Empowered Learner - July 2020 issue

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A P U B L I C AT I O N O F T H E I N T E R N AT I O N A L S O C I E T Y FO R T E C H N O L O G Y I N E D U C AT I O N

THE SHIFT THAT SHOOK EDUCATION HOW WE FARED WHEN COVID-19 FORCED US TO REINVENT LEARNING

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STANDARDS SPOTLIGHT

GLOBAL COLLABORATOR: INTRODUCE STUDENTS TO OUR SMALL, CONNECTED WORLD

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COVID-19

LEARNING KEEPS GOING

The COVID-19 outbreak means schools, colleges and universities are facing unprecedented challenges in delivering learning.

To keep learning going around the globe, the COVID-19 Education Coalition, a community of nonprofit organizations, has come together to support the education field.

LearningKeepsGoing.org offers a curated collection of free tools and resources to help educators and parents during extended school closures.

You will find:

E FRE d

an tools rces! resou

• Free learning tools.

• An educator help desk.

• Ideas, strategies and plans.

• Webinars and podcasts.

• Tips for parents.

Visit LearningKeepsGoing.org

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July 2020 Volume four Issue one A quarterly magazine

4 about us

5 from the iste board Bill Bass Leading in the moment that mattered

6 iste in action

Joseph South New column empowers educators with research-based insights

8 member voices

Tim Needles Video poems bring a creative interdisciplinary approach to any lesson

10 interview

Pamela Cantor, M.D.

Child psychiatrist, nonprofit

founder discusses stress, resilience

and the needs of students in a post-COVID-19 world

20 what works

Design class gives students the power of choice

35 standards spotlight

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Global Collaborator: Introduce students to our small, connected world

22 cover

The shift that shook education How we fared when COVID-19 forced us to reinvent learning

CONTENTS

39 research connections

Study uncovers benefits, pitfalls of videoconferencing for global citizenship

43 global focus

Sandra Chow Lessons learned from school closures in China

44 member profile

Carla Jefferson She’s focused on helping educators understand the power of technology

48 community voices

What are some sites that offer free access to audiobooks?

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executive editor Julie Phillips Randles

director of editorial content Diana Fingal

contributors Jerry Fingal Kristin Harrington Nicole Krueger Daniel G. Krutka, Ph.D. Jennifer Snelling

art director Sharon Adlis

iste ceo Richard Culatta

chief learning officer Joseph South

iste president Bill Bass Innovation Coordinator for Instructional Technology, Information and Library Media Parkway School District

iste president-elect Randy Hansen, Ed.D. Associate Dean, School of Arts and Sciences University of Maryland University College

empowered learner advisory panel Bijal Damani, Rajkot, Gujarat, India Matt Hiefield, Beaverton, Oregon Nicol Howard, Ph.D., Redlands, California Carol Kelley, Ed.D., Oak Park, Illinois Janice Mak, Phoenix, Arizona Luis Perez, Ph.D., St. Petersburg, Florida Jason Trinh, Toronto, Ontario, Canada Jorge Valenzuela, Richmond, Virginia

The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) is a nonprofit organization that works with the global education community to accelerate the use of technology to solve tough problems and inspire innovation. Our worldwide network believes in the potential technology holds to transform teaching and learning.

ISTE sets a bold vision for education transformation through the ISTE Standards, a framework for students, educators, administrators, coaches and computer science educators to rethink education and create innovative learning environments. ISTE hosts the annual ISTE Conference & Expo, one of the world’s most influential edtech events.

The organization’s professional learning offerings include online courses, professional networks, year-round academies, peer-reviewed journals and other publications.

ISTE is also the leading publisher of books focused on technology in education. For more information or to become an ISTE member, visit iste.org. Subscribe to ISTE’s YouTube channel and connect with ISTE on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Our vision. ISTE’s vision is that all educators are empowered to harness technology to accelerate innovation in teaching and learning, and inspire learners to reach their greatest potential.

Our mission. ISTE inspires educators worldwide to use technology to innovate teaching and learning, accelerate good practice and solve tough problems in education by providing community, knowledge and the ISTE Standards, a framework for rethinking education and empowering learners.

Subscriptions. ISTE members receive Empowered Learner each quarter as a membership benefit. Members can purchase additional subscriptions for $49 per year. Nonmembers can subscribe to Empowered Learner for $100 a year. To subscribe, please visit iste.org/EmpoweredLearner or contact our customer service department by emailing iste@iste.org or calling 800.336.5191.

About Empowered Learner. Empowered Learner ISSN 2573-1807 (print), Empowered Learner ISSN 2573-2137 (online) is published quarterly by the International Society for Technology in Education, 621 SW Morrison Street, Suite 800, Portland, OR 97205, USA. Periodicals postage paid at Portland, Oregon, and at additional mailing office. Send address changes to the ISTE membership department at 621 SW Morrison Street, Suite 800, Portland, OR 97205, USA. Copyright 2020 ISTE. All rights reserved. The contents of this publication may not be reproduced by any means, in whole or in part, without the prior written consent of the publisher. Published July 2020.

For information on advertising in future issues of Empowered Learner, please email advertise @iste.org.

Stay connected iste.org

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FROM THE ISTE BOARD

photo by s te v e smith

Bill Bass commends the ISTE community for its efforts to keep learning going.

Leading in the moment that mattered

By Bill Bass ISTE Board President As we all adjust to the new (ab)normal that exists in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve been reflecting on how the ISTE community responded to the crisis. In two words: You led.

In fact, you exemplified the vision of empowered learning, and despite everything that was going on in your own homes, districts and communities during the coronavirus outbreak, you stepped up.

You shared lessons, strategies and best practices for online learning. You provided tech support. You worked tirelessly to keep the needs of students with special needs in the forefront of our minds. You raised up others as you served your own students. You calmed panicked parents. And most of all, you made sure remote learning was meaningful and engaging.

Many of you contributed to the COVID19 Help Desk on LearningKeepsGoing.org by providing expertise and answers for other educators around the world.

Your commitment exemplified our vision that all educators are empowered to

use technology to accelerate innovation in teaching and learning, and inspire learners to reach their greatest potential.

It also highlighted the importance of preparing year-round to ensure learning continues no matter the challenge. That preparation allowed the ISTE community to lead in the midst of a crisis.

You can read the stories of many ISTE members who led during this global crisis in our extended feature that covers how districts, schools and educators responded to the challenges of COVID-19 school closures.

While we hope that we’ll be able to return to school in the fall, we also have an opportunity to return to a different education experience than the one we left in February.

We can continue to bring in experts virtually to bridge physical gaps that keep children from interacting with the global community.

We have the opportunity to reconsider the rigid schedules that limit students’ ability to move at their own pace. And we have the chance to make sure all teachers know

how to use the best tools to make learning meaningful. Taking advantage of these opportunities requires innovative leaders.

One thing is certain: The ISTE community is up to the challenge!

“Taking advantage of these opportunities requires innovative leaders.”

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ISTE IN ACTION

photo by s te v e smith

Joseph South introduces our new Research Connections column.

New column empowers educators with research-based insights

By Joseph South ISTE Chief Learning Officer In this issue of Empowered Learner, we’re introducing a new column called Research Connections. The purpose of Research Connections is to provide readers with practical, relevant classroom strategies and approaches that are research-based.

On the surface, this may sound really straightforward. And in a way it is. Why wouldn’t we connect classrooms to educational researchers and researchers to classrooms? Both can benefit.

Educators benefit from learning about approaches that have been studied and verified to be effective. Researchers benefit by learning from and studying the innovative approaches that educators are developing every day in their classrooms, and in understanding the context and constraints of their day-to-day work.

This can spark new ideas for researchers to study, which, in turn, can benefit yet more educators.

Surprisingly, these kinds of collaborations are less abundant than they should be. More often, researchers conduct a small study in a controlled environment and publish it in

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a peer-reviewed academic journal, never to be seen by the vast majority of educators.

And educators often rely primarily on what they learned in their own university experience (whether that was one year ago or 20) or what they experienced in their early years in the classroom.

Without context and the latest research in mind, it can be hard to know which of the myriad frameworks, best practices, initiatives and snappy-sounding approaches that are constantly appearing in teachers’ inboxes, social media streams and professional learning experiences are truly effective.

That’s where this new column can bridge the gap. In each quarterly issue, the column will introduce recent research and share: • New insights from the research.

• The principle behind it.

• Classroom applications and examples.

• Potential limitations.

• Key takeaways for educators.

• Remaining questions.

We hope that Research Connections can help point us in a new direction, one that re-

spects the knowledge and skills of classroom teachers while also embracing the latest advances in our collective understanding of how students learn best.

We promise to keep it practical. We promise to keep it relevant. We promise to base it in real science. And we hope you can use it to discover new insights that support you on your journey as an empowered educator, learner and leader.

Transform your practice Build critical skills for teaching and learning in a digital world with ISTE U, a virtual hub of best-in-class professional learning. Explore unique edtech topics in online, self-paced courses for teachers, coaches, librarians and school leaders!

Course topics include: • NEW: Online learning

• Artificial intelligence

• NEW: Game-based learning

• Computational thinking

• NEW: Project-based learning

• Digital citizenship

• NEW: Learning sciences

• Open educational resources

Get guidance on teaching online with our new microcourses!

Learn more and register today at iste.org/ISTEU ISTE U is powered by

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MEMBER VOICES

photo by s te v e smith

Tim Needles describes the power of infusing art into learning.

Video poems bring a creative interdisciplinary approach to any lesson

By Tim Needles

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How would you describe the first five minutes of your day in 10 words? This is one of the questions I ask my students as a way to inspire them to begin writing as part of a video poem project. After writing about a series of topics in different styles and sharing some of our favorites, each student chooses one to elevate with visuals, such as photos, film, handwriting, audio or any other creative tools at our disposal.

Writing and art has always helped me process my own thoughts and feelings, and I’ve seen it help students in the same way. I find that students often get more in touch with their own emotions as a result of the process and are able to produce more creative works as a result.

The first-five-minutes prompt is one of many I use that focuses on exploring our feelings in a non-invasive way and articulating them in words, which we later use as a basis for a short poem. I’ve been teaching this STEAM project for over 20 years and it has evolved into a number of variations that cater to the students

I’m working with, their skill levels and interests.

That’s where my signature video poems lesson comes in. These poems are a great way to infuse a creative interdisciplinary element into what you’re teaching. And thanks to their versatility, they’re also great for distance learning.

The flexibility of the medium is key in making it work in so many different situations. The poetry can be a three-line haiku, a song (which is just poetry set to music), a short story or even a rhyming limerick. The visuals are just as adaptable because they can be drawings, photographs or film clips.

The video poem projects range from a simple four-frame video poem that uses four images with writing on them to a more advanced animated or pixilation video poem, which is more collaborative and great for advanced students.

One example is the project I did in April to celebrate National Poetry Month where students worked together to write a poem in a shared Google Doc while they were home

for distance learning. It was a great opportunity for students to work together when they weren’t seeing each other in person, and to explore gratitude in their writing, helping them focus on the positives that support social-emotional learning. In addition to writing the poem as a group, students each contributed visuals that were edited together for the final video poem.

