The Tools and Tech Teachers Are Turning to During COVID-19

[Danyelle] Hello everybody. Welcome to “Comets Discuss”, part of the UT Dallas CometCast network, where we give you mini episodes on big trending topics. For this series, we’re talking about COVID-19. With nearly every aspect of life now affected by this global pandemic, we’re interviewing UT Dallas experts, while practicing social distancing to provide you various perspectives during this evolving situation.

I’m Danielle. Today we’re talking about digital learning with Katie Donaldson. Katie is a master teacher and assistant director of UTeach Dallas. Welcome to the show Katie, thank you so much for taking time away from your work to join us today.

[Katie] No problem. I’m excited to be here.

[Danyelle] Before we get started, can you give us a quick overview of the UTeach program?

[Katie] Absolutely. So UTeach Dallas is a program that takes students who are at the university for the first time, maybe they’re going through freshman orientation, and we offer them the opportunity to try out teaching. We say “Hey, so you’re majoring in chemistry or biology or mathematics, while you’re getting that stem degree, why don’t you come on in in your elective hours, get the courses that you need to be a certified teacher in Texas,” and we, we do that for them. They’re going to walk out the door with a minor in STEM education, plus their degree, plus a Texas teaching certificate. And what’s even more cool is that very first one-hour class that we offer we’re going to send them out to a fourth or fifth grade science classroom where they get to actually practice and teach lessons to fourth and fifth graders. Now we only certify secondary — middle school and high school– math and science and computer science, but you go out there and you see those elementary school teachers teach, you get in the classroom and you find out whether even like being around kids. If they do, and something they have a passion for, the next one-hour class will send them out to teach middle schools, and if they like that they keep on going, and we have a lot of early active field experience for them before they ever student teach they’re going to know this is their career for them. So, we love it and we tell them that “Hey, you want to you want to come and be a doctor?” We have a lot of kids that want to go into medical. We’re like we can’t send you out to do brain surgery but maybe we can send you into a classroom and see if you love education and a lot of them fall in love and never look back. So that’s what we do we make baby school teachers, stem teachers for the next generation.

[Danyelle] That’s awesome. How important is it to have that early exposure to the classroom?

[Katie] We think it’s crucial, we think it’s one of the key stones of our program. If you don’t know what it’s like to be in front of kids, you don’t know if you have that sort of teaching in your heart. You know what I’m saying? You got to get in front of kids to see what that feels like, to see what it looks like. We don’t want you to waste three years in a program before you ever get to do anything but watch.

[Danyelle] And your role is a master teacher. Can you explain to us what a master teacher is?

[Katie] So, master teachers are the heartbeat of UTeach Dallas. They are sort of like clinical professors. They were in the teaching profession beforehand and all of my master teachers here at UTeach Dallas were in local school districts — in Garland, in Richardson, in Dallas ISD. They were teachers in the classroom. Not just that there were award winning teachers in the classroom and in addition, most of them have administrative experience whether they were an assistant principal or a curriculum director or an instructional support teacher, they were a part of being the solution to the STEM education problem. And that’s who we want educating the next generation of STEM teachers.

[Danyelle] How is UTeach incorporating lessons from the COVID-19 crisis into the resources that you guys are offering?

[Katie] UTeach has an induction program, and what that means is, we follow our graduates for three years in the field, and we help them with whatever they need. Whether that’s “Hey let me bring you a bucket of school supplies” or “I don’t have a trash can for my classroom” or whether that’s “Help we’ve just had a global pandemic and I need some online resources.” We offer induction, like a lot of times on a Saturday, everybody will come up to the campus and we’ll have a topic like how to work with your English language learners, or recently we had a call in, a Zoom meet, about “hey what is working in your classroom.” So, a lot of it is just resources for whatever our teachers need whenever they need it. When I was preparing for this webinar, I sent out an email to my teachers “Hey what’s working in your classroom” You guys tell me about what’s going on with education right now? What’s going on in your building? Can we help you with anything? What do you need?” So, we’ve been testing out digital learning platforms. We’ve been, you know, helping troubleshoot, whatever, whatever it is that they need.

[Danyelle] What’s some of the feedback you’ve received from UTeach’s grads?

[Katie] Most of the feedback has been really positive. They are in a way excited, I mean yeah it was a steep learning curve and still is, but they’re excited that the technology that they got to learn in the UTeach program has really helped them be sort of the front runners in this crisis. A lot of them are telling me that their digital classroom platforms are up and going. A lot of our kids were using Google Classroom platforms, Google Docs, things like that already. And so the transition was, I won’t say completely seamless, but it was it was pretty seamless. I’ve seen them put out memes, that they’re sending to the parents, when the parents tell them the kids don’t know how to get out on their Google classroom and they’re like “That’s odd. You’ve gotten into it every day, all year and you know, and you can do it while doing a Tic Toc video in your lap, but you know tell your parents you’d know how to get on Google Classroom. So it’s been more classroom management type issues, there are definitely some students struggling with access, and that’s tough for the teachers. Students who are working, you know, there’s five people in the family who need two computers. The teachers are very aware of that. We’re aware of that and the school districts have been working to sort of lessen the load on the students and make sure that it’s helping out. A lot of our teachers are running a synchronous and asynchronous, so maybe they’re meeting with their kids a little bit face-to-face if they can, but they’re also using recording platforms like Loom or Snagit or something to do capture videos, and then send those out asynchronously so the kids can work two different ways on that.

