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Shmoop interSECT 2014: Best Practices Make Perfect Panel Second Half 225 Views


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Description:

Here's the best practices panel from our very own 2014 interSECT conference down in LA, California. This is the second half of the panel, to watch the first half (if you missed it), click this link: /video/shmoop-intersect-2014--best-practices-make-perfect-panel-first-half/

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:05

Well one of them and it's sort of been the

00:08

theme here all day In the sense of what happens

00:10

with poverty in the sense of with schools One of

00:13

the ways that we approached with having smooth is that

00:17

we we know most of our students don't have internet

00:20

at home Um or if they do have internet it's

00:23

tao up or if it's a computer that is incredibly

00:25

slow today's internet And so this is why we said

00:30

we have to reach these kids on campus We have

00:32

to open up our library We have to open up

00:34

earlier We have to close later to give them the

00:37

opportunity to be on the internet and surf the web

00:41

on a site that's going to help him be smarter

00:43

And it was sort of a cold we needed to

00:45

make a cultural shift and this goes from like i

00:48

said all the levels might might english learners that are

00:50

struggling to pass the cassie part on the way they

00:54

see it in english they see it in spanish They're

00:56

able to get more comfortable Um and i think that

01:01

plays a very large part and why we're able to

01:03

skid my e l myself level two's on my cell

01:07

level threes to be able to pass that test that

01:10

seventy five percent on their initials test that's going to

01:13

come in march the one that's coming up in a

01:15

couple weeks Um i think this also goes to why

01:20

we've been able to be more successful R r I'm

01:23

not sure if it's up there Well there's our results

01:26

herself is there ourselves One are self twos and threes

01:30

This is their pass rate now as eleventh and twelfth

01:34

graders and you know sell to sell to us very

01:37

limited english A lot of these air newcomers that have

01:39

been in the united states less than four years and

01:42

they're being able to pass that seventy five percent now

01:46

It used to be under fifty percent of these This

01:48

led to our dropouts Um and it's just really helped

01:55

us get them to be confident walking into the exam

01:58

This also i think has been a huge reason why

02:01

we've been able to increase our scores on the a

02:04

p exam like like philadelphia i track not just the

02:09

three four fives we tracked the twos and the reason

02:12

why is when i took over the program four years

02:15

ago and i always look at the ap european history

02:18

exam is my example this is you know typically done

02:22

in our high school tenth graders is they're first huge

02:26

exam that they take in the sense of a college

02:27

level I would say i test about a hundred kids

02:30

i would say fifty of them had quit within an

02:33

hour of the exam and probably the other forty five

02:36

percent had quit about about lunch break um now when

02:40

we take that exam because they've been on shmoop and

02:43

they've taken two three four practice exams they walk in

02:47

with a confidence of i could get a three and

02:51

they finish that examined when i say stop three and

02:54

hours and forty five minutes later they're like man i

02:57

got one more question i can finish it Give me

02:59

five more minutes and as an educator it's so wonderful

03:03

to see that they want more time to take an

03:05

ap exam versus when do we get out of here

03:08

Um and that's Why i think why we've seen the

03:11

score It is a cultural shift of i could do

03:14

better I mean when i took over the program we

03:16

had to ap scholars and both of those were students

03:19

that were accepted to uc berkeley this past year We

03:22

had twenty five um and one of them had our

03:26

energies a senior this year He's already passed seven ap

03:29

exams and the pressure on our campus right now is

03:33

you see the end coming Juniors I want to be

03:35

an ap scholar I could past seven I could past

03:37

six We went from a school that had to three

03:42

years ago on the entire campus and now kids air

03:44

like i could pass seven I mean it is just

03:46

a cultural shift and it all has to do with

03:49

then being comfortable with the exam And i brought an

03:52

example what we used to do This is a baron's

03:57

book two thousand nine english language i have about one

04:02

hundred eighty is in the library I think this was

04:04

the one that was most used I think paige is

04:08

one two and three have some writing in it We

04:11

bought these for years and years and years and never

04:14

got results and all the books with brand new well

04:18

this is now five years old and it didn't work

04:22

and now that we've gone to technology kids do it

04:24

at home we've been able to show them ways ways

04:29

