 Welcome everyone to the Learning Loop podcast, your best source for educational insights and trends. I'm Chris, your host, and today's special guest is Kathy. Kathy's an instructional technology specialist in Northeast Independent School District in Texas. Kathy's a veteran teacher who is always on a proponent of strong educational practices. In our episode, Kathy will share how CISA is building strong digital portfolios in her district. Kathy, welcome to the show. Thank you, Chris. Glad to be here. We are so excited. Yes, we're so excited you are here to share some amazing insights into how CISA is really being positive in your schools. We'll start with a basic question. What really inspired you to start using CISA as your digital portfolio tool in your school district? I, Chris, I started, I was a, I guess one of the first dabblers way back in 2014. And I was looking, you know, teaching in a classroom and trying to be engaging and the kids were smiling and nodding and, but I just was finding like kids didn't get it, they couldn't apply the skills. And I thought, in my head, there's gotta be a way that I can put my finger in here every kid's thinking because it's hard to do in a classroom, you know, with 20-something kids in there. And so I caught wind of CISA and started using it. And it really, I really turned the corner as a teacher in my effectiveness when I started using it, particularly with the voice, the voiceover. So there was an activities available at the time, but presenting kids with opportunities to capture their thinking and then share their thinking with me, you know, through a voice recording was really powerful and helped me get to the nitty gritty of where the learning gaps were. So I knew what to do to intervene. So I was hands down sold at that point. And then of course, all the amazing developments that CISA has had in the sits then has just really leaps and bounds made the product even better and helped to, you know, with that mission, you know, but I'm coming from the lane of when I'm looking at CISA, it's fantastic that we can share with families. But the game changer for me is it impacts the teaching and learning in a classroom and helps teachers be more effective in their practice with what we're doing with students. Absolutely. And I think that lens in that perspective you have too of like, how can a tool, a technology tool or anything that a teacher is using, how can that really help them save time and be a more efficient teacher and make better decisions. And so coming from that grounding that you have as a teacher is such a positive way to push that initiative forward and push the tool forward as far as usage in your district. So I think that's amazing. Absolutely, that's why we're here is to make sure learning is happening and that's a great way to do it. Absolutely. Absolutely. If learning isn't happening, we gotta rethink something. Awesome. We'll jump into our next question here. How has CISA helped you to provide with you guys and your teachers and your classrooms and your administrators how has CISA really helped to provide more information beyond a paper, pencil, assessment or activity? What is that other information? How does that really help you as a teacher and your teachers to make better decisions like you were talking? Well, I am now out of the classroom myself and I'm supporting five elementary campuses and one of the big tasks that I do is helping them learn how to leverage CISA as a tool for monitoring student understanding and getting some insight. So a paper, pencil, assessment, you can look at as a teacher and say, okay, the student got it wrong, but you don't really have any insight on why and where their thinking was and where the gaps were. And so again, that's really how I position myself as I'm working with teachers. When we have the kids include voiceover to explain their thinking or their moving things and talking through the processes they're doing and it really opens the window to what's going on in their brains to help us. So that and also just the formative assessment features are phenomenal to give that closing a lesson I know immediately in the moment where my class is at and their understanding and I know what to do moving forward. So hugely impactful for the teaching and learning again. Absolutely. Getting to the point that you were talking to earlier is like giving the right information at the right time to help teachers to really move their learning forward. I think the holistic picture of what CESAW really provides helps to just level all those things up. It's not something that we look at and you were speaking to this little, it's not something that's an additional piece, it just really helps to capture all the pieces that are already happening in real time so that I can see that and view that as a teacher. Absolutely. And share it with families, it's very helpful as well to help families stay in the loop of where the thinking is happening. Absolutely. One of the most important parts for sure is ensuring that the families know what's happening and how it's going and how they can also contribute to that learning process as well. Absolutely. We actually have moved using a lot of like at the school-wide professional learning community when they're sitting down and data teams, they can pull up those examples and pull up those student work and student thinking to make better decisions as a whole as well. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I love that. I love how you're thinking about that at a wider angle lens too of just what's happening and what are these larger trends and how can we continue to just serve all of our students whether it's at that very high level or even at the PLC level. How do we just continue to use this information we have to serve our students best? That's awesome to hear that. Really? I wanna jump back to something that you kind of spoke to a little earlier. So can you continue to describe a situation where CISA in the CISA Journal specifically was just really beneficial for a teacher or for a classroom? Can you have any testimonies around that and just how that really contributed to the learning and that experience for that specific classroom? I think I can't speak enough. I mean, there's just a plethora of ways that it has been incredibly impactful. So the organization of using the foldering to create basically digital notebooks over time that we can filter down and look at writing progress over time, things like that. The ability to broaden the audience of student work is huge. So, and that's been a real game changer and kind of passion project of mine and doing a lot of work with kids working in Canver, kids working in Google Slides and publishing. They're working sort of hard for their teachers and their classmates that are gonna see it in CISA, but using the blog feature and connecting blogs we're really broad in the audience that's gonna see that student work, which is really lighting a fire under students to work a little harder and invest more effort. So I've seen just leaps and bounds of progress and using it in that way. So hugely impactful. Yeah, absolutely. Getting past that just, I'm gonna say regular audience and getting to a really authentic audience. One who's unique that specific child in that content that they're sharing out there. I think that audience is also a great safe place to practice some things. You get to learn some digital citizenship skills. You get to learn what people, how they absorb content, how you can share your voice out in that world through a really safe space like CISA. Absolutely. And we've had to do some, you know, explicit instruction on what good feedback it looks like. Cause, you know, you come in on your class when it makes work you say, good job, it doesn't really motivate them. So we've talked about routines like tag or a glow and a grow. So they're really moving each other to, you know, better practices and better application of their learning. That's awesome. That's awesome. You're really baking in a lot of other soft skills around that versus just the academics that are happening. These are life skills that they'll be able to take with them and move into other subjects and other content areas and grow into that as they get older too. So it's awesome to hear that you guys are emphasizing that. Thanks. I wanna jump into kind of some instructional design a little bit. I know this is always something on your forefront of your mind. What types of activities inside of CISA do you find most effective for helping to improve learning for students? What have you found to just really light students up and help them move forward as far as like the design and elements that are inside of activities? I think CISA is really a beautiful vehicle for blended learning lessons. So when I'm looking for activities, you know, sometimes you need a quick assessment and it's just the, you know, the student interaction but a lot of times I feel like it's a really powerful tool to have that, you know, blended learning piece, the lesson piece actually tied and then the application piece. I've seen a lot of success with the supports that are in CISA as well for, you know, learners that struggle with reading. We've got, we can add the voiceover and just make that content much more accessible for students as well as the self-correct, the self-checking formative assessment. You know, giving kids that real-time, you know, information of I did, I got it or, you know, hey, I need to go back and take a better look at this, which is very powerful. You know, they're not leaning on the teacher, waiting for the teacher to give them that feedback. They know in the moment, so they can, you know, adjust it and retry. Absolutely. You're truly taking advantage of the baked-in tools that are inside of CISA to really just provide all the supports and scaffolds for kids so that they can be successful on their own and through independence or even through partner work if they're doing that as well. So I just love to hear that that is on the forefront and one of those pillars that you guys are using to design your content as well. Absolutely. I have a slightly different question here. This is called our loopy question. This is just one that's designed to be a little bit fun for our audience to listen to. So this is a would-you-rather question. Would you rather sit by a fire in the evening or curl up with a blanket in a good book? Which one would you rather do? Oh, that's a hard one. I kind of would like to do both. I mean, the fire's awesome, but without the book, not so great. That's okay. You blend them both together. You could sit by a fire with a book, then that's perfect. That's my choice, right there. That's awesome. I think before you, Jotun, we're talking about how chilly the