VSTE

Virginia Society for Technology in Education

VSTE Voices

A Day in the Life of A Student

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As an educator, have you ever stopped to wonder what it’s like on the other side of the screen? What is like to be in the shoes of a student in the year 2020-2021? We did and it changed our entire perspective on virtual learning.

In the Fall of 2020, I and three of my JMU colleagues were student teachers placed at the same school in Virginia and much like everyone else we were uncertain what this year was going to hold. As schools began their journey into the intrepid waters of the unknown, piloting this new ship we call digital remote learning, it wasn’t long before the flood of communications, worries, and frustrations threatened to sink it: inboxes were full, phones were constantly ringing, systems were crashing, and everyone was beyond exhausted, trying their hardest to press on despite the storm of challenges caused by the pandemic.

I sat in a team meeting one day brainstorming how to chart a more effective and less choppy educational course, when the principal stated longingly, “I just wish I knew what it was like to be a student.” As the words struck deep into my heart as a Duke, I thought to myself, “I can do that... I could be a student for a day. I can be the change that I want to see... ”

Cartoon of student at desk in front of a computer

The next thing I knew, I was rounding up my colleagues and we sat down to develop a strategy with the administration. Each of us was assigned a student schedule in a grade level different from the one we were placed in as student teachers. We borrowed Chromebooks from the library to simulate student technology, selected a specific calendar day that would have been indicative of a normal day’s worth of work for students, and then dedicated time to complete all the work and write out our findings. Before we began, we also noted that our findings were limited by the fact that we were collegiate educated students with reading and digital literacy skills that far surpassed the average student. As we got started, I was suspecting that our results would support the trends we saw as teachers: students were not reading instructions carefully or were just not motivated to do assignments.

You would think that four graduate students would have no problem completing one day’s worth of online instruction, but to be completely honest, it was brutal. While it only took us four hours to complete all the assignments, we were completely drained from the amount of reading, clicking, navigating, and just overall effort we had to put in behind our tiny laptop screens.

Allow me to emphasize that we were completely competent graduate students, who knew how to do all the work, and had zero learning challenges, but by the end of the day even our heads were splitting at the seams. Imagine how much more difficult it is for our diverse students? In our carpool the following day one of my colleagues remarked, “I am so glad that I get to be a teacher again today and not a student.”

We published our findings and suggestions in an informal research report and distributed it to the local school division, but perhaps the biggest take away from our experience was that it is necessary not only to empathize with our students but to also understand their experience by entering into it.

A lot has changed since the beginning of the school year and as routines and norms are established, the waters of education are becoming less murky. Students’ experiences are constantly fluctuating though between hybrid and remote models and so the question is just as relevant as ever—What is like to be in the shoes of a student? I challenge you to find out. It might rock your boat and change your whole perspective on digital learning like it did for me.

Written by Austin Evans. Austin is currently a graduate student at James Madison University finishing his Masters in the Arts of Teaching with a concentration on Middle Education. He worked with Ann Allred, Nicole Popule, and Allison Wellener to conduct the “A Day in the Life of A Student” research project at North Fork Middle School in Shenandoah County.

Using Google Earth to Enhance Curriculum

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As Library Media Specialists (LMS), we are always looking for new tech tools to increase student engagement and help teachers enhance their curriculum. One of our favorite tools over the years was Google Tour Builder. Needless to say, we were quite disappointed to find out that Google Tour Builder was going to be phased out and replaced with something called Google Earth Projects. But, turns out, this new tool is amazing!

When school buildings closed during the second half of the 2019/2020 school year and continued to stay closed throughout most of the 2020/2021 school year, the need for tech tools to enhance virtual instruction was at an all time high. Teachers were struggling to learn how to do their jobs virtually while also keeping kids engaged. So, they looked to the LMS and ITS (Instructional Technology Specialist) for help navigating through these unprecedented times. Google Earth Projects was a perfect fit!

Google Earth Projects allows students to travel all over the world virtually, diving into an interactive map and exploring locations with 360° photos and street view, while giving them the ability to create their own tours and projects to share their learning with teachers and classmates. Teachers can create templates and share with their students to edit, or students can create projects from scratch.

screenshot of a Google Earth Project

Since Google Earth is part of the G Suite, all projects are saved automatically in students’ Google Drives and can be added to or edited as they move through grade levels. Google Earth Projects allows students to drop pins to show locations, add 360° photos for an immersive experience, and add multimedia like photos, videos, and text to pinned locations. Students can also make copies and share out, as well as add collaborators. This tool allows for cross-curricular learning, combining research and writing, as well as content. In addition, students even have the opportunity to present their tours, allowing for oral communication data to be collected.

