 Hi everybody and welcome to our last live session of DL MOOC. I don't want to spend a lot of time talking up front because we're really excited to have an all-student panel. This one will be a little bit different because this is going to be facilitated by two of our students that should seem familiar to our DL MOOC community because they were on our first DL MOOC panel. Only thing I want to mention is that we do have a couple of things that are up on the website. Make sure you do your put into practice where you're sharing just some of your thoughts and reflections on what DL MOOC has meant to you. We had our participation participants panel on Monday and that was a real eye-opening experience. And we continue to see your reflections and see your tweets about how you've been bringing deeper learning back to your sites. And it's been really inspiring to us here on the team. So please continue to share your thoughts and whatever way you feel comfortable, whether that's D plus Twitter or any other medium that you choose. Also, we will be live. There's a survey that's up on the front of the site. So please take that as well. And we will be live streaming three events from the DL MOOC conference coming up on Wednesday, the next Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. So check the website for any and all information on that. Without further ado, I will mute my camera and I'll turn it over to our two student facilitators. And we're really looking forward to hearing from all of you guys. We do have a pretty full panel, so I won't take any more time. So Trey, Paris, the show is yours. All right, thanks. Hi, I'm Paris and this is Trey. So we'll be facilitating tonight and we have a bunch of students. So this is really cool. I go to High Tech High North County and so does Trey. We're both in 11th grade and we're really excited to be here and talk about deeper learning and just what students think about school. So, yeah, Trey. Yeah, so Paris said it really well. We are both from High Tech High North County. We are both juniors and we have a whole bunch of high schoolers from a bunch of places. Some actually from our school, High Tech High, and some other school. So we're going to go down the line and introduce ourselves. Yep, so real quick, the schools we have tonight at High Tech High North County, Pink Meets, City Arts and Tech, and International Community High School. So let's go with Erisbeth. She's going to talk about herself a little bit. Okay, my name is Elizabeth Pavia. I'm a junior and I go to International Community High School in the Bronx, New York. Thanks, Erisbeth. Okay, how about you, Miranda? Hi, I'm Miranda. I'm an eighth grader at High Tech Middle Chula Vista and I'm excited to be here. Thanks, Christian. Hi, Paris. My name is Christian Poulstra. I go to Pinkney New Technology High School in Pinkney, Michigan, and I'm a senior. Great. How about Carlos? Hi there, I'm Carlos Montajano and I go to City Arts and Tech. I'm a senior this year. Gaby and Elizabeth. Hi, my name is Elizabeth. I'm a 11th grader at High Tech High North County. Hi, I'm Gaby. I'm also a junior and I also go to High Tech High North County along with Eris and Trey and Elizabeth. How are you doing, Jake? I'm doing good. Along with Christian, I go to Pinkney New Tech High School and I am a senior. Great, thanks. Jessica, last but not least. Hi, I'm Jessica. I'm a junior at High Tech High North County. Cool, thanks. OK, so let's just jump right in. Our first question is all about deeper learning. So deeper learning means a lot to different people all about it. So also, since we're from different schools, it'll be interesting to hear what it means to us. Trey, what is deeper learning to you? You know, to be honest, deeper learning means a whole bunch of different people, as you said. But I'd say to me, there's a difference between deeper learning and surface learning. Surface learning is where you learn the difference between deep learning and deep learning. How can you display that in the world? How can you apply that to the world and put it in a large place for you? OK, deeper learning. Basically, I think about project learning. So again, not the surface level, kind of more using your knowledge as just using it, actually using it while you're learning it, rather than just learning it from your head and then giving it to the nose right away. Yeah, so, Eris Beth, what does project learning mean, or sorry, deeper learning mean to you? For me, this means to have the curiosity to learn something that you are really passionate about. Cool, that's a good answer. How about Gaby and Elizabeth? So, deeper learning to me just has a lot to do with in-depth learning. And I kind of like to think of it as instead of learning a bunch of different subjects, like just surface level learning, you take one and you just learn about it for a lot more time and you go way deeper into it. So like I said, instead of covering a lot of different topics, like just going maybe into one or two topics, but learning a lot about those topics. Like instead of learning just a little bit about a bunch of topics. And then also, deeper learning to me is like learning how to apply those topics that you go deeper into, like into the real world and like I said, learning more in-depth. Yeah, I definitely agree with Gaby. Deeper learning for me, since I've been in that high-tech high system for such a long time, one thing that I've realized that we do a lot is for deeper learning, we don't like only research on computers, but we go out there, we go to different museums and we look up and we like look up different things and kind of get different perspectives on each topic that we're learning so we can have a greater understanding of it. That's good. So, Christian, Jake, do you guys have anything? Because I know that your school might not do as much with deeper learning or it might look different. What do you guys think? Yeah, I think when I think of deeper learning to us, it's always been like project-based and I think that's the biggest thing for me that I actually get to take a project and actually create something with it or at least apply it to the real world, whereas in non-deeper learning, it's just kind of like worksheets that don't really affect the real world and I think that's the biggest difference for me. It's something that I can apply to life and later on I can look back and be like, hey, I remember doing this back in school when we got together as a group and worked on a project and created something. Yeah, I definitely agree with that, Jake. One of the things that I really like about Pinkney New Tech, that we really do uniquely and that really applies to deeper learning, excuse me, is that we're constantly involved with our community. We're constantly trying to solve problems and we're constantly applying what we're learning in class to the real world. So here's a question from the DL MOOC. What makes your school experience deeper? And I think that's Carlos. So what makes my school experience deep is that we tend to contextualize our learning. So I remember earlier today in Pre-Calculus, actually we were talking about waves and how they work in our classroom and outside of the classroom. There's a bunch of psychomath involved in calculus. And so that's definitely been a way to contextualize it is to bring it back together with waves. And it's been a lot of the case in a lot of classes that have taken here at CAHT. You know, we've had more context than your average school. And that's really made my education deeper. You guys think it works