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In this Episode:
In this week’s OutClassed Podcast, Mike and Blake discuss a range of topics including
*The best way to provide PD for staff and students and why both are important
* What’s the consensus around the globe around how much work a student should have
* Why your block first and open tools later approach is doing a disservice to staff and students
* Are keyboards making students dumber?
To see all the Outclassed episodes go to utb.fyi/outclassed
[buzzsprout episode=’3749078′ player=’true’]
Podcast Episode Highlights:
2:00 – Issues with Online learning unpacked – servers crashing, meetings being ‘bombed’
6:35 – The stats Blake is seeing regarding tool using across the school
9:20 – Why block first and open later is doing a disservice to staff and students and the results of this policy
20:30 – The power of providing training to students and the outcomes we see
25:05 – The most effective type of PD for staff where your outcomes compound year on year
30:25 – Are keyboards making students dumber?
37:50 – How we see the new normal
42:40 – Guidance on how much work should we expect online (see resources section)
51:20 – Wins and fails for the week
Resources mentioned:
Article: Queensland home schooling website glitch blocks students on first day of online learning
Steve Bobs connect dots video – commencement speech
Travis inking thinking YouTube video –
How much work should children be receiving? – See the tables for suggested times and types of activities
Transcript:
Mike
Well, good afternoon, Blake. It’s great to have you back on the podcast. The outcast podcast called this on the bad hair edition. But if you and I were in desperate need of a haircut, but we’re just leaning in, we’re embracing it and no hats on today I noted my wife. She runs an online pilates course, and she runs some live classes. And some of the ladies have started showing up wearing hats to their classes because they just can’t bear showing ever on their grays. So
Blake
everyone’s growing out. I’ve been embracing greys since I was about 18 I think so. I’m pretty used to. A bit of salt and pepper. It’s a good look, I think so. Let’s embrace it.
Mike
Yeah, totally. I think, you know, greys are a sign of wisdom, right? So we should be good to go for today’s episode with just a little bit more wisdom showing than usual
Blake
wisdom Plus plus today Absolutely.
Mike
Yeah, it’s good. just interested in what’s been happening in your week in terms of school going back in Victoria. So you’ve had 2 weeks of holidays, teachers are prepared Or so they tell us. And so now students are back in the being back for a week. Is that right?
Blake
We’re back here. We’ve been back a week, it’s been pretty good so far for us. I mean, there’s been a lot of horror stories online that I haven’t seen on Twitter and the socials people are losing their minds a little bit. But I think on the whole where in a good position I mean, obviously we have 1 to 1 devices in the hands of every kid, a robust repair and low loan program that were able to cycle pretty well in the current lock down state. So as long as nothing changes too much more in terms of lock down, I think we’re okay where I want to still provide a platform that’s working across all students, you know, still providing equity. Everyone’s getting a fair chance at learning and feeling pretty good about at the moment.
Mike
It’s good. So no major policy disruptions, nothing. No major discipline problems for you guys.
Blake
Yeah, we’re having the usual naughty kids of course, we have 2300 kids at the school. So there’s gonna be some bad elements in there, but yeah, the usual stuff. We have had a few issues with meets where people were admitted external people into their meets. And that’s just in the awareness thing in education. And we’re trying to kind of work through that time, you know, one of the time. So we’re trying to figure out Is this a issue that was caused by the platform, or is this just an education issue that we need, to train up and skill about teachers on and says a few things like that know with meets, we’ve found that adding it through the calendar is the best way to do it. Because if you add it through the calendar, it makes you the owner, which is really, important that you’re the one that can kick people out and you can add people in. Yeah, that’s where up to excuse the Children in the background, this is the hallowed halls of my garage today. So anything could happen.
Mike
That’s good. Hopefully that makes an appearance. It’s been interesting. Did you find that the students were ready for learning, like they were keen to get back into it or parents were certainly coming to get them back in? It wasn’t anything like what we saw in Queensland this week, with schools going back yesterday and within the 1st 30 minutes off school time, and I put school time in inverted commas. Now that was saying I was just reading an ABC news article saying that the servers got hit more than 1.8 million times in the 1st 30 minutes. So across the state, obviously they’re dealing at its scale. But I’m interested in a micro dose of that. Like, Did you see a massive ramp up as of 8 30 Monday morning, where everyone was on. Or was it a slow trickle? Like what he just started to see in terms of the way the tech was being used and demand on services and tools and resources?
