VSTE

Virginia Society for Technology in Education

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Featured Resources from #GoOpenVA, February 8, 2021

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logo for go open vaJean Weller, VSTE Board Member and VDOE Technology Integration Specialist, leads the #GoOpenVA initiative in Virginia. This collaborative initiative enables educators and others throughout Virginia to create, share, and access openly-licensed educational resources (OER, also known as open education resources). OER are free digital materials that can be used or modified to adjust to student needs; they are openly-licensed unhampered by many traditional copyright limitations.

The database is growing. Jean recently created a collection for resources specifically related to professional learning. Technology coaches from across the state have contributed and you can learn more here.

We asked Jean and other VSTE leaders to periodically curate a few of the resources to give a sense of what is available. Start with these but stay for so much more! And be sure to follow Jean on Twitter.

The following resources are recommended by Tim Taylor, the Instructional Technology Supervisor for Shenandoah County Public Schools. They will help your students better understand the issues involved with the founding of the United States.

The Constitutional Convention: What the Founding Fathers Said lesson plan is very appropriate for our current political climate. Students learn how the Founding Fathers debated and resolved their differences during the Constitutional Convention. Learn how they created "a model of cooperative statesmanship and the art of compromise." A lesson we all can learn from!

Emanuel Leutze's Symbolic Scene of Washington Crossing the Delaware is a resource that makes students question and look through a critical lens when viewing historical art.  This iconic artwork is what the majority people envision when thinking of Washington crossing the Delaware.  Did it really look like this?  How does art such as Leutze's work here influence our perception of history?

The Federalist Defense of Diversity and "Extending the Sphere is a lesson plan for secondary students that allows them to analyze Hamilton's and Madison's arguments in favor of an extended republic in specific numbers of the Federalist Papers. (I finally watched Hamilton over the holidays and the relationship between these two founding fathers was very complex.)  This lesson will open the eyes of students to see just how challenging and difficult it is to establish a government that is inclusive and providing liberties for all citizens.

YouTube: The Dilemma and Rockingham’s Solution

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In Rockingham, we finally gave up hope that Google would rescue everyone from the YouTube predicament the company created for school divisions all over the US. We asked for assistance as far up the Google chain as we could go but learned it clearly has no intent to change its practice nor its stance.

The problem concerns Google’s G Suite for Education terms of service agreement that requires school divisions to obtain parent permission for minors to use YouTube and other Google tools it labels “Additional Services.” These additional services are its products Google considers to be more consumer applications and different from its “Core Services” which include Google Docs, Google Slides, Google Sheets, Google Drive and others. Like MANY school divisions, we had not obtained the required parent permission to use YouTube in legal compliance with its terms of service.

According to Google:

Additional Services require consent for minor users: G Suite for Education requires in its agreement (section 2.5) that schools obtain parent or guardian consent for any Additional Services they allow students under the age of 18 to use.

Why does Google insist that divisions obtain parent permission for minors to use YouTube? You may be surprised to know that it has NOTHING to do with content nor appropriate use. Google’s issue concerns student data privacy. They admit that they don’t guarantee to protect the private student data they have access to when students use YouTube in the same way they protect the student data associated with student use of their core G Suite services like Google Docs or Google Drive. And they’re not interested in doing anything about it.

diagram showing relationship with YouTube and student data

In Rockingham, we considered our YouTube options. We determined there were FOUR.

  1. Ask for parent permission to use YouTube.
    Decision: NO. We simply couldn’t do that to teachers. How could they use the resource effectively when only a fraction of students (big or small, doesn’t matter) would be allowed to access it? That’s a nightmare scenario for the classroom. It was unrealistic to think we could get 100% permission.
  2. Remove YouTube completely. Ban its use. Make the problem disappear.
    Decision: NO. There are too many valuable resources there to simply dismiss it entirely. We would create a problem for ourselves arguably worse than the legal one!
  3. Do nothing.
    Decision: NO. We couldn’t afford to ignore the situation any longer. We were in violation of the G Suite for Education user agreement which clearly states that permission is required. Google even provides you with the boilerplate for your use with parents in asking for permission. Thanks, Google.
  4. Look for a workaround, some way to use it legally, in compliance with Google’s ToS.
    Decision: BINGO. We found a way and with no thanks to Google, I should add.

We employ a web-based tool called MyVRSpot.

Here are a few of the things we appreciate about this tool.

  • Our teachers are able to assign YouTube content by washing their YouTube links through MyVRSpot, a very, very simple process. It requires a minimal amount in terms of training.
  • Our teachers can authenticate through Google so no new logins are required. No student accounts are needed. Student accounts are available at a price which provide students some video creation features but we’ve found our subscription level to be perfect for the sole purpose of providing YouTube content. (We subscribe to WeVideo for video creation.)
  • The student interface for viewing the YouTube content is completely clean — no comments, no recommended videos, no “up next” videos. There’s no link to YouTube nor to the video hosted there.
  • Unlike other tools out there that may do something similar, MyVRSpot registers the user views on the original content hosted at YouTube. So there’s no harm nor loss to the author through our access in this way.
  • Our teachers report what turns out to be an unintended benefit — they love being able to have a place where they can create folders and organize their video links for use year after year.

We can now handle YouTube access for students in varying ways depending on grade level.

For K-5, we block YouTube all together. Students can’t access it on their division devices. As a 1-to-1 division where elementary students now take their devices home (a change for us, a COVID-19 response), we felt parents would appreciate it if we did not open Pandora’s box for them to manage. But students CAN watch ANY YouTube video that the teacher provides via a MyVRSpot link. It’s a win-win.