to cheat and get more spines but in essence we're

04:31

showing them how we studied in college You sit with

04:34

two or three of your buddies that are taking ap

04:36

calculus and you hammer out how to get that right

04:39

question and it's clicked with them That's not cheating This

04:43

is what we need to do and our scores have

04:45

gone of last year I don't know why i used

04:48

ap calculus every single one of our ap score showed

04:52

a measurable gain except ap calculus um which is the

04:56

irony and like this year i'm measuring How are students

05:01

have done on the for the class of two thousand

05:04

fourteen i think it's up there we are expected let's

05:09

see it was mentioned earlier Well there's our gains We

05:12

have grown thirty eight points on the writing portion of

05:15

the this year math thirty for reading forty six we

05:21

have increased our levels to where students were scoring a

05:25

little bit under four hundred and we used to test

05:29

on ly i would say about the top seventy five

05:31

students of a class of five hundred which are pretty

05:34

much kids We're already going to be a through g

05:36

pretty much going to be able to go to at

05:38

least a cal state I'm now testing about one hundred

05:41

and thirty kids of my graduating class this year so

05:45

mathematically my score should have gone down because i'm now

05:47

using students seventy six through one thirty but it's sort

05:50

of fed into them We could do better They take

05:54

those practice tests Um look your example like the math

05:57

shack things like this that have been used they're getting

06:01

more and more comfortable and they walk out of the

06:03

exam thinking they did good instead of walking out deflated

06:08

Um you know and we've seen other results i mean

06:11

my c a t this year i've seen an increase

06:14

of a least one full point in all three portions

06:18

of the tea and when i went back i could

06:22

go back about six years We've never seen games like

06:25

this and the only thing that we really do different

06:27

is we've given him shmoop and we walk in and

06:30

we kind of tell them they could do it Um

06:33

and so we're very happy with what them with the

06:36

progress that we made through smith right now and we're

06:39

happy to charles s so now it's like teo turn

06:44

it over to the crowd for questions as we have

06:47

these wonderful educators up on the stage Obviously they have

06:51

fantastic stories so hopefully we can find out more of

06:57

the things that you would like to ask them Hi

07:00

um i teach special ed and i want to know

07:02

what it looks like for the spread students Um as

07:05

faras they're reading levels are concerned that say they're reading

07:08

at the fourth fifth grade level at a high school

07:11

So how have you addressed at how his shmoop help

07:16

increased their scores I'll take that I also oversee the

07:20

special ed department So you think one of the things

07:24

that i have done what we have done it indio

07:26

high school is a lot of times when you look

07:28

at a special ed class the problem is reaching rigor

07:30

and this also works with my english learners as well

07:33

You need to teach that special wet student or that

07:36

english learner at their level And so a lot of

07:39

times in the main class it's way below the high

07:41

school level But one of the things that we did

07:43

is we created support classes Well it with mice with

07:46

my special ed department we tune math at the special

07:49

wet level but in their support class we use a

07:52

lot of shmoop and we use the high school exit

07:55

exam on the shmoop program as the rigor And so

07:58

we've been able to not only expose them to the

08:01

problems and when you look at like the math shack

08:04

it will bring down the rigor to the level which

08:06

is very basic in the sense of the standards they

08:08

need to do to pass the exit exam And they're

08:11

exposed to something that they could Accomplish and slowly we're

08:14

able to ramp up the rigor to what they need

08:16

to do to pass the california exit exam Now in

08:19

california special ed students can grant a waiver two they

08:23

don't have to pass the exit exam to graduate Our

08:26

kids know that but we've been able to get more

08:29

than fifty percent of my stc students to successfully passed

08:33

the exit exam through them being exposed to the rigor

08:37

of the california exit exam through shmoop i think the

08:41

other the other piece toe addie did a great job

08:44

answering that but the s a lab i think is

08:47

the other component of it especially for you especially when

08:51

you're talking about passing a casey or something like that

08:55

It's not rocket science to pass that you know the

08:58

people say well how does a computer teach you too

09:01

Right You know and and a lot of i'm not

09:04

trying to offend any english teachers that are out there

09:06

but um but it's really not ah rocket science thing

09:11

in orderto pass the casey there's a certain level and

09:14

it's the same it's the same thing where i've seen