As you can see, video poems are both interdisciplinary and differentiated, and cater to each student’s interests.

As an added benefit, video poems help teachers connect with and understand their students better, providing insight into how each student comprehends learning and how they’re feeling.

Self-expression and choice are core elements in creating a video poem, making it a terrific tool for promoting mindfulness in education. I’ve always seen poetry as the starter kit for writing because it’s an open form that allows a huge variety of expression. That’s one of the reasons I’ve continued to teach it and adapt it to different learning situations for so many years.

Video poems have also become a mainstay because they’re so versatile. I’ve successfully led versions of the project with students from elementary school to college, and I’ve integrated a variety of subjects using technologies from smartphone apps like iMotion, Over and iMovie to programs like Adobe Premiere and Final Cut Pro. I chose to include the project in my ISTE book, STEAM Power, because I’ve seen firsthand how teachers can use video poem creation in any learning scenario, regardless of age or technology or even skill level. It’s a project you can adapt for a one-period class or for a full week of projectbased learning.

When I was in school and teachers offered a creative variance on a project, I would suddenly come alive and jump at the opportunity. Creative projects inspired me to study each subject in more depth, and the knowledge I gained from these projects

stayed with me until this day. Why? My theory is that in order to translate knowledge to a creative medium, you have to have a deep understanding of the topic.

When students are synthesizing what they’re learning and writing about, it helps elevate the experience and that knowledge gets ingrained. What’s really great is that this is not just true for the students who create the video poems, but also for the students who view the poems, so the work becomes a shareable teaching tool in itself. A great example is the musical “Hamilton.” Anyone who has seen it is not likely to forget the actual history it’s based on.

That’s the power of infusing art into learning. tim needles is an artist and educ ator whose work has been featured on npr and in the new york times as well as at the columbus museum of art, the norman rock well museum and the museum of fine arts houston. he’s taught art and media for 20 ye ars and is the recipient of the iste creativit y award from the art and technology professional learning net work. needles is al so the author of the is te book , ste am power: infusing art into your stem curriculum.

“ These poems are a great way to infuse a creative interdisciplinary element into what you’re teaching.

And thanks to their versatility, they’re also great for distance learning.”

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INTERVIEW Pamela Cantor, M.D., explains the science behind supporting students after the COVID-19 outbreak.

PAMELA CANTOR, M.D. CHILD PSYCHIATRIST, NONPROFIT FOUNDER DISCUSSES STRESS, RESILIENCE AND THE NEEDS OF STUDENTS IN A POST-COVID-19 WORLD

By Julie Phillips Randles

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Pamela Cantor, M.D., was more than happy to answer the call to help the New York City Department of Education whose students were in lower Manhattan the day the twin towers fell on 9/11. As a child psychiatrist, she was prepared to work with students whose nightmares about that day were interfering with their ability to function and learn in a classroom.

Instead, she discovered that it wasn’t terrorists that haunted them. Yes, 68% of New York City school children had experienced trauma sufficient enough to impair their functioning in school, but the lasting distress stemmed from growing up in poverty and facing ongoing adversity. And because she had the science to understand how the human brain works, Cantor was able to positively affect these students’ lives.

But Cantor had another advantage, although that wasn’t the word anyone would use to describe it. Her own childhood had evolved around an ongoing trauma, and it was a therapist who showed a teenaged Cantor that she was a pearl in an oyster and not a damaged individual.

This mentor supported her without wavering when she announced that she, too, was going to be a doctor despite the fact that she was an art history major and didn’t have a track record in science and math.

Backed by this kind of belief in her success, she earned a bachelor’s from Sarah Lawrence College and her M.D. from Cornell University, where she was one of five women in her class.

She entered private practice in child psychiatry with a focus on trauma, and was a clinical instructor of psychiatry at Cornell University Medical Center and an assistant professor at Yale.

photo by bri a n h at ton

Pamela Cantor, M.D., says for children, stress is local and the response to it must be equally local.

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INTERVIEW

That’s why Turnaround partners with school districts to equip educators to understand and address the impacts of trauma and adversity, and put children on a path to learn and develop in healthy ways – a path to thrive.

“What these teachers are able to do – if they are taught the skills – is to develop trust, reduce stress and open the minds of young people to a full engagement in learning,” Cantor has said.

Cantor is also a governing partner of the Science of Learning and Development Alliance and has shared her insights at events including the iNACOL (Aurora Institute) Symposium, Education Writers Association National Seminar, NewSchools Summit and EdSurge Fusion. In 2018, she appeared in

photo by bri a n h at ton

What I could change was the impact it had on their lives, how they coped and ultimately surmounted adversity.

So she was the right person in the right place in 2001 to learn deeply about what children need to learn and thrive. But she was just one person. That’s why in 2002, she founded Turnaround for Children, a nonprofit that provides educators with tools and resources, grounded in science, to help turn any school into a positive force for learning and growth for all students. Since its founding, Turnaround has assisted nearly 300 schools serving tens of thousands of children.

“In my private practice, I never changed a child’s circumstances or what had happened to them. What I could change was the impact it had on their lives, how they coped and ultimately surmounted adversity,” she has said previously.

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WHAT DID WE LEARN FROM 9/11 THAT CAN INFORM HOW WE SUPPORT KIDS AFTER THE COVID-19 OUTBREAK?

At the time of 9/11, New York had the acute event happen at ground zero in lower Manhattan. That’s where the buildings came down, and there was an idea that all of us had then that kids who lived in the immediate proximity of ground zero were going to have the greatest impacts from this crisis.

At the time, I was part of a group that did what is still the largest epidemiologic study on the emotional well-being of an urban school system. That study had a number of findings that really surprised us. One of the biggest surprises was learning that the most profound effects of 9/11 were not in the immediate proximity of ground zero.

They were in the communities and the schools where children were living in deepest poverty.

There’s a story that illustrates the key point that I want to make both about how 9/11 is different from COVID-19, and what we can learn from 9/11 that will help us respond to the stress of COVID. I visited an elementary school in the South Bronx and a teacher had given their class an opportunity to do a drawing of what 9/11 meant to them. This little boy, Thomas, who was 6 years old, came up to me and showed me his drawing. In that drawing, there were two little boxes in the background that had smoke coming out. In the foreground, there were two stick-figure boys with guns pointed at each other.

The story of Thomas’ drawing was that for him, the stress and fear were local; it was something he saw every single day, and 9/11

was very far away for him. When I saw that, as a child psychiatrist who had specialized in trauma, I was seeing something that didn’t surprise me – that stress is local. It’s something that’s happening in their immediate environment. And to be helpful to children, the response needs to be equally local.

This has huge implications for how we understand COVID-19, because COVID is something that isn’t geographically isolated.

It’s everywhere. And there are very few lives in the world, let alone in the United States, that are going to be untouched by COVID. So one of the things that can help us understand how to respond is looking at the mechanisms of stress. That’s the unifying principle here. The experience of the pandemic, its uncertainty, the losses and the stress, all of these things are going to activate stress mechanisms in children that need to be responded to. And for all intents and purposes, the context of stress is local.

WHAT CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT HOW CHILDREN AND ADULTS RESPOND TO STRESS? WHAT DOES STRESS DO TO THE BODY AND THE BRAIN?

Adversity doesn’t just happen to children.

It happens inside their brains and bodies through the biologic mechanism of stress.

The way that happens is because of the interplay of two hormonal systems – one that responds to stress, which is mediated by the hormone cortisol, and one that responds to love, which is mediated by the hormone oxytocin.

When we experience stress – all of us are pretty familiar with that feeling, for example, when we’re preparing for a performance or a recital – we get that feeling of fight, flight, freeze, which is associated with the release of cortisol. If the stress is mild or moderate, it’s great because it’s adaptive and it helps us prepare and it makes us alert.

But if the stress is overwhelming, cortisol can do damage to some very criti-

photo by t urnaround for children

and contributed to Edutopia’s “How Learning Happens” project that includes videos viewed over 11 million times.

ISTE sat down with Cantor to learn more about this holistic approach to students and learning.

What these teachers are able to do – if they are taught the skills – is to develop trust, reduce stress and open the minds of young people to a full engagement in learning.

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INTERVIEW

When we experience a relationship that provides safety and trust, it triggers the release of oxytocin, and oxytocin and cortisol start to battle with each other.

cal structures in the brain called the limbic system that consists of three structures: the prefrontal cortex for focus; the hippocampus for memory; and the amygdala, which regulates our emotions. These structures are covered with receptors to cortisol, but they’re also covered with receptors to the other hormonal system, and that’s oxytocin.

So when we experience a relationship that provides safety and trust, it triggers the release of oxytocin, and oxytocin and cortisol start to battle with each other. But oxytocin is the more powerful hormone and triggering the release of oxytocin can protect children from the damaging effects of cortisol. It can help them manage stress, and it can even promote resilience to future stress.

Understanding these stress mechanisms is absolutely crucial to how we can support adults as well as kids in the era of COVID. This thinking leads us to something we’re calling “the COVID paradox,” because the message in COVID that we all heard was that the way to prevent the spread of this virus was to maintain physical distance from each other. But the way we need to protect ourselves from the emotional impact of COVID is through relationships, it’s through connection. So how do we do both at the same time? This is the paradox. How do we remain physically separate, while at the same time. remaining emotionally connected?

This is the most important thing we need to solve for if we want to build resilience in ourselves and our children.

HOW DO YOU THINK THE IMPACT ON CHILDREN POST-COVID-19 WILL DIFFER FROM POST-9/11?

The very big difference is 9/11 was a single event. It certainly had enormous implications for our political lives globally and for our sense of safety in the world, but it was still a single event.

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My reading of the current medical literature is that this new virus is going to be with us for a long time. It will be better managed when we have a vaccine, but the best estimates for the vaccine are 12 to 18 months from now. So we have no other way to protect ourselves from this particular virus than managing the disruption in our lives. That happens as a result of the requirement that we physically distance.

At Turnaround for Children, we’ve heard various timelines for when kids will return to school. We’re also hearing that districts are advising educators to prepare for distance learning as a part of life and a part of education moving forward. So this is very different, it’s not a singular event.

This is something that will be with us and something we have to manage in an ongoing way in the months and potentially years to come.

HOW RESILIENT ARE CHILDREN IN OVERCOMING CHILDHOOD TRAUMA? WHAT FACTORS MAKE THE MOST DIFFERENCE FOR THEM TO BE SUCCESSFUL LATER IN LIFE?

This is where some of the more optimistic things come into the conversation. Although we can observe that resilience in children and adults is variable and some people appear to have more than others, resilience is not a trait, it’s a set of skills, and those skills can be intentionally promoted and built in children.

We k n ow, f o r e x am pl e, t hat i f relationships protect children from the damaging effects of cortisol by promoting oxytocin release, that helps children recover from the acute effects of stress. It enables them to build a very key skill that’s foundational to resilience – self-regulation or being able to regulate their thoughts and behaviors.

