 Welcome to Faces in Focus. I'm Maria Clayton, Public Information Officer for the Davis Joint Unified School District. In this episode, we'll be talking about technology in our schools. This is an exciting topic, as it has the potential to beneficially impact each and every one of our students and our whole school community. Joining us today to help lead this conversation is Marcia Bernard, Director for Instructional Technology. Marcia, welcome to Faces in Focus. Thank you. We've worked together now for the better part of one year. And in that time, I've already started to feel this great amount of energy around the issue of technology. And I think our viewers in our whole school community really have felt that too. So we have quite a bit to cover today. But before we get into all of these topics, can you take a moment and introduce yourself to our viewers? Of course. My name is Marcia Bernard. I am new back to the Davis Joint Unified School District this year. I was here for 10 years as a reading specialist at Willett and went on to get my administrative credentials and became a principal at a large K-8 in Sacramento. And am returning this year in 1415 back to the Davis Joint Unified as the Director of Instructional Technology. And we're happy to have you. So in order to kind of create the vision of what we want to cover today in this segment, I just want to go over four main things that we'll be talking about. First, I'd like to have you give us a sense of what technology really looks like in Davis Joint Unified. Second, and more specifically, what exactly are teachers and students using in the classroom in the ways of technology? And how is that impacting learning? Third, how are we as a school district working to make sure that students are safe and wise users of technology? And how are we reaching out to make sure there's equitable access for those who may not have technology at home? And lastly, we'll spend a few minutes asking questions about what's on the horizon, what's coming down the pike in terms of technology. And in order to kind of keep us on track, we've put together this quadrant poster here, which has four main topics that we'll refer to as we go along. Sounds good. OK. So I want to jump in and start with infrastructure. Infrastructure is kind of a jargony word in the world of technology. Can you explain what infrastructure is and how it specifically relates to schools? Sure. A school district's infrastructure is all the parts of the district's environment that play a role in technology operations. So that is to include the network, all of the servers, the hardware, the software, the computers, all of those processes that allow us to communicate to the internet and the outside world, which leads me to say our district, as you well know, has a local control accountability plan, a strategic plan that specifically calls for building a strong technology infrastructure to support our vision and goals. Right, and we've been hearing a lot about the LCAP, the local control accountability plan, and the strategic plan. What do you think, as part of those processes, what do you think was motivating this attention to infrastructure? I think it is that our society is becoming so much more broadly digital. Schoolwork, administrative work, all is going digital, and, as you know, communications depend highly on digital technology. The LCAP and strategic plan was developed by a group of community members, staff members, parents, and other people that realized that we are moving fast forward in a technology world, and we've got to have a strong infrastructure. And I was fortunate to be a part of that strategic plan, and sure enough, the Wi-Fi and infrastructure was a lot of the conversation. So now that this is motivating us, what are the actual steps we're taking to improve the infrastructure in our district? So we are making, first of all, the reason that we are making these changes in infrastructure is so that we can provide better reliability, better redundancy so that if the internet or email goes down, we are able to quickly and efficiently bring it back up, better backups so that we don't risk losing data now that we are working in such a more data-filled world. We are making these improvements in the infrastructure in a number of ways. We are actually moving a big chunk of our DJUSD infrastructure to the Quest Data Center in Sacramento. Quest Data Systems is a company that we have a longstanding working relationship with, and they have been a huge resource for us. And we are going to move a chunk of our infrastructure in DJUSD to the Quest Data Center, and Quest will actually own, monitor, maintain, and manage that equipment and those services for a higher monthly lease. And this monthly increase will be in lieu of us as a district purchasing and replacing expensive equipment that is failing and aging out here at the district, that we're not well-staffed to maintain and manage efficiently. So this, we're hoping, will provide some long-term cost savings, and we'll be able to operate in a much more proactive way. So it sounds like a lot of this work is being done to make sure that our internet speed is working better, that email doesn't go down. Are you feeling that those problems are going to be solved with this move? With technology today, those problems will never be fully solved. There will still be issues that arise. That's just the nature of technology, but we are hoping for fewer