better, project facing me? Brilliant. Yeah, I think it really does work better because me as an eighth grader, I've been in the high tech system since sixth grade. I think it's kind of helped me better because, I mean, in public schools that aren't really project-based learning, you learn things, but most of the time you learn things that you're not really going to use when you're an adult. And in project-based learning, you kind of learn things that really help you in life when you have a job. I think that's what makes it like a deeper learning environment. I totally agree. Let's see. Gabby, did you have something to say? Yes. So for me, what makes my school experience like so much deeper is the relationship that I have with my schoolmates and my peers and also my teachers. Like, so for our team this year, we did a lot of team builders at the beginning of the year to just like little ice breakers and getting to know everyone and just building like a really strong community makes my school experience so much stronger. And I went to Carlsbad High School, which is like a public school. And the teachers barely even knew my name in here. I know all my teachers really well. And I have like a good relationship with all of my teachers. And I'm not afraid to ask them questions. And it's just like it just it feels good to be able to ask my teachers anything and not like be scared to talk to them or anything. So I know those things. Not like they see that everything you're just having on just having like a really close relationship with all students. I think it's like just great. So you can like know everything that they're really saying and kind of feed off of that. And if Jessica gets something to say. Yeah. So what I think is really interesting is that when I say that I go to high tech high people always ask me if that means that we like build robots or use computers a lot for everything we do. And my answer is always that it's not that we are doing things with computers necessarily. It's that we the way we learn is high tech. The way we learn is more is far different than normal schools. And so it's there's no textbooks at our school. We have tests, but our school doesn't revolve around that. And so that's what I think is really important about our school is that we are high tech, not in technology necessarily, but in our way of thinking and our deeper learning. I have a question. I didn't write this down on the screen. But maybe think you guys think it's hard to face learning and computer learning. How do you do on this kind of guys testing because personally, I think that I would like to know a little more of the facts. But I don't think they're helpful in the long term. But yeah, I would just love to know more about that. So I'll say the question one more time. What do you guys think about standardized testing with deeper learning and find that it's, you know, that it's harder than your standardized tests or just the same? Jessica, do you have something to say about that? Yeah. So with that, I kind of agree with you that it would be great to I feel like sometimes I do feel behind in my schoolwork because of the fact that we're not studying all the time for the S&Ps, which is what you need to get into college, I think. But we're learning so much more than that. And we do learn a lot of content here. But we do it while we're learning important life schools like group work and cooperation and all kinds of other great things that you guys are learning through this MOOC. So I do think it's important to study for tests such as the SAT, but I also think it's important to learn things the way that you do learn through deeper learning. Carlos, you got something to say? Yeah. So how do we do it here at City Arts and Tech? So since we practice deeper learning for the most part, we actually take about maybe a week off, not a week off, but a week to practice standardized testing to be able to ensure that our students' scores don't fall because deeper learning definitely takes a different path from standard learning. And so we have to kind of get back into the groove of learning how to do the standardized tests for about maybe a week or so before the actual tests arrive. So we do have test-taking strategies that we learn. And that's definitely a plus side to deeper learning. I think a great example for this is at my old elementary school, I was about in fourth or fifth grade, and all that really mattered to them was test, test, test after test. And to me, they even gave us packets to prepare for the test over winter break when that time is meant to spend time with your families and doing things that really give you a break from school. And they would give us tests, even real tests, to prepare us for the actual tests. And honestly, at the high-tech schools, they don't really, I don't understand that they don't matter, but they don't matter as much as public schools because really they just kind of focus on the content questions which are, what are you gonna need in life? Like, what do you wanna be when you grow up and are an adult and what are you gonna need for that? And Christian, you had a point? Yeah, I just wanted to say, it was really interesting when I was a junior in Michigan, at least we take the ACT. So it was interesting to find out that the new tech students actually performed better on the ACT than the more traditional high school students. But hopping off of what Miranda said, I agree, like within our new tech, we don't really focus on tests as much as we do really understanding the content and applying it to issues that matter today. Great, that's great. Iris Beth? Yeah, I think that these tests are important because this is like a challenge that we the students have. And this is an opportunity to show that we really know the material in our classes. So it sounds like really project-based learning is beneficial for your whole life. And then standardized testing will have to work a little extra harder to make sure we're on time with that. But in the long run, I think deeper learning and it sounds like you guys might think deeper learning is more beneficial for a student. So I've got a question for the panel. Is what environment would you say you learned best in? I would say that I learned an environment best with other people. So like the way I learned is I like to collaborate productively with other students. That's the best way I learned because we get to build off of each other's thoughts and grow into something a little greater. And so that's definitely how I learned better. And I think one of the big things about that I really like about new tech is that it's kind of, it kind of lets you be free. You don't, I mean you have a deadline obviously, but you have a couple weeks where you can do whatever. So you can split one week for research and one week for putting everything together. It'd be two weeks for research and another week for putting something together. And it gives you that freedom and really helps you with time management and learning how to budget everything up and split things up in a group. I think that's probably one of my favorite parts of new tech is that you have that freedom and I think that's why I learned best when I have that ability to work how I want to at my pace. Great, great. And Miranda, do you have something to say? Yeah, I think a place that I learned of us is me being like a kinesthetic learner. I learned best in an environment that's really hands-on and I found that throughout my school years, I learned best in a place where we're actually doing projects, we're using