Alexa in Education? Teacher Evaluation Checklist!

I feel burdened to be forward thinking on the subject of using voice speakers in education. With the title Director of Instructional Technology and Innovation, I spent most of this year focused on the instructional side of my role due to rolling out the learning management system, Canvas. It’s really the nature of the title to be a support to educators and something I am fairly good at doing. But my passion and drive lean more to the word “Innovation” in my title. I love to think about educational reform, to consider new ways to do things, to enhance the educational experience with experiences. For the past couple of months, I have actually had more time to focus on this side of my role. I’ve attended conferences, researched concepts, read and brainstormed. This is the part of me that delights in being an educator.

I had the honor of attending the Technology Symposium that showcased big thinking of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga College of  Engineering and Computer Science. The keynote speaker was Chris Cochran that lives in a small town in Idaho or South Dakota, but basically some nondescript place. His talk was inspiring and motivating. He talked about the importance of thinking innovatively and why it doesn’t matter where you live to do that. He said, “Never before had there been a time when education and technology have been more democratized...You have to have confidence in nonsense. Those ideas could change the world forever.” 

Take that statement and intersect it with my ongoing desire to see educators using voice speakers in the classroom in intentional ways and my brain is now in Digital Thinking mode. I stand firm in believing that voice speakers can truly help with the equity gap of access in a very low-cost way. I also believe that voice speakers create an opportunity for more fluid connectivity than ever before. There is no need to look down at a device to find an answer, no need for keystrokes. I find myself in a space of “what’s next and how can I be a part?” 

This week while wearing my “Instructional Technology” hat, I realized we needed to be more proactive about evaluating the digital tools that teachers want to use in the classroom. I adapted some resources created by Kathy Schrock (the mother of edtech) so that our lower school teachers could do some self-evaluation of potential tools before asking the IT department to install apps on the iPads. After doing this, I realized that’s what the voice first world needs!

As a rule, people that have the skill sets to create robust voice Alexa skills or Google actions are not also educators. Designing these skills and actions are being critiqued through the eye of the computer scientist to focus on the conversational design model but that doesn’t necessarily make it good for classroom design. So this week I created an evaluation form for voice skills/actions as well. 

With this first draft evaluation form, I believe it can help teachers look for truly intentional voice skills to integrate into their classroom but also it might help developers in creating skills that match the needs of learners in more robust ways. Creating good skills is more than just conversational design and intuitive slots. The importance of being age level appropriate in language and learning is centered around grade level essential questions and standards could take voice in the classroom past rout memorization. 

I find myself asking “what’s next? And how can I be instrumental in this journey that I am so passionate about?” Today, Chris Cochran inspired me to figure that question out. Anyone want to join my think tank? 

Why an LMS? Why Canvas?

During the last school year our school announced that our upper school teachers would be required to use the learning management system (LMS) named Canvas in 3 significant ways forward:

1. All objective assessments would be delivered through the Canvas LMS
2. All students have the option to turn in papers digitally
3. All grades would be done through the Canvas grade book

With any change comes push back and fear. For us, all stakeholders have had to learn a new system- teachers, administrators, students and parents. Below are the benefits each group of our stakeholders can experience from using Canvas:

Benefits to Administrators: 

• Analytics- By creating expectations for students to take assessments using Canvas, we also have the ability to start to see patterns of each student's learning and possible gaps in mastery of concepts. While we are not a full fledged competency-based school in the way we teach, we now have a place where administrators can quickly have access to class averages on assignments and even dig deeper to see individual student results. 
• Compliance- In some ways using Canvas diminishes the silo effect that education can sometimes cause. When administrators can only get into a classroom for a few observations a year, Canvas allows admin to take a quick glance at assignments and quizzes to make sure all teachers are compliant to the goals and expectations put upon them for their curriculum.
• Scalability- We are in a school system where we have multiple educators teaching the same course to grade levels. By having those educators work together to create their Canvas-based curriculum it takes workload levels off everyone and allows systems to be in place regardless of the size of classes. Blended learning works well with Canvas. In our middle school math program we have been able to effectively increase class size by using this platform for students to navigate their daily needs. 
• Accountability- The realtime aspect of Canvas allows administrators to immediately see if lesson plans are both accurate and up to date for students with just a click of the mouse. 