09:16

it be very effective in in a special ed from

09:19

a special ed approach to is that you have to

09:22

learn to write formulaic lee to a certain extent just

09:24

the past on dh Then you khun talk about the

09:27

arty later Um so i think there's a lot of

09:31

things that can be learned and can be gained from

09:34

a little bit of formulating grating on dh in the

09:38

assay lab is able to produce that in a number

09:40

of different ways and it has the ability to teach

09:43

kind of the flowery outside stuff too but but we've

09:47

seen definitely the use of it i think and i

09:50

could go back to the continuation side of things too

09:52

It's the same same deal So for ill for special

09:55

ed for continuation especially when you're just trying to get

10:00

close those gaps and move kids up You gotta walk

10:04

before you can run and i think that's a lot

10:06

of steps kids up really really well i think the

10:09

literature learning guides as well i think every piece of

10:12

literature you can think of is listed alphabetically and then

10:16

it gives a summary for them in and you know

10:21

kid language So it's not difficult For them to grasp

10:27

that summary piece and it models for them What a

10:31

good summary is of a story or of a poem

10:34

Um i think it also helps teachers as well Help

10:38

that Take a piece that might be above the especially

10:42

for il l their level of comprehension And bring it

10:45

to the student level so that then they can move

10:48

to rigor This question goes teo the aspects of houston

10:55

the middle school i'm a middle school teacher and i

10:58

want to know how they were receptive to the use

11:03

of shmoop but also how do you change or how

11:07

did you address the culture of using technology on campus

11:10

such as a mobile device without it being oh you're

11:14

using your device give it away and because there is

11:17

a large phobia of using mobile devices for any kind

11:21

of sort of things that we have to um i

11:24

think i think it was that for me because it's

11:27

hard to them Okay exactly Um first of all the

11:30

phobia issue of using your own device which that's what

11:34

we have to do because we don't have a wonder

11:36

one We began a bring your own device initiative several

11:41

years ago it's been met with some resistance in some

11:44

areas middle school is one of those but honestly i

11:49

think this has helped them see the benefit of a

11:52

student getting their own mobile device out and using it

11:56

for a purpose in class which has been phenomenal and

12:00

really it's been because i didn't do it school wide

12:04

for middle Schools i presented it to some middle school

12:07

teachers and said if this is something you want to

12:10

do let me know and so it has you know

12:14

it has to be in that regard it's kind of

12:16

opposite from high school because of high school i've just

12:18

been flooding flooding flooding hey kids here's a trick to

12:22

get you around your teacher's kind of toe trick them

12:24

into getting online would really I was having the same

12:27

presentations for their teachers but at middle school i didn't

12:31

really it was teachers if you want to do this

12:34

and so i've had a lot of teachers on their

12:36

own take that initiative and say this is how i

12:39

think i can use it Will you let me so

12:41

that's been very exciting I foresee you know the next

12:45

step being we would then do that push to get

12:49

middle school students on it school Why Just like we

12:52

are at the high school But it's become more of

12:55

a grassroots at middle school Kind of like what you

12:57

described then it has been at my high school campuses

13:01

because at my high school campuses it was this is

13:03

what we have and let's let's make everyone use it

13:06

and love it and they do once they get on

13:08

it they love it It's just the question of getting

13:10

them there There's one other question What about if students

13:15

were walking around and i know they were talking about

13:17

the gamification aspects before three kids there at lunch or

13:22

a pre time they're walking around they're actually like the

13:25

cat in the competition trying to beat each other's shmoop

13:28

scores Have you had any of those incidents on the

13:31

high schools are side like i dream of those incident

13:34

given ward i would i would give i would give

13:37

i would buy steak dinners for those students but no

13:41

we haven't had that issue happened Um yet but someday

13:46

she weigh our shmoop ing over the world So someday

13:51

you know one of the things i would say and

13:53

this also falls along with all the common core stuff

13:56

that's going down I know what My site It has

13:59

forced us to get more computers on our campus Um

14:03

my district is really large under the chromebooks So last

14:07

year i bought five class sets that were sort of

14:10

designed for Classes that were sort of having to do

14:14

in essence shmoop or other stuff like that on And

14:16

i know this this year um we're buying where are

