 So everyone, welcome to Six Strategies for Tech Integrationists and Tech Coaches. I'm Angela Waseesa and we are thrilled that you are here spending some time with us today. Just as a reminder, if you've never joined our live webinars, we will send the slides and a copy of the recording to you after the webinar because you registered. If you are enjoying the recording, that's fabulous and you can find lots of recordings on our YouTube channel as well. We're going to take some time at the end for questions. But a little bit about me, as I mentioned, I'm Angela. I lead the community team here at CESA. I was a kindergarten teacher for 15 years and using CESA in my own classroom. So I have lots of stories to share, lots of passion for helping teachers get started. And we have Deb here, my good friend from Iowa. And I'm actually going to give her the controls at this point. So she's going to move to her screen presenting and she will introduce herself and then we will get going. So we're just making the switch right now for those of you joining in. Let's see. So asking you all the hard questions now, Deb. Let's see. Yeah. Okay. I can see your screen, so that's good. Can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. We're good. Awesome. Okay. Thank you so much. Yes. So I'm just going to hide this for a minute. There we go. I'm so honored to be able to be here today to talk to you a little bit about my 40 years of educational experience. I've learned so much over those years. I was at a school district for 26 years doing various technology related and teacher related things. I was also at a regional education agency for 12 of those years and got to work with some amazing tech coaches in our area. And then I have been lucky enough to scale back a little bit. The past two years I have been at a local school district as a K-12 instructional coach. And just a little bit about that district, they are a one to one district. Third grade through 12th grade has laptops and starting this year K-2 is one to one iPad. So it has been a lot of great learning. I'm just going to continue on here. So our focus has been and is we are using these two books to focus our coaching and our learning. It is a PLC driven model where we focus on with teachers what do we want our students to learn and what work or samples do we want to collect to inform that. So very quickly because I have a lot to share with you today. My goal today is to share with you my experiences and hope that you find at least one thing you can use to inform your own work. And I'm going to start right away with the educational box. You know, as educational coaches we are asked to define our roles. But as technology coaches it's just a little bit different. We are often still kind of the go to person for those tech emergencies that arise. And I think it's just really important to think here are my coaching roles. But it's OK to be flexible to think outside of the coaching box to best support your teachers. At least to start with when I'm starting with teachers I help them out with CSOT in any way they can. I create their classes for them. I enter their students. I print their QR code PDFs. I find and create activities that will meet their instructional goals and post them in their classes for their students. I don't always do this. I always ask them first as we're getting started in planning. What can I do to help you? Is this something that would be a help to you? Now some of them are just so busy and overwhelmed. It's a huge help. But others want to learn. They want to learn every step of the way how to do their own things in CSOT. So you know what? Every classroom is unique. Every teacher is unique. I think it's OK to step outside of that box and do whatever is needed to help teachers. We wear a lot of hats but be willing to help out and that I think really helps toward building those relationships. And we know as instructional coaches how important relationships are. They are just of paramount importance to the instructional technology coach. But strong relationships don't just happen overnight or in a vacuum. I think every interaction we have with our teachers is a way to start to build that trust by being approachable, by being friendly, by being dependable, by doing what we say we're going to do. Now with my teachers, other than instructions or the introduction to technology with students at the beginning of the year, we work with a co-teaching model. The teachers lead the curricular part and I lead the tech related part. I don't have that deep knowledge and understanding of the curriculum and the students that the classroom teacher does. But one of the ways that we always start out one of those conversations is, you know, tell me what's coming up in your curriculum. What standards are you working on? OK, what are your goals for your students? And that's a way to start. It has also been my experience as a tech coach that not only our relationships with students or with teachers important, but students as well. I'm not always going to be in that classroom. And sometimes those glitchy things happen with technology that when I'm working with students, I just show them how to fix right away and then they can help each other. So I'm just going to share this example. We had a first grade teacher who really wanted to do something with fluency, but was very hesitant and really didn't know if first graders would be able to handle doing this activity