Blake
a few things that sort of stood out was that it was more of a trickle we didn’t see and especially we see this out kind of analog is that help desk. It’s popping off at the moment, but trying to figure out on the help desk I care what one of the patterns we sort of see it in the mornings tends to bays at nine until 12 but it’s not. It’s not like everyone I asked was not all jumping on a date 30 and doing classes for the day. So it’s class here, class there instead of checking in once a week. Most teachers check in once or twice a week, telling us that they have seen your classes. They might need a little bit more, but it’s up to them. You know, I really believe in re professionalising teachers. That’s one of the sort of things that I spoke about, which is letting teachers kind of navigate their waters and giving them the skills and the resources in the environment to be successful but not actually mandating the success in a way. So we are trying to say he’s best practice. Here’s what we think, you know. If you ‘re stuck, you don’t have any ideas, not sure what to do. He is where you should go. But if you’ve got a really clear idea about what’s gonna work for your faculty in your class because we know that art and maths from home or at school are very different subjects that we want to make sure that you know, we’re providing the skills in the environment to succeed. That’s really up to them. makes that leap and to look at what’s best for their kids and their environment and their classes just here. Building off the stats side under the Queensland department was shocking. Always, there were mainly the primary schools that were struggling as well. But I’m just kind of flattered. Tested by that, like at 1.8 million, you’re saying like, What were they expecting? I mean, did they think no one would use it or
Mike
wear laughing at us? Who would have thought that that many people would log on and I will hang on for a second minutes on holidays? You thought they would have been prepared? Hey, yeah,
Blake
so you know that it’s a great learning opportunity. I think that for that system and those of you who don’t know much about the coins land system, especially the state system, it is a lot more locked down on most systems there. Internets highly filtered and locked down and on their different states and a lot of ways to go to Australia, the rest of Australia, in that very spread out that a lot of centres all across the state, which has its unique challenges. So I think they’re going to be doing some rapid learning at the moment, like all of us, like all of it. So it is what we’ve seen is probably Doc increasing its something interesting in looking at the stats in the last few days in light last week, the first time ever seen. That’s flattening. And that’s really interesting because I think what they’re showing is this is everyone is kind of getting on, and we’re seeing that sort of flat flattening of the curve. Usually, it’ll sort of Evan flow throughout the weeks as people to exchange programs or people off sequel people are moving. Schools are coming back to schools, will not. No one’s really moving schools unless it’s an extreme situation. We don’t have any camps going on. We don’t have anyone off, you know, Checking out offline like a Central Australia trip was two weeks accused of logging in. That’s not happening. So we just think it’s real flattening and we’ve got out 2500 users and it’s just kind of a flat line. Cross Jima now and drive and classroom just to a lesser extent. 2400 uses in classrooms. That really is only 100 people across the entire school on down, in some way involved in the classroom. And that’s probably that could be anything that could be accounts that off. See, you know, sick or or something else. So, yes, a lot, lots of interesting stuff going on in our stars and, you know, comparative for last week. Pretty much everybody is a liar, which is great. Yeah,
Mike
right. Okay, so that’s Ah, that’s really interesting that you’re finding that you do like to track third party tool use. It’ll do you know if there’s anyone like they flattening out because everyone’s using because you guys are a G Suite school, and now they are also branching out into other things to supplement their learning. Or you’re finding that they’re mainly staying inside the course with the tools. Have you got any sort of stats? All data on that we have
Blake
a little on other platforms like style and in ed Rollo we’re seeing similar things. There is that if work is being set, people are leeching onto that resource. So more so than ever, actually, which is interesting, like I’m not quite sure what to think about that, whether it’s Ah, there’s a situation where people are thinking Okay, you know, these researchers have been shared. I need to go through each one of them methodically or whether it’s a situation where previously that was covered in class and was only kind of a follow up if you missed it or if you wanted to go a bit further. So I’m not having those physical classes. I guess people are leaning more on the resource and now it means the quality of those resources matters a lot more as well.
Mike
Yeah, totally good to see that again. That ramp up, we’re told to bend it over the last few weeks that the way that services are holding up under the pressure, generally speaking, is quite good. No, no, no point signs. A bit of an extreme, I guess. Case study in that But, you know, I think you’re right when you talk about them being very controlling and what they block. It was interesting because the articles showed a picture, or I think it led with the line that students have been blocked from accessing it. It seems to me from the work that we’ve done in Queensland schools that their policies block and then release if you ask for it. So it seems like that kind of policy maybe has come back to bite him on the bum a little bit.
Blake
Yeah, sounds like you’re baiting me. They’re a little bit like, you know, I you know, I’m a big proponent of opening, first on blocking later. And I think this is This is the conundrum you face when you are the arbiter of truth in the central source of everything. If you make decisions for thousands of students, hundreds of thousands students and thousands of teachers, then you need to be on top of every single point in that process. And what happens is you become less agile and you are unable to immediately pivot and try new things. And what happens is you’ve got huge teams of people trying to work really quickly to enable, say, online learning in this case and then realising that has a whole lot of pieces, that puzzle we missed. Whereas if you go the other way and you allow people to innovate from the ground up, you have this slow burn effect. Someone grabs it, another person grabs it. Three people grab it. A little bit of policy might have you discussed informally, and then it can become more formalised, and can move into other faculties. And then we can provide his formal PD do formally, you know, formalises the purchase of the software or whatever that innovation years. It was just a procedural innovation, so that that’s where I think you’re gonna get shot in the foot is when you have no ability to be agile. When you’re sort of stuck in that, we will tell you how to teach your class. We will tell you that it’s the technology that so I can the technology that isn’t and you’ll have to lobby us every time you want something. What you see is a culture off. How do we get around the blocks? And I know that there is a big techie breaking that happens up there. I think that’s a big thing in Queensland here that talked about a lot and we’ve actually attended. A couple of those in the Tiki Breakers tend to bay. Ah, he is a great tool that’s not blocked or here’s a way to get around. The fact that we can’t use this Google tool or whatever it is, can use this other tool that I haven’t found yet. That’s good planning. Wacka malware is I prefer that the teachers air in charge of you know they’re learning and not worry about the tools that tools are just gonna work if they want them on. We kind of manage the prophecy and all those other issues when their eyes on the back end of when we see issues.
Mike
Yeah, yeah, and I think we’ve certainly been on the receiving end of that a little bit with our training that way. Do because we’ll have Catholic diocese and independent schools and state schools and we’ll be showing a toll on everyone’s getting excited, and then a state teacher put their hand up and I got on. We kind of exist. That and any out session were like What do we do? Like do we keep showing this talk cause it’s a great tool and half the class of the half the room can use it. Then do we not show it now? Because after being there in that way, I have definitely been on the receiving end of that block first sort of mentality. Yeah, they have a side of that, too. Is that you? Like what you’re saying that whole thing about innovation, people find things. I tested their trial and they came to us and daughter about why they want to. They want to use it. You can’t if you’re not finding new tools, that that’s just up to the I t. Guy, right? A technical person generally to come and make recommendations based on the sales pitch somewhere or at cost associated with something. I was like,
Blake
very, You have these scary companies that are better. These solutions companies say we’ve got a solution for this and we’ve got a solution for meeting management. We’ve got a solution for student management, and then they kind of tell you all these solutions. But they’re not in school. They don’t. They don’t know that the needs of the you know, the the worker I’m about, You know, like I said, re professionalising teachers. They know their class better than anyone who will weigh one administration. How can I possibly make a good decision for 200 teachers? 200 teachers could make a good decision for the direction of the school. Collectively, if you think about it is kind of a microcosm of the A small ecosystem. If you like a small little environment where people can have their say that can try things, how they can fail and it doesn’t hurt anything, it doesn’t hurt the school in a large way. If you roll out this new ones unsightly learning and it fails, that hurts the whole system. In a large way, there’s been no ability to test that to ramp up slowly, incrementally improved.
