S2: E40 ISTE with Amanda Neuschafer and Marcela Uribe

Season Two
Episode 40
ISTE and Technology with Amanda Neuschafer and Marcela Uribe

Amanda Neuschafer: Amanda is a second grade teacher at Good Shepherd Episcopal School in Dallas, TX.  She has been teaching at GSES for eight years and loves creating an engaging environment and nurturing community in her classroom.  Amanda enjoys working with other teachers and is always looking for her next collaboration!  When she's not teaching, she is running around with her husband and three sons.

Marcela Uribe:  Marcela is a middle school Spanish teacher at Good Shepherd Episcopal School in Dallas, TX.  She was born in Columbia.  She is an interior designer and has a Masters Degree in Education.  She has one son, who is a physical therapist.  She absolutely loves what she does and is always looking for ways to improve her practice.

TRANSCRIPT OF THE SHOW:

Jessica: Alright, so we are in the heart of Philadelphia in our hotel room talking about the ISTE Conference and I'm with Marcela and Amanda.  And I'm excited to talk with them and just hear their thoughts and opinions about the conference so I thought we'd get started by sharing what our favorite sessions were and what we really have enjoyed learning.

Amanda:  Okay.  Yeah, thanks Jessica.  I'll start.  Okay so I went to a bunch of sessions and the ones I found that I liked were - the ones that I liked the best - were the ones that I kind of already knew a little bit about.  So I tried to pick things that "oh - I don't know anything about this.  I'll go learn about it" and then "oh we use this at our school and let me learn more about it."  So I ended up liking those the best.  Like for example I went to a session on Brainpop, which a lot of the Lower School teachers love Brainpop.  It's just a website where you can watch cute educational videos and they have some fun characters and then the kids can take a quiz after the videos.  And so I use it a lot to kind of pre-teach things or review things.  And you can find just about any topic on Brainpop.  

And so I went to their session.  I knew there was more to Brainpop, but you know I'd never really taken the time to explore it and learn it.  So it was good to sit down.  The Brainpop people had a neat - they had their... way down at the bottom of the Convention Center.  We were in like a little room where we got to sit at laptops and login on their computers and get into Brainpop and try some of the other things.  So they were specifically showing us three things that Brainpop does.  One of them was making concept maps.  One of them was students making their own movies.  And then one was coding.  And so I looked at the concept maps and the movie making.  We got to like rotate through stations and try them out.  It was great!  

I think my second graders are going to love making their own Brainpop movies.  So they can like search and like, for example, we had to pick a topic we wanted to learn about and so I used Benjamin Franklin because we're here in Philly.  When you're making a video on Benjamin Franklin, they'll give you a bank of clipart of Benjamin Franklin and like a lightning bolt and a gas stove and so the kids can drag these little images into their screen kind of.  And then Brainpop uses this robot character named Moby and you can bring Moby in and so then you lay out this cute little video and the kids are gonna love it.  So that was one of my favorite ones!

Jessica:  That sounds so fun!  And Marcela, what about you?

Marcela:  Thank you Jessica.  I loved all of them.  I really loved them, but there are two that I really loved because I have a background in design.  One is called Sketchnoting and Drawing as  Thinking Process with Manuel Herrera and Rebecca Hare  (Education Closet Podcast Episode about it).  And the other one that was later that day: Learn How to Draw 100 Essential Sketchnoting Icons with Jen Giffen and Sylvia Duckworth.  So they were really interesting because, you know, I have used in my classroom TPR, which is Total Physical Response, and that is an amazing tool when you are teaching a foreign language, but I also use a lot of pictures because I love to draw and you know to convey a message.  However, I have never encouraged my kids to do so.  To take notes with pictures.  You know, that has multiple advantages.  

One - they personalize their notes, which is fantastic because they, you know, they use colors and markers and things

Two - they remember better because they drew their pictures

Three - it is more fun and engaging, right

But I can hear a lot of my students saying, 'but I have no idea how to draw' because they are thinking about artistic drawing so you know, I would teach them the basic shapes just to make something look like a house or a dog or a car.  That's it.  I think one of the most important things for these two sessions was: for note taking we have to stop thinking of drawing as an artistic process, but rather as a thinking process.

Jessica:  That was one of my favorite sessions as well and I'll put a little plug in for one of Sylvia Duckworth's books.  It was the How-to Sketch Note: A step-by-step Manual for Teachers and Students  Visual Notetaking made easy.  And I'm kind of like your students where I don't feel like I'm an artist as far as drawing and so I'm always a little more hesitant to use the sketch noting so that's something I want to try with my students as well. 