14:21

my district's buying mohr So i'm gonna have about a

14:24

thousand chromebooks on my campus Well actually have now they

14:27

just haven't given to the teachers We just got him

14:30

this week Um so there's gonna be a lot more

14:34

and i think schools are going to get a lot

14:36

more of these devices on campus because of all the

14:38

money that came from from the governor because of common

14:40

core and i think i think that's gonna have to

14:43

disappear really quickly I mean i know my prince my

14:45

prince has been inside for twenty two years and he

14:48

doesn't believe in cell phones and so it's like that

14:51

that attitude has got to change because there's so much

14:54

good available on the internet right now to help us

14:57

get through this transition that we're gonna have to embrace

14:59

it And a hope that you use your technology money

15:02

to buy devices the kids could use and be mobile

15:05

in some way we didn't get that common core money

15:12

So one of our responsibilities i think is teach students

15:16

to use the devices they have in front of them

15:18

well and to take advantage of what is there so

15:21

our students are going to be on their phones whether

15:23

texting or communicating otherwise so why not teach them to

15:27

use these tools to enhance their learning Our students take

15:30

public transportation to school every day and so do i

15:34

and it's great to see a student looking at flash

15:38

cards on their phone or putting a post on it's

15:41

like facebook for schools we use school aji for their

15:44

classmates to see you're answering a question or we had

15:47

an issue it's a real issue two years ago where

15:50

students created a hashtag for their a push class before

15:53

the exam and and that's how they were setting So

15:58

i think we need to take advantage of the tool

16:00

that they have in front of them instead of telling

16:03

them put it away because that's when we're going to

16:05

face the most problem i think if we if we

16:08

make it taboo to use the tool then they're going

16:11

to use it for reasons that we don't want and

16:15

so let's take advantage of what the powerful tool that

16:17

they have in front of them i think we were

16:20

were obviously we benefit by the fact that our community

16:25

wants technology and they wrote it in a bond and

16:28

are willing to pay their own tax dollars for that

16:30

i'm so our community in essence wants this but the

16:33

one thing that we learned when we went for this

16:35

bond as we flew all over the country looking at

16:38

places that had done one two one programs and bring

16:41

your own device programs and everything else and it's all

16:44

with philosophy from the top down our superintendent believes in

16:49

it our city council believes in it Our school board

16:52

preaches it we give training's too all of them we

16:55

give training's the parents we give training so everybody so

16:58

that you can take the phobia of what kids are

17:00

doing with a device away And so then what the

17:04

benefit is if they're you if they're structured well so

17:07

that takes me to structure it Well you know we

17:12

if there's anything that i think was done right that

17:16

i've seen done right and other parts of the country

17:18

And other and done horribly wrong in other parts of

17:21

the country where they had to learn the lesson the

17:23

hard way was you have to have the infrastructure You

17:26

have to have the board policy that supports this You

17:29

have tohave parents that believe in it You have to

17:32

have teachers that air trained But nothing replaces the teacher's

17:37

ability to control their own environment in their classroom having

17:41

high expectations for kids and structuring their lesson to truly

17:45

use the device to be a positive contributing factor if

17:50

free time is a killer and that's why killer whether

17:53

you got a phone in front of you are anything

17:55

else If you're giving them just free unstructured time that's

17:58

not moving you towards your target in the class kids

18:03

they're going to manipulate that so your high end third

18:06

are probably not there going to be the ones on

18:08

the flash cards and things like that But the middle

18:12

bottom are going to mess with that if they get

18:15

the free time and you so a lot of it

18:17

is Are you planning your lessons Well Are using time

18:20

effectively Are you using that device and telling kids how

18:24

To use it well enough so they go after mohr

18:27

content so that they're collaborating more so that they're setting

18:31

up the different opportunities that you've heard But the downtime

18:34

is the killer and uh but i would say i

18:37

honestly i'm not being sarcastic when i give the kid

18:40

who's using it at lunch an award they're going to

18:43

text anyway I mean i've seen kids text through their

18:45

pants better than you honestly like any it's it's sad

18:50

but i mean the kids that i've expelled there suspended

18:53

for drug dealing those kids text through their pants better