Mike
I mean, like, you look taken pointing, Kate, that case around the security side of things like you got Zoom that have been in all sorts of strife in the media and so on because they haven’t had it secure. But at the same time, like I don’t see any major long term damage that may have come out of that. So, you know, at the same time, maybe some accounts were compromised. Maybe it was awkward, but if you look at the long term ramifications of that, we’re going to get a much better tool in a much better product because of those issues, Rather than stopping all the issues before they become an issue, that kind of makes sense, like sometimes you do need to have issues to move forward.
Blake
I totally agree, totally agree, and again comes back to this other other made mention. It’s on the podcast before where schools aren’t allowed to fail. It’s not good enough if I send my students somewhere and you make a mistake that you know that absolutely cannot happen. So schools are a lot fessed up and make mistakes. I think if you’re a school now, the best thing you can do is say we are trying to figure this out with you. We need your help. You’re a stakeholder in our school, right? If we fell, you fell. If you fell, we fell. So let’s work together to try and come up with these solutions, because again, what they’re looking for is this Holy. You know, all seeing, all knowing, omniscient being that’s going, to understands the entire landscape to make a perfect decision in every situation and don’t get me wrong. We try very hard to do that. But at the same time, I think when you can enable innovation at the bottom level, have much more control of much more ability to see things and understand things like one of the things that came to me is it’s about that. I don’t know if you’ve ever watched that Steve Jobs commencement speech for Stanford. I think it was. Connecting the dots is really popular, but it’s such a in that you’ll see something else or something. Years ago when we were doing some Minecraft stuff, using this plug in called plots where kids go build on their own plots and bill competitions and, you know, we sort of put in the fail pilot and work that well. But now suddenly we have. We want to create some opportunities for excellence. We want to create some opportunities for celebration and that’s really important that we have competitions running right. So I have this thing that’s sitting there that someone innovated on that they tried out and it may have found then. But actually, it’s gonna be a win for us now. The problem is, you can’t quantify that. I can tell you that. You know, I’ve made exit blocked X amount of risk problems or anything like that. But by having that innovation available, even that didn’t succeed in the first place. We’re now able to use that to our advantage. So it’s about that mindset of innovating and leading from the bottom up, giving people that freedom to innovate.
Mike
Yeah. And then do you allow students to innovate in that way? Or is this OK? So we’re talking about innovation we’re talking about bottom up. We want to release our teachers to innovate, to find your tools like it did you How often Or if ever do extend that to the student body for them to come and say his accords all like, how does that work? They come to a They use it all in a class a teacher season. They go, that’s cool. They talk about it at the water cooler and it bubbles up that way. Or is there some sort of process that you put in place to try and highlight and call these out.
Blake
Yeah, certainly. So the big part of that is obviously coming up through the teachers if we when we survey our teachers and we run a standard I survey called meant measuring technology in school survey. And that’s that’s a starter that I built in partnership with the Educational Technology Consortium of Victoria. There’s a mouthful for you and that’s a consortium of schools that we all do the survey and were able to sort of look at comparatively where we stand with each other. But this survey looks at how the teachers gain new skills. We ask how teachers are getting new skills and one of the biggest ways is through their students, and it’s often overlooked part of that. We think you know, these professional teachers. We go to university and then we throw that away, and then we go and actually teach and figure out how to make that work in the classroom. And while we’re there, we will learn off appearances and we do pure observation. But hang on to the 28 kids in every classroom and those kids are influencing teachers directly and indirectly old I. So that certainly happens. And we also do things like you know, you seven. When they come in, they’re inducted, and they talk about how to use email and best practice with email. What we try. News. We find examples of students that are managing their email. Well, I mean, one of the if you want to talk about one of the most hidden and underrated problems of 2020 and beyond is kids managing email. His email box is overflowing. Everything that comes into classrooms sends an email notification they get. They sign up to 1000 Liston and don’t know how to unsubscribe from them. Everything is just one huge chunk of email in their email box. And so, kids managing their email, we provide examples to our students of how they manage their email really well. So it’s not just, you know, here’s this best practice that we have decided is you know, I decree is the best way to do it. We said, Well, here’s Here’s an option that a student does there. This inbox zero method is another option. They use market markers red on red and have a grouping in their in box. Or here’s another option. You know, we label everything and move it off, and so many on your level of O, C, D and E. And you know who you are as a person. You might gravitate towards one of those that can help you on your journey through six years of schooling, where you’re gonna amass hundreds of thousands of emails through that time. So that’s kind of how we like to breathe. That innovation is, we find, you know, typically born out of a problem. Some students will have a solution, and we just want to share that solution when we induct students in Year seven, but also throughout the school and Correa’s as well.
Mike
So it’s Answer me like you’re saying that students are digital natives and they just because they can swipe a knife ed doesn’t mean that they had to use old technology right in my understanding. This surely you have made to a conference. What just says put a taller device in the hands of a student. They know exactly what to do with it.
Blake
Not? Yes, not yet, Mike, but you know, we’re working towards that I think. And like, you know, you know as well as I do that there’s a difference between being out of swap and I’ve had to use technology. But I’m interested to see what your thoughts are on the whole argument. Because all of the digital native stuff I think most people fall in the camp of no. Kids are digital natives, but they know how to use the technology. But the difference between technologists like you and I who are interested and want to learn how something works probably me too more of an extent where we’re looking at CP use and, you know, I ops and different things on the server and networking side versus someone who’s like, Hey, you know, I know how to get around my I’ve had to get fortnight installs and can troubleshoot a couple of little things. But, you know, how does that translate into the workforce? Like what? What is the ultimate outcome of all this? Do we think the digital natives have to be digital native? What is it that I suppose the definition of the term is part of the problem?