Self-regulation is the prerequisite, the building block, for resilience. If we’re able – in the ways in which we set up our

FOR CHILDREN WHO HAVE BEEN SOCIALLY ISOLATED FOR HEALTH OR OTHER REASONS, WHAT RISK DOES THAT INTRODUCE TO THEIR DEVELOPMENT AND HOW CAN WE HELP THEM THRIVE IN SPITE OF IT?

To answer this, we need to start with the principle that all children are malleable.

Their brains are malleable, their bodies are

really malleable and even their genetics are malleable.

What we know as the most powerful driver of development for children is the context – the experience, environments and relationships that kids are in. So when kids are in an environment that’s constrained, whether they’re a child that has to be protected because they have a serious illness or they have to be protected from COVID, the question is what are the essentials that need to be in any environment to drive the positive developmental needs they have?

They need relationships and trust more than any other single thing. And they need to have routines and things that happen in a regular, recurring way because routines

Self-regulation is the prerequisite, the building block, for resilience.

t urnaround for children’s ne w york cit y te am le ads a professional le arning session for dis tric t 10 school le aders. photo by brian hat ton

homes or ultimately set up our classrooms – to promote relationships, to establish order and routines, we’ll help build resilience in kids.

In fact, Turnaround for Children has captured that message in what we call the three R’s: relationships, routines and resilience. And all of them can be built.

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INTERVIEW

Even without the pandemic, our organization has been a thought leader on the science of learning and development, trying to move our education systems away from delivering content or filling kids up with academic content as a way of defining learning, and instead moving toward a system that actually develops the learner in holistic ways.

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help children begin to be able to focus and even catch up on things like learning. We also need those kinds of relationships and routines to build resilience.

When children don’t have that, whatever the cause, a kind of dysregulated, chaotic, emotional state happens. In those states, children can’t focus their attention, they’re easily triggered in terms of their behavior and they’re at enormous risk for mental health issues like depression and anxiety disorders.

So we have a choice in the way we construct environments around whether we want to push toward protective factors, which is what our three R’s are all about, or whether we’re going to continue to expose kids to risk factors in which they’re thinking, emotions and behavior are going to be dysregulated.

WHAT DO WE OFTEN OVERLOOK WHEN CONSIDERING LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT IN CHILDREN AND YOUTH?

It’s interesting because those of us who are glass-half-full people in a moment like this tend to see a convergence of important ideas in a very positive and healthy direction.

We would have said before the pandemic that schools that put relationships at the center of learning are going to activate the healthiest parts of a child’s limbic system, meaning their ability to focus, concentrate, remember, control their behavior and manage their emotions.

We need all of those things for a child to learn, whether it’s basic learning or to develop those wonderful higher-order skills like perseverance and self-direction, all of which depend on having these foundational regulatory skills.

Even without the pandemic, our organization has been a thought leader on the science of learning and development, trying to move our education systems away from delivering content or filling kids up

with academic content as a way of defining learning, and instead moving toward a system that actually develops the learner in holistic ways.

If you have that as your goal – that every learner should have higher-order thinking skills, problem-solving and mastery of content areas – then we’re talking about designing a very different system, and relationships are primary in that system.

It’s not a coincidence that the very same system I’m talking about that’s the ideal for the 21st century is also a system that would help many more children manage the stressful contexts of their lives, which are absolutely going to interfere with their learning apparatus.

If educators right now are thinking, how do we prevent learning loss, how do we have kids catch up on their mathematics, all of those kinds of things, if children’s brains are not open and receptive, it’s not going to work. We have to prioritize well-being and wellness. We have to prioritize relationships.

And then we’ll have a cognitive apparatus that’s working.

YOU TALK A LOT ABOUT THE IDEA THAT CONTEXT MATTERS IN LEARNING. WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY CONTEXT AND HOW CAN EDUCATORS INFLUENCE THE CONTEXT TO MAXIMIZE LEARNING?

By context I mean the environments, relationships and experiences in a child’s life.

It could be at home, it could be in a classroom.

Context has a series of concentric circles, but it certainly starts with a child’s primary attachment – a parent or grandparent – and moves out from there. All of these people and experiences are the drivers of development. This is a core finding of the science of learning and development that’s 180 degrees from what people believed at the beginning of the 20th century.

Back then, people believed in genes, and the genes were the determinant of skills

SOME PEOPLE FEEL LIKE WE ASK WAY TOO MUCH OF OUR TEACHERS. THEY ARE

The message here is that we were looking at teachers who were having a much more productive and satisfying day and students were having fun learning.

I believe we have to move to whole child design, but we have to do it in ways that integrate across practices and have teachers do the things that only teachers can do. One of those right at the top is the relationships they form with kids.

EDUCATORS, COACHES, COUNSELORS, CHEERLEADERS, DISCIPLINARIANS, FOSTER

HOW CAN TECHNOLOGY BE USED TO

PARENTS, ETC. IF WE WANT TO CARE FOR THE

ENHANCE A CHILD’S WELL-BEING?

WHOLE CHILD, HOW CAN WE DO IT IN A WAY

The feature of technology that would change the game for kids is whether children are active in their use of it or if they’re passive recipients of content. If they’re passive

THAT DOESN’T OVERBURDEN TEACHERS?

I do think we ask teachers to do too much, but I think that’s because we continue to add and we don’t subtract. Not everything we ask teachers to do is equally important. When we think about whole child design, we think about five elements.

The physical and emotional safety in the environment; a culture of belonging; integrated supports; being intentional in building skills and mindsets; and rich, rigorous instructional experiences.

One of the really interesting things we had the chance to work on was that series of videos produced by Edutopia, featuring Linda Darling-Hammond, professor of education emeritus at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Edutopia looked at classrooms in different schools across the country. These were not high-tech classrooms, but what was so interesting was the ways in which teachers integrated the elements I mentioned.

We tried to highlight this in the videos by pointing out that teachers were forming relationships with their kids; there were lots of prompts around the classroom to scaffold learning for kids. They had children working together to solve problems. And in the process, children were building skills like self-regulation, executive function and growth mindset.

I do think we ask teachers to do too much, but I think that’s because we continue to add and we don’t subtract.

photo by dav id jacobs

and talents and outcomes for children. It’s the opposite today. We know that nurture drives nature and that the opportunity we have, whether it’s at home or at school, is to be the drivers of development, of learning, of resilience – of all of those important and positive things for kids.

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Teachers have to be able to differentiate how each child learns, and using technology is an enormous boost to being able to do that.

recipients of content, I would say that’s actively harmful to kids, and particularly vulnerable kids, because vulnerable kids need intentional skill-building, particularly around self-regulation, executive function and growth mindset.

There are a couple of things I can imagine that would be most important as far as enhancing a child’s well-being. One is that the actual way in which content is delivered is tied directly to skill-building.

But in order to build a skill, you have to practice. So, just like learning anything else, a child has to be active.

You can’t learn the piano by listening to the piano. You have to learn the piano by playing the piano, and playing certain things over and over and over again. Building on this metaphor for a moment, if your teacher is listening to you play the piano and giving you feedback, that’s the third leg of this incredible stool. Because something we now know is that one of the key ingredients to great teaching is great feedback – children continuously getting feedback about what they’re doing.

Sometimes adaptive technologies can learn about students and give that information in real time to teachers. So there’s a loop of sharing knowledge, students actively engaging with it and creating information for teachers about how students learn so teachers get real-time feedback they can then use to help children. You know if a student’s doing well in a particular area that’s a virtuous cycle, and I think technology could play a very virtuous role in it.

WHAT COULD AN EDUCATOR START DOING TOMORROW TO BETTER APPLY THE SCIENCE OF LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT IN THEIR PRACTICE?

The science of learning and development operates from the principle of the malleability of the brain and the ability of the brain to change as a result of the environments,

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experiences and relationships that children have. So if we were going to play by those rules, we would want a teacher to open that brain to learning – and that means children feeling physically and emotionally safe and connected. That’s number one. Number two is understanding that all learning is variable; it’s as variable as the brains we have, and no two children learn in exactly the same way.

So teachers have to be able to differentiate how each child learns, and using technology is an enormous boost to being able to do that.

Then, teachers have to respond to kids in differentiated ways. So, a child that’s shut down because of stress is not going to learn more, just because they’re given more to learn. A teacher has to recognize that they’re going to need to do something to reduce the stress level in order for learning to start again.

Another key feature here is that challenge grows the brain. I think that some folks, when I put the focus on relationships, perceive what I’m saying as being soft.

What I’m actually saying, to use another metaphor, is that an athlete needs to prepare to run the toughest race. So if you prepare by doing all of the things we’ve been talking about and then face a challenge, it’s a very good thing for the brain.

Then you really don’t just follow your assumptions about what children are capable of. You give them challenges so that they discover what they’re capable of.

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iste.org/AwesomeSauce EMPOWERED LEARNER

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WHAT WORKS A glimpse at some edtech success stories.

Design class gives students the power of choice

By Nicole Krueger

photos by z ack ary pe ters

Students in Gina Baragone’s design class may never be expected to code a robot, engineer a 3D-printed roller-coaster or make a stop-motion animated movie in a professional setting. In fact, by the time they enter the workforce, much of the technology they’re using today will have fallen out of date.

But that won’t matter. By the end of the semester, she hopes, they’ll walk away with the skills and confidence to tackle whatever technology they need to bring their ideas to life.

“The idea is to teach kids how to project manage and create things – to look at things in the real world and create their own take or spin on it,” says the teacher at Cesar E. Chavez Middle School in San Bernardino, California.

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Structured to simulate the autonomy students would have as professional designers, the class aims to expose students to various technologies while teaching design thinking and project management skills. Each month, students choose from a menu of options, from robotics to 3D printing to digital photography, and complete a list of independent tasks designed to teach them how to use the technology.

After each task, they meet with Baragone one-onone to demonstrate their work.

For the final, they’re asked to design and direct their own projects using the skills they’ve learned.

“Today we have all this amazing technology, but a lot of times we get stuck doing the same thing with everybody all the time,” she says. “The great thing

about technology is that it makes it so easy to customize now, it’s easier to give kids what they need for where they’re at. I have three of these classes, with 36 kids each, and it gives kids the opportunity to really focus on what they’re interested in.”

The school launched the course last year as a STEM elective, garnering enough interest for a single class. As students discovered what it was about, however, word of mouth quickly spread, and the course became so popular the school added five more classes this year.

Why does it work?

Students become empowered learners.

When teachers make all the decisions, students do just enough to meet expectations and learning remains superficial. Allowing students to make choices about what and how they learn is one of the key indicators of ISTE’s Empowered Learner standard.

By giving students the power of choice, Baragone’s design course invites them to dive deeper.

“I think an empowered learner is someone who is excited, focused and really wants to do it,” she says. “When kids have a choice, they’re no longer stuck doing it just for a grade. They can do something they’re interested in, and they’re more focused on really wanting to learn how to do something and accomplish something. That’s far more empowering than saying, ‘I got an A or a B.’”

not afraid to try things and see how it works out,” Baragone says.

They unleash their creativity.

The prospect of giving kids the freedom to direct their own learning can seem intimidating, but for Baragone it has revealed a completely different side to her students. Some who struggle in other subjects have risen to the top of her design class.