So, when I talk about synchronous learning, that’s like what you and I are doing now, we’re in real time, talking to each other. You’re on Zoom and you can see the little squares like The Brady Bunch, I’m dating myself there, you know you can see the little squares and everybody’s talking. So, it’s a, it’s a FaceTime kind of situation. Whereas asynchronous learning would be something that the teacher prepares beforehand, puts on a digital platform like Google Classroom or Blackboard for their students to do an assignment per se, but it can be a video capture of teaching. So, the teacher space can be there they can be delivering content, you know, a Google slideshow for the kids to watch and type in answers, or they have the kids doing something, but it’s asynchronous. The student can complete it at any time. You don’t have to show up at 11:30 and go to my class. I’m delivering the content to you and you can do it on your own time.

[Danyelle] Besides access to technology like you mentioned, are there any other hurdles that you’re hearing of any UTeach grads facing at the moment?

[Katie] Just, you know this sounds silly, but just that they’re missing their kids. They’re missing that face-to -face contact. Every single one of them without doubt in their little paragraphs that they’ve written in social media is like, “But I miss my kids I just want to be there with them.” Our math teachers have had a little bit of a hurdle. With Google Docs and Google share you can type answers, write papers, you can comment, but a math teacher really needs to see kids working and writing problems, and a couple of our math teachers have found a solution called Kami, which is a PDF creator and you can create your math sheet in PDF and then the students can write on it and send it to you. You can write on it and grade it and send it back. Then digital whiteboards are also helping with that — some of the digital whiteboards in the meeting software. So that has been one, they’re short of sharing with each other ways to solve that. But getting a really good way to be able to see a hand-worked problem in mathematics has been tricky.

[Danyelle] That’s so amazing that we have the technology that allows even these hurdles to kind of be worked around. In your opinion, if this pandemic happened 20 years ago, do you think we would have been able to make this transition to home school learning, or is this generation of students and teachers better suited to computer teaching and learning?

[Katie] Oh, I think this generation is definitely suited for this. I have an eighth grader at home and it’s no difference for him to be in Discord playing Fortnite than it is for him to be, you know, in, in Google meetup doing his theater class reading a play with his friends. It’s the same media, so in a way, I hate to use the term digital native because people hate that, but in a way, they are. They, they are used to this type of communication. So yes, absolutely. And just the, the amount and the array of forms and how much collaboration can be done on them is mind boggling considering where we were 20 years ago. I think if this was 20 years ago, we would have been passing out a lot of worksheet packets at the drive thru, and we would have been able to take them back because they would have been germy. You know, it would have been it would have been tough. There would have been a lot of emailing and the blue screen going on and it — I just I can’t imagine that this would have been anywhere near as successful as it can be with a creative, digitally-intelligent teacher right now. I also think this– the teachers who are like my age, a little bit older, a little bit more mature, that we kept up with the technology but we are just really expanding what we know and can do, and our range just in this crisis, I think it’s a, it’s been a real teachable moment for educators everywhere.

[Danyelle] Do you think that there will be any long-lasting changes to education, that come in terms of technology use?

[Katie] I absolutely do but I’m going to defer to my students because they’ve written in some incredible things about this. Here’s one of them. This is from a lady who is teaching chemistry at Wagner High School and she says, “A dream that I have is more effective school time. When a full school day can be boiled down to three hours of dedicated work. Should set schedules and class loads be looked at more carefully? Could certain classes be offered in an online or face-to face-format for students to choose from, or classes go synchronous for two or three days and asynchronous for the other days? Is having four classes at a time instead of eight more useful for working memory? Differentiation of schedules for students might be more impactful than a common schedule of eight classes from 9 to 4:15 every day.” And, I mean, I think that’s really profound, I think you need to take a look at what does it gonna look like in the future. I had another teacher talk about interactions with not-for-profits, that a lot of teachers had really been having fun putting exciting things in their lessons like zoo visits and looking at the aquarium and the Perot Museum. They’d really gone outside their classroom digitally to look for pieces that could be incorporated and she really hopes that those partnerships with nonprofits keep up and really bloom because of this. I thought that was really interesting take on it.

And then of course the parent involvement in teaching. “I hope the parent involvement, just in talking to the kids about what they’re learning and coming up with ways to show their learning in their own words or lives might increase after all of this is. Student learning involves cooperation on all fronts, and not divisions between the community.” That was a quote from another one of my teachers so that, just profound things about as the parents see what students can do online, and as the parents see what the teacher job’s like and the teacher is being understanding of what the parents going through. We’re all going to learn a lot about, about what education looks like in the future.

[Danyelle] That was some really great feedback from some of your teachers. That was awesome.

[Katie] They always come through for me.