failures, fewer emergencies, repairs, replacements that we are going to be able, as I mentioned, to operate more proactively. So those will be significantly reduced. And will this move to the new, the move of the servers, will that change our bandwidth? Well, that in particular will not. However, we are increasing our bandwidth by nearly double as we're adding more and more devices and seeing more and more technology being used in the classrooms. So that will increase our internet speed and dependability. Yes. Great. Let's talk for a minute about Wi-Fi. What schools right now have Wi-Fi capability? So Wi-Fi was also part of that local control accountability plan and our district strategic plan that we would commit to going Wi-Fi district wide. That's not something that can happen quickly or in one instance in our case. So it is going to be happening over three phases. We are actually approaching phase two. In phase one this past summer, all school libraries in the district have Wi-Fi. All of Davis High School is complete with Wi-Fi. One to two wings at each of our large junior highs are now Wi-Fi installed, as well as the Children's Center Preschool at the Valley Oak Campus. So that was phase one, and that is all complete. And phase two begins this summer. What else is coming then? So phase two will start at the beginning of this coming summer, and we will complete installation at all of the junior highs and do a small amount of work at each of the elementary schools, probably in the special education programs. And then the following summer of, is that, 16, 17, we will complete Wi-Fi throughout the entire district, all departments, offices, school sites, and buildings. So by the summer of 2016, all of our classrooms will have Wi-Fi. Absolutely. And so with Wi-Fi, there's a need to start using the tools that are out there and the resources that are out there. We've heard a little bit about the deployment of Chromebooks in order to get students ready for spring testing that's ongoing right now. Can you talk a little bit about that deployment and how Chromebooks are working? Sure. So I actually have a Chromebook with me. Chromebooks are one way that we can put technology in the hands of students across the district. They are small, lightweight laptops. They are very durable. They have strong battery life. The battery life on one of these lasts all day long. And they live on Chromebook carts. Oh, and I think we have a picture of one of those. OK, so the Chromebook carts are portable carts that roll from classroom to classroom from building to building at the school sites. And each of the carts houses 32 to 36 of the Chromebooks. And the Chromebooks charge on the carts. And so essentially, any classroom at the school site can have a cart of laptops and students online and working. The other neat thing about the carts is that each cart has an access point which provides Wi-Fi so that if a cart presently is at an elementary school that's not installed with Wi-Fi yet, wherever the cart is in whosoever classroom the cart is being used, there is Wi-Fi access. That seems clever. So how many of these Chromebooks have been deployed out there? Good question. Currently, we have three loaded carts for each for a full classroom at each of our elementary schools that are being shared and rotated around. At each of the junior highs, there are four carts. And at Davis Senior High School, there are six loaded Chromebook carts. Yet each of our small schools being King, Davis School for Independent Studies, Fairfield, they each have eight Chromebook devices, which are on a charger at the site. OK. So just we're talking about, let's say, elementary schools just under 100 Chromebooks there. How are teachers using them? And are you seeing that the computer labs are now obsolete? The computer labs are not obsolete. They're still in full use. The Chromebooks are able to be used with all grade levels, kindergarten through 12th. We are implementing a new platform called Google Apps for Education. And that is being used on the Chromebooks for third grade through 12th grade. But kindergarten through second can still use the Chromebooks. They can log on as a guest. And they can access web-based instructional programs. Great. And you're going to talk about Google Apps for Education in a little bit. As far as the Chromebooks now that they've been deployed, are you feeling that they're being used? Are there enough to go around? So I do not feel like there are enough to go around yet. What we're hearing is that they are in high demand at each of the schools. We are working on a plan as a district to look at how we can increase those numbers and add to that inventory. And that is definitely a priority. So the teachers and the students are liking them. They love them. And we're hearing more and more and more. So I understand that we now have the Google Apps for Education. What does that mean for our kids in the class? How is this helping them with their learning? So Google Apps for Education is a hugely popular and fabulous resource that is being used in schools across the whole country. It is a free resource. And I'm going to turn to my computer here for just a second and show you. So the first thing that needs to be known is that each student and staff member in the whole district that's in third grade and up has been given a Google account so that now they can log into their Google account at school from the Chromebooks, from any device