“A lot of kids haven’t been asked to be creative and think outside the box, so when they’re given the chance, they’re kind of surprised by it,” she says.

“Sometimes they’re surprised by themselves. They didn’t know they could do certain things, like make a robot actually work. It opens them up to thinking they can do more than just take a test or write on a piece of paper.” nicole krueger is a freel ance writer and journalist with a pa ssion for finding out what makes learners tick.

They practice failing successfully.

When the 3D printer in Baragone’s classroom jammed, she didn’t hear about it until a student had already Googled the problem, found an instructional video and figured out how to clear the jam himself. Although students seek a lot of hand holding at first, they quickly lose their fear, she says.

“Early on when they fail, they come to me and ask, ‘What happened? Help me.’ I do help, but I encourage them to see what they can figure out. By the end, they’ve gotten so comfortable with not necessarily being successful the first time, with failing and trying again, that they have far less they’re coming to me with and worrying about. They’re

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COVER

The shift that shook education How we fared when COVID-19 forced us to reinvent learning

By Nicole Krueger and Jennifer Snelling

It all felt a bit surreal.

One minute, students were looking forward to spring break. Then COVID-19 flipped the world on its head. Home became school. Parents became teachers.

And teachers became the linchpins in one of the biggest educational experiments in history.

“If anything was ever going to change education, it might be the coronavirus,” says Andrew Smith, chief strategy officer for Rowan-Salisbury Schools in North Carolina. “I think this will forever change the way we think about how we instruct kids.”

When the school closures began, many people thought they would last only a few weeks. Soon, states announced closures for the remainder of the school year. By March, 90% of the world’s enrolled school children were at home due to COVID-19, according to UNESCO. Like most superintendents across the nation, Carol Kelley, Ed.D., of Oak Park

97 in Illinois, leapt into action when the state closure order came. Her leadership team worked through the night to prepare guidelines for the district’s shift to remote learning. The plan went out to administrators, who spent the next night learning the information front and back so they could deliver it to staff in the morning. By Monday, the district was ready to go online.

“Our staff literally transformed how schooling is normally done in less than 48 hours,” Kelley says. “Every teacher and administrator deserves a presidential award.”

Not everyone made the transition smoothly. For weeks, districts operated in crisis mode, scrambling to make sure students were safe, fed and equipped to continue their learning at home. Then came the mad dash to reopen learning online. Leaders wrestled with equity and connectivity issues, while platforms such as Zoom, Canvas and Seesaw became lifelines for teachers attempting to recreate their classrooms in virtual space.

While districts such as Oak Park 97 pivoted to remote learning within days, others, such as California’s Cajon Valley United, needed a few weeks to reopen online. Districts that had already laid the groundwork for distance learning got a head start, but even those steeped in digital instruction soon found themselves out of their depth as two weeks of home learning stretched into nine.

The questions were overwhelming.

How do we feed the children on free and reduced-priced lunch? How do we make sure all students have devices and internet access? Can we provide accommodation for students with disabilities? How do we take attendance online? What does teaching and learning look like without an actual school building?

The pandemic ignited a massive experiment, giving online learning an unexpected trial by fire and changing education in ways we can still only guess at. Now that most schools are closed for the summer,

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The shift that shook education

“We can now expect that in the future there will be times when we will have to shift our mode of learning either partially or fully online, for either a short or long amount of time.”

educators who have been working around the clock can finally pause to take a breath and reflect on where to go from here.

“What is this all going to mean, moving forward into the future?” asks Lu Young, executive director of the University of Kentucky’s Center for Next Generation Leadership. “How do we take everything we’ve experienced and figure out what it means for schools and classrooms once it’s safe to go back out again? What key lessons have we learned about what is essential and how to better empower students as owners of their own learning?”

There’s no telling how the massive shift to remote learning will affect students or the way learning is done in the future. But one thing is clear: Technology, integrated to wildly varying degrees in schools across the nation, has become a vital tool for keeping teachers connected to students and each other.

“The idea that we will never again find ourselves forced into fully online mode even for a short time period is untenable to me,” says Joseph South, chief learning officer for ISTE. “We can now expect that in the future there will be times when we will have to shift our mode of learning either partially or fully online, for either a short or long amount of time. What we want to be thinking about is how to develop resilient systems, and do we have the resources we need to do that well?”

Staying connected during lockdown As nationwide remote learning staggered to its feet, parents in rural North Carolina were flocking to school parking lots to tap into the Wi-Fi. At Rowan-Salisbury Schools, where one of the nation’s fastest digital cities lies just five miles from an internet dead zone, the technology team worked with access point providers to jack up school Wi-Fi signals so students without home access could hop online from the safety of their cars.

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“Even though we’ve tried our very best to bridge the digital divide – and we’ve been working on it for six or seven years now – we still really aren’t there,” Smith says.

Getting every student connected was one of the first challenges district leaders faced during the pandemic. According to an Associated Press analysis of census data, an estimated 17% of U.S. students don’t have access to computers at home and 18% don’t have home access to broadband internet.

Without it, educators feared learning would come to a screeching halt for underprivileged kids while their more affluent peers continued to progress, widening the learning gap.

The disparities prompted some districts to put the brakes on remote learning. “You cannot open a ‘brick-and-mortar’ school in Oregon unless it is accessible to every student in their school district. The same rules apply to an online school,” Marc Siegel, spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Education, told The Oregonian.

“Online learning in a school district cannot be implemented with an ‘access for some’ mindset.”

Many other districts bravely forged ahead, offering digital lessons for those who could access them and supplying the rest with paper packets or other alternatives – anything to keep kids learning. On the last day of school, Baltimore County Public Schools orchestrated a districtwide effort to let every student check out library books, clearing more than 65,000 titles from library shelves.

Los Angeles Unified School District partnered with local public TV stations to broadcast educational programming every day from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Meanwhile, school lunch pickup sites, which served many of the same students who lacked internet access, doubled as technology distribution centers as districts rushed to hand out as many mobile devices and Wi-Fi hotspots as they could scrape together.

Instead of distributing lunches on school property, Jessamine County Schools in Kentucky enlisted its bus fleet to deliver meals to students. Leaders quickly began exploring ways to embed the buses with technology and other learning resources. In areas that struggle with connectivity, buses could be equipped with Wi-Fi and dispatched as neighborhood hotspots, loaded with mobile devices to hand out or stocked with library books and other paper materials.

“How do those bus deliveries become a place where parents can walk up and say, ‘I need such and such’?” asks Young, the district’s former superintendent. “Delivering those meals provides a safe and distant touch point. Having those buses out there as the new face of the school district provides a way to stay in touch that many families could access.”

That ability to think outside the box and creatively repurpose resources will be essential as educators continue to navigate the pandemic and its impact on underprivileged students, she believes.

“I don’t think there’s anything that’s not on the table at this point. This is a time when creativity and resourcefulness are at a premium. How are we thinking about all of our resources and using them for multiple purposes?”

day, expecting to come back a week later.

Now we’re not going to go back at all. It caught all of us off guard.”

Sadie Bograd’s prom dress still hangs on the attic door, unworn. “Hopefully, it will last until next year,” says the junior at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in Kentucky.

In a climate dominated by alarming death tolls and horrifying images from hospitals across the country, she admits it feels a little selfish to mourn the loss of prom. But for the 1.5 billion learners in more than 160 countries affected by school closures, anxiety over the global pandemic coexists with feelings of disappointment, frustration

Helping kids process the pandemic While educators grappled with connectivity issues, students were enjoying what felt like a prolonged snow day. But as stay-at-home orders became more urgent, the realization hit: There would be no last-day-of-school parties or yearbooks to sign. Sports seasons, proms and graduations were called off. Many students didn’t even get to clean out their lockers.

“It was kind of sudden for me,” says Sorrin Garcia, a sophomore at Camelback High School in Phoenix. “I was there one EMPOWERED LEARNER

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The shift that shook education

“Now that districts have moved past their initial crisis response, it’s time to start asking what quality online learning should really look like.”

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and loss at being disconnected from friends and missing out on irreplaceable rites of passage.

“I worry that there’s a sense that the most important thing to do right now is to focus on academics and get kids learning, and we’re not dealing with this collective punch to the gut,” says former district superintendent Joshua Starr, CEO of PDK International. “We have multiple punches to the gut coming our way. Our most important job is to attend to kids’ emotional needs, their confusion and concern. We’ve got to give space for that, and schools have to balance that.”

Social distancing has been hard on students who are used to seeing dozens if not hundreds of people flow through their lives daily. One thing the pandemic has highlighted is the multifaceted role schools

play in children’s lives; they’re social hubs and emotional support systems as well as places of learning. In making the shift to distance learning, educators discovered the importance of meeting students’ social and emotional needs as well as academic ones – especially in a crisis.

While district leaders focused on getting lunches out and drafting protocols for distance learning, teachers took the lead on reaching out and offering reassurance to bewildered students. They teamed up on Zoom to record encouraging music videos.

They left personal messages in sidewalk chalk outside students’ homes. They decked out their cars and paraded through school neighborhoods.

To address students’ psychosocial and emotional needs during the shutdown, Bal-

timore County Public Schools assembled a team to explore how school counselors and social workers can leverage the same instructional tools as teachers to provide emotional support for students.

“It’s one of the things we’re talking about whenever possible,” says Ryan Imbriale, executive director of the district’s department of innovative learning. “All these resources can also be packaged to help providers working in the system provide emotional support.

School counselors may be able to use Google Meet to talk with students who need that support. We are trying to look broadly at opportunities beyond just instructional.”

For Sorrin, just hearing daily from teachers has made a difference.

“My teachers are constantly checking in to see if I’m OK, if I need anything, if I’m staying sane. It’s good to hear from them even if I’m not seeing them every day. The connection is not as strong as it used to be, but I know they still care about me.”

From crisis mode to high-quality learning While students lamented the loss of prom, many educators were celebrating the cancellation of another big event: spring standardized testing. In March, the U.S. Department of Education waived federal testing requirements for all 50 states. Several states went a step further, announcing that online work wouldn’t count toward students’ grades.

The closures impacted the Keystone Academy in Beijing several weeks ahead of what was happening in the U.S. As online learning days extended into months in China, Sandra Chow, Keystone’s director of innovation and digital learning, says the school took the opportunity to remember it’s mission.

“We began making priorities based on the core principles of our school,” she writes in her Global Focus column on page 43. “This

meant that our learning embraced inquiry and real-life connections, we emphasized character development through online interactions, designed as-sessments with process and feedback in mind, and celebrated and encouraged service learning.”

Some in the U.S. also began to see an opportunity in the crisis. Freed from the shackles of standardized testing, they could explore the limits of what online learning could be.

“Let’s do education like we’ve always wanted to,” Smith says. “We’ve got an awesome opportunity to try something new.

Let’s look at problem-based learning, where you find a problem for kids to solve and give them a few days to do it, instead of drill and kill.”

But most districts were still operating in crisis mode, with teachers struggling just to provide instruction – any instruction at all – to ensure learning continuity during the pandemic. The result, ISTE’s South says, is that the bar for online learning has been set far too low.

