in and make our children feel supported and heard and powerful in being able to shape our future. But unfortunately, social media and AI thereof is not doing that to the extent that would bring us all together. you know what I mean? I'm sure you've seen that over time.

It's it's always amazing when you're working with families and students and you see them light up right and as a middle school teacher I see that constantly you show them something you you give them something that maybe at first they're not used to it maybe their first they haven't tried it but I see it constantly in my kids you know we try video stuff we try audio stuff we try you know graphic design projects and at first they're okay this is different.

But then after a while, you get those messages that go, this is kind of cool. How do we do more of this? Yeah, just to make that that connection with that student or that family and just to see that change. I want to bring up something that you recently mentioned about AI. You've got a specific way of looking at students and artificial intelligence. Tell us about it.

Well, so I think that for people to be able to understand AI in the correct visuals in their mind, which allows you to see the future and imagine your path forward accurately, is that you cannot and should not allow your mind to visualize artificial intelligence because artificial intelligence has a very large connotation to the concept of a tool.

But when you reframe it to, let's say, like an alien intelligence or a more human perspective would be an alien immigrant, and you start speaking in that way, it encompasses both the liabilities and the relationship that's necessary for us to not only protect our children, but also mold a future that is accurate in where we're heading. Because, for example,

Let's say in a job, you're going to say to yourself, I'm going to use not AI, but I'm going to use this alien immigrant to help me do my emails. In the back of your head, you're like, what if it takes my job? So now you're in a more accurate space, right? I'm going to use AI or this alien immigrant to help my children. Okay. Now you're taking into account the liabilities more accurately, right? Like what is this alien immigrant? What values does it have? Like, how is it going to communicate? What is it going to share?

Where's my child's mind gonna be? How is it assimilating into the relationship with the child? Does it know the values that I as a parent or we as a society have that are crucial? Or am I exposing my child to this alien immigrant that is essentially from an alien planet? it didn't, you see what I mean? Like it's not from Earth. Even though we made it, it hasn't lived here. It doesn't know what humanity is.

And those are the most crucial things because that's where we're going to end up stumbling as a society. And we've already seen it. In another conversation I had, the gentleman was talking about AI literacy. I'm like, so alien immigrant literacy. I'm like, how does that sound? But now we're in the correct framing, at least. It's the closest to the truth. Because you're

You're at the very minimum talking about a temporary relationship. You're not talking about literacy that's long-term because like how long do you expect this alien immigrant to need to be literate with you? it's, you see what I mean? It almost doesn't make any sense. That just like three years ago, all people were like gung-ho about prompting. And I'm like, that's not true because there's already agentic AI being developed. Like it doesn't need to be prompted. It's a literal human employee.

Right? But that was like, but I was ahead of it because I've been in technology for 20 plus years and an entrepreneur. So I've been literally living and breathing this for my entire life from a perspective of protecting my family. So my entire vision of technology and the internet is from, is oriented from the seed of protecting my family from the darkness of it. Like where is it limiting us? Where is it leading us? What are the liabilities and how are we as a family going to

control our own destiny as well as protect not only ourselves, but our children. And now we face this crucial crossroads that we essentially aren't really collectively talking about, which is why I think this, at this point in time, this is so important, is what is purpose going to look like and accepting the very, very hard truth is that the speed of AI evolution or alien immigrant evolution is so fast.

that we run a very high risk of reaching a time space, which I think we're already in, where our children are going to lose all hope for where their purpose will come from. And that's when you start seeing, you know, mass mental health crisis, which we're already kind of in, but we're still not really like fully in that space, right? Because even now, if you've noticed how much AI has become video oriented and influencer. So think about like, we just went through like X amount of years.

propagating how important being an influencer and so many children bought into that dream. But now those children are competing with hundreds of thousands of AI influencers. Like, how is that fair? Like, we can't live in a society where we're our very children who have spent a very large amount of years that we pushed them into, right? Because they're doing, children are in education based on us. That's not on them.

It's on us as educators and as parents. So if we can't see far enough into the future and aren't realizing what is actually occurring right now, we're going to accidentally position our children into a space that has such a large amount of darkness that even like us as families are going to have an issue being able to carry them through it. Right? Because we're not having the conversation. Like you have to have the conversation.

when you look at this as this like massive alien immigration that's happening, what does the assimilation look like? It is essentially a global thing that's happening. So it is a part of national security as well. So there's limitations to like how regulated it can be. Cause it's the modern day like atom bomb essentially, right? Cause we're competing as nations with it too. So it's not just about education or what it can bring. It's about the fact that we're literally competing with this thing and

for the first time in history, which from a positive perspective, think is like, for the first time in history, our children are at the front lines. Like our kids are the ones that are gonna be the ones most affected by this and are the most affected. And we have to choose right now, which is that fork in the road is, are we going to open doors to the future where our children lead and where we define the future to ensure that AI, this alien immigrant is.

where our children are the masters to this alien immigrant and we maintain that relationship in that way, or are we opening doors in such a way where there is a clash in that relationship and we face a high risk of influencing our children's sense of purpose in a way that's going to be very tough to get through? And that's where I think that conversation needs to lead and we really need to start talking about how we're forming this relationship.

And ultimately also look at the positive side of it is that right now society really is facing a test of whether or not it can be a family, right? Like just like in movies from back in the day, an alien race comes in and the biggest thing that humans have to do is become a family to like reestablish their values, fight for who they are, you know, and protect the human family. And I think this is kind of in a positive.

way, you know, a coming together of humanity, where we have to establish the values on which AI will assimilate into our society, such that we can all be collectively happy. And that's where my dream in a way comes from, where I want to unite the world around children's dreams, because I think that currently we're in a position where children's dreams have to lead us, because they're the only thing that we as adults can agree on.

to get along because of, right? Our kids being the ones who ask and lead. And it's also gonna be incredibly necessary in defining how we set the foundation of this alien immigrant being allowed to exist in our society as far as education and economics go.

talking today to Adrian Martinca all about how his view of technology has led him to donate dozens, hundreds of dozens of pieces of technology to students all around the world and all around the country. Adrian, first of all, thank you so much for being here as a guest on this show. Your mission is absolutely inspiring. And if anybody out there is interested in partnering with you or

being supported by your organization. One more time, where can they go to learn more?

So the center of our movement is called the OpenDoorsMovement.org, which is where we're bringing together families, organizations to advocate for the voices of our children and making sure their dreams lead us into the future. And if you're a company that would like to celebrate the dreams of children in your community and empower them to believe that their dreams matter, please visit kidsdreamsmatter.org.

And of course, we're going to make sure that we have all of the links to that in our show notes over at teachercast.net slash podcast. Adrian, thank you so much. And would love to keep in touch and have you back on the show. And maybe we can bring on some school districts and companies that you worked with and we can have a further conversation about all this. Thank you so much for your time today.

Thank you too.

We want to say thank you one more time to Adrian for joining us on this show tonight. You can learn more about his amazing work he's doing by visiting his website at open doors movement dot org and I highly recommend you check it out and follow them on social media. And one last thing before we go. This podcast is all about the people with big ideas and big stories behind their impact on the world around them. If you're looking for actionable playbooks and productivity systems to apply these ideas to your own brand I invite you to subscribe to my weekly sub stack newsletter.

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