I think one of my favorite sessions was Digital Storytelling and Digital Literacy with Jen Leban.  And she shared this acronym that she learned from John Klein for how to remember the five steps and stages of design thinking.  So she used the phrase "Every Day is Party Time."  

E - Empathize

D - Define

I - Ideate

P - Prototype

T - Test

So I loved the steps she shared for helping your students use digital tools to create videos and she was just really refreshing and upbeat and positive.  Do you guys have any other sessions you want to share on?

Marcela:  Absolutely!  I went to another one exactly like that one - Digital Storytelling, but this time it was actually... it was so fun because what they do is they make in cardboard or felt - little characters, you know.  They cut them out and that's fine.  They can actually go to the internet and find templates if they don't feel comfortable, but some of them do feel comfortable, you know, drawing their own pictures.  And then all you have to do is on the back is put some velcro and then you have a straw with velcro as well to attach it to either the side or at the top or at the bottom. And then you use a pizza box that you paint all green and that's your green screen.  And then the kids make their own story.

Amanda:  Okay - yeah.  Today when we were at the conference I spent some time at the Google Education Room, I guess.  They have this whole room and it was sought after because you had to pre-register to get to these sessions so I got into some of them.  They went over a bunch of different things and you know our school uses Google for so much which I love and so it's made me even in my own life just use Google more often and use the drive and the cloud and different documents and so I love having access just to things like that.  But they really shared - Google did...the people from their team - first of all it's interesting that a lot of their employees were former teachers so it's this whole new, this whole business where a bunch of people who used to be teachers are working on the Google side so it was cool to even like hear their experience.  So some of them - one of them was a former math teacher or a high school chemistry teacher and now they're working for Google to create all of these tools for teachers to use.

And they also mentioned - they said, "We really really..." - in all the sessions I went to.  I went to three Google sessions.  They said, "We really need teacher feedback."  And so when you see that button that says like 'Send Google Feedback,' they said they read every one of those and that's really what we use to tweak our products and to tweak our different platforms.  So they always said please keep sending us feedback because you're the people we're making this for.

So they introduced some new things that they have coming in the G Suite for Education.  One of them was a Google Gradebook, which I thought was great because I considered myself pretty savvy, but my grades are still pieces of paper on a clipboard and checking little boxes and I lose it and I'm at home and I don't have it or vice-versa when sometimes when I need to see something so I thought 'Ooh - that would be a neat thing for me to try' and see if it works for me.  And they said that it was specifically designed to be simple so that it's not too complicated and so you're able to do things like have different things be weighted more than other things so you could have weighted grades.  You could have different types of things and I think they said Google Gradebook was still in its beta form right now so you can try it or either that or it was just about to come out as finished or ready for everybody.   But so I'm definitely wanting to try out the Google Grades.  So I was excited about that!

Jessica:  Google is one of my favorite like things to use.  I love the Google platform so I would be so curious to try the grade book and see what that's like as well.  Yeah, one of mine that I attended today was the TED Masterclass and it was with Ashley Kolaya.  But she talked about - it was basically about sharing your story with other educators and sharing how you've become who you are and how your story is unique.  And the three concepts she talked about to starting to tell your stories are really:

defining our ideas 

what are your ideas

what is a through line

So as teachers we have so much to share and being able to tell our story is a great way to help other educators build their knowledge and just the ability to share your unique story.  So some of the quote of that she said that really stuck with me was that as your speaking your number one mission as a speaker is to share something that means something to you and share that idea with others.  That can be a simple how-to or simple insight or beautiful image that has meaning or a reminder of what matters most in life.

An idea is anything that can change the world.  And I loved this one.  She said, "The key to a great speech isn't stage presence, style, substance, or confidence.  It's having something worth saying."   And I think something I need to work on with my students is finding that key piece of having something to say and being able to really articulate what that is.  So I want to try something with my eighth grade students with a project that involves them speaking and presenting on musical concepts to either Lower School students or their peers.  Not quite sharing their story, but just being better about sharing ideas and articulating them better.

And then the other thing I want to do is bring in podcasting because I went to a cool podcasting session with Danielle Brown and Donnie Dicus, which they're the hosts of the Three P's in a Pod podcast for educators and they just talked about how podcasting can be integrated into professional learning and how you could have teachers read an article and listen to a podcast and then watch a video and then combining the three, really have a great discussion to build in professional learning into using it outside of teaching time.