not really our minds, but more like we're relying on our peers to kind of help us through it. In my old school, that was really just you rely on yourself and you have to do everything by yourself. But at high tech, I really rely on my classmates and they rely on me. So it kind of gives us a sense of community. Right, and you're all learning together so that's a perfect way to learn this together. Gabby and Elizabeth? To add on to Miranda's point, yeah, it's really easy for me to work on a hands-on environment. It just makes me feel more connected with the project and topic that I'm learning. Also an environment that's not judgmental as well as like a supportive environment, like a lot of teachers helping you and your peers helping you, which makes everything 10 times easier and more understandable, I think. Yeah, and just like Elizabeth said, like it makes it so much easier to learn when you feel safe and like you feel comfortable in your environment and you're open to sharing things. Jessica? Yeah, so going off of basically what Elizabeth and Gabby said, right now at high tech, North County at least we're doing a thing called intersession, which I am currently in. And it's really important in a group to feel safe, like you're in a safe environment because I feel like your best work happens or at least you can share your best work when you're with people that you feel safe around, not necessarily safe like physically, but safe where you know that they're not gonna judge you. And I think that that's something that is really hard for a teacher to fix or control because they can't really control whether or not a student is gonna judge someone else. So I think that's something that maybe if you guys wanna comment on or think about, that's something that I think is really important is being in a safe environment where there's no judging because that's something that produces the best work. Elizabeth, did you have something to say on that? Yeah, for me it's really important to be in a place where people are at the same level as me. For example, in my school, we all are immigrants that have less than four years in this country. So all of us are learning English in the same levels. So that makes us a strong community because each other helps, all of us help each other to learn. So yeah. That's wonderful. So here's a follow-up question. So you guys were talking about safe environments and good environments at a school, but how do you cultivate that with teachers, Gabby? Yeah, so something we do here at High Tech High before we're about to have a discussion or where we feel like people need to feel safe around each other is we set norms. And so norms are things where we just kind of put up a few environmental rules that everyone can follow. So for example, a norm would be maybe like respect or like share the air and like respect is kind of self-explanatory, but share the air would be like, make sure you give other people chances to talk or and then another one could be maybe like be polite or like things like that or like maybe like don't judge other people. And so when you set up norms and you write them down on the whiteboard, it kind of gives people a reminder to like, you know, like follow the norm. So that's something we use a lot here at High Tech High like very frequently. Yeah, that's great. Miranda, do you have a point? Yeah. I remember when I first started at High Tech, me and my group of friends were all really, really quiet. But as the years went on, we've learned how to cultivate a really great environment that we feel safe to ask questions and ask for help because at the end of the day, you do need that to like have a better learning environment to learn more. And even one of my friends right now, she still is quiet, but like we as a class encourage her to go. So like we'll call out her name and say, well, what do you think about this? You know? Great. Jake, how about you? And one thing we do here at Pinkney is we have something called like a collaboration day. And that's a day where we don't work within our classes on our classwork. Instead, we all work as one individual in New Tech. And we usually do some kind of big project. Two years ago, we did a peace garden outside. So we all went outside and we built ourselves a garden. So some kind of retreat for anyone that ever wanted to go. And this kind of nice ends up the school. And last year we went around and we painted all of the hallways in New Tech. So when you walk around the school, New Tech will stand out because you have these big posters, you have these big paintings that say New Tech achievements and they'll have pictures of the students themselves and we painted them on the walls. And it's just kind of fun and it helps kind of bring the community together. So all of New Tech really knows each other and gets to spend time with each other. Yeah, that's great. So do you see other like other high schools could maybe introduce those type of days and it might be a better time? Oh yeah, definitely. I think Collaboration Day is one of the probably the finest days of the year because it doesn't feel like a school day really because you're not working on schoolwork. You're just hanging out with your friends, working on a project. And at the end of the day, you get to look back at your work and say, wow, we really have really accomplished something here. So that's actually a cool thing about New Tech. That was great. Kind of going off that. Is there something maybe similar or something you guys would like to kind of share about your school that really kind of stands out? Maybe it's kind of in terms of connection, but the legacy of this school does that stands out as an important thing. An important day, an important day. So following up on what Jake was saying, we actually started a tradition here at CAT, called the Beautification Day. We started it this year actually. And so what Beautification Day was, students showed up on a day on a school day and we actually remodeled the bathrooms, both the boys and the girls bathrooms. And we added new decorations to the black top we have as well. And so you know, it was students like collaborating together to make the school a much more beautiful place. And it was really great to see students come out and do that work because it's something we've never done before. And so that was a great experience. Yeah, that's great. Miranda? Yeah, I think one thing that's really cool about our school is that we do this thing called advisory Olympics and it's once every school year. And an advisory is basically a group of students, sixth, seventh and eighth grade. We all, we have a park located near our school. So we all walk to the park and then we have different team building exercises. Like we'll do obstacle courses, some of them are mental, some of them are physical and it's just a great way to bond with your whole school because at the end of the day that's how you have like a great community. Like I could name every single person that walks by me at my school. It's really cool. Okay, cool. I have a real quick question for you Miranda. So I know that we have, we have advisory Olympics too and a lot of us kids, we kind of like, oh, we have to do that today. You know, how do you get, how does the school get the students pumped up for that and not think of it as, you know, like just another thing that we have to do? Well really there are some students that really don't want to participate but it's just something that like your advisor is like, okay, we're counting on you. Like you guys got to help us. And sometimes