The Power of Data and Technology in Modern Education

Sam
Yeah, so I tutored a bit in high school and then I taught dance for a number of years during college and then after college while I was in grad school. My master’s degrees are in creative writing, my bachelor’s in sociology. So I don’t know that I was going to be an English teacher at any point. Although the creative writing side does lend itself easily to English teaching and then I took several odd jobs trying to get my big break as a writer and that is still work in progress. So, at some point I realized I needed a day job that I actually enjoyed and didn’t hate. And signed up for several different credentialing programs here in California which is an intense credentialing process, takes about a year and yeah, yeah, they’re really intense about it which is good like you want good educators but there’s all sorts of problems with the credentialing process as well. That being said I made it through my school, my student school teaching year where I was lashed to this wonderful woman from Queens New York who was in California teaching some kiddos. And I ended up getting hired to replace her at Summer Preparatory Charter high school which is the original of the charter schools that are attached to the Summit Public School network. So, I’ve been here since the school year of twenty twenty so we went first year as a student teacher. You know February and March came and suddenly we were in virtual school, did virtual school all the next year online when we went through COVID when I was back in the classroom and I’ve been there ever since.

Husena
Wow! So, you started teaching during the year of covid, that’s so, that’s right.

Sam
Yeah, my first, yeah so, my first year when I was with a cooperative teacher, we were in school for a first couple of months, up until February and March and then we went into virtual school, and it was virtual school for an entire another year. So, my first-year solo teaching was online. It was wild.

Husena
Wow. Like I don’t think that’s anything you expected when you first started considering as well, that you kind of fell into teaching and that’s the interesting part. I find that a lot of educators that I speak to kind of fall into teaching and then they love it. So, then they just stay. There’s just something about teaching that you know that makes people stick around and do that, going like even if it wasn’t their original plan. But that said you know considering that you started your career in an unconventional way you were expecting to teach in a classroom, you ended up having to teach virtually because of Covid, you know and Covid did bring a lot of rapid changes in teaching especially in this digital age. So how do you stay updated with the latest trends and tools in education technology.

Sam
Yeah, you know, the summit schools are a little different in the fact that the Chan Zuckerberg foundation that’s Mark Zuckerberg and his wife foundation. They helped to sort of start the summit public school while Dianne Tavener set it up and so well, Facebook actually created the platform, this sort of like canvas, like you would use online but it’s a summit specific online technology that was created by Facebook and then hand over to the Chan Zuckerberg foundation and they still do some stuff with summit. Although, I’m not involved at all they work with our home office and so I actually learned most of my technology usage by using this online platform where kids turn in everything that’s where we grade until you look at all student data. That’s how you access these personal files for students with independent education plans and five fours, everything that happens happens in this summit thing and then of course there’s the computer that we have at in every student’s hand they get a Chromebook when they come in the door and so I don’t know that I’m staying super up-to-date with like all the technology that are surrounded. When I was in virtual school, certainly we used a lot more whether it was pair deck or you know Google slide update and all these things that sort of tried to make the classroom a little easier to work with, there I was using some more technology. The other teachers were using now that we’re back in the classroom and I’ve tried to decrease the technology usage in there. I’m pretty much only using summits technology which is its own weird thing and is actually going away next year. So like we’ll be using canvas next year and I’ll have to reacclimate to that.

Husena
Ah, okay, right. Is there a reason for moving away and going to canvas.

Sam
I don’t know. Even if I knew I could say but I think in general like we’re trying to spend less money on things, so you spending money to keep Up-to-date this platform when there are things that are otherwise available that would be my speculation on that.

Husena
Right. Well, you know, even right now when you’re using some its technology, and you mentioned about having student data on there constantly, do you use that to make some data-driven insights that can help with your teaching methods.