Benefits to Teachers:

• Mobility and Accessibility- Students now have the ability to access their assignments easily as long as they have access to the internet. Being a 1:1 school with 100% at home connectivity (one of the upsides to living in Chattanooga, TN- home of the fastest internet in the country), this means our students now can access things without the excuses of "the dog ate my homework, I lost it, or I didn't know I had homework." 
• Deliver Content Instantly- Teachers now have the ability to deliver information to students instantly. Perhaps a classroom discussion spurs a teacher to remember an article they want to share. Utilizing an LMS allows the teacher to quickly upload it to the course for immediate and future reference. 
• Personalization- Canvas allows educators to assign things to individual students, give individual students multiple attempts to take a quiz, share different resources with different student groups, all without other students knowing that differentiation is taking place. This allows some students with IEPs to feel less self aware of their learning issues because others aren't aware that any accommodations are taking place. Have a student that can breeze through the curriculum? With mastery paths being utilized within Canvas, teachers can meet those needs by creating deeper learning or allowing those students to go further with their learning.   
• Multimedia Learning- The use of Canvas allows teachers to share videos, audio recordings, as well as continue robust face to face engagement with students that might be graded outside of a computer-based assessment. Sometimes students may not grasp a concept during a lecture but a teacher can upload a video of themselves or someone else teaching the concept and students can stop and start the video to make sure they have the concepts before moving on. 

Benefits to Parents:

• Transparent view- Parents have the ability to see exactly what their students are seeing by pairing with them. They can view the courses, the calendar due dates, and grades all from one location. In a world of constant connectivity, parents have the ability to know 100% what the expectations are for their child's classes because it is all listed in their Canvas courses. Nothing can be placed in a grade book without first being added as an assignment in Canvas.
• Click thru to assignments- Parents have the ability to see a grade or a "missing" label and then click directly through to the assignment to see the details. They can see everything their student can see, they just can't complete the assignment with their parent account. 
• Parent portal for accountability- Parents can set up to receive notifications regarding their child's account. If they choose to use the Canvas Parent App, they can have the app push them information straight to their phone about course grade levels, missing assignments, when a grade is above or below a threshold they deem important to know, and any announcements about a course. If they use the web browser access, they can set themselves up to receive emails for the same types of information in order to hold their children accountable in their learning process.

Benefits to Students:

• Single sign-on- One of the things we wanted to streamline for our students is giving the ability to go to one place and have fewer log-ins and passwords to remember for their educational process. Canvas allows our students to use their Google accounts for single sign-on capabilities. There are no longer multiple platforms and passwords to remember because all information and access goes through Canvas for our students. 
• Consistency- Students now know they can go to Canvas and click on "calendar" to see all the things due on any upcoming date that has already been assigned for any class they are taking. Students know that their "Upcoming" section represents a week glance. Students know that their "to do" list means things that they need to get done. Students now have one platform to go to see information shared by their teachers. While each class may look differently, based on how the teacher set their own courses up, the student experience remains significantly the same for access and turning in assignments. Now students aren't sharing a document  via Google Drive in one class but uploading to an LMS in another. Their experience and the expectations feel more the same from class to class. 
• Collaboration- Canvas allows for discussion boards and it connects with the school Google suites account for all students. This allows students to work together on a Google doc or slideshow, for instance by adding information or comments. Students also have the ability to participate in "peer grading" through the Canvas LMS platform. 
• Communication- Knowing that a teacher is communicating through one platform helps students to realize the importance of checking for communication more often. Canvas allows the students to expect all communication in one localized place- the place where they also see their assignments, turn in their assignments, and take assignments. 
• Immediate Content-  Canvas allows students to place their virtual hands on content quickly and efficiently based on teacher sharing. Students no longer have to go back to their locker to get a handout or call a friend because they lost the details of the homework assignment. Students can immediately access the content of their courses as long as they have access to the internet. 