like they don't want to participate so maybe they'll just sit out but they do like contribute by cheering on their team. And really it's just a group effort. Mm-hmm. Gabby, do you have something to say on that? Yeah, so just a way that we create culture here at Hightakai North County is by like, when we do big projects, we create lasting products. So we talked about this with Ms. Shawnee and Mr. Leader, but we like to, so like let's say we create a bunch of art pieces on campuses, like when we do projects, we like to hang up the art pieces like in the hallways of our school. Like so everyone can see them every day and when visitors walk by, like they walk by them every day and everyone's reminded of like the projects that we have completed. So our school is just like covered in like projects that people have done in the past and it's really cool to just walk around and be able to see art like all over the walls. Yeah, and another thing that our school does, I'm not sure if all other Hightakais do this but it's like a peace day which is kind of just one day out of the year where we have different facilitators and they actually have it as like community service, right? And basically, we just kind of all talk, there's different discussions about kind of like what's going on at our school, how you feel about things. It can also be like your own personal life too if you'd like to share anyone and it's just kind of like a big icebreaker and it's people from all different grades so everyone else can connect, not only with people in your grade but others as well and different ages. Erisbeth, do you have anything that you do at your school that stands out? Yeah, well, just as I said before, my school is international so all the students are from different, so many different places from all around the world. An example is Yemen, Bangladesh, me, myself, Mexico, Africa, et cetera. So we actually build culture every single day because we learn about each other every day like the backgrounds of each one and also in important dates, we used to celebrate the dates from different countries. For example, November 2, that is the El Dia de los Muertos in English is the Day of the Dead. We celebrate this in Mexico so in my school we do the same kind of things that in Mexico we will do. So yeah, this is pretty cool. So it seems like you guys are taking pieces of yourself and bringing it as a whole and kind of mixing it all together. That sounds like that. Yeah. Yeah, I want to go there. You should. Jessica, do you have something to say? Yeah, so quickly going off of what Elizabeth said about Day of Peace, because that's another day kind of like Paris said about advisory Olympics, if not a little bit more so than where kids are like, I don't want to do that. I'm going to leave school early. But like the kids that do stay, I feel like they really get something from that and that's going back to the fact that it's hard for teachers to facilitate how kids feel about things like that. But I think that it really is what kids make of it. So if we can get that point across to kids then that'll be really important because if kids go into it feeling like they're not going to have fun then they definitely aren't going to have fun. They're not going to get anything from it. They're just going to space out. But if kids go into it really excited and wanting to share and wanting to make it a good experience and that's the only real way that it's going to be that way, if that makes any sense. Yeah, it makes no sense. We actually have a new question. Which is how do you think teachers can be engaging? And what are your favorite type of, or like when were your teachers really engaging with what lessons were they learning about? Like do you mean specifically at our school or? Or past schools. Or just pretty much if you maybe had a teacher that you don't think is engaging what would they have done to be more engaging? I think one thing definitely our teachers do at CAT is to engage students, especially Shire students is what they call cold calling. So if the Shire student is just kind of like turning their head away, that teacher makes sure to call on them and let them know that we want your opinion, we want your input as well. Because I know everyone's equal in the classroom and that's something CAT does to encourage that sort of culture in that classroom. Do you think that ever maybe stresses out some kids who don't need to call on them? Definitely sometimes, but there are kids who also do happen to talk or come forward a lot, who also encourage the students who are more shy and laid back. So it's also a community of students that help each other out as well when that sort of thing happens. That's great, yeah. How about Gaby? Yeah, so just for an example, Dr. Patton, he's my humanities teacher of my junior year so I have him this year. And what I really like about him is he's honest and he treats us like we're adults. When teachers talk to us like we are adults and we are intelligent and we feel intelligent and it's so much more engaging to listen to them when they talk to us like we're adults. And also one of his lessons that he did, we tried out a new experiment like a few weeks ago and we were trying to do outside reading and writing so we would go outside of the classroom and go find some grass or a tree to sit next to and then we would just sit there and free write for an hour and it was really fun and I like it when we are taken out of the classroom to do lessons, because it just makes it so much more interesting and it's a nice change of environment from the regular classroom every day. Yeah, kind of going off of Gaby as well. For myself, I just really love it when teachers not only talk to me about what we're learning in class but feel like an interest in me and my personal life as well or make connections like, I don't know anything simple from books to movies or anything like that, it makes you feel more connected with the teacher and it makes you wanna listen to them more. Right, so it sounds like a change in environment is important when the teacher connects to you personally and also when they treat you like an adult are pretty main topics. Yeah, great. Christine, do you have something to say? Yeah, definitely. A really common thing in New Tech is we're always engaging with each other. The teachers are constantly talking about their lives and what's new with them and it's always nice to hear about how teachers have problems. Because too often we think of teachers as these abstract species that just teach us all day and don't really do anything else but when you really learn about them on a human level it really helps you to learn from them. And not only that but one of my favorite teachers was Mrs. Trosen for my junior year. I had her for AP biology and then sophomore year regular biology and she would constantly challenge us to think, you know, why did this happen? She would constantly push us academically. So I think it really comes from teachers wanting you to grow and foster and really incorporate the project-based learning mentality into the school curriculum. That's great. I noticed I totally forgot about this too but project-based learning, a lot of it is asking why. Like why you're doing this, finding out for yourself and also like just the importance of it, knowing that makes you wanna learn better, I think. Yeah, definitely. We're gonna go to Jessica on a point and then we actually have a question from the audience. Awesome. So in the eighth grade, and I think you guys all know Mr. Gallagher, he opened it, I had