18:56

than any person i've ever seen they don't want to

18:58

give it away that they're setting something up but that's

19:01

just the worst case scenario of what they're doing with

19:04

that The best case scenario is i've also had kids

19:07

check out projectors and computers and things like that because

19:10

they're having a pee movie night at somebody's house and

19:14

they're gonna pack forty kids into a room to watch

19:16

videos You know whether it's videos from here or elsewhere

19:20

so you gotta see the good with the bad You've

19:24

got a structure the downtime and then it's a positive

19:27

Experience I i want to follow up with the They're

19:33

comment about exposing the students to the rigor I want

19:39

to know How do you know that the students have

19:42

mastered the rigor besides the drill and the amount of

19:46

time that they've spent on that particular subjects Is that

19:52

for me Anybody for anyone Charles well yeah i mean

20:02

i guess i would just look at the data in

20:05

the sense of when i see an sec student pass

20:08

a portion of the exit exam we celebrated within the

20:11

special ed department and we celebrate it when we have

20:14

a low e l stood way also do it Bye

20:16

bye lingo alternative program at our school we really celebrate

20:20

when a student passes the exit exam that is that

20:23

is the bar that we've sort of said for them

20:26

and i know what like four years ago they weren't

20:30

passing and so it almost was there was no celebration

20:33

because none of them were passing or only one or

20:35

two were passing And now like i said this year's

20:38

seniors class i believe i have we'll have about seventeen

20:41

stc students i believe seven of them have passed at

20:44

least one portion of the exit exam and most not

20:48

my school If you're classified sstc you're very pretty low

20:52

so i mean it's it's a it's a real struggle

20:55

for them to pass but they've been able to embrace

20:57

it and it's just been another tool that we've used

20:59

i mean that's the only empirical data i have i'd

21:02

say other than i mean it's really nice to see

21:05

a student that's really low say i want to study

21:08

math i mean normally it's like oh i'm ditching math

21:11

class you know And like no we're gonna go work

21:13

on points we're gonna get more points today i mean

21:15

it's that that that should be enough evidence alone that

21:18

it's working that they want to study math and i

21:21

think exposure to rigor is also something that are at

21:25

least in texas are teachers have to get used to

21:27

a swell We went from a minimum standards test called

21:30

tax to an end of course star test called star

21:34

that's essentially an achievement test of that year's content and

21:39

all of the questions or double coded So what i

21:41

mean by that is one question might have one or

21:44

two processing skills along with a content skill and so

21:48

no longer are the questions just a tte the knowledge

21:51

level on their tests that they take it the end

21:54

of the year So our teachers air having to practice

21:57

this open ended questions higher higher levels of thinking you

22:01

can go through costas you can go through lots of

22:05

open ended discussions and dialogues but one of the things

22:08

that i see shmoop is being able to allow is

22:12

having those big ideas and big questions for students and

22:16

those comparisons of literature to pop culture because they are

22:20

being exposed to it and they don't even realize it

22:23

It just becomes part of what they're doing but it

22:27

really is exposing them to that higher level that's required

22:31

of them again on whatever state we're talking about The

22:36

thing that jumps out to me about rigor is the

22:39

i'm excited about some of the future editions that i've

22:43

heard with wish shmoop being able to search it with

22:46

depth of knowledge for example being ableto go through there

22:51

um and i really am a big believer in that

22:54

and i think the other piece of it is too

22:56

if you're talking about blended instruction or flipped instruction or

22:59

anything like that you have to get the lower levels

23:02

of depth of knowledge You've got to get the factual

23:04

knowledge so you can go to a greater death Andi

23:07

i think what this does is assure the one in

23:09

two so that it allows the teacher to be a

23:12

teacher and a facilitator and a person who can help

23:16

kids collaborate and get you to those higher levels of

23:19

death of knowledge in those higher rigor levels once you

23:22

getting class But being able teo once you can identify

23:27

what's a three or four you know dok question when

23:32

you're talking about building courses and things like that i

23:36

i want to push that rigor but i want i

23:39

want to guarantee the baseline one into knowledge and so

23:42

that i know as a teacher i'm confident with coming

23:44

in tomorrow with much harder questions because i know where

23:47

the base line on my kids is So i think

23:50

