WHY PRINT MATERIALS SHOULD GET A SECOND LOOK Vicki Davis

WHY PRINT MATERIALS SHOULD GET A SECOND LOOK

By Vicki Davis

As the principal of Pike Road Intermediate School in Alabama, I'm part of an overall school culture that champions intellectual curiosity. All students are asked to take ownership of their learning and are inspired to think, innovate, and create. Engagement is essential, and teachers are asked to customize instruction to meet individual students' needs to ensure no gaps exist in a child's knowledge.

As a 1:1 school, we are continually looking at education technology to enhance the learning process. Yt, interestingly, I've noticed that paper materials remain key learning methods in the successful advancement of our standards-based curriculum.

Before I became a principal, my special education background enlightened me to the tactile side of child learning. It stayed with me as my career developed, and it is something I believe is beneficial to all learning. When children have something tangible that they can hold in their hands, it gives them something to respond to as they select or write an answer down. The hands-on approach often makes

learning more embedded in kids' minds rather than merely responding to a computer or device.

The Teacher Benefits

When students have print materials in front of them, teachers have the freedom to be less conscientious of the student falling off task. The device-driven society that we live in today has made students experts in distraction. When a student is working on a computer, they are very adept at quickly and easily swiping away from an assignment to a video game or something they shouldn't necessarily be watching.

We are a 1:1 school system, and it's a real problem for us with students exploring on devices away from the assignment. When students have print materials in front of them, they are more likely to concentrate on the task at hand rather than having things that pull their attention online.

Forced Remote Learning

During the initial spring COVID closures, we did not take advantage of print material as best as we could have in virtual learning. When we closed our schools in March, teachers automatically went to Google Classroom to establish their lessons and provide instruction. But they also used materials from Ready Reading and Ready Math that they uploaded to Google Classroom, and parents could make copies.

In retrospect, we could have done a better job of printing materials for families. It was such a scramble, and we did the best we could under the circumstances. We provided hotspots for families that didn't have access. Most families had their 1:1 devices, and we made sure For the families who had issues with getting set up for online learning, we inquired about devices and Wi-Fi connectivity with a form over two weeks. We provided a schedule of staggered times that parents could drive to the school and be assisted by staff. Parents came to the school and waited in a carpool line format. Our team would meet them at their cars, asking, "Who are you? What is your child's name? What devices are needed." As for those parents that did not respond to our inquiry, we reached out by phone to follow up.

Observations and Areas of Research That Show the Benefits of Print Material

Print material allows students to work more effectively in small groups. Even though we are in the midst of COVID, and you need to be careful, I've noticed kids' reactions in the classroom with a computer device being different than if they were creating a project with paper and pencil.

There is so much research about the adverse effects of screen time on students—social skills, attention issues, and more. The computer and the internet are wonderful advancements, and we often wonder how we ever lived without them. However, at the end of the day, when you are looking to educate children best, paper and pencil is at the top.

Sometimes parents aren't as savvy about accessing online materials, so when you send home actual paper copies asking that the students practice with the materials, it's more likely to be completed. Parents are more engaged to sit down and go over the materials with their children—one reason being, perhaps, that these materials feel familiar to parents from their own school experience. We’ve found that print materials help with parent communication

The Need for More Print Materials

In the past, because we are an online 1:1 device school system, our school was not in the habit of purchasing print materials or curriculum. Established only five years ago, we are independently in control of pulling our standards and producing our curriculum. Before I came to Pike Road as a principal to start up the middle school, I had worked as a principal and curriculum specialist for a traditional school system with 21 schools.

When I came to Pike Road, it was daunting to try and put together a specific, sequential curriculum and hit the necessary standards. Recently, I was searching for some good science and social studies material to help teachers so that they didn't have to rely on piecemealing materials all the time to put together a curriculum. Unfortunately, teachers are often asked to spend too much time searching for materials, taking up time that could be better used for interactive lessons. We are working on improving this area in our school.

When I came here, we did not have a good benchmark of assessment. When I arrived, I was alerted to i-Ready from an educator who had gone to a reading and math workshop. For the first time, parents who were in the school system for some time were able to see their child’s progress. They could see where their children were—what their deficits were, what their strengths were. We could identify and provide enrichment and intervention with learning paths. After that, I realized there were print materials in the Ready Reading and Math curricula that would be additionally helpful and last year, we went ahead with adding those elements.

There are always going to be kids who will learn under any circumstance. But that does not include every kid by a long shot. Having print and digital resources integrated into our curriculum has helped us identify and monitor students’ needs while providing intervention. Other programs were frankly not as comprehensive and were not aligned to standards. The curriculum aspects of previous programs were piecemeal at best.

It's interesting that with all the online learning taking place, especially compounded by the pandemic changes in education, a mixture of paper materials with technology-based methods seems a perfect marriage. Hopefully, as things settle down and get back to more normalcy, educators, leadership, and parents can come together and share stories on how both paper materials and online learning played essential parts in the advancement of recent student learning.

Vicki Davis is a veteran educator with a wide range of teaching experiences which includes teaching kindergarten through eighth grade as well as serving as adjunct professor for several years at the university level. She has been an administrator for the past seventeen years serving as program specialist and principal in an elementary, intermediate and middle school environment.