him as a math teacher which was awesome. And so one thing that is super important for me as far as teachers go and having interactions with teachers is when they're excited about projects, when they're excited about school, because if, sorry, if they're not excited about school, then how am I supposed to be excited about school? Because I feel like if they're teaching something that they're not excited about, it's harder for me to get excited. And with the eighth grade in Mr. Gallagher's class, we built hovercrafts, which was amazing and awesome. And he was excited about the project because we were building hovercrafts, which is awesome. So all the kids were excited about it. So I was excited about it, which is basically the domino effect, which is something that teachers should definitely use as this idea that if they're excited, kids are excited, which means that everyone's excited. And also just this idea of originality in projects where it's not something that you do every day. It's not something to say that you can't go around and be like, everyone has built a hovercraft. Like, not really. That's something that's really special and that's what makes it stick out in my mind. So that's really important. And we actually have a question from the audience. But first, I just kind of wanted to tie it back to Carlos, who I think I believe went first in that cold call, which we actually have a teacher with support, and she's similar to Bill of Assignments. And I think it's great. Definitely need one, if you do assignment and learn the information when she calls on you, but she does engage and engage all those people who usually wouldn't talk and do the conversation. And I love people who we hear so many from us. Normally wouldn't hear. But anyways, we're gonna move on to a question from the audience, which is, how do you think your experience with project-based learning would improve your choice of college or whatever you happen to do after high school? So I think project-based learning, it really made me realize how much I like getting my hands involved and really creating actual things like making tangible items that I can really, especially if it affects like my community around me. And so when I was looking at colleges, my first choice was of course U of M and I was looking at their engineering program and I'm looking at the things that they're building and I'm like, I wanna do this. I wanna build a rocket. I wanna build a submarine. I wanna build these huge things that they create in college. And so I think U of M was the clear choice for me because I looked at their engineering department and I saw that they were building. I mean, they have rockets that go in the space. That's something I wanna build. And so for me, project-based learning really showed me how much I like getting involved and really creating something. And that's why I chose this thing. Carlos? For me, project-based learning has been such a great experience at CAT. It really brings the community together and for me, it's influenced my choice to go to college. That's either UC Berkeley or University of California, Santa Cruz. More so Santa Cruz because it's a small learning environment where it's even more further, like separated into 10 small colleges where everyone learns in a small scale. And definitely there's gonna be projects in college and I'm gonna wanna learn in a small environment with other students who also understand the material or not even necessarily understand the material. So like everyone can get a chance to chip in to what they're thinking about, what they're talking about. Right, great. Miranda, did you have something to say to Adon? Yeah, I think, I mean, I am only in eighth grade so college is a bit long away. But I do think about it. Sometimes I have always really enjoyed talking in front of people and having like an audience and I really like kind of like inspiring people to like maybe use their voice a little bit more. And I think that's really influence me to kind of wanna become an actress because I've always loved to talk in front of people be kind of like a performer. We'll watch out for your next movie. And Miranda, what you were saying, I know Hi Tech High up here doing a lot of college stuff in your career. So it's never too early to start. Now it's coming so scary so quick. Yeah, exactly, and time will fly. You'll just, we'll be there before you know it. But anyways, I do have something to say. Yes, you can. Oh, sorry, I couldn't hear you. Okay, yeah, I did have something to say. So in biology, particularly Ms. Jesse's class, we got to choose, or we got to choose for a semester some disease that we were passionate about, which for me was a stick fibrosis because my cousin has a stick fibrosis. It's like a life-threatening disease. And with that, I think it's really important to find something that kids are passionate about. It's really important to let them have choice, which was a topic on a move before, which was student choice, student voice, switch that. But so with personalizing projects, it's really important because with our honors project in biology, we got to pick a book that we could read on any kind of biotopic, which I'm really interested in psychology, which is what I wanna major in in college. And so I picked a psychology book. And since then, I really haven't stopped thinking about psychology. So it's really important to let people explore what they want to explore so that they are able to find something that they're passionate about. And that's what's really helped me decide what I want to major in in college because that was previously really scary for me. That's a wonderful answer. Erys Bess, so we got a question. Let's see. Has your school helped you think about college? Do you wanna answer that? Yeah, well in my school, they provide two kind of classes. One is internship and advisory. In advisory, we used to learn about what college requirements are. And in internship, we find some, we apply for places that we are interested in. For example, I just started my internship two weeks ago. And because I want to be a journalist, I was co-located in a place that is called BronzeNet Television where I can learn about different jobs that the journalists cast and stuff like that. So yeah. Are you interested in it as you're going along? Is it just really exciting? Yeah, this is exciting for me, yeah. That's awesome. I hope you have really like a fun time as you continue with that. That's great. Oh, thank you so much. I hope so. Yeah. So we have some more questions that will just move along. So you guys were talking about kind of hands-on projects are better for you guys. So we were wondering when your teachers are giving you a project, how hands-on did it like kind of connect kind of not. But so when your teachers are, when they're really taking hold of the project a lot and they're kind of putting a lot of different directions on it, is that better? Is it better when they give you kind of like, go free, run wild with this project? For most of sure. That's what I was trying to say. Yeah. Does anybody have an answer to that one? I have an answer. I think I've always liked having like a more structured project because it kind of just gives me like more of an idea of what like I'm supposed to be doing. Just a couple of months ago we did an art project and it was kind of just like, oh, just run wild with it. Do whatever you want and a lot of my classmates just had a lot of trouble with it because they're like, okay, what should I do? I need like the teacher's help and the teacher's just like, I