all by themselves. What she wanted them to be able to do was record their fluent reading totally on their own while she was working with another group of students. So we have two rules in our school that I'd like to share with you for using technology. One rule is, of course, you may not take any photos of anyone without asking permission first, whether it's a teacher, whether it's another student. And these are K 12 rules for us. The other one is you cannot touch anyone else's device without asking permission first. So we want our students to help each other out when we started this fluent reading activity. We had students work with partners. They helped each other when one of the partners wasn't sure what to do. The other partner was responsible for helping and we modeled you can't touch someone else's device without permission. Some students just like to reach across and make the change without the other student learning how to do it. So that has been a really good thing that students are helping students. Now, so that's this example right here. And this teacher has just been she's told me how amazed she is that these first grade students can just do this totally on their own. She works at the table with them. They go back to their desk after they've done an initial read with her and then practice reading into CESA again. Later in the week, she'll bring them back, have them listen to what they've read and make decisions and set goals based on what they've listened to. Now, in this particular example, when you get the slides, you may want to play this one. I'm not going to play it now because it doesn't show up quite as well on a webinar. But this is an example of students doing reciprocal reading. One student is helping the other this particular student every time he records something in CESA. He has this little CESA song that he made up about how much he loves CESA and how engaged she is in it. When you run across a little gem like this, this is something you may want to keep and share with school board and other members to help them understand the active engagement that CESA brings to the classroom. So just a few things to be thinking about as you're working with your students. So communication and consistency. Here's how I communicate with my staff. Every Sunday night, I send an email to the entire school, K-12, of what my schedule is going to be for this week, what buildings I'll be in and the times. Then by building, I break it up into what times I will be working with different teachers and just a little bit about what we're going to be doing. And when this happens on Sunday night, I've been doing this consistently for two years now, I immediately start getting emails from teachers and they say things like, Oh, I see you have this time open. Could you stop in my classroom then? I need to talk to you a little bit about whatever. Or they say, I see what this other teacher is doing. Would you be interested in telling me about that? I would like to maybe consider to do that, consider a way that we can do that. So, you know, with coaching, being visible when supporting a K-12 population is really a challenge. Sometimes it's all you can do to keep your head above water. I think it's important just whatever way, whatever type of communication works for you, find a way to do that and then be consistent about your sharing. Try not to miss a week or miss a scheduled time when you're planning to share what your schedule is going to look like with other teachers. And then being consistent about that lets teachers know where you're going to be at and a way to always reach you. The other way that consistency has been a really important thing for us is just CISA itself. Our students at third grade transition to laptops, we were so amazed when we started our one-to-one this year of how the kindergarten students take iPads like a duck to water. They have been using iPads or their phones at least since they were 18 months old, their parents phones. However, the transition to laptops with our third graders has been much more difficult. Now here, you will see one of the activities we did with last year's second grade. As third grade students, when we transitioned over to laptop, we had students say to us, oh, we're so happy we're still using CISA because it's been such a transition to learn how to use that trackpad and how that laptop works. They were happy that CISA was something they were familiar with and continue to work on with. Okay, so moving on here, I'm just going to talk to you a little bit about planning. You know, we are so busy, we have post-its on top of post-its filled with lists of things to do. What I mean here is that planning is so important, but it's so hard to find the time needed to do it. So be creative about finding that planning time, but don't neglect to really base your planning on student needs and student goals. Class time is so precious, there's so much that needs to be done. Every minute is important. I think it's really crucial in the coaching process. And teachers recognize that when student needs are being addressed and met, their planning time is worth it. So think about the goal that you're working on and what needs to be done. Now, I am going to put my stuff out there and share a mistake so that you can learn from my mistakes. This was also a first grade teacher that I was planning with and what she wanted to do was have her students share their thinking with math. So we