As Library Media Specialists, we hope to turn what could be a simple lesson into an engaging and interactive experience where students can showcase their research skills, along with their ability to engage in the 5Cs, while exploring curricular objectives. For example, students can show their learning of specific Civil War or American Revolutionary War locations. Additionally, Native American tribes, VA regions, landforms, landmarks, continents, and oceans are just a few of the content areas that have been highlighted within these projects.
As the pandemic and travel restrictions continue, the use of Google Earth projects allows students the opportunity to tour countries around the globe.

Street View image of Egyptian pyramid

Is your class researching countries? With Google Earth projects, students don’t have to just read about it in books; they can take a virtual field trip to see it up close and personal. Teaching geometry? Show students 3D shapes in the real world (think pyramids in Egypt, Spaceship Earth at Disney’s Epcot, cylindrical towers in Germany).

Google Earth projects can even enhance a simple read aloud. Yes, students are able to visualize the events in a story, but it would be fun to follow a characters’ travels throughout.

While you may be used to Google Tour Builder, give Google Earth Projects a chance and you won’t be disappointed! The opportunities are endless and will take your students on a trip around the world all while staying put in the confines of their very own classroom chair.

Written by Erin Nye and Courtney Phillips. Erin is a Library Media Specialist at Kingston Elementary School and can be found on Twitter @enye001. Courtney is a Library Media Specialist at Strawbridge Elementary School, and tweets @MrsPhillipsLMS.

Making Makerspace Mobile During a Pandemic

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Covid. It’s truly amazing how one word, one event, could single-handedly change the face of education across the world in such a short period of time. However, as we are all aware, that is exactly what happened. In the winter of 2020, Instructional Technology Specialists such as myself, were busy leading professional development, attending and participating in collaborations, and modeling effective instructional strategies for the teachers and students in our buildings. Then, in the spring, everything changed. Our normal everyday educational occurrences were changed in ways we never could have imagined.

I cannot say that everything changed in a negative way. I watched as the teachers in my building and across our city, as well as across the country, learned very quickly how to navigate Zoom and Google Meet. There was more participation in professional development in my building than I had seen in the past several years. Teachers immediately jumped on board with PearDeck, PlayPosit, Flipgrid, and so many other programs to engage our virtual learners in ways they never thought they could. It was amazing to experience and be an active participant in this learning experience. It became obvious that our teachers were going to do whatever was necessary to ensure the success of all of our students no matter what was happening in the world around us.

photo of mobile makerspace with student and teacher

Another thing that changed was my role and the role of the Library Media Specialist especially as we envisioned our shared library space. Over the past three years, we have worked diligently to create an amazing Makerspace program in our library through donations from parents, the community, and several grants we have received. In March 2020, our Makerspace initiative immediately came to a screeching halt. We missed the looks on the children’s faces as they speed walked to the library to use the Dashes and Dots, the Lego sets, the arts and crafts projects, and Merge Cubes. We went from having approximately 750 students a week rotate through the library to a library that was empty. This fall, it was obvious that the students were missing a much-loved piece of their education.

Thanks to the Virginia Beach Education Foundation Grant opportunities, my LMS and I decided to write a grant for a Mobile Makerspace Initiative. We were awarded $1900 to purchase carts and supplies to keep Makerspace alive in our building. We were given another $1800 to purchase a Makey Makey class set for our students to use. If the students couldn’t come to us, we would go to them! We used the funds to purchase things like arts and crafts, build your own planes and boats, Egyptian tombs to do archeological digs, pots and seeds for children to paint and plant amongst many other items. On the carts, we have also included Dashes, coding mice, Merge Cubes and smartphones, and Ozobots that we have received from other grants.

Now, instead of the students coming to us, we can go to them. Our Mobile Makerspace is as flexible as teachers and students need it to be. Teachers can email us about materials that they want to use in their class as they have a list of what was purchased with the grants. They can check out our electronic equipment as long as everything is sanitized appropriately between uses. Teachers can request a variety of the materials and activities to keep in their classroom for their own Makerspace area, or they can have students meet us in the hallway to choose activities to take back to their classrooms during specific times of the day. Additionally, teachers can sign up for us to work with a small group, socially distancing, with our Dashes and Dots and Merge Cubes. They can also request for us to model and instruct on the class set of Makey Makey in small spaced out groups or as a whole class.

We all know that things have changed since the Pandemic began. What I have learned from the pandemic is that our "normal" is now different. In some ways, things will never be the same. Our shared philosophy behind Makerspace was the value we placed on developing students' communication and collaboration skills. With that, my LMS and I followed our own values and adapted to create a new normal, a Mobile Makerspace. A space, mobile and different, but one that still allows students to create and be innovative, skills which all of us have needed over the last year.

Written by Nicole Cabral. Nicole is an Instructional Technology Specialist at Landstown Elementary in Virginia Beach.

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.

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.