At the ISTE Conference, they always have Keynote speakers and several of them that I've gotten to see were just incredible.  I took so many notes.  I'd love for you to share one of the Keynote speakers or two of the Keynote speakers and what you thought of what they had to say.

Amanda:  One of the MainStage speakers who I really enjoyed was Richard Culatta.  He gave a talk and he was a very personable speaker.  And I found myself wondering - did you think those graphics behind him were the sketch note girl?  I was thinking that maybe she had done those 'cause I thought man, these so perfectly match his speech.  He had this really great visual behind him throughout the speech.  And so he spoke about Artificial Intelligence, A.I., and I think he said something like only 30% of Americans think they use A.I., but actually 80% of Americans are using A.I. because every time you do a Google search or you type in something in your phone like so much is happening that is artificial intelligence and we think, 'oh I'm not talking to my Siri or my Alexa,' but the way that computers are predicting what we want to see is a very large part of our lives already.  He said, you know, everybody's afraid that all these jobs are going to be lost to robots and so I think it was like 75 million jobs are going to be lost to machines by the year 2025 or something, but he said you don't hear the next part of the research which is that it's going to create another 125 million jobs or something like that.  But the problem is is now we have to prepare our students for these jobs.

Was it General Motors that he said... Okay, General Motors came to ISTE and said we need your help.  We have a job shortage, but it's a job shortage in ten years and so what can we do because right now we're fine, but what's coming down the road - these cars that are gonna be made, that are gonna be coming, we don't have people to build them yet.  So he really talked about how you can teach children now.  How you can talk to kids now about A.I. and artificial intelligence and he pointed us to  ISTE, which has some great resources online.  I think it was some videos.  I think coming out of that General Motors conversation, they said start figuring out how to train students, young people, and even start teaching them about this.  So ISTE's kind of getting ahead of the curve on that and really they kind of challenged, or he was challenging us all, to start thinking about that and how we can... you know it really made me scratch my head and think, 'ok, what are we doing today?'  And how you do have to change how we're teaching even five or ten years ago because of what's coming up for these kids, you know.  And even thinking, 'well, there won't be as much pressure.  When I was growing up, it was a big deal to learn mandarin Chinese.  Everyone needs to know mandarin Chinese because that's where all the jobs are going to be, but now you can translate things on your phone instantly and have these real-time conversations so there's not that pressure to know that anymore because we can figure it out through these artificial intelligences.  So.  He really just kind of impacted me with that.

Jessica:  Yeah, he was amazing.  I love what he asked at the end where he said, 'what is uniquely special about being human?'  Like finding out what's uniquely special about us and then talking about how the language of future problem solving IS the language of A.I.  It was so great!  So what about your Marcela?  What presenter for the Keynote really stood out?

Marcela:  I especially liked Mike Walsh.  So funny enough this is the second time that I see him because I saw him I think two years ago when I went to one of the Spanish Conferences and he's an amazing guy.  He's the CEO of Tomorrow, which actually on the first day got us confused because we were thinking that his presentation was 'tomorrow' and he has written books like The Algorhythmic Leader and The Dictionary of Dangerous Ideas.  And so he has this capacity to foresee the future, what's going on.  He says that right now we are entering the decade of algorhythms even though we're using them since a very long time, but he says that that is what is going to dominate, pretty much, the world.  That right now that anything that you do is being assessed by computers and companies and they know exactly what you need, exactly when you need it, and things are being created one day before you ask for them.  So it's, it's funny to see that kind of world that we're entering and actually he's a very good speaker.  You know, he's entertaining.  He's very smart.  He has a way of engaging the public so it's...it's... I really enjoy him.

Jessica:  Yeah.  The one that stood out to me today was Phil Hansen, which I think part of what stood out to me because I love the fact that he's an artist too.  You know, getting that viewpoint as well.  But he talked about his story - how he started being fascinated with pointillism and using lots of dots to make these pictures, but then he had this thing where he would hold the pencil so hard to make it steady and then no matter what he did his hand would shake and even if he wanted to draw a straight line.  He went to a doctor and the doctor told him 'embrace the shake' and just go with it.  So he realized that he could still make art even if it wasn't the type of art that he thought he was going to draw like.  And he talked about how just embracing a limitation could thrive creativity.  And how he went out and he was able to afford more resources and more art supplies and so he gathered them up and over time he had this whole big amount of art resources and then he realized that he was kind of like stuck and he didn't know what to do with all those resources.