that's a value and something i'm excited about for the

23:53

future a specific example that that reminded me up in

23:55

my district for middle school We have the requirement in

23:59

pre ap social studies classes that they all begin to

24:02

be accused of sixth grade so and then they increase

24:05

in the numbers they go up but the teacher can

24:07

go on and look at any of the a p

24:10

social studies courses and get an example a good well

24:14

organized example of a d b q that they could

24:17

show in middle school whereas that teacher may not have

24:21

had access to that before they do now because middle

24:26

school teachers i don't know about how it works in

24:29

your state but in our state we have a lot

24:30

of generalists who became middle school teachers and so they're

24:33

content knowledge is sometimes part of the issue when we're

24:37

talking about raising rigor in a middle school classroom because

24:40

they don't have the content knowledge and background So i've

24:43

also seen this as ways to help those teachers learned

24:48

that rigorous need in their content I think the other

24:53

part two is in order to be funding you have

24:55

to be fairly smart Andi the sum of the witty

24:59

humor that's involved with the site in general Um if

25:03

you want to get the joke you have to kind

25:05

of understand it S o i think it really motivates

25:09

the higher end kid tio if they didn't get that

25:13

it kind of hurts you know So they have to

25:17

understand why why it was funny and i think that

25:20

you know kind of a back side away or maybe

25:23

that i know that wasn't the intent with the funny

25:25

maybe but but it comes back and helps you with

25:29

the differentiation in that sense too And now i think

25:32

that new hover feature too that it will be able

25:34

to explain it to the kid who maybe didn't get

25:36

it Um i think that's going to help and again

25:39

it's a levelling of playing fields So yep why is

25:42

this funny will be on shmoop soon Was there one

25:46

more question out there Two questions questions one Well for

25:51

one question for me and that is you guys have

25:54

talked a lot about the curriculum axe back the ap

25:58

casey all of those how do you do any of

26:01

you work on the sort of the non core side

26:04

of like the d m v or the job or

26:07

the job smorgasbord or any of those How do you

26:10

how do you uh let the teachers know about those

26:16

the career one i've demoed a lot for our alternative

26:21

campus and for middle schools that's one that's one that

26:26

i've done i haven't done any of the others at

26:28

my school we all of our freshmen take a class

26:31

which is sort of design Tio i don't get on

26:34

a focus of a career of some kind and they're

26:37

starting to use the career I don't know what it's

26:40

career path or career career test test and they're starting

26:44

to look at it I know it's called real poop

26:47

all the has but it has a lot information on

26:49

and i know attacks about you know all the kids

26:51

think they're going to be rappers or movie stars or

26:55

mba or whatever and you know i love it how

26:58

it has like the odds of you becoming like you

27:00

know n b a all star and i don't know

27:03

what it is but like you know one in three

27:04

million and so i've seen that more and more on

27:08

my campus where all right let's look it up You

27:11

think you're going to be a rapper That's let's look

27:13

it up You think you're going to be an astronaut

27:14

that's looking up to see how much money you're gonna

27:15

make I know on our campus we dio i just

27:19

was in a class on friday and they were looking

27:21

up This is in our computer tech classes do we

27:24

do in a place certification Class and they were looking

27:28

upon shmoop how much a computer tech makes and they

27:31

were going through all the stuff they need how much

27:33

education they make and i think on it it says

27:35

well if you have this degree you would be starting

27:37

at like forty two thousand dollars or something like that

27:40

and if you get a bat masterson here's something you'll

27:42

perhaps starting around sixty thousand and so this was something

27:45

that we're using in classes that it would never intended

27:47

something that we never would never introduce too smooth but

27:51

it's just the word of mouth like a shmoop has

27:52

his career tech thing that's pretty good and you know

27:56

it has i don't know what you three hundred years

27:58

or so i mean it has a lot of careers

28:01

and that's something we have used i know our students

28:04

also did the as fabric practice as the exams of

28:10

exam we test about one hundred fifty of my sight

28:13

so the kids that were signed up for the as

28:16

fab we're told they think it did they take the

28:18

practice test on the as fab um about you know

28:22

when they signed up with the career center so i

28:24

mean some of that stuff was used to my campus

28:25

is well we're really interested especially next here as we

28:30

expand our wonder one programs and things like that and