Mike
Yeah, I think the notion. The thing that frustrates me is that you go to these conferences or you talk to a tech person and they say to a teacher who’s struggling with technology use and they say, Don’t worry about it The kids will just teach you how to use it And I just got its biggest lead of crap because just because, like I said, the kid can swap around an iPad does not mean that they know how to use a Google doc properly or knows how to use Google Drive or one drive or Microsoft teams or whatever tool your using Probably so part of me, I understand the sentiment that students are quite good and happy to click around, and I’ll find things and I’ll just have a try and they’re not worried about breaking things and and so on. But the other part of me just says like, Just wake up like this is you’ve got. If your school does not have a program to teach their students how to use the technology than they’re letting those students down, you shouldn’t just assume that that’s what they’ve got in some of the best training we’ve done is when we’ve taken students on a boot camp through the tools that are in their hands and showed them how to use them properly and then extended that acts of parents cause of parents haven’t got a clue. It used to be a They take a book home and mum and Dad conflict through the book and see what is. You know what work you’ve been doing and right now the kid comes home and the parent says, What did you do today? And the students say nothing like they always do. And the parents of those students
Blake
I came to hear about a parent’s side. But with the students, when you’re running boot camps with, um what? When you say some of your best sessions, what are the outcomes you’re seeing out of that? What is that? What’s that kind of changing foot for the school? For the students?
Mike
Yes. So, like we run him through a competency star boot camp. So you know they’re gonna understand Google Drive, and they’re gonna understand Google Doctor. That’s the course with the tools that they’re using. And so it’s very competency based. I can do it, can’t do it and so we lived through. So at the end of the day, if we break it into kind of like a ninja style basic, intermediate, advanced. And so the students, all as they come through the years and particularly in primary schools, where it’s real formative, that the students have skills, that where a teacher doesn’t just assume that they’ve got the ability to do it. So maybe a student doing an activity in a humanities type of subjects and they need to do something, I don’t know, like foot bubbles, or they need to do a family tree in science or, and you’re relying on technology that would have it now. I had to do a flow diagram, for instance, in which abscond I use and how does that work? And so sometimes teachers will set tasks for students, assuming that they have the technical knowledge or the technical know- how to use the tools to do that. But really what they’re doing is spending half of their cognitive load, trying to figure out how to use a tool, not actually learn what they’re trying to learn. If that makes sense, so being out of boot camp, um, at different levels in different stages and bringing them through and reverse. Met that to a general curriculum. Eyes where we’re saying like real good results because it’s just hard baked into the lessons then. So this teacher at this year’s gonna teach this concept and say no, that if they’re transitioning from year you through the year four year Ford made these capabilities and it’s on me as part of the team to teach the students that concept so that they’re ready for next year. And we said that making a major difference for the teachers as well because you don’t have to be an expert in everything. You just need to know your thing that you’re responsible for, and somebody else takes care of some of the other things. So in terms of whole school change, we find working with the students through the teachers is a great way
Blake
to work. Because the teachers are influenced. 28 teaches two students to one teacher. There’s a lot of influence that goes on in the classroom from the other direction as well. Um, in the sort of model of instruction, top down delivery is the very model. I think we need to be upset. We need to change and reorganise because we’re seeing in almost all facets of schooling, whether we talk about differentiation or, um, you know, it’s student driven. Learning all of this requires us to flip the model of instruction back to providing students with the ability to see their own data sets to navigate themselves and the ones who don’t. Then, you know, we still have these other structures for them as well. But that’s really interesting, I thought, like the idea to take all the students through like a boot camp and do like a Google certified educator course or something to see. You would be great to see. Like what? What? The difference in output is a difference in time to complete tasks. But also on the back end of that, it strikes me that there are two issues. One of them is learning the tool. So inside of a Google doc, what are my options? Like if I’ve never seen a table of contents option, I’m not gonna no to use it, so I sort of need that demonstrated to me or need some awareness in the first place. But then there’s the other. The other side of that is when to use those things. And this is where it gets to be harder because a blank Google doc conducted can be and do so many different things. And how do I use that effectively? So if I’m using it for study notes, Although I use a bullet list, do I use table cells? Do I use comments and paste the information? So giving people good models, I think is like that second step, and I think that’s the hard part. Even with staff is to say, Well, here’s what he’s always tools and what we’ve found with professional development of McKinnon is showing people step by step, how to use a docking, clicking them through and showing them all the features of a Google doc has zero. Engagement has zero outcome. Improving the staff opportunities. What works well is to say he’s a completed lesson plan. He’s a task we developed with an embedded Google drawing timeline and his how it works really quickly and then letting the staff don’t develop and find that information is one of the lessons we learned early on, and it relates to this bottom up thinking where instead of us, provoked like when we start. When we moved to J Sweet, it was like a totally different product. I mean, you couldn’t. There were no controls in the back end. Everything was just, I think I think your docks were public by default. I don’t know if you remember those days, you credit the new document and anyone could see it. So that was a very different time. And one of the things that forced us to do is with something like Google Calendar. We couldn’t push a calendar out to everyone’s account. We actually had to to create that calendar and then say he is how you add the calendar and what that did was it was a beautiful lesson for us is that it took more effort up front, but then on the back end saves us tons of time because no one is coming to are saying, Well, you’ve out of the calling To me. It’s not working. I throw my hands up. I don’t know how to fix this. It’s you who have administratively done it. You’ve touched it. It’s your problem, whereas if you say here, here’s the resource you guys have to go implement. You have to create your own. You have to do it yourself and maybe three or four steps. But they own those three or four steps. It’s there three or four steps, and they learn in that process how to use it with that class, how to use it in other places so it gives an exposure to those tools. That was a big learning for us early on about that bottom up thinking, and I’ve got a blood post on what I wrote years ago. That’s probably embarrassingly out of date, but it’s Ah, it covers exactly that, trying to get people in the tools and understanding how you can use them and showing them good examples with them saying No, you know what it looks like. You try and get there and we’ll support you to get there, and that’s going to be more work for us right now. But the years down the track, that investment just compounds to the point where you know they’re really confident to use the technology.