[Danyelle] What advice do you have for parents or guardians who may feel in over their head, as far as helping their children with schoolwork, or getting on board with the technology that’s being used in the classroom?

[Katie] You would think that it would be the chemistry and the algebra and calculus that would be freaking out the most. My friends that are freaking out the most are the kindergarten parents. The reason is they have to be there to help the students use the platforms, and that is tough, you know for them I just pray that this all gets over with quick, just pray, because I can imagine that sitting down with seesaw or one of the elementary platforms with your kids is interesting and I love that the teachers are being creative and I love it just makes me get teary when I see the pictures of the little third grade classes on zoom and they’re all talking to each other. I have a sister in law that they’re in rural area and so they have spotty internet. She drove to the town high school, pop the tailgate of her car and tailgated there so she could meet with her third-grade classroom with uninterrupted internet, I mean, there’s teachers that are just going out of their way. So, for parents now just to know that the teachers are working as hard as they can to make it as seamless as possible for your kiddos. And they will figure it out, how much assignments to give, how little. It’s going to take a little bit of a while, so just for them to know that we’re trying as hard as we can, and the more communication, you can give with your teacher that better that’s gonna be. Just hang in there. I know that at my own house. We’ve had an algebra two meltdown, we had to call our brother in college and get some tutoring, you know, I’ve got people so, so use your resources find out who you know who’s good at math. Set up a community, it takes a village, right? It takes a village to home school a child so, so know your resources there and then just hang in and communicate, that’d be my advice.

[Danyelle] That was great. I love that it takes a village to home school a child. Yes, because if I had a child I would not be able to help them with a math at this time or any time. So, Katie were there any tools you had that anybody who’s struggling through this online learning time can use at home?

[Katie] So, absolutely, when we polled our teachers, almost everybody was using Google in some way, whether it was Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides, Google Hangouts, Google presentation. A lot of our teachers are in Google Classroom platforms, so that tool has been incredibly useful for sending assignments and working in collaboration. Also, teachers, we were talking about synchronous versus asynchronous. For asynchronous learning, there are a lot of tools that you can snag a picture of your video and you talking on your video and make something to take home to the kids, you know, like you’re a YouTube hero or whatever you can make the educational videos on your own. I use Snagit, there’s Loom, there’s a lot of really good, I’m like L-O-O-M, like you wave things, lots of good video capture software that’s low cost or really some of its free at this time because of the COVID situation. So, you need to go to a synchronous platform make yourself some little video clips.

The other thing that’s really helpful is having a meeting platform, you know, whether it’s Zoom, or it’s WebEx or you’re using Google Hangouts, all of the teachers have really benefited and while they may not use that for a classroom platform they’re using it for office hours just so they can have tutorials with kids and things like that. So, if you can find you one with a whiteboard, most of them do. I know WebEx says, Google does so, and then like I said that math issue that we were having, the other software that my students were really excited about was called Kami. It is K-A-M-I, and those are the ones that take like a PDF of a worksheet and the kids can write on it and send it in and the teacher can grade and write and hand back. Zoom, Lumen, Kami are the three that they were raving about as far as how they were getting through these few weeks in their classroom. Another one that’s really cool that we love is Nearpod, and some of our teachers will be familiar with that. Nearpod takes a PowerPoint and makes it interactive and it’s through the web. You type in a code that the teacher sends you and here’s the PowerPoint, but then you can stop and you can put a little puzzle game in it, you can have kids answer a test question, and get a poll do vocabulary word, embed a website, have a do a quick video with all within the frame of the PowerPoint. So very interactive and the students can follow along, synchronously, or you can save it and send it and the students can do at any time. So it’s a synchronous and asynchronous platform and shout out to them. It’s a really nice piece of software for living in the time of COVID.

[Danyelle] Thank you for those awesome resources, I’m sure a lot of people outside of the learning will find those really useful too in the business setting. Did you have any last thoughts or words of wisdom that you think our listeners could take away?

[Katie] Teachers have to be ready for anything. And I am so proud of our teachers, even our baby teachers. You have to think about the fact that a lot of the people that I’m talking about in this feat have been teaching six years or less, then some of them, one year or less. They have done an amazing job of being captains of technology at their school, of really jumping in and loving their kids through the limited media that they had. Teaching is about learning but it’s also about loving kids and I’ve been just amazed to watch my professionals, some of my baby professionals even, take their classes and walk with them through this and just help them come out on the other side, not just more educated, but more socially and emotionally ready for the next generation.

[Danyelle] Thank you so much for joining us today it has been such a pleasure. You have given us so much interesting information.

[Katie] Well I was excited to be here. I love preaching about teaching.

[Danyelle] UTeach Dallas is a part of the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. You can find more information about UTeach at their website, but we’ll include a link in the show notes.

Thanks for joining us. “Comets Discuss” is brought to you by the UT Dallas Office of Communications. A special thanks to senior lecturer Roxanne Minnish for our music. Be sure to check out our other shows at utdallas.edu/cometcast. For the most up-to-date news at UT Dallas, visit the University’s official COVID-19 information webpage. Take care and stay healthy. [whispering] Whoosh.