With any digital plan, there are sometimes bandwidth issues, accessibility of device issues, quirks, and a learning curve for all users. It's not all benefits but as we are now a month into the school year, the benefits of this endeavor seem to quickly outweigh the detriments for our students. 

Putting Yourself OUT THERE Professionally

As I reflect over my school year, I realize I had a lot of disappointments. In fact, a crazy amount of disappointments. As a rule, I don't deal with disappointments or rejection well so I have spent the last few days asking myself "why does this year feel like a success if you truly felt like you had tons of disappointments?"

I think it is because my disappointments weren't in what was happening at school that much and more about putting myself out there to become a better educator and to grow. I also think it was because I put myself out there enough that I also have some crazy awesome things to celebrate as well. As I started typing this blog post I decided to just create this chart to help me put my year in perspective:

A few years back I realized that in order for me to get the feedback I needed to both grow and feel fulfilled in my role I would need to reach outside of my own school system. Not that it isn't a wonderful school system- it is! But I tend to be a futurist and and "what's next" type of thinker about education. That being said, it is not my role to force my dreams on those I work with, so looking for ways to develop and feed that part of myself while incrementally creating opportunities at our school is important to me.

There are some years the professional rejection feels more overwhelming than the things to celebrate but because of my personality, I feel like it's important for me to keep putting myself out there. And let me say that has not always been my personality. There have been more years than not that I was quite happy siloing myself in my classroom with my students and focusing on teaching and the things that happened within the four walls of that classroom. AND I was a good teacher. But after spending time looking at what others were doing by attending conferences and using Twitter to grow professionally, I had a quest to do more and be more for myself, my school system, but ultimately the students and families I serve.

So now I spend time looking for opportunities to get outside my box and challenge my thought processes. I realize that as an instructional technologist I work in a role that opens a mixed bag of emotions from others. It is that fact that has pushed me to have a more global approach to my job so that I can get the support I need and can be a balanced educator in seeing the strengths and potential pitfalls in my realm of influence.

I say all this to challenge others to continue to put yourself out there. After not being chosen for part of the Google Innovator program this year I tweeted "Rejection makes me hungry." It's true. Don't let your rejection define you-dig deeper, apply again, seek other avenues, but never accept the status quo of complacency!  Fail forward and grow! Colonel Sanders, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Edison and J.K. Rowling are just a few people that come to mind when I think of persevering through the struggle of failures. May I ever be someone with that type of growth mindset.

Don't tell me you hate AI...check out Google's "Talk to Books"

Google, with the help of Ray Kurzweil just possibly changed the world of research. Navigate to the new artificial intelligence driven "Talk to Books" website that can be found at:
 https://books.google.com/talktobooks/

What I love about it?

• It's artificial intelligence. It wants you to talk to it like you would talk to a person. Keywords aren't it's thing. It's not how it was developed; guess what, neither were we.  Elementary students definitely struggle with keyword searches. This can change the dynamics of research!
• It doesn't ask one book what the answer might be, it asks thousands of books. And then it gives you answers written in quotes from the book with most of the needed info RIGHT THERE. Citing just became easier too. Now I'll be honest, often when I click "show in book" I don't have access to the book but this is a FREE search engine that now allows me to know where I need to go to look further.
• It seems to look for answers creatively. It's looking through all genres of books to come up with the answer to your question. I like that. It challenges my analytical side to embrace my creative side simultaneously and think on subjects in a broader scope. 

What I don't love about it?