“It’s troubling, because we can’t let this be the floor for what we think online learning needs to be for our schools,” he says. “The danger is that people will start to believe that this is what online learning is, and they won’t be motivated to really step back and think about what it could be, to realize its full benefits.”

Now that districts have moved past their initial crisis response, it’s time to start asking what quality online learning should really look like, he says. While pedagogy for distance learning, blended learning and online learning have all been called upon to meet this moment, none is a perfect fit for what educators collectively experienced this spring.

For Ohio’s Lakota Local Schools (LLS), a suburban K-12 district with 17,000 students, successful online learning starts with flexibility. Todd Wesley, LLS chief technology officer, worked with the district’s

One thing the pandemic has highlighted is the multifaceted role schools play in children’s lives; they’re social hubs and emotional support systems as well as places of learning.

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leadership team to develop a Remote Learning Resources Guide, which opens with the words, “We must plan for flexibility, not perfection.”

During the pandemic, teachers delivered instructions via video as well as text, asynchronous learning and playlists to accommodate differing family schedules.

They also assigned both digital and nondigital work, which might mean hands-on science activities, such as drawing a map of the students favorite neighborhood walk and identifying plants.

The district provided professional development for existing and expanded tools so teachers could integrate flipped lessons; live and recorded video options; and content creation, curation and sharing.

Rubrics and checklists helped keep students on track and engaged, allowing teachers to focus on the most important learning outcomes instead of providing busywork.

“With the whole world part of this sudden shift to remote learning, quality of learning will certainly be a primary consideration, and I anticipate new indicators and assessments, and new approaches to students’ demonstration of learning, will be developed,” says Wesley. “We are going into this with our longstanding expectation of quality, but with an understanding that flexibility and an open mind are critical as we navigate these uncharted waters.”

Training for educators was, and will continue to be, a critical component of making a successful shift, says Michele Eaton of Metropolitan School District of Wayne Township (MSD) in Indianapolis. When the school closure order was announced for Indiana, the district was already in the process of approving a virtual school plan for inclement weather, although it had not yet been tested. MSD went fully remote for its 17,000 students within 48 hours.

Eaton, director of virtual and blended learning, says MSD already used virtual and blended learning courses, designed

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in-house, and quickly developed a remote learning guide, which provided a template for what quality learning looks like. Teachers then had two planning days to prepare.

The district hosted live and recorded virtual trainings twice a day on topics ranging from how to use the tools to keeping students engaged and making lessons accessible for all. With both live and recorded sessions, teachers could choose sessions that were convenient for them or attend a live session if they needed more individualized help.

“In our district, we feel strongly you can design online learning that is just as effective as classroom learning,” says Eaton. “We think that for the majority of our students the best environment is more traditional with blended components. There is value face to face, but also know this was an emergency situation and we will keep improving.”

Solving accessibility challenges W hile face-to-face instruction is an important element for all students, there is no population for whom that’s more true than students with disabilities such as autism, deafness or learning disabilities. Serving these students, who make up roughly 4.6% of all public school enrollment, continues to be one of the thorniest issues facing schools.

The U.S. Department of Education relaxed the requirements for serving these students during the crisis, but Torrey Trust, associate professor of learning technology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, says we can and should continue to educate all students so that none are left behind.

“The point of public education is to try to provide equal footing,” says Trust. “It doesn’t have to be perfect in this emergency situation, but I want to see educators be creative in these times. Instead of shutting down, use technology as a resource.”

Trust developed a slide deck, rooted in Universal Design for Learning (UDL), with seven things to consider as educators moved quickly to set up emergency remote learning. The basics of UDL include allowing for multiple means of representation, engagement, expression and action. This can be as simple as making video transcripts available for students who cannot hear or allowing students to choose whether to answer a question in writing, video or through an art design.

Open educational resources (OER) can help educators find creative solutions for students with special needs. Because they’re available in the public domain or introduced with an open license, educators can remix them as needed.

The flexibility of OER makes them easy to adapt for UDL purpos­es. In addition, OER listed on the MASON OER Metafinder, OER Commons or OASIS have been vetted for privacy or acces­sibility and are rated for quality.

“I’m hoping we can shift to UDL, whether high tech or low tech, because it will be so beneficial for making more inclusive learning environments at home as well as when students get back to the classroom,” she says.

What comes next?

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a burst of innovation and self-sacrifice, from the robotics team at Oregon’s South Eugene High School that designed and fabricated face shields for those on the front lines to the countless teachers providing meaningful learning for students while homeschooling their own children. But has it been enough?

It’s hard to know where we’ll be in the fall. A new study from NWEA indicates that “compared to how much they would have learned in a normal school year, elementary and middle school students are likely to start

school in the fall with only about 70% of those reading and writing skills, and with 50% or less of the expected gains in math.”

That staggering amount of learning loss will take years to make up, experts say, with the burden falling disproportionately on students whose families are least equipped to help them regain lost ground.

The pandemic has exposed many gaps in our societal systems, from health care to schools. Aside from becoming better prepared for similar emergencies in the future, we’re seeing more clearly all the ways that schools serve students – and the ways they don’t. Freed of the way we did things before COVID-19, we can start questioning why we did them in the first place.

“I think there is an opportunity, even when we go back to the classroom, to ask ourselves, ‘Can learning be more masterybased, more in tune with the interests of students, more open to the ability to investigate using online tools? Can it be more open to using tools to create an expression of what they’ve learned that’s the best match for them?’” South says.

Already, we’ve been forced to think creatively and make technology accessible to all students. What if we decide that a bell schedule and seat time are not as essential to learning as progress and understanding?

What if we all return to the classroom with the spirit of innovation and cooperation learned during this crisis?

If we accomplished this much with technology during a pandemic, what could we achieve with it in more ordinary times?

“We don’t have to leave technology behind the emergency glass,” South says.

“We can pull it into the classroom to enhance learning and also build resiliency. I hope in the long term educators and education leaders will think about how to build in resiliency and make this part of what we do – not a life preserver, not a tasteless emergency ration, but something that’s part of our regular diet.”

“Can learning be more masterybased, more in tune with the interests of students, more open to the ability to investigate using online tools? Can it be more open to using tools to create an expression of what they’ve learned that’s the best match for them?”

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Tales from the front lines

“ A ll district leaders realize this will be an evolution and flexibility and adaptability will be key.”

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Here’s a glimpse at how some districts leveraged past initiatives and new approaches to keep learning going.

Lakota Local School District, Ohio

It’s a typical school day at the Bauer house in Liberty Township, Ohio. Third grader Riley has been working on math and reading most of the morning. Afterward, she’ll take a break to do some sidewalk chalk outside.

She’s looking forward to a special afternoon project assigned by her teacher, Kelly Scarbrough.

W hen COVID-19 closed schools, Scarbrough’s class at Cherokee Elementary had been studying butterflies and insects.

While still in school, the class learned about moths in England that can change color to

camouflage with surrounding trees. The class cut out moths and colored them to match things in the classroom, then hid them for classmates to find.

On an afternoon during school closures, Riley camouflaged moths with her little sister, Emily, who is in kindergarten, then the family had a moth-hunt around the house to see how well they did.

Lakota Local Schools, a suburban K-12 district with more than 16,700 students, has valued personalized learning since the 2018 implementation of WEareEMPOWERED, a 1:1 initiative for grades 7-12 that included embedded technology and personalized learning in all its schools.

During the pandemic, that program empowered students to be leaders in their own learning from home.

“In the district, there has been lots of movement toward personalized learning and that has helped this move to remote learning along,” says Riley’s mother, Katie Bauer. “Because students are comfortable with having a choice in how to learn a concept, they are comfortable in figuring out how they want to execute that learning.”

The district watched as closures due to COVID-19 made their way across the world.

In preparation, the district created a Remote Learning Resources Guide and held one practice remote learning day before closing its doors. The practice day let the district gather feedback and make adjustments.

“All district leaders realize this will be an evolution and flexibility and adaptability will be key,” says Todd Wesley, LLS chief technology officer. “Starting slowly and simply is critical to building a solid foundation.”

The resources guide lists some key principles in their vision of remote learning, such as flexibility; a focus on the most important outcomes; being accessible to all learners, not a duplication of in-person learning; and both digital and nondigital learning.

Each week this school year, Scarbrough assigned Riley and her classmates math

“playlists” or assignment options, to choose from. Students do all the assignments, but in the order they choose. Some prefer to start with the harder ones, some the easier.

Emily’s kindergarten teacher used a choice board where the student can choose which version of an assignment to do.

The groundwork in personalized learning made the transition to remote learning easier, says Scarborough. The Remote Learning Resources Guide provided districtapproved resources to help close the gap between her home and her students’ homes, and specified how to keep good teaching practice when you’re not face to face.

For instance, to keep learning accessible to all learners, she gave directions in text and videos, and shared examples so that students can work more independently without her presence for immediate feedback.

Scarbrough’s class was scheduled to begin a spiral review of math for the year when they went to remote learning. It quickly became obvious that this wasn’t going well for some learners. She posted a hint and a help video for every single question. This is a change she will keep even after they are physically together in the classroom again.

Emily’s kindergarten assignments had an electronic option and a nonelectronic option. The girls’ mother, Katie, says the hardest part of distance learning was that she and her husband continued to work from home, while trying to help with school for Riley and Emily. Riley stepped up to help her sister. For example, one day the two hunted for shapes around the house, one assignment from Emily’s class.

Next, Scarbrough’s students learned about the Wright Brothers. While they did some of the learning by reading or listening through the digital classroom, the project at home was building paper airplanes and graphing which designs fly the furthest. “ We went into this with our longstanding expectation of quality, but with an understanding that flexibility and an open

mind are critical as we navigate these uncharted waters,” says Wesley. “We can ensure quality is maintained, it may just look or feel different … and that’s OK.”

Oak Park District 97, Illinois

On the first day of remote learning in Oak Park, Illinois, first grader Brooks Gerace walked downstairs, put his hand on his heart and started saying the Pledge of Allegiance.

His family burst out laughing. But Brooks wasn’t trying to be funny. “I was just trying to make my day feel better,” he says.

Brooks and his sister, third grader, Ruby, attend Irving Elementary School. They thought that their principal, John Hodge, should continue to do the announcements during remote learning. Then, they had an idea. They would make the announcements.

Brooks began standing in for Mr. Hodge each morning, announcing birthdays, saying the pledge and giving the lunch menu (“Whatever is in your freezer!”). Ruby made guest appearances as the assistant principal.

The pair posted their daily videos on the school’s Twitter feed.

“The response has been great,” says Hodge.” People appreciate the sense of normalcy and the opportunity to laugh during these times.”

The PK-8 district with 6,000 students implemented a plan five years ago that emphasized personalized learning and provided a device and at-home internet for every student grades 3-8. In addition, the district was in the process of approving an inclement weather plan allowing for remote learning.

Although the plan had not been approved or implemented, when the order for closure came the district was able to build off that plan to transition quickly.

On Thursday, March 12, the Illinois governor issued guidance to restrict large gatherings and District 97 decided to close.

The central office team worked all night to prepare professional learning decks, which were shared with staff the next day during an

emergency Institute Day. Staff then did their own preparation over the weekend and were ready to go by Monday.