don't even want to like influence what you want to do. Just go with it. So I think structured projects works a lot better for me. Anyway. Yeah, do you have something to say? Actually for me, I think, I remember as a freshman, I think that's how a lot of the projects were. But over the years, as I've kind of grown into a new tech program and learned a lot more about how I work and how to manage my time and stuff like that, almost all the projects I've had this year have been really open and our teacher will pretty much just say, here's, just give me a sentence, that's just a question and they'll give you three weeks to work on it and you can take it however you want. And I think I've really come to really like that freedom actually. I think at younger, I couldn't really handle it, but now as a senior I think I've learned enough to know how to manage my time and what I have to do and I really enjoy that freedom. Really nice. Great. Appreciate listening to that. Yeah, like Jake, I mean we've had a lot more liberal projects recently and I've really enjoyed it. Especially this year, I had the opportunity to really develop my, like AP biology skills and look at how salt affects some of the roads here in Pinkney, Michigan because we get a lot of snow up here. So it's really been fun learning about things that I want to learn about and kind of applying it to things that I find interesting. You know, you can take any concept really and somehow apply it to what you want. Great, good. Let's have Gabby or Elizabeth? Yeah, so for me I like some sense of direction but then again, some freedom. The problem I've had in the past, I've kind of had both ways. I've kind of had a project where there's like too much direction, no like really room to do what I kind of want and then too much freedom to a point where you're not really like understanding the project and I think that's a problem that sometimes happens here is like maybe if there's too much freedom, kids just kind of do what they want and just kind of like ends up a mess and there's like a, like it doesn't really have anything to do with the project but for me, some sense of direction like helps me but then again, some sense of freedom. Maybe for like example, if you're doing a topic, you could do like any type of visual you want. Kind of as an example I guess. Yeah, yeah, I agree with Elizabeth and something that helps with that, like just to find the perfect balance between like direction and freedom or what we do at our school or our benchmarks and so like we're given a lot of freedom with what we want to do but we have to meet certain dates, you know, like so like let's say you have to have 50% of your project by this time or you have to be done with your visual piece by this date and then have the whole thing finished by this date and so like benchmarks just kind of help the students like check in with the teacher and make sure that everyone's on the right track and so those help a lot. Yeah, so it sounds like structure is good but also more of like for the younger students and as you get older, kind of like take care of the teaching, take your hands off a little more but still we need a little bit of hand holding as we get older but yeah, that sounds great. Jessica, did you have something to say? Yeah, so I do like everyone else said, I think it's important to have a mixture of both things and when you're younger, I think it's really important to have structure in almost all of your projects because you are being taught how to learn, how to study, how to do all these things for the future. However, like Jake said, as you get older, it's really important to like kind of free the reins, no more hand holding, like let students figure out how to do things for themselves and with that, like Elizabeth said, structure is also really important because project-based learning and deeper learning is a lot about preparing for the future outside of testing and outside of college even. A lot of times in jobs, they're not gonna be like, oh, do whatever you want, they're gonna give you something to do and you're gonna have to do it like that, how they want it because you're working for them. So it's really important to be able to do something structured like your teacher wants it but it's also really important to be able to work for yourself and to be able to come up with your own ideas and follow through with them. Yeah. Great. And then, Carlos? Similar to how Jake was saying, Kat, we started out with quite a bit of hand holding actually for the first two years since we separated at school into lower and upper division. Lower division being ninth and 10th grade and then upper being 11th and 12th. So while that did happen, once we reached 11th and 12th grade, that hand holding was much, much more reduced. The structure was a little more free for the students to choose but the students actually had a little bit of struggle like a jesting that after about 11th grade into 12th grade, a lot of students got used to the whole that okay, there's not gonna be as much structure as there was before. And so now we do pretty okay. One class that really pops to mind with the free structure is my AP government class actually. We do research projects and we have to do our own research. We have to find our own sources. And so it's been really great because I know the less hand holding there is, the smoother the transition is gonna be into college. That's great, yeah. So it's kind of letting us learn the responsibility and kind of throwing it at us a little bit. So I've actually got a new question for the panel kind of going off the structure in teachers. What are the characteristics of a teacher? Anyone can answer. Sorry about that, the answer, the question was a little hard to hear. One more time, I don't know if you guys could hear me. Sorry, some technical difficulties. What are good characteristics in a teacher? I think the most important one is that they really care about what you learn and they really care not only about what you learn, but actually your future. I know my English teacher Mr. Uzzias. As far as learning the content, we do learn the content but what I really love about him is that he'll spend 20 minutes talking to you about life and getting ready for college. And if you have a question about, hey, what are your thoughts on this for my college essay? You'll be like, okay, let's run it through and it'll go down line by line for your essay and help you with it. And then when you're trying to decide what you wanna do for college, you'll be like, all right, let's take a look at what your skills are and let's make a decision. And I think it's that personal connection that a teacher makes with a student that I really appreciate because it really shows they care. I even have one of my teachers actually go on my way. I didn't even ask him when I was applying to U of M. He's like, hey, here are some options for when you apply to U of M. Do you need me to write a letter of recommendation for you? And I hadn't even asked him. I'm like, oh, this is great. I really appreciate you going out of your way, taking your own time for me, just for me. And I think it's that connection that I really appreciate and a good teacher. Yeah, it makes you feel valued and important. Yeah, that's great. How about you, Carlos? Two characteristics that really make a great teacher. First and foremost is passion. The teacher definitely needs to have some passion for both the students and the subject of teaching. If not, it'll make for a boring class for both the students and the teacher. And the second