Phil Hansen Art

He said that having more resources should be pushing him to more creativity, but he found he was feeling constrained with so many options.  And so he kind of started looking outside for other things and kind of like drawing on a Starbucks cup and he thought of asking Starbucks for lots of cups to draw on.  And so he did and he drew with pencils that he already had for like 80 cents and drew this amazing - what looks like a mural on the cups that were stacked.  And he talked about how he needed to become limited in order to become limitless.

So he found ways to purposely limit himself and then there was one project where he had - he called it Goodbye Art and he would create the art for the sake of making the art and then destroy it.  Like one he destroyed with fire like that Jimi Hendrix picture and it was like heartbreaking to watch this gorgeous thing go down in flames you know, but he used temporary materials and then one was he was spitting out food and he created this picture of Brittany Spears.

And then the one that I loved, but was then heartbreaking again to watch was when he smashed the Fender guitar, like this beautiful Fender guitar, and he used the pieces of it to make this amazing picture of Kurt Cobain and then he took this hammer to it.  And like just tore it down and destroyed it - yeah!  And then the last one that I remember was that he painted with hamburgers like he took this whole pile of hamburgers and he showed his dog like eating the meat like next to him.  It was hilarious, but he like literally wiped the grease from the hamburger onto this canvas and he painted the Mona Lisa.  And it was SO stunning!  It was just amazing.  So he talked about letting go of outcomes and letting go of failure and how, you know, you can develop creativity in your life and push it further, but using our limitations is a source of creativity.  And I think that's just such a, such a great idea of seizing our limitations.

Um - so being the ISTE Conference is about three to five days long, what do you think is your biggest takeaway from these 4-5 days and what would you say to educators who are interested in coming to a conference like this?

Marcela:  Okay so I would say the first thing is even though this is all about technology, you don't have to be absolutely an expert in technology.  All you have to do is be very curious and willing to apply what's coming in the future.  That's it.  If you are a passionate teacher, you really want to - to get better at what you do and to give your kids what they are going to encounter in the future, this is the place you should come.  There are sessions for everybody and pretty much for every subject.  So I believe it is...I have gained so much I want to go back and put some things in, you know, rolling with my students.  Yes, I'm very happy with that.

Amanda:  Yes and I will say this is unlike any conference I've ever been to because of the sheer size of it.  I mean there must be thousands of people here and I think the convention center where we are at is multiple blocks.  It's so long that I would joke with Jessica and Marcela that I missed some sessions because I couldn't find them because I would be trekking back and forth.  I got like 20,000 steps or something yesterday.

I think just come and just embrace it because it can be overwhelming.  ISTE is so well run. They have a great app so leading up to the conference you can start looking at ideas of what you want, what you might be interested in learning.  You can search for different key words.  I really enjoyed just walking around the Expo Center that they had set up which is just this giant convention of exhibitors and vendors.  And I found myself instead of going to new companies or new software programs that I've never heard of, I kind of jumped to the ones that I use.  So for example Kahoot was here, Brainpop, Quizizz is an app that I love, Osmo.  When I saw these different booths, I would come to them and say, "Oh awesome.  I use Flipgrid.  What's new in Flipgrid?"  And so since I already had that knowledge, it was easy for me to say 'oh okay cool. great' so we could come back and say we could do that as opposed to just going to some new app that I didn't have any context for.  So I enjoyed getting to speak with the people who work for these companies. 

I just enjoyed putting my feet in anything and everything and just jumping around and then trying to bring back little things that I thought are going to be doable for me to tackle in the fall.  So it's a neat experience if you have the opportunity to come to one of these national conferences, they're really worth it.

Jessica:  Yeah, for me I also loved the camaraderie and getting to be obviously with both of you because you've got, you know, Amanda's teaching second grade, Marcela's doing Spanish, and I'm music so it's very different.  Learning about each other's roles and about who we are and even though we're at the same school, I think that's been incredible just having time to really talk through what we got out of each session.  And I agree that it's... not limiting yourself and saying well, I teach music and it's a technology conference - I can't do that.  It's like no - there really is something for everyone.  So highly recommend doing it and like Amanda said, it's so different from everything else, but there's so much to gain.

If you get the chance and you want to look more into it, you can go to ISTE to find more information.  I believe next year's conference is in Anaheim, CA so beautiful spot to check out so something to put on your radar if you're interested.

Amanda:  I was going to mention one more thing that I learned while I was here.  ISTE has these national conferences, but they also have regional conferences.  So if it's not feasible for you to get to California, I think they do a smaller version of something like this in the different regions so there might even be like a southwest ISTE or something that would be closer to everybody.  Someone told me that at some point this week.

Jessica:  Awesome.  That would be cool to check out and closer to home.  Hope you found some great gems you can use!