Mike
Yeah, so that’s what that’s the exact model we used with the teachers. So think about where you’re going to use this tool in this way in this kind of listen and then reverse engineer that. So what are the skills that I need to be able to teach that lesson and then it’s authentic, right? And so the best kind of PD is taking that concept of saying, Well, here’s an example. Are but half building it for them and then they need to finish it. So when we do our training, we diet. We don’t do slide decks. We, uh I mean, you’ve seen it naked, and we’re hands on to open up a Google Drive account, and we’re gonna work together and collaborate on this thing. So giving them something that’s half built that they then need to learn the skills to be able to finish and have as a resource to take away. That’s when you get that higher engagement. You get that learning on the backside of it. And then you know, people walk away with a resource that they’ve been. And now I understand the process. Say, yeah, yeah, make thankfully
Blake
lots more powerful that way. And a good friend of Travis Smith actually talks about this Travis Smith from Microsoft. He talks about building slides next, like you used to in the old days on overhead projectors where half of it is filled out. Then you grab your white board marker and you ride in the rest, you draw the graph and you explain as you’re going, If you’re building slide decks, you should do the same. And you put in the speaker notes what you actually meant to do on this slide on the slides. Only half finished, and you go in there and you make changes. And obviously one notes a great tool for doing that on the fly. Like he does that in his presentations, where he draws lines and links things and circles things. And he makes ah Patton’s, creates patterns in the daughter and shows how things fit together and adds zine information as the talk and the lesson develops. And it really makes for fun, more engaging lessons that were far more engaging. Speech Chief, you’re at a conference listening to it, which is no surprise because you’re learning along with them. Um, and you can get that immediate feedback from the audience.
Mike
Yeah, I’ll actually link to that on the show nights. It’s Travis on YouTube. He’s got a YouTube video on thinking you’re thinking on all the stats and the research that goes on behind that in terms of retention of information, processing of learning and that sort of thing on. There are some great articles out there. You know, for instance, are keyboards making our kids dumber is probably the week for another broadcast where, you know, you look at the research of what happens when you’re talking. This is what happens when you’re writing a book or on a tablet or on an iPad or surface pro. Something like that.
Blake
Well, actually, I did a bit of investigating on this years ago. I interviewed all the students in the last couple of years at McKinnon, who got perfect eight. Ours tonight are the Australian sort of s A t. I think it is, isn’t it? Mark you? Yeah, university. Yeah. And these kids at our school, phenomenal academic students got perfect items, which means like, 100% in everything. Basically, and that’s incredibly difficult to do, obviously, and credit to these students and I interviewed them and said, Well, how did you get those scores in terms of your studying? So what was your method of studying in every single one of them? Hand wrote copious notes. Not one of them used a computer for notes. They all had computers. They will use computers for various other tasks. So submission of work, online research. But when, when they’re actually consuming that information that they haven’t had next to the computer, that watch the video that does the research that does the task in that right there, notes in the notepad, they never really review those notes. Even they were just written down as a form of thinking like thinking, That’s that Travis Me Think again. And ah, a lot of the research shows that when you do direct comparisons, but my critisism of that research, is that it? We’re trying to ask people to think in a new way with a neutral set with old old style thinking. So as teachers were saying, people write notes by hand and we know that writing notes by hand works because writing notes by hand forever has worked, and this is the kind of dichotomy of Ah, you know, in my opinion, a dichotomy of this. This thinking is that I wonder if you bought students up to only using computers, only taking notes on a computer. Like I look at you know, a friend of a friend of mine was riding a Louis for Europe and you got a piece of paper and ready to pack list down, you know, is this is a 19 year old kid just out doing these Gap year going to Europe, writes pack list down on a sheet of paper and then made a mistake and then turned the paper over and wrote the pack list again, every line by line. And I think, like, you know, looking at that from someone who has used digital technology for a long time, and I take notes solely on the computer. I have systems and processes in best practice, for when I need a list, I’ll use a spreadsheet or, if I need this kind of note taking all use notions or I’ll use Google Doc. So there’s various tools fit for various forms, and I wonder if you give up through 12 years of schooling, knowing exactly Okay, I’m in a physics class. I need this kind of notes bomb and go to that tool and know how to format. There’s no snow to recall those notes. I wonder if that kind of process would out perform a typical sort of pen based process just moving in a line. It’s that that SAMA model thing, isn’t it? We’re just substituting the existing process and putting it onto a computer. We know that it doesn’t have good results. But if we redefine how notes should be taken on a computer, I wonder if then you’d start to see a big chasm opened up between handwritten night retention versus computers. Not retention.
Mike
Yeah, I think like I’m always for it should be both ends not even, All right. So there’s a time for building stuff and being a keyboard warrior and smashing that stuff on the keyboard. And then there will be times when you need to revert to being able to hand. Write some notes. Probably regardless of your age, we’ll see how that goes, cause students it may be the opposite, like what you’re saying down the track. 10 years of time with students have barely picked up a pen. That might be harder for them to think in ink than it would be to think in a cable. I don’t see
Blake
why people struggle to think with the keyboard, because the format is very limiting if you’re not using the right tool. So again, it’s about understanding how to use it was not just the tools that exist, but when I’m creating lists. How do I do that in the dark effectively?
Mike
Yeah, yeah. And I didn’t like today. I had a brainstorming session. We had a general manager around the different programs and packages we have. And I found myself still needed to pick up a pen and just map it out so I could see it and then put it into the dock that we were sharing. I just couldn’t go, Director, Doc. So, like
Blake
- So old.
Mike
Yeah. All right. I mean, it’s whatever works, right?
Blake
That’s right. That’s what we used to. And, you know, I was brought up in it. I don’t have computers at school, so my reach for it work is a post it note, and, you know, but at the same time, I’d be brainstorming. There’s no way I do it on pen and paper, always online because I want to move things. I don’t have to rub things out or start again. I just want to move stuff around, to be flexible in my thinking and be messy about it until I’ve got a picture and at that point, I can kind of formalise it.