USERS ARE THE BENCHMARK FOR ACCESSIBILITY, NOT SIMPLY COMPLIANCE

By Valerie Schreiner

As someone who’s led development of education technology products at multiple companies, I always thought, and believed, that we were doing everything we should do to make our products accessible. We had the mission statements and the policies in place and we actively considered the needs of our user communities in design and deployment.

I thought we were doing everything right until it was obvious that we were not.

That moment came at a previous job when we hosted a webinar on accessibility where we would be demonstrating our teaching and learning technology. I joined the event and saw a blind professor start his presentation. Things were very wrong. He could not advance his slides, could not read the chat. Professionally and personally, the obvious tech failure was a slow motion nightmare.

At that point, I had a choice - crawl in a hole or deal with it. So, I called the professor and said, “We are trying. We thought we were doing well. But it’s clearly not working; will you help me?” Fortunately, he did. He helped lead us to do many good things such as forming an advisory council of users and bringing in reputable, independent accessibility experts. But the most important and beneficial thing he did was help me understand the importance of seeking, collecting and responding to the experiences of real users. It’s a foundational principle of accessibility that I’ve kept with me since.

In fact, designing in and planning for direct user engagement and feedback has become one of what I call my three tenets on doing accessibility in education technology right. The other two are declaring accessibility a non-negotiable part of the company’s brand identity and allowing and inviting independent, outside review of your progress. At the time of that accessibility webinar, we were only doing one of the three. Let me share an example of how feedback from real users makes a difference.

In developing new education software, we were fortunate to work with blind students at the University of Toronto - real students who were really using our products. At one point, one of them said, “I can do all the

things I have to do to attend, go to class. I can get all the information I need to function, but I can’t do anything that’s fun.”

In that product, we’d designed feedback icons to allow students to quickly click a smiling face or an angry face, that kind of thing. With that student feedback, we realized that was fun but simply not accessible to all our students. We had created an inferior experience. We built something that worked, not something that was genuinely equitable.

So we went to work and when we thought we’d solved a few of those issues -- things we would never have contemplated without real user feedback -- I sent a product manager to Toronto to see that same student and record her experience with our changes. We needed to know if we were making progress in doing better. When the student tried our new designs, her face lit up. “Tell your developers this means the world to me,” she said.

We showed the video to our entire company. I watched it change our company culture. It changed the reason people in our company were coming to work. Seeing the difference their work could make gave them power and purpose in ways few other things could. It was and still is a big deal.

That’s when it hit me that genuine feedback from real people could not just spark improvements or solve market problems, it could help your company at the same time. It’s the rare dynamic in which no one loses and everybody benefits.

And, if you will indulge me, I’d like to add two further points about enacting accessibility instead of simply saying you will or want to.

Compliance is not Enough

No one should have a goal of compliance; that goal is too low. If your company or product is merely compliant, you have not actually done anything. You have not accomplished your goal until a real user says you’ve met your goal.

Scale Matters

When large companies embrace real user input and make changes, they can drive market-wide adoption by forcing smaller companies to catch up. Being more means you have to do more. As the largest education company in our space, it’s a position we’re honored to leverage.

The bottom line is that thinking you’re doing right, just having the words written down, not only is not enough, but it can give you a false sense of achievement. Real users can burst that bubble in real ways and you would do well to encourage them. In my experience, it’s the best way to unlock real and necessary improvements in products and perspectives.

Valerie Schreiner leads product development and marketing at one of the largest education technology companies in the world, Turnitin. She has a long history in the education and edtech industry and has served on the board of several successful technology start-ups.

LEARN MORE ABOUT TURNITIN

ADDRESSING THE NEEDS OF STRUGGLING STUDENTS OVERCOMING CHALLENGES AND FINDING SOLUTIONS

“Whether financial hardship, loss of a family member to COVID, or reactions to the boiling over emotions of Black Lives Matter, no two students will have had the same experience.”

-Sam Drazin, Executive Director at Changing Perspectives

This year—perhaps more than any other in recent memory—our classrooms are full of students who have all made it through the first 75% of 2020, but are unlikely to share the same story. We have spent a lot of time making sure that educators know how to engage students in synchronous sessions; that they’re able to master the tools of online learning; and they know how to set solid boundaries when communicating with learners weekly.

But one topic keeps pricking at the heart: how to reach students who aren’t engaging well. We tackled this topic in the spring, but while we have made a lot of progress in day-to-day teaching during the age of COVID-19, the need for inclusion and support has only grown. THE TROUBLE WITH HYBRID & REMOTE LEARNING

In addition to the issues present with access inequality, students who need additional support in the classroom have also been disproportionately impacted by hybrid and remote learning. For many exceptional learners, a structured routine is a foundational way to ground learning. As we are all aware, structured routine was the first thing to be disrupted this year, and though the 2020-2021 school year was better planned than last spring, it is often marked by varying schedules, pivots to full online learning, and lots of home-based learning where structured support services are not available at the same level as they would be in a traditional classroom or campus. Although support services are focused on the student, when students shift to home-based learning, families are forced to play an additional role.

All parents of remote learners face extra challenges this year. But there is no doubt that children who are on IEPs or 504 plans are under extra stress, and will require more support and resources to be successful.

To learn more, watch the full recording of our webinar: "Addressing the Needs of Struggling Students: Overcoming Challenges and Finding Solutions." Joining hosts Kris Murner and Dennis Yim are E. Christopher Williams, Associate Director of STEP at New York Institute of Technology, and Sam Drazin, Executive Director at Changing Perspectives.