at home, from a smartphone. And when they log into their Google account, they can access the Google Apps for Education, any of their ongoing work that they're storing in their Google drives. And it's really quite amazing. But they do whenever they're in their Google accounts, wherever they are, they're still under our district filtering system, which I'll talk a little bit more about later. So I'm going to shift to my computer here just to show you. So when I or anyone goes to Google and they log in with their Google account, they will see their picture or their district name up here at the top of the screen. And you see these nine little boxes. And so the student or the teacher goes to those boxes and their Google Apps pop up. So I can here access what's called my Google Drive. I'm going to show you that really quickly. And this is what the Google Drive looks like. So when you're in your Google Drive, you will see a series of folders, documents, spreadsheets, whatever you have in your drive. For students, this is going to look like documents, slideshows, videos, whatever they've been working on at school and collaborating on with classmates and teachers, assignments they've been working on or turning in, they're all going to live in their Google Drive, which they can now access from any phone, any device, anywhere. That's the beauty of it. The other thing is, in this drive, they are able to create and share documents, Google Sheets, which is like Excel spreadsheets, Google Slides, which is exactly like PowerPoint, Google Forms, which is a surveying tool, drawings, and art. So they can use any of these Google tools and they can share them with classmates or teachers so that they can work totally collaboratively. Same thing goes for teachers who are trying to work collaboratively with their grade-level teams, et cetera. So that is only one piece. The Google Drive is only one piece of what exists in this equation. On the Chromebooks, which I showed you, not only does this capacity pop right up, but also a whole myriad of what we call educational applications, which the students can access apps in any subject. They can access keyboarding practice, science, technology, math, anyway. So there's programs built up. Lots of options. So that's just a quick overview of what Google Apps for Education is. And real quickly, the Chromebooks operate on OS, which is a Chrome operating system, which is part of Google. So the Google Apps for Education works beautifully on the Chromebooks. OK. So thank you for sharing that and showing how it all works. Now that they can access these resources, what are some of the ways that students actually are using these types of, I mean, you mentioned they could collaborate. They can make documents. They can do videos. Do you have some examples? So this is all a very new implementation. And one way that we are reaching out to staff and students to build capacity so that they can use these tools to really impact learning is through a program that we have created as part of the DTAC, which is our District Technology Advisory Committee. We created a resource called the DJUSD Chromebook Academy. And this is a website which I'll give you a glimpse of. So on any computer, you can go to Google and say DJUSD Chromebook Academy. Oops, let me get it. And it should come right up, DJUSD Chromebook Academy, Davis Joint Unified. And there it is. So this is our Chromebook Academy website. This is live and available to every teacher, every student. And the beautiful thing about this is that it is a quick and easy to follow kind of bank of resources. So what you have in the Academy is Chromebook basics, how to use and operate and work these Chromebooks. You have keyboarding, a section on keyboarding, which has the keyboarding expectations for all the grade levels, as well as a number of web-based places that students can go to practice. If you go into your particular grade level, so here is third through sixth grade, you can see that there are instant links to lessons on digital citizenship, which I think we're going to talk about in a bit, how to use Google and Google Drive, recommended apps, extensions, and add-ons, all of the Google apps that we're recommending for that age range. So the teacher can just grab them and immediately have the students using those applications. So this Chromebook Academy does all of that, as well as has a whole bank of common core resources, which is what teachers are really looking for right now. There's also a link to SBAC testing practice. So that's what the Chromebook Academy is. That is one way that we are helping teachers to be able to use these new tools. And I know you said that the Chromebook Academy was specially designed for teachers to have these resources that they're fingertips, but it looks like if anyone could peruse this website and take a look and see what's available. Absolutely. And it's a living document that we are constantly refining and adding to as we're finding out what people like. Sounds like a great resource. What about actual student work? We have a part of a video that I'd like to show. We have a fantastic science teacher at one of our element. We have many fantastic science teachers, but one by the name of Ingrid Salim. And she is at North Davis Elementary. And she has created a video because she is a huge advocate of using these Chromebooks for instruction as are an increasing number of teachers in the district. But this video