is flexibility because students are not gonna be all at the same level. Some students are gonna have a little more easier time with the material and then other students are gonna struggle a little more. And being able to be flexible with both kinds of students is something that a teacher really means in order to be successful in the classroom. I love that. How about you, Christian? Yeah, definitely jumping off of what Carlos said. There's been some times in class where I'm like, I have no clue what's going on and I don't understand any of the ideas and it's that fear of not wanting to ask the teacher that really doesn't help a good learning environment. But when you're in a new tech class and you're constantly collaborating, you don't have that fear and you can say to your teacher, hey, I really don't get this, Mr. Ozias, can you please clarify? Or hey, can you help me with this essay? One of the things I love about Mr. Ozias is that he's constantly understanding of the current situation. He understands that we have six other classes in the day and it's always nice to know that he knows what the average high schooler is going through and he doesn't constantly make you turn in assignments when they're not 100% to your ability. Yeah, that's great. I hope he's watching that because you just had a lot of nice things about him. Yeah. Here's Beth. Yeah, I strongly agree with Carlos. I think a teacher must be flexible because especially in my school, we all are from different places. So we have different perspectives about everything, almost. So they need to know how to treat each other. Like each student is different. So each student needs different things from the teacher. Mm-hmm. All right, I have something to say. So one thing that is probably the most important thing for me, for a teacher besides passion, which I already talked about, is the fact that my teachers want me to succeed. They want to see me do well. A really good example is my English teacher, Ms. Clark. She's constantly wanting to help me out. She's constantly wanting to help all of her students out, which is incredible because we have so many students and she's still there for all of them. And her, I mean, she has tests that are known for being really hard, but she's always there. Like she constantly is telling us, I want you to succeed, come after school, I'll help you. Do you have any questions? Here's a study guide going over everything you need to know. Just teachers that are always there to help you. That you know they want you to succeed. That makes me want to succeed more. And they're always there to help me out. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, it's super nice when you have the connections with the teachers. I keep noticing you guys pull that up. The passion from the teachers and that you can assume that they want it, like, or I mean the teacher really wants to help you. That's always really important. Great. Yeah. Okay, and then we have kind of one last question we're kind of nearing in at our end. But one question we have for you guys is, what was one thing you would say to your teachers or your educators? And we also, oh Gabby, one thing. Two, no, what's going on? Okay, yeah. So one thing I could say, I think everyone could agree to this, but I think one thing I would say is thank you. And I think that a lot of people are gonna agree with me on that, but at least the teachers that I have now at High Tech High, like I know that all of us are just like so grateful for the time and effort that they put in. Like they are always available for us. And every single teacher here, I know like with confidence that I could go up to any teacher here. And like if I needed to talk to someone about something like every single teacher would be grateful and like, yeah, hey, come let's talk real quick. And every single teacher is just so open to helping and like so available. And I know that they put so much effort into all of their lessons and all of our projects. Like the teachers here just really like pour their heart and souls like into their projects. And I hope that they know that we like appreciate that. Yeah, we recognize that we appreciate it. Yeah, I'm so sorry. But the same thing going off with Gabby. I mean, teachers that I have now and the past years too that I've been at High Tech are just so great. So on top of things of keeping in touch with us, I'll email my teacher maybe like, one time I emailed my teacher at like 10 o'clock at night and they got back to me like 30 minutes later, which was just like a crazy response. And I'm just like so grateful for that. And just such availability, office hours as well. I just love it. It's great. So thank you. That's wonderful. How about you, Jake? Yeah, I think that's really the most important thing both of them, I think I can't stress enough how important it is for them to build some kind of relationship with you. I know a numerous amount of teachers I have that they'll just walk around class during work time and they'll just, they'll see what you're up to. And if you have any problems, they're always open to talk. And I think that's the key. I've had some teachers, they'll just sit at the desk, they'll hand out some, they'll hand out some worksheets and then they'll sit there. And you never really have a conversation with them. Whereas pretty much all my teachers, I can talk anything about them. I mean, we've been talking much madness for the last couple of days with them. And that's something that I can't say for a lot of the other teachers. And I think that's special about things like New Tech is that we can talk about anything because we have that personal relationship with our teachers, something that's really nice because I can turn to them for anything at any time and they'll be there. That's wonderful. So here's a question from the audience and we'd love for you guys to just keep answering all of them if you want to. So how can teachers support students who come into a class feeling like school isn't for them and who may not feel confident enough to really put their heart into a project? Gaby, you said that you have something to say to that. Yeah, so actually this is kind of what Jake was just talking about. But when teachers connect to us on a personal level, like it makes us wanna learn from them even more. So just like when we are able to understand the teacher is able to understand us just as people, it makes us so much more eager to learn and makes us so much more excited for their class. So when you connect with them as friends, like maybe not even just a student and teachers, but when you connect to them as friends, it makes it a lot easier to learn from them and when you actually know your teacher on a personal level. Miranda? Yeah, kind of adding on to what Jake said, it's just really cool to come to school and know that you have a really personal connection with your teacher and you can trust them with anything because I recently had a bit of a problem with my friends and I went to my teacher and he really helped us go through that and it's really cool when I'm talking about the question from the audience, when you have that connection with them, it's kind of a way that you could go up to them and say, well, like me and my peers were, we didn't really like this part of the project, well, can we change this and maybe go from there? Mm-hmm, that's great. How about Christian? This past year in Pinkney New Tech, we recently had our New Tech director take another job at a different school to make it easier for his family, but I would really like to