• Did we just cheapen the act of research? How much are we being manipulated by Google right now as to what our research answers are? Is this a monetized site? How do they choose the books that are part of this search engine? All questions I want answered as an educator.
• It doesn't replace peer-reviewed research sites but I fear some students might think it does. I think this website has the potential to being a game changer when doing research. The key and challenge for us, as educators, is to teach them good digital literacy skills when curating information. This site is a great getting started tool for research purposes but we need to be even more diligent in defining what good research looks like.
• I'm not seeing parent controls. I did a search that lead me to some pretty descriptive information that every age level shouldn't have access to. 

I'm excited about this website and interested to hear other's thoughts on the potential and pitfalls of something so dynamic in answering our daily questions. 

My #ISTE17 Takeaways

Rachelle and myself

Traveling alone to ISTE this year gave me lots of time alone with my thoughts and my learning. Meeting up with my friend Rachelle Poth on the last day led to one of my greatest moments of reflection. When we talked about the things we had done during the week it was very different from each other. Rachelle presented multiple times (and I must say she's amazing at sharing her classroom stories) and I was there as an attendee only.
For me, that moment was a realization that ISTE meets needs in many different ways for many different personality types. It's easy to get lost in the crowd if that is what you want or to be in the middle of everything learning AND social. I was "all in" for learning this week and here are my takeaways to learning more about:

• Google Applied Digital Skills- Yes, I did stand in a 30 minute line for a 30 minute session to learn more about Google's new Applied Digital Skills curriculum.
  
   A free, stand alone curriculum that can be found at https://www.cs-first.com/en/apps. Our school recently started looking at the scope and sequence of digital skills we want our students to have by the time they graduate from our school. What I love about this curriculum is that many of these skills could be mastered with these very relevant curriculum ideas that 13+ year old students would both enjoy doing and benefit from. 
• Snapping, Gramming, and Scoping Your Way to Engagement-  

  

  Shaelynn, Steven, and myself

                              Educators Steven Anderson (@web20classroom) and Shaelynn Farnsworth (@shfarnsworth) created an interactive learning opportunity that challenged me in how to reach students, teachers, families, and constituencies with the use of social media. I've often used social media to share the story of our school using the hashtag #ccslearns but I'll be honest, I think my assumed audience was almost always my professional learning network. I am currently reflecting on how I can use it more to reach broader in my own school community. Steven's sharing of data shows a window of opportunity to reach our families and share our stories in a platform that will be looked at. As most schools can attest, the percentage of emails sent and read by families is small. Why not meet them where they already are looking? And as I've heard often but don't know who said it, "someone is going to tell your story, shouldn't it be you?" 
• Big news from Wonder Workshop: Challenge Cards- Dash and Dot are some of our favorite  robots to introduce robotics to preschool and elementary students. What a great opportunity to meet Charlotte this week- she's the creator of the new "Challenge Cards: K-5 Learn to Code Starter Pack" that hit the market in September. I had a little look at the cards and can't wait to add them to our curriculum. These cards "meet both CSTA and ISTE standards are aligned with Code.org's Computer Science Fundamentals series." (store.makewonder.com)

  

  Charlotte of Wonder Workshop 

• Creating Interactive Professional Development Opportunities- This idea has been growing in my head since Edcamp Gigcity but attending a session by Michele Eaton solidified in my head how I want to do this. I plan to introduce one tool every 2 months to our teachers (I'm working on curating those tools now) via an interactive introduction that they can access at any time. My hope is that in the two months the teachers will try the tool in their own classrooms.

Obviously there were tons of learning moments at ISTE for me both in and out of the conference center, it's like learning from a firehose, but these are the top things I am excited about!

The Value of Googleable Questions?

In 2006 my oldest daughter was in 4th grade and part of the curriculum was called "Daily Oral Geography." This is a well known geography curriculum that consists of weekly worksheets to teach geography. I remember buying Jessica this huge Atlas that was a bound book. We still have it because it was so nice. She could look up all sorts of maps to answer her questions. We spent a little extra for it but decided with another child 3 years younger, it would be worth it.