really talks about the importance of integrating technology with common core, ways that new technology can improve the ability to differentiate instruction, examples of real student work samples of students using the Chromebooks to do work. The video is of a recent fourth grade project that Ms. Salim did. And I think it's about four minutes. OK. Well, let's take a look at that. So the rest of this is really about a very specific task that I did with fourth grade students. And I did it with others as well, but this is the one that I chose to document. It was around text. It's around some trade science texts that we ordered very recently. So they're brand new. And there's a lot of different topics. This was not one text for everyone. It was within the standard of life and organisms on the planet. So certainly, students got different things out of it. But because it was so many different choices, it's naturally differentiated from the very beginning. This slide you're seeing right now is the prompt that I gave students, which allowed them to either read the text on their own first and then go back and create something or to do it simultaneously. And it was about half and half the students actually were able to do that or did choose to do that. I gave them a prompt to use seven to 10 slides and to use bullet points. And we looked at a number of basically PowerPoint slides to see what was effective. And I gave them the prompt to use at least one image per slide, which also meant they had to learn how to go and get that image off the net and put it into a slideshow. So they're pretty captivated with this process. These are the texts that they had to choose from. There were a couple of others as well. And they're all around, as I said, life and organisms on the planet. And certainly what they got out of them would have been something different. However, the range of text in these selections is different. There's several different grade level text ranges. And they're very engaging. The text in them is easy to read. It's accessible. But there's also quite a lot of interesting content. So nobody was bored. Everybody was able to find something that they liked. And nobody was also so challenged that they couldn't find something they could access. So before I show you the actual examples, I'm just going to show you one per kid. The benefits of this sort of approach where you have different kinds of possible content for students to choose from or find. And an open-ended kind of project, whether that's a slideshow on technology or a video or a Prezi or an Animoto, and these are all pieces of tech that allow students to be creative and basically to pace themselves and figure out what they want to do. This is kind of the height of think-of-word differentiation can go and needs to go. And if we were able to do that, we would have a lot more happy students, content students. And students are actually learning things as they go. One of the most amazing side effects for me as a science teacher who sees students for only 40 minutes a day is that every single student did complete this, some version. And I did get things besides the slideshow. I got a couple of essays. I got a couple of notetakers. I did get one poster. And I'm not demonstrating those because I think we're real familiar with kind of those products. But students really did choose from the thing that they thought was most interesting to them. Now, in the end, this is not a substitute for the, in my case, the practices of science and the actual performance tasks that we have in our standards. But it is a way to increase literacy and engage interest and create a way to ask questions that do come all back to similar things that I want to be focusing on in the lessons. So here are some examples. And these are just the first pages of fourth grade's interpretations of that prompt. You'll notice you're not going to see a lot of bullet points. I thought that was interesting. Their minds think in terms of paragraphs, whether they're accurate or not. I did note that nobody seemed to be copying out of these texts. They really did seem to be summarizing. And some enjoyed images more than others. Some got quite a lot more content in them than others. And I'm going to go fairly quick. The point of showing these is to basically highlight that students will do different things with them. I also selected here a range. And you can't tell, I think, of students in terms of whether they have an IAP, whether they're identified as AIM. All of that is represented in here. And it's pretty hard to tell the difference. I think that you'll notice that actually most of them are quite proficient in what they've come up to and what they've actually created. And that is the end of those examples. I encourage you to continue exploring how to use technology and also just how to use differentiation in our classrooms. And thank you for watching. Well, thank you for bringing that in. And thank you to Ms. Salim for putting that together. It really kind of makes it feel real to be able to see what the students are using. And especially at such a young age to see kind of the creativity and the new tools that they're able to access. And yeah, and she's only one example. You have to know that teachers are doing these kinds of activities at all of the age ranges and all of the school sites. You could make 50 of those videos if you visited all the schools. Okay, so now as we see more and more students