thank all of the staff and all the students at New Tech Pinkney for making the transition easier. I know Mr. Jerome took the position of the previous principal, but he's really done a great job and he's really transitioned us to the point where we don't even notice the difference and although it's not really talked about much, I would just really like to say thank you to all my teachers. So you have Carlos? First off, I'd like to give thanks to our principal, Daniel Allen. He has definitely made a cat progress a lot further in the past four years than I have seen in cat before. And also our educators, thank you so much because you guys put so much time and effort into making sure that we are ready as much as we possibly can be for the future, whatever that may be. And to answer the question from the audience, actually, is that the teachers here build a community of support and make sure that students who do come into class are feeling not 100%, not feeling that there's so much up for a project to make sure that you know, to understand what's going on behind that and to better aid that student, like what can we do to help you complete this project to get started on this project? And Jessica, do you have something to say? Yeah, so to answer the audience question is that I'm a really busy person and I know a lot of people are. I have after school activities, I have friends and stuff like that. So being able to come in after school is really a tricky thing, which I try to fit in, but it's really hard. And so I think that with that, it's incredible if you can connect to kids. Once you get that connection, it's really important for teachers to be available for kids, not just after school and understanding that they do have lives besides school. So my teachers are really amazing with what I would like to say to my teachers, I would like to say thank you like everyone else because you're all amazing. And at high tech, I feel, and a lot of project-based schools and deeper learning in general, it's so much harder for the teachers because it's harder to think of a project and go through with it and help kids with it than it is to assign and grade a test. It's so much more work for them and they still do it and they love it and they go through with it, they help us with it and that's what I would like to thank them for. Not saying that other teachers are lazy but that our teachers just work so hard to make sure that we learn what we need to learn for life and that, so thank you, that's what I'm saying. All right, so we are actually coming to a close. We're gonna do a final word. So if anyone has anything they'd like to kind of add on to wrap up their individual kind of panel that we've got. We're gonna start off with... Erin's Beth. What I would just say, thank you for letting me participate in this was a pleasure to meet all of you and to be here, thank you. Great to have your voice, thanks. Yeah, thank you. Miranda? Oh, I just wanna say that this was like my first time doing a Google chat and it was just really fun and I'm glad I got to be a part of this experience. Thanks for being with us. Yeah, Christian? Yeah, same with Miranda, it's my first time on Google Plus so I'm a little rough around the edges navigating the website. But I would like to thank you guys for inviting me to this student panel. It's really interesting to see the differences in new texts across the country from Michigan to California. Yeah, definitely. Great, yeah, thank you for joining us. Carlos? It's so great to see that there are other students who have a passion for doing this sort of thing and makes me happy to be a part of this. Thanks. Gabby? Yeah, yeah, I'm just really happy to be participating and to be here and I'm really grateful for my school and all the friends and all of the teachers that I have here and so I'm just really grateful. I mean, I came from a public school so I mean, I'm really happy that I found High Tech High and that I'm here still. Yeah, thank you so much for both inviting us as like our both time doing like the DL MOOC kind of session and I think it's really cool everything. Okay, I think it's really interesting being able to like not only connect with your peers and students your age, but to be able to talk to teachers is just really cool and interesting for me. It's been like a just a new thing. I really like it, so thank you. Yeah, thanks for joining you guys. Jaleek? Yeah, this is actually my first time doing the Google Hangout and so it's been pretty cool. I just kind of really like it and then it has some big actual connections with other new techs and as always, go blue. Yeah. You see all they do in the tournament. And then Jessica? Awesome, so just for a last thing, I guess, deeper learning is something that I'm really passionate about because I have been here since the seventh grade. It's taken up a lot of my life that I wouldn't trade for anything and we've thanked our teachers a lot. We thanked each other a lot, but what I really wanna do is thank the audience because you're investing your own time in learning about deeper learning, which is something that is really important because you're all, by investing your time in deeper learning, you're investing your time in your students, in yourself if you are a student, in your kids if you're a parent, if your kids if you're a teacher. It's important to thank you for investing your time in our generation. And it's important that you're listening to us students because it's one thing to listen to teachers talk about what they're doing. It's another thing to listen to us students in what we have to say because we're the ones that are learning things. So yeah, thanks everyone that's watching. That's a wonderful wrap up. We'll go ahead and say our final words as well. I would just like to thank first off all of you guys for being here with us in a panel. And it's so much different. I was gonna, I've been on this before, but it's so much different, but I love it. And I love seeing what everyone has to offer and all their input. So this has been a great, great experience for me. Yeah, I totally agree with everything you guys said. It was super fun. And I just, I wanna thank the teachers again because we don't think about it, but they are a huge influence on our life. We're there for six to eight hours a day. And so all the teachers that are doing a lot for us that are passionate teaching us to learn and teaching us just how to live life. Kinda it's a huge impact and it's really good. Thank you everybody for being on here and joining us taking time out of your day. It was really fun. Thank you. And then I don't know, Mr. Gallagher, do you have to make it a wrap up at all? You know, honestly you guys said everything and it's just really, it's very emotional to hear from you guys. You guys have done a fantastic job. Every one of your teachers, the only thing I would say is go back and you've mentioned so many fabulous teachers. One thing I would say is make sure you go back and tell them all the things and share that experience because it's really meaningful. You guys make the job so easy to do and you're really inspired and it's great to hear from every one of you. You guys are a really inspiration to your generation and it's great to hear from you. So thank you for all the kind words and all the thoughts and thank you to everybody else in the DL MOOC community for listening. And we hope to hear from you next year during our all student run panel with Paris and Trey, our constant facilitators. All right, bye everybody. Thank you everybody. Thank you. Bye. Bye.