weather is here and I would totally agree. Sitting by a fire in the evening, you got a blanket, you got a nice book. That sounds like the perfect world right now. Perfection, yes. Maybe we can do that tonight, no big deal. Two more quick questions for you before we close things up here. This is a family engagement question and one that is also just surrounding this digital portfolio because we know digital portfolios are more than just the teacher and the student in the classroom. They also engage families. So in what ways do you engage your parents in viewing and potentially even contributing to those portfolios inside of Seesaw? How has this really helped to improve that relationship with your parents? I think it really provides a window into the classroom and what's going on. So a lot of times if parents don't have information, they have misperceptions of kids are just sitting on devices consuming content and so it really allows that transparency. And in addition to the parents really being able to understand what's happening with their students' learning. So as a teacher, I could say, here's what's going on, the teacher for the parents is, well, I don't see that at home. My experience is something different but when they can hear those artifacts and see those things, it's pretty phenomenal. And we've had some great experiences with location is just not a barrier anymore. So parents that are deployed or grandparents that live somewhere else can connect and it is hugely motivating when students see those comments pop up or the voice comment from grandma who lives on the other side of the United States. So I feel like it provides more understanding of what we're doing with kids and 150% more support on the family side of understanding where we're going with the learning and teaching in our classrooms. That's awesome. It's so good to hear that you got to that point. Sorry, go ahead, I cut you off there. No, no, that was just kind of elaborating on that point but it's just a phenomenal impact on the classroom and the experiences of kids. Absolutely, for sure. I think with the surrounding of all these people around this specific classroom and around this learning and around how CSOT makes it so visual and so easy to absorb too, I love that you're reaping those benefits and leaning into that as far as you guys really are because that's really where you get to that point of, everybody's on the same page, the teacher, the student, the family members, everybody understands what's happening. Everybody understands where you're going and what you're doing. That's when you can really move learning forward. And so I just love that that's another pillar and another piece that you guys are adding to this. That's just really making sure that your learning is getting to the best ability that it possibly can without having any barriers in the way also. Absolutely. We will close up with our final question here and this is one that as people listen to this episode as we close things up, this is really designed to just provide a last piece of advice for people. One or two things that you would provide them that they can hopefully learn, they can put into place and really help them to move forward using CSOT in their classrooms. So what advice would you give to a teacher who's looking to build up strong digital portfolios in their classroom using CSOT? What would be one or two things that maybe they could start with or one or two things that they could do to improve what they're doing in their classroom? I think really the sky is the limit. There are so many facets and opportunities that exist in using CSOT. I know as a teacher for myself, I kind of grow by the rule of plus one. So I would take one thing and learn. Let's learn how to use the plus button and add a photo. Now let's learn how to use a photo and add voiceover and just keep building the capacity of the students as you're going. I mean, there's with all the different creative tools and the ability to bring content in that kids are doing somewhere else and add narration and things like that. There's so many, you can fall down the rabbit hole. So if you take one thing at a time, practice supply, get good at it and then keep layering up, that is 100% my strongest recommendation. There's so many great things you can do but you can't do them if you don't start putting one foot in front of the other first. For sure. And also you can't do all of the things at the same time too. I think part of what you were talking to also is like starting slow, start with one thing and one plus one is two and then continue to layer that up as you go. Such wonderful advice and one that in today's day in world we know teachers are very taxed. So let's just start small. Start one little thing and continue to move forward. So I love that advice, it's so purposeful. Thanks. Yeah, well, thank you, thank you Kathy so much for taking some time out of your day to be here to share your expertise around CISA and how it's really making an impact in your schools. We gleaned a lot of great insights into what CISA can really provide, what should be your emphasis as you start to implement CISA and what are some next steps for teachers as far as how they can start to level up their classroom. So thank you so much for taking the time and sharing this expertise. We look forward to having a conversation in the future as well. All right, thanks Grace.