I remember one night Jessica was working on her D.O.G. (Daily Oral Geography) as homework and she came downstairs and asked "Mom, it asks what the 5 oceans of the world are but I see more than 5, can you help me?" I looked at the atlas and saw what she was talking about. At that point in her school life, she didn't have easy accessibility to technology. She didn't own a smartphone or iPad because they were not yet invented. We had a family computer but it wasn't seen as a place to go to help with homework.

I remember googling "5 oceans of the world" and one of the first hits was the actual worksheet she was doing all filled in by a teacher. I said "wow!" and Jessica looked over my shoulder and said, "YES!" to which I replied, "You can't just copy the answers." And she didn't. She worked hard to get her answers every week. It was a moment to teach good digital citizenship at my house but it also led me to start thinking deeper about what we ask of students. I didn't expect to find the actual worksheet on the internet and I'm sure her teacher didn't either. There is no blame in this statement, just a fact...I saw the world changing.

This was 2006, 11 years ago. Educational technology was not even a strong game at that point. Out of curiosity I just now googled the same question and in 1.75 seconds I had 1,340,000 results with the first hit being them listed in bold with bullets. What does this mean to education?

I find myself seeing this from several different angles:

• Students becoming positive Digital Citizens. If you are a user of technology, you are a digital citizen- a participant of a community with rules and expectations that are constantly evolving. With educational technology comes faster access to information and opinions. In 2006 the ease to get to "facts" using technology was just the tip of the iceberg. Now that educators are seeing the value of students having authentic audiences, we are suggesting to students to create an online presence of their learning. No longer is it just facts that can be googled but also opinions of other students across the world. With the mapping of curriculum (which prevents gaps for students if they leave one district for another) being somewhat the same from district to district the ability to find answers to the assignments placed before students becomes easier and easier. More than ever before it is important for us to set well explained boundaries and expectations for our students. When is it ok to use technology for learning and when is it not? Teaching students the value of the process of learning, not just the end results on a worksheet for a grade is important because when I google "write my paper" I have 212,000,000 hits in .42 seconds. To think our students are not doing things like this is naive at best. Spending time in each class setting digital citizen expectations is crucial to helping students navigate and choose to be students of integrity.
• Teachers asking intentional questions. More than ever before I think it is imperative that we look at education differently. Access to information is at the fingertips of our students (even in elementary school). When do we, as educators, ask easily Googleable questions? When do we allow technology to answer those questions for our students? How does homework fit into the easy accessibility of answers in today's world? What information is now "worth" memorizing? Who decides what required facts to purge in this day of easy accessibility? How do we make sure students are truly answering from their knowledge bank and not their ability to ask Google good questions? What's the value of worksheets in a world where you can find the answers and fill in the blanks in about 3 minutes? How do we make sure students are learning how to use tools beyond technology? When are shortcuts ok? When are they not? If Google can answer a question, is it a worthy question to be asking our students in preschool? elementary? middle? high? advanced?
• School Culture changing to adopt more critical thinking goals. Does technology mean we should be rethinking the way we teach? In the past, the teacher was the giver of all knowledge. Now students are both learning and creating in their own way, on their own time. Does this mean we need to be looking beyond the practical and pushing students to critically think about that easily accessible information? Is this why project based learning, cross-curricular integrated units, genius hour, and personalized learning is becoming significantly more popular? Is this why schools are trying to shift away from grades-based learning to competency-based learning? Is there a better way for students to prove their understanding not just their compliance to educational norms?

I'll be honest, even as an instructional technologist, I find the possibilities for education in the future mind boggling. I want to make sure we are being student centered as we adopt and adapt education. I don't want to throw out the baby with the bath water but I also want to know we aren't accepting antiquated ways of doing things "because we've always done it this way." And so I ask the question again..."what is the value of Googleable questions?" and "What new expectations should we be placing on students?"