28:33

paul and else and we've already had some elementary conversations

28:37

about this but we're currently using edge uf aya's our

28:40

cyber bullying and digital literacy curriculum but were not thrilled

28:44

with that And again i'm trying to go back Teo

28:47

one stop shop approach I like the single log in

28:50

i like the fact that so as i see those

28:54

things added here it's really exciting because i think if

28:59

we can find a way to bring that and it's

29:01

really something that we're digging into right now andi i'm

29:04

hoping that we can make work with our middle school

29:06

and high school kids bringing them in and doing the

29:09

cyberbullying which we absolutely mandate And i don't know any

29:13

disciplinarian in the middle school or high school who doesn't

29:16

mandate something like that right now because you're dealing with

29:19

a cell a text or ah you know an e

29:21

mail or something that fight on facebook or something almost

29:24

every single day so uh we wantto say we've trained

29:29

kids well in those areas and they know what our

29:32

expectations are and that's part of that infrastructure that i

29:35

was talking about before I mean i'm hoping that shmoop

29:38

could be a major player and helping us frame that

29:41

infrastructure for our kids and that one the one program

29:44

on dh then with a b eighty six that two

29:46

hundred fifty six million dollars pathway trust thing with careers

29:50

in california Um we have twenty different career pathways on

29:55

dh One of the things that i'm touting here and

29:58

and hoping that will be a major player in getting

30:01

us a portion of that money is that they do

30:03

have the career angle and that we do have access

30:06

for all of our kids to do that type of

30:08

ah career exploration with this on dh hopefully get them

30:11

into those right pathways so that they can move on

30:14

to a community college or for a year in the

30:15

appropriate area So that's all exciting And i'm glad it's

30:19

a one stop shop like you said Okay one last

30:24

question okay I have kind of to the other one

30:28

one of them really easy but the first one is

30:31

can you talk a little bit about how did you

30:36

how are you able to train your teachers How do

30:40

they get to invest in this And the second question

30:44

is is there any way we can get emails of

30:47

you guys so we can send some stakeholders to you

30:50

for some information Because we may be convinced here but

30:54

there may be others back home That art that's Great

30:57

Would you like to give your email address before i

30:59

speak for You know what My email address is ridiculous

31:04

So wait Right But you guys are okay Yeah well

31:07

make sure everybody gets that for sure But grant if

31:11

you can talk about the training that you do it

31:13

just because i think you have a fantastic program that

31:15

you built there Yeah Like i said i'll keep going

31:17

back to the infrastructure piece It's what We saw that

31:20

major broke Any digital thing You have to think it

31:23

out before you put it in And the bigger the

31:26

scale is for your district the more you have to

31:29

think about it You and it's so stereotypical and it's

31:33

Not true In all cases i have to do my

31:35

my preemptive strike on this But the older your population

31:38

of teachers is the more difficult and more walls you

31:41

might have to break down But we we did thirteen

31:47

digital learning coaches like i talked about a little bit

31:50

earlier where their full time job is to provide professional

31:54

development Find resource is mentor people in technology on dh

31:59

try to hook people up with this when i know

32:01

you you have a problem in this area up I

32:03

got a solution for you When did you get your

32:05

log ins Are all of your kids on on And

32:08

then we send himto one person in the district One

32:11

person garrett kerr is the name of the guy in

32:13

our area So for twenty four thousand kids if you

32:16

have a question about shmoop or you don't know how

32:18

to get on you go to one guy That way

32:20

the messaging is controlled the loggins or easy he has

32:25

access to everything and if not he has their cell

32:27

phone numbers so on dh that's been the best part

32:31

on di didn't get an opportunity to answer that question

32:34

today and got him a a good salesman I need

32:36

a bonus but the enough for the the best part

32:41

that that i've liked about using shmoop and i don't

32:43

know if i'm sure you guys can can echo this

32:46

but but i do have allison's cell phone i do

32:49

have paul cellphone and if something goes wrong i mean

32:52

it hasn't yet but if something went wrong i know

32:56

i could get a hold of them and we're working

32:58

on a lot of really exciting future things that aren't

33:01

out there yet building a lot of the courses and

33:04

and especially in the middle school level and they've been

33:07

so receptive if like i said we have a conservative

33:11

community and we had a video that had an intro

33:15