“They literally transformed how schooling is normally done in less than 48 hours,” says Oak Park District 97 Superintendent Carol Kelley, Ed.D. “Whoever can give that presidential award, every teacher and administrator deserves that.”

The focus and foundation of the plan is connection. The district has a team of instructional coaches, one for each of its 10 buildings, who provided remote professional development to help teachers become more proficient with the tools of connection. Using Zoom, Canvas, Seesaw or other platforms, teachers connected with their students and each other to build a sense of community and focus on each other’s social and emotional needs.

Irving Elementary teachers stayed connected with students by recording read alouds and using Padlets to share responses to questions. Many of Oak Park’s educators and students are comfortable with technology because integrating it into instruction has been a focus at the district. For example, the Lincoln Tech Club is a student-organized and -facilitated club. The club’s more than 80 fifth grade students teach staff members and other students how to use technology when doing projects.

“Brooks demonstrates the level of comfort our students have with taking a leadership approach,” says Kelley. “Had it not been for prior learning experiences, I don’t know if we would have seen students taking that kind of leadership.”

Ruby missed her friends and her teacher at school. During remote learning, she worked on a slideshow about killer whales.

As her father spoke about their new normal over Zoom, Ruby reached over to fiddle with the screen. Suddenly, there’s a killer whale swimming behind her on the screen.

“As the adults, we have to know how to label the emotions we are experiencing and EMPOWERED LEARNER

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The shift that shook education

model for our students,” says Kelley. “I think we will get through this crisis, but our goal is to get to use self-reflection to get to the other side of doing things that are more creative and innovative than we were going into it.”

“ When this is all over, we are going to learn what our students love most about school – and it’s not going to be the content.

It’s going to be the people who take a deep, abiding interest in them.”

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Cajon Valley Union School District, California

Cajon Valley students were out of school for five weeks before they returned to school online. The district, which serves just over 17,000 K-8 students and has a 70% free and reduced-price lunch rate, made an intentional choice to focus on fostering individual relationships rather than rushing to begin remote learning or maintaining strict measurements of academics that were in place before the closures.

By choosing to place all its students in small advisory groups led by a single teacher, the district stayed true to its philosophy, “Happy kids, healthy relationships, on the way to gainful employment.”

“When this is all over, we are going to learn what our students love most about school – and it’s not going to be the content,” said David Miyashrio, superintendent of Cajon Valley Union School District, in an article he wrote for District Administration.

“It’s going to be the people who take a deep, abiding interest in them.”

The district was well positioned to make the move as it has focused on personalized and blended learning since going 1:1 in 2014. One of the district’s middle schools piloted an advisory program beginning this school year before the closure. Students were assigned to an advisory group and teacher all three years of middle school, enabling the group to form close relationships. The advisory group welcomes students when they enter sixth grade and celebrates their eighth graders when they graduate. In preparing for remote learning, the district placed each middle and high school student with an advisory teacher.

The district’s decision to move all students to an advisory family as part of the

transition to remote learning was, in part, in response to requests from families. Parents asked the district to keep school manageable for those who are still working. Rather than receiving assignments from five or six different teachers, one teacher helps 25 kids navigate a playlist of assignments.

The benefit, says Miyashiro, is that if kids trust adults and have good relationships with them, they’re more inclined to be successful. After all, if they don’t like what is happening on the other side of their Chromebook screen, they can just close it.

Choleanne Dilgard, a fourth grade teacher at Cajon’s Fuerte Elementary, appreciates the district’s approach. Dilgard was teaching her students online, as well as supporting her own children at home. She functioned as the advisory for her class, as well as part of the reading team that develops reading lessons and offered support.

The arrangement allowed Dilgard to streamline her job. Content area teachers work together as a team to develop playlists.

If the whole math department works together, for instance, that means an individual teacher only has two hours of work out of the six it takes to pull together the playlist.

The relationship helps teachers identify student challenges, customize playlists in response to student needs and develop closer relationships with their advisory students.

“We have to remember, we are not just in distance learning,” she says. “We are in crisis learning.”

Family representatives were active participants as the district developed the plan. Parents requested flexibility, such as a weekly playlist instead of daily assignments.

They also asked for activities they could do together to facilitate conversations within the family. Some examples are optional family craft activities or questions for students to ask parents about their first job.

Miyashiro says the focus on flexibility and student-centered learning is something

that can benefit districts long past the pandemic. “Most of us recognize that the education system has been in need of disruption for years,” he says. “As education leaders, we need to see this crisis as our chance to do more than simply return to the status quo.

Instead, let us seize this opportunity to reorient ourselves to the real challenge we face: helping our children achieve brighter futures in a radically transformed world.”

Rowan-Salisbury Schools, North Carolina

Ten days before his district shut down, Andrew Smith saw it coming.

Since growing alarmed about COVID19 in late February, district leaders had been having cursory conversations about what they might do if they had to do something different with their 20,000 students. At first, the talk revolved around whether to cancel field trips. In early March, the district became one of the first in North Carolina to cancel all its field trips; a week later, the rest of the state followed suit.

That’s when Smith made the strategic decision to start monitoring some of the more forward-thinking states and districts.

He noticed that things tended to happen in California about 10 days before they hit North Carolina, almost like clockwork. So when Los Angeles schools closed in midMarch, the chief strategy officer had one week to get everyone ready.

District leaders leapt into planning mode. If teachers had just one more week left with students, what did they need to accomplish in that time? The district already had six years with 1:1 iPads and Macbook Airs under its belt, and teachers had begun pivoting to e-learning on snow days, stockpiling two days’ worth of lesson plans that could be done either synchronously or asynchronously. But that wouldn’t be nearly enough.

“We were kind of set up for (distance learning), but nowhere near what was coming,” Smith says. He gathered all of the district’s curriculum and technology teams

together in the central office, where they raced to develop protocols for long-term distance learning. Taking care not to cause a panic, they deployed a survey to all 20,000 students to identify those who lacked internet access at home. With 90% of students connected, they started working on solutions for the other 10%, handing out 300 MyFi hotspots by the last day of school. “ We were really the only people preparing,” Smith says. “At a meeting, I asked someone from another district, ‘Are you preparing?’ They laughed at me.”

Friday was a teacher workday, with professional learning sessions planned at various schools across the district. Leaders ditched all of them. Instead, they told teachers to spend the time developing 10 days’ worth of online lessons. It was a risky move;

by Friday afternoon, the governor still hadn’t closed schools, and Smith began to wonder if all that work had been for nothing.

The announcement came on Saturday: School was canceled, effective Monday.

“That started a mad dash of work,” Smith says. “Up until that point, we had just been planning. But planning and implementing are vastly different. We met around the

“As education leaders, we need to see this crisis as our chance to do more than simply return to the status quo.”

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The shift that shook education

clock. We developed an emergency planning team that includes all key department heads and some of our community principals, and we all sat in a room for 12 hours until we went from having a plan to ‘this is how we implement it.’”

Within a week, distance learning was up and running. While other districts across the nation were still scrambling to pull something together, Rowan-Salisbury was already working out the kinks. For starters, they realized that online learning doesn’t necessarily have to mean sitting down for instruction every day from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

“We quickly changed our school week,” Smith says. “Five days in a row is too much.

Parents can’t handle it, and teachers can’t handle it. Teachers were getting a lot more

work to grade beyond what they would normally do in class. They were working around the clock. They would plan at night and try to do synchronized stuff during the day.”

In response, the district implemented Wellness Wednesdays to give teachers a midweek workday and students a day off.

Teachers were also encouraged to explore problem-based learning models, providing students with a problem and giving them a few days to solve it while checking in periodically to make sure they stay on track.

When you’re leading in crisis mode, one of the first things you realize is that everything is subject to change.

“There were times when things were changing hourly for us, and we had to be nimble.” Smith says. “But if there’s one thing

we’re used to, it’s change. In this type of environment, people feel comfortable enough to make a decision and maybe have to reverse course.

“We’re learning from failing forward.”

To help keep learning going around the globe, a coalition of education organizations joined forces to provide free resources and strategies for teaching online. Learn more at LearningKeepsGoing.org nicole krueger is a freel ance writer and journalist with a pa ssion for finding out what makes learners tick. from her home in the northwest, jennifer snelling (@ jdsnelljennifer) writes about educ ators using technology to empower students and change the way we learn.

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STANDARDS SPOTLIGHT Kristin Harrington describes the connections and rewards learners experience as part of the Global Collaborator standard.

Global Collaborator: Introduce students to our small, connected world

By Kristin Harrington

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, one thing became clear: It truly is a small world and we’re all in this together. That’s why it’s never been more important to provide students with opportunities to connect with others to understand that despite differences, we all share many important similarities. Through these connections,

students develop empathy, knowledge, perspective and communication skills – all goals of the ISTE Global Collaborator standard within the ISTE Standards for Students.

As outlined in the standard, Global Collaborators use digital tools to broaden their perspectives and enrich their learning by collab-

orating with others and working effectively in teams locally and globally.

Since the pandemic first hit, we’ve seen how these skills have come into play. They’ve helped reduce the spread of the virus by allowing people to communicate digitally while social distancing; they’ve helped experts communicate vital information

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STANDARDS SPOTLIGHT

As they completed more exchanges, their communication skills improved and they were able to take on leadership roles for setting up equipment and leading the lessons.

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quickly to all reaches of the earth; and they’ve allowed people to empathize with each other.

When our students hone these skills, they become leaders in our physical and digital world, and develop an appreciation and understanding of others along the way.

With that in mind, I’d like to share a few examples of projects and activities that help students develop as global collaborators.

Connecting with different backgrounds and cultures

ISTE Global Collaborator indicator 7a states that students use digital tools to connect with learners from a variety of backgrounds and cultures, engaging with them in ways that broaden mutual understanding and learning.

One way to do this is by connecting your classroom to another in a different town, state or country. That might sound daunting to set up because of different time zones, class schedules and curriculum resources. But you can find organizations that make these connections easier by matching classrooms according to age groups, time slots and topics.

Wadsworth Elementary School in Flagler County, Florida, used a site called Empatico to connect K-6 students with classes in New York, Mexico, Nigeria and other locations.

Empatico.org was developed with seed funding from the KIND Organization whose mission is to cultivate a future generation with a greater understanding of others.

Empatico makes it easy for teachers to connect students with other classrooms, which has made this a popular teaching tool since its launch in 2017.

To get started, you simply complete a profile that includes grade level preferences, class schedules and the types of lessons you’re interested in implementing. From there, Empatico provides a list of classroom matches from around the world, and then it’s as easy as clicking a button. To give you a small idea of how connected Empatico is, I searched for matches for 5- to 6-year-old students and found classrooms in the United States, Ghana, Argentina, Mexico, Brazil and Romania.

This gives you the opportunity to make connections that wouldn’t have been possible without this technology, demonstrating to students how small our world can really be!

Wadsworth Principal Anna Crawford described what happened when her students connected with a fifth grade classroom in Mexico. “At first, our students were nervous to talk on camera, but by the end they were showing off their Fortnite dances to each other,” Crawford explained.