Sam
Oh certainly? You know, each summit does a cool, really neat grading technique where we grade not so much on content knowledge. Although there is some of that but on cognitive skills. So, your ability to select evidence, your ability to integrate evidence, your ability to explain evidence, your ability to create a thesis, your ability to have an argumented claim, your ability to describe a counterclaim, we grade on those and each of those Kong skills comes with a rubric and that rubric is, it’s a sliding scale. So it’s not like an upgrading thing. We still give a grade but it’s not necessarily abcdef. Whatever, it’s a four point five to a 5.5 and then the next year when your sophomores, you’ll actually be expected to have a five and a six that sort of stuff. But the rubric is very specific in what you’re looking for and you get to use all that data on all the different cog skills that a certain student has shown and if you’re using that data really well, you can help to mitigate your own personal bias around a student that’s not perfect, right? You can still like grading bias comes in etc etc. But if you’re using the rubric to the T which sometimes they’re hard to understand but the theoretically you’re able to mitigate a little bit more bias because it’s a Data-driven model rather than just being like well this student turned to in late and I don’t like them therefore they get this, but this other student turned in late but I like them therefore I did this instead. If you’re sort of abiding by the number system, you’re doing a bit to help out whatever biases you might be bringing into the classroom. So, I do look at the student data. Although I collect a lot of my own now and that really helps me more I think than anything that summit provides on the platform. But there’s a lot of student data there that can be found there, you know I’ll get low-hanging fruits. So, students that are close to passing sometimes, I’ll work with that group all day to just to see if with this final product we can finally get them passing. Sometimes the students that are really far away I’ll grab those students. Students that did really well on this cog skill on this day, you know, hey I know you, know how to integrate and explain evidence, I don’t need to work with you guys but I am going to work with the students that have low cog skills on explaining and integrating evidence over here. So, you can start to split up your classroom based off of some of the data analytics and that’s really neat.

Husena
Right? I can imagine that that would make making decisions in the classroom easier as well. You mentioned collecting your own data outside of the summit technology. I’m interested in understanding a little bit more about that if you don’t mind sharing.

Sam
Well I’m really interested in students’ perspectives of themselves and the student perspective of each other. So, there’s four things that I have students take little surveys on at the end of the day. It’s like our exit ticket as we’re finishing up class which is I don’t know that remember all of them but though they’ll take us a certain number of questions about how do they do on their revisions, how do they do on their communication and collaboration, how do they do on their self-advocacy, how do they do on their physical organization of things and I also have them partner up some days and I’ll have their partners fill it out for them and fill it out for themselves. So not only do I have hey what’s you? What is your perspective about yourself student because I certainly have mine and I know mine. I don’t really need to always dataify mine because I understand where what I think about a student.
But if I can see what a student thinks about themselves in a real way that can be helpful now. Of course, it’s you know, it’s a Google form people can say whatever they want. There’s always going to be a plus minus margin on any of the stats that come out of that. But it is interesting also to see other people’s perspective. So, when I go to a student and I say hey like you might think you’re collaborating really well because you’re talking all the time but all your partners since October have said you don’t collaborate. Well, you, boss people around and that’s my experiences as well like but you’re saying you’re collaborating really well how does that make you feel and that can make kids feel uncomfortable, but it’s a little easier to have a discussion sometimes when they’re sort of like this anonymous feedback that they are seeing oh my peers, my peers don’t think I’m doing this and my teachers doesn’t think I’m doing this. Wow That’s a lot. Yeah.

Husena
Yeah, you have data to back up what you’re saying. So, it’s not just coming out of the blue and the student can be a little bit more levelheaded when listening to your feedback that way. That’s true. That’s true. Yeah, well not that’s green.

Sam
Yeah, and then I also take data. Yeah yeah, it’s really helpful. I also take data on social emotional learning. So, I take data on hey are you feeling safe at the school, have you eaten today? Do you have access at home to food which is a constantly changing question for some of my students. And, so I want to make sure that you know their social emotional selves are also being taken care of and not just sort of the like learning component of school because these are children and from various degrees of social economic background. So, I want to make sure they’re social emotional is good and it gives kids a chance to check in anonymously or I know their names but nobody else does and they know you know if they’re feeling not safe, if they’re feeling uncomfortable, if they’re feeling anxious, if they feel like school’s going poorly, I have all this data to either like give to their mentor or check in with them myself or talk to the administration about to be like hey look at like all the sophomores this week, think that school’s going really poorly, now they have a final product to you tomorrow, so that might be part of the problem. But you know it just, it helps to understand the students in a more holistic way rather than just sort of the great aspect.

Husena
That is so important, it’s so important for every teacher to try to understand as well in their own classroom and you also mentioned about students having coming from different social economic backgrounds and what kind of impact that can have on the student.
It can have an impact on the academics for sure. So, if you don’t have that background knowledge. You won’t understand why perhaps you’re not understanding something. It can even be a cultural difference sometimes, so these are all important things for you to know about your students and I’m really glad to hear that that’s something that you deem very important for you to know and collect data on in a way about your students. You know when you mentioned about your students coming from different socioeconomic backgrounds I thought about the fact that and considering your background, the age of your student must be a lot of impact on of social media on education. What are your observations both positive and negative.