Mike
Yes, so this is really interesting right now. If you’re thinking about homeschooling and online learning and the push to digital Teoh, you know, save all of our education. This has got ramifications right now. So what do you do? We’re seeing some schools pushing out paper packs, the students still there, feeling a right and bring back to school whenever that happens, you’ve got people who are relying 100% on Google Classroom, for instance, and the reason is our handwriting anymore, like they’ll be.
Blake
Well, there’s a new one in there because a lot of people are using the tools like classroom or their school APs. But then they just push the paper forms out, and people are putting them at home or or using them in a low low fi way, if you like. So the sort of 33 parts that continuum isn’t there is literally getting a hard copy pack was getting the printed out stuff off the hard copy that was delivered digitally. And then there’s going full digital with pro former Google docs and using online tools.
Mike
Yeah, I mean, how has a disease I saw walked in and just checked on Kelsey before? She’s 17 donor studies she’s doing in the internal assessment today. What are you writing? Because he’s just like filling in an election, and she’s looking at a computer screen in front of ah, and literally she’s got the answers on a computer screen. But she has to hand write it into the format of the document they want so they can scan it and send it like why, like, I just don’t understand Why is this not just type it in its got no cognitive reason for you to be able to do this, Evelyn. It’s a task that’s probably being used for the last 27 years. I
Blake
was actually going on the market. She’s applying for homeland.
Mike
Yeah, it’s interesting, you know, before things are changing in. I was listening to a lawyer last night as part of a program wherein real estate and they were saying they had to rush laws in because normally you have to sign something in front of a lawyer right after David, all these sort of things. But now you can do it, I presume. And you have to do what you signed with a zoom. But the law, the wording of the Lord didn’t allow for it. So even age old traditions that have been very anti taking one sense, and they are very much going online and finding you to legitimise what’s being done online and silence a
Blake
justice of the peace as well. Yeah, all that stuff. Yeah, crazy and thought about that
Mike
really interesting. That was just like, Well, there’s another area that’s been revolutionised if you want to use that word because of covert and Technologies had to step in and
Blake
it’s not gonna go back that that’s the thing. I think there’s a misconception here that once the door opens, he can’t close it again, and we see that in schools, you try removing, try removing something. It’s 10 times as high as adding something moved to a new tool. We just credit. And you told, If you want to take the five people who are left using the old tool, those five people kick and scream louder than 100 people have to move to the new tools. So we’re moving into a new world on the other side of this that’s going to look so different in a world that needs technical literacy, which is the thing we’re always on about, isn’t it? Like
Mike
Yeah, and I guess that would be what I would implore. Everyone listening to right now is Please don’t go back to how things were like agitate for change, to pick, moving forward even. You know, one of my wife’s clients is reasonably elderly. But even heard this morning was saying, This is amazing, right? Because I’ve already liked this morning. I’ve had a zoom call with my doctor. I didn’t have to go into the thing. I didn’t have to drive. It was amazing. I’ve done one hour of polite his class review like My day is so efficient. I’m getting so much more done like I don’t want to go back to how things were. That’s my heart enough to Yeah, that’s my hope is that we’ll just, you know, people say the value of this and it won’t just be Let’s just get through this storm, this inconvenience and eventually things will go back to normal, hoping that this is the normal.
Blake
Yeah, well, I think I was reflecting on this the other day, like for you and I’m you know, we’ve known each other a very long time. We often catch up. You’re never in the same state as I am, you know, in Victoria. So we’ll catch up over video and you can bounce ideas off you and sort of similar to the stuff will do in this podcast. But we’ve been doing this for years and back in the day before, it was cool. It was really unclean. I mean, there’d be huge delays and trying to talk back, and then you’d interrupt the person and it was really hard. I think they almost couldn’t be a better time. I think the platforms of maturing now to a point where this isn’t so we need any more people to get on with it, and it was funny at the end of a meeting the other day, we had a briefing on the team. That’s a big team of technicians who play online games and uses online speech and all that sort of stuff on the voice service. But doing a video meeting, all of them found it quite funny, you know, quite different and confronting in a while. I probably wasn’t super empathetic to that because I didn’t see that this is some you thing for a lot of people. And I think that’s something we have to constantly remind ourselves is what we might be used to. We might be used to these mediums in these forums, people who are coming into it. We’re gonna go back five years and think, What was it like when we first did those video calls? Because it was weird and it was interesting talking. A lot of teachers were saying, We’re talking out of this classroom of people. There’s 28 people there and I hear nothing. I got no feedback at all. Ah, that’s different and new and scary.
Mike
Yeah, yeah, it’s actually it’s a good point, cause that was one of the things I had to make a conscious decision off this week. It was the coach, my team through online delivery and Webinars because again, I’ve been doing it since. Like, I used to have two Internet lines coming into my house, one so I could broadcast out. And at the same time, watch what was happening online. That’s you know how long ago I started trying to deliver online professional development and learning. Yes,
Blake
it’s hard for us to be for that sells in that
Mike
position, isn’t it? Yeah, I’ve made all the mistakes and I just assume everyone knows what I know just because, like you, I’ve got the battle scars, you know, like the downfall of reading all the comments as they’re coming in and taking your train, Our photo. Someone says something. You know, that’s not complimentary. And the next thing you know, you have lost all train of thought because that’s really interrupted your thinking. And
Blake
yeah, it’s hard to make all those mistakes and everyone’s going through that. Now, if you want to see all those mistakes, check out the learning conversations that were our original attempt over and over years ago.