Students in both countries created presentations to share ways they help others in their communities, and they learned how similar their communities were in that both have homeless citizens, hunger issues and elderly people needing help buying groceries and maintaining their homes.

“It’s difficult to put into words the feeling you get when you see these exchanges taking place,” Crawford said. “I just know that

this is right and what we should be doing with kids.”

In addition to helping students become more aware of other cultures, students developed vital skills. As they completed more exchanges, their communication skills improved and they were able to take on leadership roles for setting up equipment and leading the lessons. Teachers took a back seat, allowing students to collaborate in more authentic ways.

Using technology to connect with experts

Another important aspect of the Global Collaborator standard involves using technology to learn from experts and to solve problems. Indicator 7b states students use collaborative technologies to work with others, including peers, experts or community members, to examine issues and problems from multiple viewpoints.

There are a number of videoconferencing tools that facilitate this, such as Skype, Zoom or Google Hangouts. Another great tool that helps teachers easily connect with students and adults around the world is Flipgrid.

Flipgrid has a teacher dashboard that allows educators to easily connect with guest speakers and other classrooms around the world for numerous projects.

One example was the #GoalsProject (flipgrid.com/765d8d15) that took place in fall 2018 in which students engaged in collaborative projects that encouraged them to connect with peers around the world. Ayush Chopra, founder of #SDGsForChildren, launched this project with a Flipgrid board, inviting students to introduce themselves and talk about a United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) they were interested in.

It was amazing to see so many students from around the globe sharing positive messages. Later, students used Flipgrid to

connect with others focused on the same goal to share their projects and ideas.

Students take action

We feel confident that once you test the waters with global collaboration, you’ll be ready for more authentic and elaborate interactions with other classrooms, and you’ll be ready to address indicator 7d, which expects students to explore local and global issues and use collaborative technologies to work with others to investigate solutions. Luckily, there are a plethora of online resources to help educators engage students in authentic and meaningful projects.

The U.N. SDGs were developed in an effort to transform our world by 2030. With goals such as zero hunger, climate action and gender equality, it’s clear that achieving them will take time and effort.

In 2016, Ada McKim, Amy Rosenstein, Fran Siracusa and Jennifer Williams cofounded the #TeachSDGs Movement that focused on educating teachers and students about these goals, while empowering them

to take action. From there the movement exploded. A wealth of projects and resources were created, giving students a chance to learn about global issues and have opportunities to help solve them.

Resources to get started

The following resources can help you get started with engaging students in SDGs and connecting with classrooms around the world.

World’s Largest Lesson

The website worldslargestlesson.globalgoals. org features free lesson plans and resources to support each sustainable development goal. These resources include kid-friendly posters and infographics that can be displayed in classrooms to remind students about the importance of serving others. #TeachSDGs

The website teachsdgs.org engages students in the SDGs and offers SDG Ambassadors who serve as mentors to eucators who need EMPOWERED LEARNER

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STANDARDS SPOTLIGHT

extra support with initiating global projects with their students.

Teach Boldly

As you encourage students to explore our small but connected world, I hope their list of global friends will continue to grow as mine has.

The ISTE book Teach Boldly: Using Edtech For Social Good by Jennifer Williams, Ph.D., is a valuable resource for any educator seeking to engage students in global projects and authentic learning. This book blends the ISTE Standards with research-based ideas for connecting students around the world and empowering them to solve community and global issues.

Student-centered global projects

Takeactionglobal.org, led by Jennifer Williams and Koen Timmers, introduced and managed the following projects: #GoalsProject

This project has connected over 1,600 classrooms from around the world to tackle the SDGs. Each classroom chooses one of the 17 goals and works with other classrooms to address it. Classrooms connect through Google, Flipgrid, Padlet and other multimedia tools to share their learning and advocate for social good. Register for the fall 2020 project at goalsproject.org.

STEMpatico Project

In a partnership with Empatico and Cisco, students engage in STEM and socialemotional learning using a design thinking approach. This project provides professional learning opportunities to teachers, while students connect with a classroom from around the world and explore challenges in their communities. Learn more at empatico.org. #TakeActionProject

The #takeactionproject focuses on social awareness and global conversations. Take Action Global partners with organizational thought leaders like UN75 and WWF to offer webinars, class-to-class collaborations and a guided experience with classroom

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resources. Learn more at tag.community/ user/register.

Overcoming barriers

What’s stopping you from getting started with global collaboration today? In many districts and schools, security restrictions make these types of lessons seem difficult or impossible at first glance. If student-tostudent videoconferences, chats and online communication are not possible, then consider employing class-to-class exchanges instead.

It’s important to review your school or district’s acceptable use policy in regard to student online communication and media/ social media policies. If photographing and recording students is not typically allowed, then request the use of videoconference tools that will not be archived or can be maintained in a private space online.

As you encourage students to explore our small, connected world, I hope their list of global friends will continue to grow as mine has. Additionally, I hope they understand the great rewards and joy that come from using technology for the greater good. kristin harrington ( @ kristincharr) is a distric t k-12 edtech coach at fl agler count y schools and an adjunct professor at fl agler college in st. augustine, florida. she’s the iste learning spaces pln president, and has been a guest writer for empowered le arner and the iste blog.

RESEARCH CONNECTIONS Daniel G. Krutka, Ph.D., shares the results of his team's research into videoconferencing.

Study uncovers benefits, pitfalls of videoconferencing for global citizenship

By Daniel G. Krutka, Ph.D.

Helping students grow as citizens of the world can seem challenging when confined to school campuses. As many teachers and students have experienced during the COVID-19 outbreak, videoconferencing technologies offer an interactive means to communicate with people beyond school walls, but this communication technology doesn’t guarantee experiences will always go as envisioned.

Whether you’re videoconferencing with a class across town or a guest speaker across the planet, a lot can go wrong. Our research team surveyed 117 educators who use videoconferencing to find out how others might improve their experience with this technology. This study was completed prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and consisted primarily of teachers who videoconferenced alongside students who were

physically in their classroom, but we hope these findings offer insights and flexible guidelines, not truths or hard rules, for various contexts.

WHY VIDEOCONFERENCE?

Pre-pandemic, educators said they integrated videoconferencing into their classes for a variety of reasons. For example,

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RESEARCH CONNECTIONS

Prepare your technology.

VIDEOCONFERENCING TIPS FROM EDUCATORS PEDAGOGICAL ADVICE • Connect to students’ prior experiences.

• Establish a practice plan and norms,

TECHNOLOGICAL ADVICE • Test internet speed.

• Complete a practice call.

• Prepare a backup plan.

• Get support from an experienced colleague or IT team member.

• Position camera so all students face the screen.

like active listening, with students.

• Prepare questions in advance.

• Review your plan with partners, discussing

purpose, questions, class and student needs, small or whole group participation,

active or passive participation.

• Reflect on the experience.

INTERCULTURAL ADVICE LOGISTICAL ADVICE • Review school or district policies.

• Get parent/guardian permissions.

• Be aware of time differences.

• Schedule in advance.

• Limit unnecessary noise.

as Kenneth Carano and I explain in an article in the Journal of Social Studies Education (bit.ly/39MZkGm), if teachers want to encourage intercultural understanding, they might organize videoconferences to learn from others, participate in curricular projects that encourage cross-cultural relationships or learn about cultures from an expert.

Our sample of educators said they used videoconferences to bring in experts, conduct virtual field trips, increase cultural understanding, discuss live events and engage in student-to-student collaborative projects and other forms of distance learning.

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• Center and continuously engage in culturally relevant, responsive and sustaining pedagogies.

• Ensure engagements are mutually beneficial and agreed upon.

• Reflect on power dynamics among groups.

• Focus on internal (i.e. values) not just surface (i.e. food) cultures.

• Avoid romanticizing diversity.

ADVICE FROM EDUCATORS

Our participants offered a range of videoconferencing advice related to instructional, technological, logistical and dispositional issues.

Always do a test call ahead of time.

One rural educator suggested: “Share info about your class with your presenter (special needs, amount of time their attention span lasts, etc.), prepare your students ahead of time with possible questions, building prior knowledge, videoconferencing etiquette, practicing with another class in your school and/or your principal.”

Ensure students are in the camera’s view and coordinate with tech support or experienced peers. Because technology problems can occur even with preparation, educators should prepare backup plans in case there are videoconferencing delays or rescheduling is necessary.

Establish student expectations and prepare questions.

Some teachers explained that asking students to raise hands or fulfill different roles like notetakers, question askers, introducers or photographers was particularly helpful with large classes.

Be aware of logistical issues.

Double-check scheduled times that span time zones, get permissions from parents/guardians and ensure support from administrators.

Orient your remote presenter.

Teachers should provide information about students (linguistic repertoires, disabilities, attention spans, background knowledge, etc.) and not presume an adult has experience communicating with students. For example, teachers might encourage presenters to define academic vocabulary and provide wait time for questions.

Adopt a problem-solving disposition.

Numerous educators emphasized this as there are bound to be setbacks, glitches and disruptions when videoconferencing in schools and across the world. Educators should expect some hiccups, remain calm and use supports if needed.

Avoid noise distraction.

For example, one teacher assigned someone to mute their mic while their partners spoke to avoid noise distraction.

Prepare for students’ needs.

One elementary teacher set up a station with STEAM and mindfulness activities for students who might require a break.

Reflect following the call.

While fewer teachers mentioned it, we also appreciated the suggestions to include reflection time after the call and integrate students’ prior experiences.

PERCEIVED OUTCOMES AND A WORD OF CAUTION

Educators who responded to the survey believed that students gained an array of skills, knowledge and dispositions during videoconferencing, from networking and questioning skills, to content or cultural knowledge, to heightened respect for differences.

However, educators should recognize that videoconferencing with classes across cultural, linguistic and geographic boundaries can also be miseducational. For example, students from communities of wealth and privilege can easily leave videoconferencing experiences with deficit and savior mentalities where they presume they know best how to help those they perceive as less fortunate.

That’s why we recommend that teachers should be attentive to the culturally relevant teaching approaches from researchers like Django Paris (stanford.io/2V4KvLk) that can help move toward engagements that are mutually beneficial, attend to power dynamics regarding language or race, and delve deeper than surface-level differences. Educators should avoid romanticizing diversity as something exotic to be consumed. Instead, educators should recognize cultures in our classrooms and across the world as complex and shifting. Developing cultural competence requires an ongoing commitment to equity and growth.

In the graphic included with this column, we offer educators recommendations for

videoconferencing, particularly for intercultural experiences. The list is not universal; educators must consider their particular contexts and critically engage with culturally sustaining pedagogies. In short, videoconferencing requires high-quality teaching for justice.

ABOUT SURVEY RESPONDENTS

Our sample primarily consisted of K-12 classroom teachers (60%), but also included teacher educators, librarian/media specialists and educators in other roles. Participants were disproportionately white (88%) and female (69%).

We hope the wisdom of videoconferencing educators and critical scholars will help you as much as it has helped us.

