This summer, I had the opportunity to spend two weeks at Accelerated Technology Labs (ATL) in West End, North Carolina for my Kenan Fellows internship. Before I started at ATL, my understanding of the company was very limited. From a simple Google search, I learned that ATL is a technological leader in the Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) industry, but I had no idea what exactly that meant-until I met with the company’s CEO, Steve Chase a few weeks before starting my internship. Even then, I really didn’t understand the many components of ATL until I fully started my internship (and I think I’m still learning).
If you look at their website (like I did) here’s what you’ll learn: ATL’s LIMS products are installed in over 575 laboratories around the world, serving industries such as food and beverage, environmental, water and wastewater, government, and public health, to name a few. Their technology allow clients to automate laboratory operations to make their daily work more efficient and more accurate, ultimately saving their clients time and money. The company was founded in Silicon Valley in 1994, and was the first Windows-based LIMS on the market with their flagship product Sample Master. Still confused? Yea, so was I.
Let me put it to you in “teacher speak”: Let’s say you’re teaching your class and you have all this student data that you’re collecting throughout the year. From TRC, to DIBELS, etc., what do you do with that data when you need to keep track? Put it in your cute planner? Probably not. That student data is going to go in a database so it can be tracked, analyzed, and shared. That’s basically what ATL has created, but for other industries.
As a company, ATL has many different departments, from Sales and Marketing, Internal IT (supporting the company), Product Development, Finance, Customer Support, the list goes on. For my internship, I spend one week in Sales and Marketing and the following week in Internal IT Support.
The first week at ATL I had no idea what to expect. After a tour of the (beautiful!) facility, and a brief overview of the job of each department, I spent my week working with and learning from Ken Ochi, Director of Global Marketing and Customer Relations. During this week, I really got a better understanding of the company and the different industries that benefit from ATL products. I wrote press releases, joined in on conference calls with other companies, and researched different entities that use ATL products. Overall it was a great week, however, I learned a lot about myself during this time. First, I am a very gregarious person, and I love being around people (I am an E30, after all), and during this week, I worked from a cubicle in a room by myself. Not to be dramatic, but for an E30, who’s used to being around people all the time, that’s just torture. However, this made me realize that there are students who are feeling a lot like I did, and when we (they) want to talk or work with or around people, it’s not because they’re being unruly and don’t want to follow the rules, it’s most likely because they just need to talk and bounce ideas off of others.
My second week at ATL was spent downstairs in IT. Let me be clear, I may have a job that falls under the IT Department, but if you have an issue with your computer, chances are, I’m going to end up putting in a help desk ticket to let the experts solve that. Now, if you want to use said technology to do something cool with your classes, that’s my thing. With that being said, spending a week in IT scared me to death. Talking about servers and remote machines, adding drivers, was like someone speaking another language to me. I had no idea what was going on. The guys in the IT department were great though, and they really helped me understand the ins and outs of all the 1s and 0s. The best part of the week was learning from a recent Moore County Schools graduate, Nick. Nick started working at ATL his senior year, and continues to work for the company as he takes classes at Sandhills Community College. During the week, Nick and I worked on building a Microsoft Flow to automate how ATL employees request supply orders. Nick had created most of the Flow, but there were still some bugs that needed to be worked out, so it was my job to go in and test the Flow to see where the errors were. I always talk about “bugs” and “debugging” when I’m working with my robotics teams, so to actually test to see where the “bugs” were in this program that was being used for a company was really interesting.
The final thing I worked on during my time at ATL was creating an App in Microsoft PowerApps. Again, Nick walked me through the process and helped me get started, and even though Nick was a great teacher, I felt like I needed constant assistance. This process was not as easy as I had expected. In the end, I made an App that I could theoretically use to help keep track of my co-teaching logs with teachers at my schools (if we had access to Microsoft PowerApps).
The two weeks I spent at ATL made me realize a lot about myself and the students (and teachers) that I work with. As I struggled to understand Microsoft PowerApps and Flows, I realized, this is how some of our students feel everyday when trying to read or understand math facts. This really made me reflect on how I can do a better job explaining and teaching concepts to my students and even teachers who are learning a new digital tool.
I am thankful for Mr. Chase, Mr. Ochi, and the rest of the employees at ATL for letting me learn (and grow!) from them this summer. I am confident that the valuable insight I gained during this experience will benefit me both as a Digital Facilitator, and as we prepare for our project next summer.
-Carrie