Sam
Yeah. I think social media is such a many lensed thing. I remember at the beginning of the year to illustrate a little bit about how social media runs in my classroom at the beginning of the year I do a project on about debunking conspiracy theories so really important to me that we understand how some people could just say whatever they want and you might start to believe them. But if they don’t have verifiable evidence you should not take it as fact and that’s really hard to get through to some kids sometimes and I remember one of the part of the projects they wanted to do this year was, have students open up their phones, go on Tiktok and look up conspiracy theories and a friend of mine said a fellow teacher history teacher on my grade level said, I’m worried that the algorithm is going to start setting them conspiracy theories all the time.I went oh no, oh I don’t want to do that to them. So yeah I didn’t, I didn’t do that what we ended up doing is I ended up giving them a list of conspiracy theories to look up on their Chromebooks and I specifically told them don’t look it up on your social media. I don’t want to be the one that gets your algorithm to do that, and kids were really respectful about that. It’s really cool when you level with students sometimes they’re really into it. That didn’t help everybody from doing that some people still went on Tiktok and looked up for conspiracy theories and had a very funny time and some people believe them.
I have my own teacher Instagram account where I try and put-up assignments and stuff like that so that people have another access point that you know we’ve got phones that are like attachments to kids and there was a report in the New York Times, I think, like a year ago or so, that said when students have their phones taken they feel like an actual part of them is removed, that these are a part, an actual part of their body is their phone and that’s you know as we update in technology, we just have to be aware that like you know I’m a millennial, not that far from Gen Z but they have a really different perspective than even I do and that yeah, that’s a huge deal. Yeah, it’s a huge deal.

Husena
I hundred percent agree. I mean the same board is here and same border as here. Yeah I can imagine so well. Thank you for sharing that. You really went into different aspects of social media and how that can affect education in the classroom as well. You mentioned about distractions of how distracting it can be, social media can be very distracting for students and you also mentioned that you do still have a teacher Instagram account which I assume obviously would be for educational purposes. So how do you strike a balance you know between the leveraging social media for actual educational purposes and then managing the potential distractions that come with it.

Sam
Yeah. It’s really, when you break it down like throughout all of human history. Your social life was happening around you of course, but there were these ebbs and flows of it’s happening right now. So, my social life is occurring right now because I’m around people and now it’s a load for a little bit while I’m around different people I’m home. So, I’m not talking to them as much etc, etc and now in the last thirty forty fifty years we’ve changed completely from as you know obviously the telephone becomes a big deal. You’ve got radio communication that you can do people can talk to each other and at distances we got early email that comes in then we’ve got you know stuff like a Aol instant messenger and it starts to continue. Now students have an ongoing social life and all moments and that’s not to say that there’s not lulls in their social life. Of course, there are but at any moment something could occur in their social life because the technology is completely open and ready and that’s such a tough thing to try and navigate because no adult really has had to face it to the level that Gen Z has and so there’s this level of social anxiety of awareness that we don’t necessarily comprehend from a like a lived experience. We can understand the hypothetically you can even understand it you know in your life right now but the teenagers right now are kind of the first teenagers to have this raring always constantly going because covid happened and everything went online and everything is stayed online and so they’re just going so I try and be respectful of the fact that like when kids are having panic attacks because of social media that’s real. That’s just the same as if somebody has come and shouted at them in their face to them that feels the same way and there’s not really a different brain effect that occurs to them like their brain responds the same way this and there’s no changing that and yet at the same time like I don’t, I’m not a cell phone banner. There are some teachers who that’s the way they go awesome. That’s their prerogative. You should have that there’s some schools that completely ban it. Okay, that is the direction that you chosen to go at my school. We don’t have a policy. It’s up to each individual teacher and I’m there much of the mind like like hey I have to learn how to use my cell phone appropriately at work all the time. There are times where I’m on my cell phone answering other students. My mentor group like about somebody who’s freaking out about I Just I forgot to turn in this college application. What do I do and I’m like having to answer them while people are doing work in my class right? that is like there are ways in which you have to as a modern-day teacher sometimes use your cell phone while you’re in class appropriately that is something that I’ve been told that I can do at my job, I should not be on like Instagram just like looking at people’s stuff while I’m trying to teach not at all and so I have, I try and help my students to learn when or when not it is appropriate. So, like I have very standard rules that are consistent and regular during worktime yeah, you can use it to do a quick text, you can use it to change your music. But if I see you too much on, I’m gonna say something and if I have to say something too many times, I’m gonna take it for the rest of the block. And that’s like I just really want them to learn sort of these ebbs and flows. Now I’ve got fifteen sixteen-year-olds so it’s very developmentally appropriate for them to not always be meeting those expectations. So, I’m not harsh about it and I use those moments of when I’m really serious about hey like today is not a day when you need to have it. Today is a day where I am going to take it as soon as I see it and I try and leverage those only for moments of like vital importance now.