using technology in the classrooms and beyond. And perhaps even younger students getting exposed to technology, it kind of begs the question of what are we doing as a school district to make sure that our students are safe and wise users of technology? Can you talk a little bit about that? Sure, it is our enormous responsibility to make that happen. We want and need kids to learn how to use technology safely in school and at home. We need to teach them to be excellent digital citizens. And this is not a quick process or a one-time lesson. This is ongoing education about internet safety, responsible use, use of social media, what's okay to post, what's not okay to post, what's okay to search, what's not okay to search. And this kind of learning has to happen ongoing and over time so that they're seeing and learning and hearing it over their whole school experience. They need to understand that everything they do is creating a digital footprint that can be seen. So digital citizenship obviously is a key aspect of teaching right now and as they go through their school career, what about what the district has in place as far as protection or filters to ensure that what students are seeing when they access outside sites? Yes, so there are a whole variance of filters that are in place when there are filters in place for younger students, middle grade students, high school students, a different set of filters for staff and very sophisticated levels of equipment that not only protects our district users from going places they shouldn't go or seeing or sending things that they shouldn't but also really carefully monitors all the content so that if the, it's called Cloudlock, if Cloudlock picks up on something, we are able to narrow it down almost momentarily where it's coming from and be able to engage with that. So I feel like that piece of the safety is very well in place. Okay, well I'd like to move on to equity. This is a topic that's very important to me as I struggle with making sure that we communicate well with all of our families in the district in the ways they need to hear. We know that not every family in the district has the same technological access or connectivity at home. And I'm wondering if you can share some of the efforts being made on part of the district as under the local control accountability plan efforts in order to ensure there's equitable access for students and their families. Sure, so two things come to mind that we are presently working on. The first, I am very excited about, we have decided to take two of our school libraries, the Davis Senior High School Library and Montgomery Elementary Library and we are now extending those hours and opening them up on evenings and weekends, Tuesday and Thursdays from five to eight PM and Saturday mornings from nine to noon. And during those hours, not only are the libraries open to DJUSD students and their families, but we have Chromebooks available for students to check out and they can access their Google apps, they can access school work, they can be online in the safety of our district and parents are also welcome to either use a Chromebook or get on a desktop computer that has printing ability and they will have, as we talked about, a little bit less filtering so that they can access their bills or their email or whatever it is they would like to work on, they can access and have support from the staff in using School Loop or their school or district websites, whatever they need and they can come and enjoy those resources and that support during that time and all of the support that we have or staffing that we've put into place for both of those programs is bilingual. Great and so you said again that that's evenings and weekends, Tuesdays and Thursdays, five to eight and Saturdays from nine to 12. Yep, okay, great. And what else, you said there was something else too. So the other initiative we are piloting right now but it's going very well, it's called Internet Essentials and it's a program that is offered through Comcast. Internet Essentials is a very straightforward and simple program. We are a family in our district who has one or more children that qualifies for free and reduced lunch. They are eligible and they go through a straightforward application and our department is happy to support and help them with that application or they can do it on their own and once they get through the application, the program allows them to get a home computer. It can be a desktop or laptop, their choice for $149.99. There's to keep, no strings attached, no contracts and Comcast will also get them broadband for their home so they will have internet access for $9.99 a month. Again, month to month, no contracts, not roping families into something that maybe they can't afford. So they will have the option of a computer and internet and if they can't install the kit themselves when they sign up for the internet, then we are happy to send someone out from our department or Comcast will also come out and support with that installation. And just so I understand, the application goes straight into Comcast Essentials, it doesn't come through the school districts. Correct, we have, if you can cut to the poster that we have, it has all the information and as soon, what we're doing right now is basically walking a few of our interested families through the process just to make sure that it all goes as we think it goes and once that happens and we have