got together, we started planning. I thought I had a fairly good idea of what we wanted that lesson to look like. So I came into the classroom and you can see we decided to do emoji math. Kids were going to explain their thinking and then we were going to use emojis to stand for the tens and ones. Well, first of all, the way I laid out the problem wasn't the way the students were used to, so that was confusing. And then we got to the emojis and it was just, we lost them. And they got so excited with emojis that we just couldn't get beyond that. So we did that same activity this year. We kept it more simple. I asked her a few more pertinent questions about how she wanted this to look. And we decided even though emojis are awesome, we're going to hold them off for a little bit later in the lesson after they get a little more use explaining their cognitive thinking, we're going to add to that. So learn from my mistakes, really listen to the teacher, ask really good questions and just keep it simple. Praise and publish and celebrate is really, really, really important. I am after 40 years of teaching and with tech integration, I'm still so excited about the things that our teachers are doing. Let students and teachers know how proud you are of them. Publish and share those examples of the exciting creative work that they're doing and those activities that are happening in the classroom. And share in a way that not only parents and the community can see them, but other teachers as well. They are such great fuel for ideas. You never know what ideas you might spark. I'm just going to share my example here. Our high school art teacher said, hey, can I meet with you? I saw an example of a neighboring school who was using a blog and I want to do something like that. And I said, sure, send me the link to the blog so I kind of know how to prepare. And guess what? It was a seesaw blog. We decided to get together and get that started. And honestly, it took us longer to find a time to plan to get together to create this than it did to create the blog. Seasaw blogs are just so easy to create. We have that studio art class link blog posted on our website. And kids are so excited about sharing the work and having those discussions about the art that's happening in their classroom. So this was a teacher who saw something from a neighboring classroom or a neighboring school and said, this is amazing. I want to do this. In addition, here is an example of this is a kindergarten student who we wanted to get started learning how to record their take a picture of their work and then record their fluent reading. And he was really struggling. The parents were connected that item. Immediately, the parents were able to hear that and could kind of hear him struggle. We knew he was struggling so I kind of took him aside and recorded again and showed gave him some tips and showed him how to use it. And the parent then spoke to me later and said, I don't know if you can see on here. This is the note that the parent responded to with that student. And she said, she talked to the student at home about what happened in school and how she knew he was struggling, but how he really worked hard and the second time around, did such a great job. The student is so excited about using Seasaw to record their fluent reading. And so exciting to hear the parent understand and see have a little peek into the classroom about what's happening. Okay, so I'm going to keep moving along here. And another thing that I have found to really be important is after a lesson has been completed after you've done a coaching cycle with the teacher, the follow up to talk about what worked what didn't. And also, next steps are so important. I think it really strengthens your relationship and fosters that conversation. I know it takes time, but I do think it's a critical piece to do that follow up, you know, and then as coaches we sometimes talk about gradual release in terms of coaching cycles. And I can just tell you how the Seasaw activities library has made that gradual release even easier than ever for teachers. So my little story with this, I had a teacher we were doing a follow up after we had done some Seasaw lessons. And she said to me, I would like to do math symmetry next and I'm like, okay, and I looked at my calendar to see when I was next available and she said, Oh, but I don't need to do I've got this, I can do it. And I was a little bit like, Oh, a little hurt because, you know, I want to be in the classroom and I want to help too. But then I thought, Oh my gosh, this is amazing. She is ready to take this and go on her own. So I'm just going to show you a quick sampling of some of the activities that she has done. Here was her first one that she did with her student. This assessment with her student in activities. These are all activities she's found within Seasaw. She had a, had their students do this activity, a little coding for our code. This was another example of an activity within Seasaw, some graphing and I really love this one. Students responding to me as a snowman in here. This is a snow woman, by the way, so students do a picture and then record themselves, recorded herself explaining her drawing. This teacher that I've been working with, she said, you know, I've started a Seasaw challenge. I'm going to do two Seasaw activities a week from now until the end of the year and she says it's been going really well. She, I just had to share