Husena
That’s fair, you know I just had I recently had this conversation with a colleague because we were discussing there’s so many apps that help children do homework using AI for example there other you know there are also games, lots of educational games that you can use and not just elementary school, these are games that you know even high school students can benefit from and I was just discussing with him like what a time to be a student and I was looking at it from the perspective like oh it’s an amazing time to be a student like you have everything at your figurative and then he was like it was a little bit like a debate but he was thinking of it from the other side that you know yeah what a time to be a student. It’s not the best time to be a student. You’re not like he was it would have been so difficult he was thinking about he was reflecting on himself, and he was like it would be so difficult if I had to grow up at this age and that’s exactly what you pointed out as well that we do not have the lived experiences that our students have right now. Growing up with so much technology around them, so much social media around them, it’s it and what they’re, what they’re experiencing is something that we can try to understand but we will never truly get it. You know? Yeah, so it’s really interesting to think of it that way but you know on the topic, I’m just changing topic, just a little bit but on the topic of having you know these apps and things that students can just use at their fingertips. I want to talk a little bit about gamification. You know educational games. What are your thoughts on that. How can they be utilized to enhance the educational experience for students especially in this age of you know where they’re fifteen sixteen-year-olds. Does it really make an impact on them.

Sam
You know it’s not something that I’ve really tried as much. My classes are really about allowing a ton of customization around the literature that you’re getting into and so I’m trying to increase their reading stamina. as much as possible like we do have some students that are lower or very low on their reading levels and so there has to be some building there. But for the most part it feels like starting from square one. It feels like we’ve got a first grader sometimes in terms of my students reading stamina, so I tell them all the time hey if you’re going to watch the show, put on subtitles for me. I want you to read at the same time in the video game put on subtitles, I want you to read all the barks, I want you to read all the cut scenes, I want you to read all the dialogue that happens. I just want you to be reading. So I’m not, I haven’t been utilizing sort of cell phone apps as much as possible. I’ve been trying to figure out ways for them to find something that they’re passionate about to physically, read digitally, I mean it can be digital as well. I just mean like I want their eyeballs looking at words and that’s been sort of my main focus, so it’d be interesting to go and look at some of the games I’m not super familiar with it. But yeah, I think that’s been my zeroing in on is trying to get them just to read more than a couple paragraphs before they give up. So, maybe I should look into seeing what reading Salmona games there are that could be really interesting. It’s a good idea.

Husena
Yeah, yeah, and you know there’s also another side to this where it’s not actually a game but just you mentioned about detail analytics. But rather the gamification of the learning experience but it’s a leaderboard or something like that I know that would be a little bit more relevant, I think on like math and science or something like that. But is that something that you’ve considered.

Sam
I mean I use. Yeah, I use Kahoot which is a like a gamification and that’s something that I used to do like what’s a I mean Kahoot for the listeners is like a little quizlet game that you can do. There’s a lot of other stuff that you can do it. With I use it for quizlets to either go over information that we’ve just done in a lecture, in a mini little a mini lecture. I do not lecture much in my classroom. So, it’s always mini lectures and I use it to go over like hey what did we read over the weekend. What did I assign you who knows and then oftentimes I have them in Teens. So there’s a little bit more like hey I will, I will make lunch for everybody who in this 4 group team. At the end who has the most points and so that does help with people trying to do that so I have used Kahoot and stuff like that. That’s that is stuff that I have incorporated into the classroom and that it’s helpful.

Husena
That’s great. That’s great. So, we are kind of like reaching towards the end but before we wrap up, I just have a few you know questions to kind of just ask about with the increasing use of technology. Basically, how do you strike a balance between digital and non-digital activities in the classroom, and I know you mentioned this a little bit earlier that after Covid now that you’re in the classroom you’re trying to move away from that. Do you find that there is resistance when you try to move away from using too much digital activities in your classroom.