to it that wasn't inappropriate but for an ultra conservative

33:20

clientele the kid thought it was funny showed dad and

33:23

dad didn't like a glove snap on on ah video

33:27

that was on there for pre calculus for his eleventh

33:30

grader i thought that was interesting but but he didn't

33:34

like the intro to it but thought that the math

33:37

was incredibly sounded that the video is showing so we

33:41

wanted the meats but we didn't we wanted it without

33:43

the set up because it was really hard tio assign

33:47

something where some parents felt that it was inappropriate and

33:52

gosh i'm talking about out of three hundred videos are

33:55

three thousand videos one that we've had any concern over

34:01

and but the responsiveness was like right now i mean

34:04

i emailed and within a minute i had an e

34:07

mail back and on dh that's something where you think

34:11

houghton mifflin's going to e mail you back in a

34:13

minute it's not gonna happen I give them a lot

34:16

more money and they don't get them when they won't

34:18

get back to you ever they don't care Maybe i

34:21

should ask for a raise Exactly I was going to

34:25

add one of the things that i have my sight

34:28

my librarian no shmoop so much better than anyone else

34:32

on our campus and i'm really said he got promoted

34:38

to the district office so he's going to be gone

34:40

next week so i think i'm gonna have to answer

34:42

all these questions but having support staff no shmoop and

34:47

how like the log and i mean doing the magic

34:49

word and all that stuff to get your account set

34:51

up it's so important to have a one or two

34:53

people in your sight then take a walk class through

34:57

walk a teacher through our walk students through um and

35:01

i know like the same thing i know sam would

35:03

call up to shmoop all the times i hate this

35:04

isn't working or this kid's counts locked or whatever and

35:07

like same thing they'd be back that emails back within

35:10

the day saying hey okay his countess opener with this

35:13

is the problem when we fixed it or something that

35:15

so having your support staff noam know the ins and

35:19

outs will help you a lot especially like a librarian

35:21

or something that we're having lots of computers i find

35:24

that having access to alison is really great if i

35:29

ever have a question she's certainly there but also knowing

35:32

how to use our students is resource is the more

35:35

the students use shmoop maur teachers will be motivated to

35:39

use it and the more they will learn about it

35:42

We have ah few early adopters in our school who

35:44

will grab anything that you put in front of them

35:47

and run with it but what i find most successful

35:52

are easiest with implementation of anything new shmoop being one

35:55

of those things is that as soon as students see

35:58

the value in a program or something then the adults

36:03

run with it so there's so much that comes top

36:06

down within our within our district and it's not adopted

36:11

to the extent as it is when it comes from

36:13

students and teachers so that student ownership you put it

36:16

in front of them and they'll love it And i

36:19

was talking earlier today about our five computer science students

36:23

who i thought would never be into shmoop because it

36:27

was just too witty and and they've really just like

36:30

the content and they sit and do do math problems

36:33

for fun and there on it all the time and

36:36

then we have students who who i thought well they're

36:39

really not so into this and they're also on it

36:42

so it really reaches the masses on different levels and

36:46

and i find just that students really enjoy using it

36:49

and that's when the adults take hold Of it and

36:52

in my district i'm i'm the person so i call

36:55

allison a lot for help but i have done you

36:59

know meetings I've offered meetings at all of my high

37:02

school's before school after school during their conferences i've told

37:05

teachers they can call me and it's so easy shmoop

37:08

isn't such a great job of making it so easy

37:11

to learn that i can say ok get on your

37:13

computer log on and here's what you're going to see

37:16

and i've done this as i'm driving to a meeting

37:19

so i'm like okay And i just pull down that

37:20

pull down menu and go to passes and you're going

37:22

to get to where you need to go but i'm

37:25

very excited as i talked earlier that five hundred students

37:28

have logged on in just this month I know those

37:31

five hundred students could have potentially increased my my phone

37:37

number for teachers because they're going to be calling me

37:39

saying okay i've forgotten how to get on shmoop but

37:41

my kids were talking about it but that's great i

37:44

don't care i've just made it where i will go

37:47

to them at any time if they want to see

37:49

it Know about it or hear about it Well thank

37:54

you very much That was a lovely conclusion to this 00:37:58.379 --> [endTime] panel discussion

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