this. She sent me this screenshot. Just the other day she said, I don't use technology in my classroom because it's a buzzword or a trend. I use it because connecting my kids with the world will prepare them for the future. She said, I found this. I took a screenshot. I had to send it to you because this is how I am now with using Seasaw. I'm just going to tell you, if you aren't aware of the activities in Seasaw, stop everything right now and go and check them out. Once you open up your Seasaw class and go to the plus as a teacher, here is the first link here, browse activities and the activity library. And I will just say that they have made these activities have made our job as coaches so much better. I just do also want to give a shout out to all the amazing Seasaw ambassadors out there who have created these authentic creative and useful activities for our students to use. Okay, so thoughts about helping teachers get started with Seasaw. It is an amazing time saver for our students, but maybe not right away. It's going to take them a few routines and a little practice in order to get really comfortable, but I would say start simple, start with a need, give teachers time then to think about how this is really working. With our teachers we just had a professional development on Monday of this week. One thing that I did with Seasaw was for our Seasaw session. I have access to all of our students or all of my teachers classes. I talked to a few teachers beforehand and said, Would you be willing just to share what you're doing with your Seasaw with Seasaw in your classes. Students opened up those classrooms. Teachers took time explaining what they were doing, how it was working, how students reacted to it. And that was our whole professional development and really it was amazing. There was so much conversation between teachers. I think teachers sometimes learn best from other teachers with shared classroom experience. So honestly, these are my tips. I hope you found one thing that you can find useful for your practice, for your teachers, for your district as you are moving forward. And now I think we are ready for questions. If you have any questions out there, I would be more than willing to respond as best I can. I did great. So many ideas. Love it. So I have a question already in from Becky. So those of you that are here with us live, don't hesitate to write in and ask your question. So Becky is wondering, she is a technology specialist on her campus, and she finds that some teachers I co-teach with learn how to use a tool and then do it on their own. However, she also has some that could do it on their own, but they don't or couldn't manage it on their own. Do you find some teachers just won't do it if they aren't with you? Yes. Yes. Yes. In fact, right before we started this session, Angela and I were talking about that a little bit. Yes, I do. There are some teachers who are just more than ready to just leap off and as fly off and become beautiful butterflies in the technology realm. But there are some who do not. A couple of things that I have done is I try to with those teachers, I try to make it really clear that I cannot be in your classroom with you all the time. I will get you started. I will co-teach with you. And then I'll come back and I'll co-teach with you again. But then let's plan something, even something really small that you can maybe try on your own. And then we will try to meet again and I'll ask you how it went. The other thing that we really depend on our students to do, not only to help each other, but to help their teacher. A lot of times our teachers, yes, it is so true. Our teachers will say to the class, oh, something will come up in CSaw or even in another program. They'll say, oh, does anybody know what to do? And our students will help them out. Our students, you know, students are amazing. So those are some of the things that I have done to kind of help those butterflies. Yeah, I love this idea of really making sure you're empowering the students as well. I have a kindergarten teacher friend that this year she, I forget what she calls them, but basically she had CSaw experts. So as soon as one kindergarten could show that they could basically sign in by themselves, take a photo, record their voice, add it to their portfolio all by themselves. And I don't know if they had to do some other tasks, but then they became a CSaw expert and they put on this little necklace and it was a whole big deal. And pretty soon she had an entire room full of CSaw experts because they just helped helping and supporting one another. So that, that is a great strategy. I love it. Right. Lots of questions coming in. So Colleen is asking what tools are best to start with when working with teachers new to CSaw? What would you say, Deb? I just start using that camera. Yes. Snap a picture, document your learning. Snap a picture, document your learning. And then my next step is now you know how to take pictures. Let's put it, let's write a sentence to go with it to explain your thinking. Then after that we're like, okay, you can take a picture. You can use text. We go into drawing and use labels and start recording their voice. And then it kind of flows from there depending on the need in the classroom. And we have a, we have in the activity library, we have getting started collections, which are there, the collection is right at the top in the upper left. And basically it has five