Mike
Yeah, and, uh, yeah, that was good. I mean, good for, like being on the edge of that and testing it. So, yeah, hopefully this is a new normal. And what? This is where we’re heading From here on in, we’re just gonna keep working through it. We do have a couple of racehorses I’ll put into the show nights as well, Just around online learning and remaining working kind of resource is to help you think that one through as well. I’ll drop a link into the show. Notes on that, people, er still looking for those tools. If they’re still looking for something, Teoh goes beyond what they’re using right now and they’re looking to improve. Uh, maybe they’re looking for a 1/3 party tool or some ideas on how to engage students. And some We’ve got a list of those. You’re right for it. And I’ll share lifespans as well, because what I get graded sometimes is we just pull these things out really quickly out of that’s all belt, so to speak. One
Blake
of the things that we struggle with a lot in the schools is this prime approach where some schools are saying where he’s going to go full classes. You turn up like you would a class. You sit there for 45 minutes. A friend of mine was telling me his sons in that and Ah, and they’re absolutely hating it. They’re turning up trying to do anything else, but sit there for 45 minutes as a student that just gets ants in their pants that I want to sit down on a video call for 45 minutes and it’s hard enough in a physical classroom, let alone online. When you know the fridges right there and the TVs are out there, you compete with all those other things. So you know what? How long should people be online for like, is there some resource is around, even if your kids are at home And maybe that I don’t have a lot of work? A lot of primary schools, you know, only give it out. Small amount of work. How much time should you sort of keep his especially younger kids who aren’t fully cognitively developed yet what can we expect from them with attention spans and that that sort of stuff,
Mike
you know, I think it’s being one of the I guess one of the resources that has gained a lot of momentum. Iran schools have Bean, a resource that was put together by the Illinois State Board in America, and they sort of put to give her a bit of expectation around what you should be doing at home. And I think it’s like a 69 page document. And everyone’s just, like, honed in on this one little piece of those 69 pages, which probably tells you where people’s heads spaces that also some resource is blunder. And yesterday, very wordy documents were. You can use this tool and that’s like, I don’t think teachers or parents really care. They just like to give me the guts of what I need tonight. It’s usually how much do they need to do and what’s a good lesson? And and so over there, saying any footwear around kindergarten is between 30 to 90 minutes a day, and by the time you get to high school, that’s talking about no more than three hours. And if you’re you know, like in your 11 or 12 or 12 13 depending on when school finishes for you in your country there, talking about no more than 3.5 1000 day Ah class should not go from more than 45 minutes. And so if you look at it from that point of view there saying, like the older you get, maybe the more concentration you’ll have and maybe the more intrinsically motivated you’ll be. I don’t know if that’s the case in practice, but yeah, if you look at that on a sliding scale, and I can link out to the websites that have picked this up so people can see the table for themselves. But basically they’re just saying anywhere between, like, 20 minutes a day at a minimum, right up to thought, say, the top end of high school minimum they’re expecting is somewhere around about that two hours a day, somewhere 2 to 3 hours in there.
Blake
So that’s basically what’s being echoed by the state government. Here is about three hours of the day in high school total, so you probably want to cover. Maybe what is that 33 or four classes you wouldn’t want to be trying to fit in seven or eight classes worth of stuff into that So you don’t change gears to offer because there is that penalty of changing gears, something Elon Musk talks about when he goes from space six to Tesla says, this is penalty and changing gears right after. Remember, where I was at with my work again and start going. And I have that to a degree as well with my making and work. This is my business work of an evening when I come home to work on that stuff. I have to change gears, and it costs him that loss to rise up to So you don’t want your students changing gears too often. But at the same time, you don’t want to just be slugging them for three hours and one top bigger one subject. That’s why we have periods in the day, isn’t it? So it’s basically just just having those periods in doing less periods a day is the general rule of thumb is not.
Mike
Yeah yep. And just giving. The students tries to dig deep sometimes, and if I want to do some deep work to go for it, you know, give them the space to do that
Blake
and doesn’t have to be contacted. A lot of like, a lot of teachers are just saying check in, we’ll start to call it the start of my double. You know, I got a double period, is an heir, and 1/2 there will start to call checking in. Okay, here’s what I want you to do. But I’m gonna sit here and do it So you guys go off and do it in 30 minutes, we’ll check back in, uh, have any questions. We can have a group discussion really quickly to raise any issues. And, um, they never consign off it onto the next class. And that just gives them a bit of freedom. Bit of autonomy. And it’s something that I think students, this generation of students are gonna have a different workflow than anyone comes before. It is going back to what we’re talking about earlier about how they use the tools and how they moderate themselves and find time for things. You know, we talk about phone bands in classrooms where we can’t do that now. Their phones, they’re gonna be near all the time. So how they’re going to cope with those impulses and understand even just having an understanding that, Hey, I am getting distracted by my phone and being out of my mind. That’s a whole lot of new tools that they’re gonna come out of this with. And I wonder if that will help with a lot of the issues in schools with distraction on phones and these kinds of issues.
Mike
Yeah, 100% Yeah. Be interesting to see. I think some of the schools in New South Wales air coming back around week three sets in about three weeks time. They’re talking about coming back. New Zealand schools are saying for central workers that we open at the end of next week, so they’re gonna have these dribs and drabs and multi classes. And so our school today asking advice around should I bring back one year a day? So maybe it’s your seven on a Monday That’s your right on a Tuesday nitty and nine on a Wednesday sort of thing, and I can see already the teachers are probably more so. The students thinking, Well, I hope the day I come back it’s a payday or something, you know, really, What’s
Blake
the? I didn’t quite understand the purpose of that. Why would they bring back one day at a time?