them up and running and we have one already up and running, then we are gonna basically have you, Maria, blast it out to the whole community and have principals and others basically reach out to families who may benefit. Great, yeah. Well, I think it's another great resource that's coming up. Well, then that really just brings us to our final topic and that we've really covered so many interesting things that are happening for the benefits of students and teachers and really our whole community here related to technology. What can you tell us about what's coming? A big thing that's coming for that will impact school sites and community is that we have formally made a decision to proceed with moving to an electronic re-enrollment process this summer. It's very exciting, so gone will be the days that parents are filling out piles and piles and piles of paper forms for each of their four children. They will still have to register in person if they're new to the district or kindergarten parents and bring in their verifications and vaccinations and birth certificates, but once they've done the one page of registration, they will get a pin and password and be asked to log on to their parent portal and they will complete all of those district forms electronically as they do in many other aspects of life. If they do not have access or they have any kind of trouble, there will be support for them both at the school district office and at their school site offices once they open. So that's what that is. Basically, families will begin hearing about this relatively soon around the end of school and there will be a magic day, possibly July 23rd, when they will get their letters with their pins and passwords and begin that process. Great. And that's not gonna necessarily replace what people have come to know as showing up the school to get your teacher or to get your, to get- Good question, yeah. So many of the schools, yes, they will still have that special day, some of them will call it a paper list parade or a paper parade, but in order to go on that day and get your schedule or get your teacher, you'll have to have completed your electronic process and you'll have lots of instructions and time to do that and even reminders that it needs to be done. So that electronic part will be done prior, but when they go on that day, they will also do some site-specific things, PTA, yearbook, those sorts of things that are specific to their school site, those will still happen on that day as well as getting their schedules and teachers and all of that. Well, it sounds like it's gonna be a lot less work for staff, hopefully, and parents will be able to get it all done to one, yeah. Anything else? I think the other thing that comes to mind kind of ties into the electronic re-enrollment and that's what you and I have begun working on and that is leveraging text messaging for communication. Would you mind sharing about that? Well, I think as folks know, as we've begun to really work hard at communicating for urgent situations, we've been able to leverage our school messenger system for emergency messaging and that has really been done through phone calls, automatic phone calls and also through emails, but in this society, text messaging is becoming much more important and so we're hoping that with this electronic re-enrollment process, parents will be able to log into their parent portal, designate which cell phones are cell phones and which ones they would like to receive text messages for urgent situations and we will be able to get them instant information in the case of an emergency. That's what we're hoping to get to. Now, certainly as we move down the road, email may become less common. I, we see that you folks don't use email as much as maybe the parents of our district now so it may be that text messaging becomes the way we communicate in the future for all sorts of communications, but at least in the beginning, the idea is to just use it for urgent situations. We've had lots of requests for that, Maria. At the most recent LCAP forum where we had community and families there, I had parents from multiple school sites saying, can we please stop, can we please be contacted by text message and it's something we've had to say until this point, yes, we're working on it, but it looks like it's going to be a reality. Hopefully as soon as possible. So hopefully by the next year, we'll be able to make sure that in urgent situations we can contact the right folks with those. So do you have anything else that you might want to add for our viewers? I think that's enough that's going on in technology. How about if anyone has questions for you? What can, how can people contact you? If people would like to ask any kinds of questions or give feedback, they are welcome to email me directly. So I'm, if you go to our district website and go to instructional technology, you will find my contact. It is also mbernard at djusd.net. So that is one way they can call the technology office and Tara is happy to help them. Yeah. Well, thank you for spending time with us and for explaining all these wonderful things about what's happening in our schools. Thank you for having me. And thank you for joining us. If you have any questions about what you saw today, or if you have ideas about what you might want to see on a future Faces and Focus episode, please email us at communications at djusd.net. That's communications at djusd.net. Until next time.