activities that really model, you know, basically one tool at a time and build upon each other. So it does start with simply taking, you know, taking that, that photo in a lot of instances, but definitely check out that's a great resource for teachers as well. Can you talk a little bit, and I know we have about five minutes left, but Sally's wondering, could you talk more about the coaching model you have in place for technology integration? Well, I shared initially the, the books that we use as our model, and I'm not exactly sure if I totally follow that to the T, because of all the other things that pull you away. Our model is I am in various buildings. When I was hired, I was really asked to be equitable for all buildings to share my time between all of them and not focus too much on just one. So I really try to create a schedule, share that with all my staff, stay within that schedule. And then when teachers express interest, they, and I get tons of interest from teachers all the time, we have to meet first to plan. It has to be based on need. Then we schedule how we're going to follow through with that. We conduct the activity, we gather evidence, and then we look at it to do that follow up and decide what our next steps are going to be. Does that answer your question? I think that sounds great. I think there's tons. I think we could have a whole, whole series just about different structures in place. Right, what works. And you know, every school, every teacher, every classroom is so different. I think I, you know, that's why I said don't be afraid to step out of that box. I think you really made teachers needs. That's what you have to do. Exactly. All right, next question coming in. Can you name the two rules again, dad, that you said one was don't touch others devices and what the other one, you know, now that every kid has a camera in their hands. Our other rule is you may not take a picture of anyone without asking for permission first. Does it matter whether it's a teacher, the principal, a visitor in the classroom or another student, even if you're using it for a class project. You still need to ask permission first. Love it. All right. Question coming in how do you encourage teachers who are finding excuses when it comes to integrating technology. Well, for us, the, you know, last year, we had pods of devices in classrooms. This year, we have one device per student. One of the things that we say is, you know, our school board supported us. Our district is paying a lot of money for these devices. We want to use them as effectively as possible, even if that means we got to step outside of our comfort zone. So how can I help. We were chatting specifically about this because I personally never had one to one devices. I only had five for about 24 kids. But I think one of the things that you mentioned to was it was really helpful for teachers to hear from other teachers that were getting started and just sharing one way that they were using it or had tried gotten started with seesaw. I thought that was, that was a good tip as well. Donna is wondering, we have about a minute left. Donna is wondering, you mentioned blogging just for a moment, but what do you suggest in terms of teachers getting started? Do you think they should connect with another teacher in their building? Or what would you recommend? With getting started with blogs. Yeah. Well, here is an ongoing discussion actually that we're having with seesaw. Some teachers connect with parents directly within, you know, within seesaw where you give them the parent handout and then parent, but others are still a little reluctant to do that. So some of them have created a blog and then they can choose what is posted. They share that blog link with parents and grandparents. So the advantages parents can see other students, the disadvantages parents can't see their students work every day. And so that's kind of part of our discussion. And I was just going to say, and even though some parents, some teachers have shared with parents, some also create that blog and we put the blog link on our website so that they can share what's happening with the world. And then we're getting to the point now where we're ready to connect with other classrooms around the world through the blog. Yep. And I think one thing that I would just mention with that too is, you know, our blog is really intended to be a space where students can connect with a larger audience outside of their classroom. It does end up being a better flow for families if they actually either visit the website or get the app because they will not see blog notifications come through that way. They'll have to just actually visit the URL to see that the content. But I totally see what you're saying, Deb, in terms of if a teacher is reluctant to connect families. We are eager to get started with teachers connecting with other teachers via the blog and other classrooms. We also want our help center help that sees that at me have information about connected blogs and a document that probably has 25 pages of teachers that are ready to connect. So if you do have teachers that are eager to get started, there are some blogs there that are ready to connect as well. Oh, right. I think we have two more questions. I also want to respect everybody's time. So if you need to buzz on out of here, go ahead and do that and we appreciate you stopping by and I hope you'll come back for more webinars in the future.