Mike
Because they’re trying to separate the students. They can’t have 1000 students in the school so
Blake
that it lives on surfaces for two days. So, you know, you sit in the chair tomorrow, the next kid sits in the chair and touches the table and, like, coughs on the table. I don’t know, like I think there. I mean, we still have essential workers, kids at the school and what that’s done. I was talking to a principal at an original school the other day, and he was saying that he’s a teacher, you know. Some of them are at risk. T. Ah risk themselves. They might be elderly that might have diabetes or any of the risk factors they’re having to say. Well, look out. I’m going to sit here behind a pane of glass, you know, that’s attached to join the room and just watch the kids. There’s no learning. Going on is purely daycare at supervision. But he said that the byproduct of that is there is no position now offering an online program because I’ve got people doing day. Carol day, he said. If they made a decision, said, Everyone has to be home and there’s only gonna be one school that’s gonna have a central worker at it in the region, and that’s where it goes. Then all those kids that are going home have been freed up, taught, um, to be able to deliver, you know, really nice for a bust, online programs and do two hours of Playschool effectively in the primary sector. Where is you do two hours of engaging playschool every day for the kids that they will dial into versus kind of this half one foot here, one foot there will give you some work shapes is really all we can do because we’re sitting here with our hands tied, playing daycare for the 10 kids at a year. And if I turn around, I want to send everyone. You can only have, I think, 12 kids in the classroom or something that might even be less. What do they do if they send too many kids? You know there’s a whole lot of problems with this kind of split approach. I think I think I need to say this is where we’re headed and give teachers the opportunity to actually deliver good programs. Baby. Excited about their opportunities.
Mike
Yeah, I’d be interested for everyone listening to let us know what their reality is right now. They are one of those teachers that are in the classroom trying to juggle this I want to know, you know, you at home, willing to go to work, But you can’t or you at home saying there’s no way I’m going to work. We’ve been talking to teachers on all sorts of angles and camps around that. So, uh, be interesting to hear from the community as to what they’re saying and feeling. And, you know, maybe some of the questions you have fired him through in the comments section and we’ll come back and answer those questions. I think that would be really cool.
Blake
They would love to hear love to hear Listen a mile. That’ll be good.
Mike
Yeah, there’s even an ability on the website to leave a voicemail. So if you click that button and leave us a voicemail, we might even play that and talk to it in a future episode.
Blake
Yeah, be fantastic. Love Hearing from the community from teachers from Texas. Well, administrators, you know what? What things challenge you and what your experience is, especially in this time, great for other people to hear what I think and learn from it.
Mike
Yeah, I think for us, you know, we get to see broadly what’s happening out there. So maybe we’re able to give you some advice. All shed a bit of an opinion. So what we’re seeing, working, not working. So good opportunity for you to get some customised support. Let’s chat about wins and fails. Blake is have been any major wins or fails that you’ve seen recently
Blake
wins and fails. I had a long series of winds, winds, but not not too many fouls. My winds this week. Win this week is slack. We use slack in our I T team and internal kind of management platform for us to communicate and keep on track. We use it as a sort of an informal document management system as well, which has worked really, really well on there and just had a lot of grass. If you had asked me a month ago about the interface and how things were a bit clunky, and they just literally addressed almost every problem as a big win for May. Now organise your channels in the group’s There’s channel called Building that’s been there for a while, but they’ve just done in a much better way now. And the desk shows that I’m just really asleep. Now we can switch between workspaces if you, you know, a member of a number of professional networks as well as my school ones. And if my school has multiple workspaces, I can easily switch between those and copy and paste and do all that stuff. So, um, slackers got a big tick from May. In fact, we’re looking at the potential of using it across the staff body as well and how that would work as a staff tool for keeping track of all the decisions that have been made in faculties, world meeting minutes are along. The resource is that is shared out in faculties, so using it in that kind of way as well as social clubs and also being at a chat to anyone in the school at any time and have a great cold feature, which is sort of like replacing your phone. It does like a phone call to anyone who’s on slack and has it on their phone. So you can, you know, as the principal. If I want to call someone, you don’t need to look up the number. You just hit the phone. And conversely, if you’re on the back over and the kids are injured, you can call up to the front without having to use your personal mobile phone. To do that in terms of your phone, you just use the WiFi called So as a slacker, really make some good moves, and I commend them for doing so in an environment which is not really the best environment or the most welcoming environment of change of the moment. People sort of don’t want to rock the boat while this is happening, but they have gone ahead and done, and I respect that, and I think it’s, ah, the right thing to do. If you have improvements to your product, now is the time to bring the mean and to really help, help you use and help people get the most out of it. That’s my wind. In terms of fails, I don’t really have a fail this week. I think, you know, looking at the Queensland story that 70 stories around the country, people getting surprised by Thea unforeseen inundation of the online platforms and websites crashing in this kind of stuff. I think it’s quite ironic and interesting because we know it’s gonna happen. But it’s like there’s a disconnect there. S. I think that’s probably the closest thing I have to have failed that. Nothing major this week.
Mike
Yeah, yeah, I think I’m in the same boat. I think it’s a good win for those who have been asking for it. Is Microsoft confirmed that they’re going to a zoom style call inside teams? It runs being asked to see more than four people on the screen. So that’s gonna go to nine with a roadmap to roll that more. Ah, a lot of people on both sides of the fence on that, because it does take more daughters and so on. But like that, you have just done the
Blake
same thing. I think hangouts go to 12 or something on the screen is currently an extension. You can get that by forcing it to do that. It’s been so successful. I think it was said, Yeah, we’re gonna take that
Mike
dressing that seems led the way on that. I’m just thinking when you’re talking about slack, maybe, you know, an episode in the not too distant future. We should do a whole episode on slack versus teams versus Google into how
Blake
they all fit together. And,
Mike
well, then,
Blake
But if he could
Mike
stand them off against each other like you’re saying, you want to use slack for team communication and I’d be like, That’s dumb. You should just use Microsoft teams because it does all that, plus some of you’re not paying for it. So be interesting that to dig into that and see, see where we
Blake
here. Absolutely. I mean, we’ve done that. So we’ve gone through and evaluated all the platforms, teams, classrooms and flak and everything else I came to share what we’ve learned and what our thinking is.
Mike
Yeah, that’ll be great. Excellent. Any have a phone woods, as we wrap up today, Spoke up.
Blake
I just want to say thanks for ah ah, weekly therapy session markets paying great dividends at the moment.
Mike
Yeah, it was good to catch up. And that you guys are listening again? Then we’ll catch you on the next outcast podcast next week. See that? Thanks for listening. For more episodes and show notes, visit you TB, don’t f Y I Forward slash outclassed.