This research was published in the article, “Wise Practices and Intercultural Understandings: A Framework for Educator Videoconferencing” (bit.ly/3adEcsI) in Vol. 51, Issue 4 of ISTE’s Journal of Research on Technology in Education. The article is free through Sept. 30, 2020. To subscribe, visit ISTE Edtech Research (bit.ly/2ymJzsj). daniel g. krutk a is an assistant professor of social studies education at the universit y of north tex as. kenneth t. car ano, western oregon universit y; leigh cassell and melissa l avoie, digital human libr ary; and k arin davidson-taylor, royal botanic al gardens, al so contributed to the original research.

CONNECTIONS: While videoconferencing offers new opportunities for participation in local and international dialogues, it’s important to understand how mediums can empower democratic engagement, not reinforce inequalities.

Videoconferencing gives educators a way to transcend geographic bounds with synchronous communication that can help students feel social presence that’s less available in asynchronous interactions like discussion boards. However, researchers have argued that educators should consider how emerging technologies can mediate social presence where students perceive “intimacy, immediacy.”

Small interactive group activities are most promising, however, technical difficulties or ineffectual pedagogy, such as too much lecture time, completing individual tasks during session and checking individual understanding can limit the benefits of videoconferencing.

Some research has also suggested that during videoconferencing, students and lecturers often felt disconnected from each other due to lag time, audio/video problems and inattentive or inactive participants.

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GLOBAL FOCUS Sandra Chow shares key takeaways from COVID-19 school closures in China.

Lessons learned from school closures in China

By Sandra Chow

Last January, the coronavirus reached a critical point in China and many schools were forced to close without notice. Having learned from the previous SARS outbreak and H1N1, schools put plans in motion for learning to continue despite school closures.

In a movement now familiar to schools worldwide, online learning plans materialized within days. Edtech and digital coaches scrambled to create resources, training videos and infographics to support teachers and students for what would soon become a longer-term experiment. Administrators communicated their best-laid plans with parents, teachers and students.

What became evident as this unfolded in China was that schools were more equipped than ever to allow business to run as usual even when school facilities are closed.

A few months later, schools around the world took the same steps we did. The experience led me to wonder what we might learn from schools’ response to COVID-19 to prepare ourselves for similar events in the future.

Here are our key takeaways: Be purpose-driven. W hen Keystone

Academy in Beijing first began classes online, our purpose was simple: Continue to provide learning opportunities for our students through a remote and digital environment. We were in survival mode, and this purpose helped us to quickly make decisions about technology distribution, plan for

training and communicate our next steps to our learning community.

As online learning days stretched into months, we found our purpose calibrating back to our school mission, values and definition of learning. We prioritized based on the core principles of our school. Our learning embraced inquiry and real-life connections, we emphasized character development through online interactions, designed assessments with process and feedback in mind, and celebrated and encouraged service learning.

Remembering your purpose gives you focus and guidance when your team needs to make tough decisions. As a community, it’s important that we always steer each other toward our students and their learning. That’s our calling as educators.

Practice the art of simplicity. As we quickly learned, it’s easy to over-complicate plans, lessons and assessments, but simplicity is best. Stick with resources everyone is already familiar with and use them well.

More tools do not equal more – or better – learning.

We found it was best to choose one tool that was an anchor and method of communication (e.g. email, LMS, Microsoft Teams, Google Classroom, Seesaw). This allowed us to build flexibility for adventurous and pioneering educators, while allowing the majority of staff and students to focus on developing skills with one technology.

Simplicity also came into play with scheduling and workload. Because students didn’t have as much help or the same tech resources they had in school, everything they were doing took two or three times longer.

In a classroom setting, teachers adjust their lessons as they observe students’ progress and reactions; this was more challenging in an online environment. But by planning shorter scaffolded lessons that allowed for feedback, students felt successful without becoming overwhelmed.

Choose kindness. A last key lesson: A little bit of kindness goes a long way, and it starts with being kind to yourself.

As all educators can now attest, during school closures, it felt like time was working against us and that everything needed to be polished and completed yesterday. But when we gave ourselves permission to let go of perfection, many things worked out fine.

This also applied to the time spent experimenting with new applications, learning new skills and exploring new methodologies of teaching. Sometimes the tech cooperated and plans worked. Sometimes it failed and we adjusted.

Either way, we should celebrate our growth. sandr a chow is the direc tor of innovation and digital learning at keystone academy in beijing, china.

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MEMBER PROFILE Carla Jefferson is a leader on educator PD and digital equity, with a goal of preparing learners for a technology-rich world.

Carla Jefferson She’s focused on helping educators understand the power of technology

By Jerry Fingal

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W hen Carla Jefferson became the edtech coordinator for Darlington County Schools in South Carolina in 2015, she was posed a challenge: How can the district get teachers where they need to be with technology?

It came at a time when Darlington schools were well on their way to providing devices for all their students. It also came on the heels of the nation’s recovery from the Great Recession, when school budgets tightened and professional development funds dried up.

“Unless you were paying out of your own pocket for technology (training), you weren’t getting those kinds of experiences,” she says. “The question was how can we bring those experiences to our district?”

Jefferson’s answer was to create a professional development event modeled on the ISTE conference. In 2015, the Darlington County Digital Transformation Conference was born.

Jefferson likens the conference to smaller events put on by ISTE state affiliates. There are sessions led by teachers, edtech experts and vendor representatives. There’s a playground where participants can try out devices and software, and a blogger’s café where participants can practice new skills with informal help.

The conference occurs one day a year before school starts in the fall and attracts more than 600

educators. And it meets the state’s requirement for teacher tech training.

Teachers are also asked to submit a portfolio with their best digital lesson that implements the 4C’s – collaboration, communication, critical thinking and creativity. From those portfolios, teachers are encouraged to be presenters at the conference.

The conference is the centerpiece of the district’s tech integration efforts. But Jefferson and two colleagues work year-round to bring edtech to classrooms.

Darlington County Schools is a rural district with 23 schools, 10,500 students and 1,000 staff members; 87% of students qualify for free and reduced-priced lunches. This year, the district rolled out a 1:1 program, a goal the district has had in its sights since 2012.

For Jefferson, it’s not just about the technology.

“For me, it’s all about improving the lives of children,” she says. “The way I do that now is through improving the skill sets of teachers and helping them better understand the power of technology.”

In addition to the conference, Jefferson started the Digital Transformation Academy where she and her colleagues work with a core of teachers at each school to build capacity for using edtech.

photos by da rl ing ton coun t y school dis t ric t

Carla Jefferson says her focus is improving the lives of children by helping teachers improve their skill sets.

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MEMBER PROFILE

“For me, it’s all about improving the lives of children.”

She also teams up with a colleague to produce a podcast that focuses on edtech and highlights what teachers are doing. The podcast, which started after the first district transformation conference in 2015, had 136 episodes as of last spring.

Working with hundreds of teachers to integrate technology poses challenges. Teachers have varying degrees of openness to technology and computer literacy.

“There’s that bell curve that you’re going to have no matter what,” she says. “Some teachers take it and run with it and do some phenomenal things.

“For those who are struggling, we kind of help bring them along. If you’re passionate and you’re strong, go push the boundaries. But if you’re struggling, we say, ‘Here are some things that we can just get started with. Let’s do one thing and learn how to do it really well. Let’s talk about how we can provide feedback or use Google Slides to present and share learning.’ If they do that, then the next year we add one more thing and we’re continuing to grow.”

Jefferson sees it as the schools’ obligation to prepare students for a digital world. At the same time, there has to be balance between digital and analog.

“No one is expecting for kids to be on a device all day, all the time,” she says. “It’s a tool that is used when appropriate. We’re not saying that kids shouldn’t write anymore with a pencil or draw or cut with scissors. But we’re also saying that it’s not fair if that’s the only medium that they’re using,

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because we know that they’re growing up into this technology-rich world.”

Her belief that Darlington students should be fully prepared for a digital world also fuels another of her passions: equity, especially digital equity. In March, Jefferson co-hosted an ISTE Expert Webinar titled “Why Equity Matters!” She has been involved with helping to revitalize ISTE’s Digital Equity Network.

Working in a rural district with a high level of poverty makes equity a real issue. A colleague’s words about equity have stuck with her: “Why not us? Why not Darlington? Why not our children?”

“Why can’t we provide our children with the same options that other places do?” she asks. “It’s always been a passion of mine to ensure that our students, from a very small rural area where farming is the primary source of income, are prepared to compete with children from all over.”

When it comes to edtech, Jefferson says, research shows that in poorer areas, digital devices are used primarily for test preparation. With that in mind, she works to give Darlington students a chance to do coding and use tech to create as more affluent areas are able to do.

“How do we provide the opportunities for students to engage in those types of activities on a regular basis? I’m not saying that those test prep programs don’t have a place, but that shouldn’t be the only thing that technology is used for.” jerry fingal is a freel ance writer and editor specializing in education, business and finance.

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Keep the conversation going year-round ISTE Connect lets you network and collaborate year-round on the edtech topics that matter to you most!

• Professional learning networks • Recent discussion topics • Community calendar • Event announcements • Hot topics It’s all at ISTE Connect. iste.org/connect

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COMMUNITY VOICES This question was asked and answered in ISTE Connect (iste.org/connect), home of ISTE’s Professional Learning Networks.

What are some sites that offer free access to audiobooks?

Get Epic! (getepic.com) Epic! has a really good selection of audiobooks, but probably caps out at lower middle school interest/reading level.

Hailey Reiter, teacher Fremont County School District #1, Lander, Wyoming

Vooks (vooks.com) Vooks is an awesome site for younger learners (K-3). There is a free teacher account for a year, and it also has put together some lesson plans for teachers to use throughout the COVID-19 crisis.

Allison Thompson, director of technology St. Gerard School, Lansing, Michigan

Free digital stories, books, read-alouds (bit.ly/2z1KChU) I created this Pearltrees page of stories, books and read-alouds.

I shared more goodies, including (audio)books free from your public library, in the School Library Journal post “Resources for learning at home while we’re keeping each other safe” (bit.ly/2XD3U7E) and on this Resources for Learning@ Home Wakele (bit.ly/2Vow9UI).

Joyce Valenza, assistant professor of teaching Rutgers University School of Communication and Information, New Brunswick, New Jersey

Libby (bit.ly/2V9RHFO)

Sora (meet.soraapp.com)

Both the Libby app (access to our San Diego Public Library) and my kid’s Sora app (links to Overdrive at their school) have digital texts as well as audiobooks.

I would suggest exploring the options from your public library.

Sora has books for all grade levels and is free to all districts right now.

Melinda Kolk, editor YES Tech4learning Inc., San Diego, California

Laurie Guyon, assistant coordinator for model schools Washington-Saratoga-Warren-Hamilton-Essex Board of Cooperative Educational Services, Gansevoort, New York

Rivet (rivet.area120.com)

Audible by Amazon has gone open and free during this period of remote learning.

Google’s Rivet app has over 2,500 leveled books in its collection. The book titles and topics are of high interest to students. My students love the interactive features built into each book as well as the ability to review the book when they finish reading it. Rivet is a hit with my students!

John McBride, tech coach The Metropolitan School of Panama

Tara Schneider, teacher YES Avon Elementary School, Avon, New York

Free Audible (adbl.co/34Ci4Hn)

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