For grades 6-12, YouTube is turned off for students (meaning that it is not sending data to YouTube for the student users when logged into their Google accounts). However, students CAN access YouTube and use it to search and view videos as a non-logged in user, i.e., essentially an anonymous user. (Note, our Securly filter [https://www.securly.com/] remains in place, we apply YouTube’s strict filter, and device management helps us protect and hold students accountable on their Chromebooks.) Teachers use MyVRSpot to ensure that students can access any video they assign. We have found the standard YouTube strict filter to be effective but also inconsistent where some students may be able to view an acceptable video while the YouTube strict filter prevents it for others. MyVRSpot solves this problem.

Recently, we purchased some streaming video account subscriptions from MyVRSpot and those along with the Mevo Start camera have given us an extremely easy and reliable way to meet the needs of our schools who want to stream events to students at home, families, and the community. We also use this to stream our school board meetings and it provides a clean interface for viewers, free of comments and other distractions.

Thanks to our Technology Director, Kevin Perkins, who leads our division in many ways with this as an important one to ensure that we maintain the proper legal standing with Google and offer respect to our students in ensuring an environment that protects their privacy.

Written by Stephanie Failes. Stephanie is the Instructional Technology Supervisor for Rockingham County Public Schools. You can connect with her on Twitter @stfailes.

Resources for Teaching African American History

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Regardless of the makeup of your school community, teaching students about African American History is an incredibly important part of any history or social studies curriculum. EVERFI has a suite of digital resources for students focused on African American History, as well as opportunities for educators to engage with these topics in meaningful ways.laptop showing website with history resourcesWe recommend students start with 306, which takes students through key events and figures chronologically, starting with the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and concluding with Mae Jemison.
As a continuation, we recommend 306 - Continuing the Story, which looks closely at events in post-Civil Rights era US.

By completing both resources, students will be able to draw connections from past and present events to recognize and empathize with the ongoing challenges Black people continue to face in the United States.

several computers with history site showing on the screens

To access these digital resources, in addition to lesson plans, worksheets and anti-racism toolkits for educators head to EVERFI’s Black History Month Hub.

Written by Teagan Seeley. Teagan is a Senior Schools Manager with EVERFI, where she works with teachers across Virginia as they implement resources designed to teach students critical life skills. Before joining the EVERFI team she was a first-grade teacher in Baltimore City Public Schools.

If you have questions about registering your students, ideas for implementation, or need troublshooting help, email Teagan at tseeley@everfi.com.

Featured Resources from #GoOpenVA, February 1, 2021

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logo for go open vaJean Weller, VSTE Board Member and VDOE Technology Integration Specialist, leads the #GoOpenVA initiative in Virginia. This collaborative initiative enables educators and others throughout Virginia to create, share, and access openly-licensed educational resources (OER, also known as open education resources). OER are free digital materials that can be used or modified to adjust to student needs; they are openly-licensed unhampered by many traditional copyright limitations.

The database is growing. Jean recently created a collection for resources specifically related to professional learning. Technology coaches from across the state have contributed and you can learn more here.

We asked Jean to periodically curate a few of the resources to give a sense of what is available. Start with these but stay for so much more! And be sure to follow Jean on Twitter.

It seems as though the  snow has finally arrived this winter and schools may declare a few snow days that would force your students out for several days.  After a couple of snow days, everyone gets a little bored.  Here are some activities students can do on their own or online with other students.

Code a Snowflake encourages students to be creative with Scratch programming, while learning about angles and symmetry.  Bea Leiderman created a colorful document you can email directly to your students.

We’ve loaded lots of resources from Illustrative Mathematics onto #GoOpenVA.  A Ton of Snow is an investigation students can do on their own at home (though they can share their thinking with a small group online).  The problem is loosely structured in order to provide students practice with true modeling situations, making them think and make decisions.

Explore and Create Your Own Expressive Pattern is a lesson idea provided by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA).  Use this as a launching point to get students to think about and create patterns based on the winter season. Students can make art using just what they have available, even pen and paper.

Teaching Lessons Not in Our Curriculum

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Something that is not unprecedented in the education field is teaching lessons that can’t be found in our curriculum. Whether they are big, thoughtful life lessons or just tidbits of knowledge gained from life experience, teachers are always offering something to their students that isn’t found in their subject’s planning guide. But somehow this year even those lessons feel different.

In mindlessly scrolling through my social media, I found a post that resonated with me. It said something like,

We keep saying these students are falling so behind but instead look how far they have come. They are trouble shooting technology, learning to video conference with peers, sending emails, and figuring out time management.

We find ourselves teaching technology troubleshooting. “Can you hear me now? Good!” seems to have made a comeback with all of the virtual teaching and meetings. I hear teachers quite often reminding students of ways to troubleshoot and correct technology mishaps. Students are learning how to describe problems in detail, sometimes with screenshots, because it is difficult to understand the issue when the student is at home.

Email was something we took for granted and used little to communicate with students. We are now teaching students how to access school email, properly compose an email, and the etiquette necessary for electronic correspondence. What an important life skill!

All these skills are going to play a big role in the working world as we see that is changing as fast as education is. I feel more jobs are going to be remote due to this pandemic, so maybe we are preparing students for those jobs better than we “normally” would have.

Take a deep breath and know that through all you do daily, you are teaching students more than just your curriculum. You are giving them tools for this ever-changing, technology-driven world.

What do you find yourself teaching that is not in your curriculum?

Written by Kelsey Huffman. Kelsey has been an Instructional Technology Resource Teacher for Roanoke County Public Schools for four years.  She enjoys helping teachers find new ways to teach and introduce technology in their classrooms.