Sam
No, I haven’t found that there’s much resistance and I think that is with the indication for me about why moving away from more digital activities has been really good. There are several things that we came away with with covid. Students have amazing technology literacy boom that was yeah much more than anybody else. So, I don’t need to really work on. They are already so into the technology that like a computer like you know the basic computer science classes that like people would take in middle school would be like this is how you type, that’s not really a thing that you have to do as much anymore with students. They’re already integrated into it but collaboration has become such an issue being able to talk to somebody in the room. It’s less so as the years go by and kids have gotten more used to it. This is something that has been so important is to ensure that we’re kind of off the computer sometimes and when kids are off the computers at least in my experience at this particular school with these particular kids. They’re more focused. They’re more willing to learn and sometimes they’re much more itchy to leave the classroom. Which to me means there’s a level of un uncomfortabletability going on but I haven’t had anyone being like I’m not doing this. I will have students say that on the computer because there’s such more learning things to do on the computer and I think that’s really important that we’re analoging a little bit not to sound like an old fart but like I think that there’s some aspects to analog. That’s really good. We’re still really early in that in this sort of internet technology phase I mean internet gets created and some of the biggest selling things, right that come out there are random little YouTube videos that people watch and get lost in and pornography like those are the 2 big things that come out of the internet immediately and then we built all of this cool library and digitalization of knowledge and like these awesome ways to access the world. But we’re still I think fairly far behind in how we orient our newest generations into utilizing technology for something that’s really impactful and meaningful instead of just sort of giving that dopamine effect. So, I really have been so touched that my students are really into some of the more analog stuff and that’s been really a lot more successful than digital stuff at least within the past couple years.

Husena
Now that’s great to hear and like you said it’s that collaboration piece is a big one. I’ve heard that not just from you, from many other educators that because they’re so used to being on their screen or being feeling safe behind a screen actually because then I don’t really need to. Even if I’m interacting with someone whether it’s true social media or Messenger or something like that, I still have the security of that screen in front of me on get hand having to actually you know interface with someone in the classroom on the spot that. I can’t take back, I can’t hit backspace on what I’m typing right? So today, is that right? But that’s really, that’s really interesting as well. I’m glad to hear that your classes are embracing that but you know on that note and I’ll end off after this, but as technology as data analytics you know, social media, all of these continue to evolve. What are some ethical considerations that you think are crucial for educators and content creators actually to also keep in mind when utilizing these tools in an educational context.

Sam
I think it’s really important in an educational context. One of the things that I really think that we should be doing is, I don’t know how to say this other than saying sharing reality and that’s not to say, I think a lot of kids look at Gen Z and they go when am I when am my kids going to grow up right? And that’s like so such a deficit mindset towards kids and there are so kids who show such maturity and strength and sometimes that maturity and strength only shows up in the phone like they are standing up to their friends there they’re really and like nobody else knows about it except for the person who’s in the chat with them. But I forget what this is called. It’s like the fallacy of the survivalist or something like that. It’s this idea of like you know you hear about in other countries what people want to do for the top jobs is like you know, astronaut or doctor or lawyer for social justice, educators sometimes trying to get water to rural areas that sort of thing and then in the United States, the top job that teenagers want as of two years ago when I read this article is content creator and yeah, which is like kind of bummy content is really great and so content creators we should continue to make it. There’s so much individualism out there. There’s so much people like people who like all sorts of different things and it’s great when you create content. There’s almost always going to be an audience for it and we don’t always have to have a big audience. I’m on a podcast about Harry Potter stuff you know we have a listenership. It’s not huge. That’s great. We’re creating content. It’s awesome. At the same time there are these huge realities that we need to have like we have to have people who help other people get better in life personal trainers doctors, Doulas, people are going to continue to birth babies like we need to have those people and people who are willing and able to do it like.Oh man am I excited for that and robots shouldn’t have to do every single job. So, like we don’t. I don’t. I hope there’s always somebody who a human always helping to birth a baby. I Hope it’s not just AI and robot someday. But you know the fallacy of the survivalist is this idea of like well you know this guy, this content creator they made it and they dropped out of high school therefore I can and what they’re looking at is the point .00001% that made it and they’re not looking at the ninety nine plus percent that hasn’t made it and yeah, those are the stories. Those are that that kids point and say that that’s gonna be me and I love the dreams I never would ever shoot anybody’s dreams down but my immediate next steps are like okay so what video equipment are you using? How are you doing your youtubes, what video editing software are using, how often are you doing it? How are you building your, but you view yourself because these are critical questions. So I think the most thing that I think we have to do both as content creators, as teachers, as everything, is to create an environment that pushes our kids to think metacognitively and critically so that they’re thinking about themselves and they’re thinking about the world around them critically in a way that is holistic and is a way that is oriented to helping others around them and that is my big hope for the world and boys at a soap box moment.

Husena
I love that and honestly about critical thinking and making sure that your students hone that skill I could go on about that. But I won’t right now but that was an amazing way to end off this conversation. Thank you so much for sharing your insights. I really enjoyed our conversations Sam. I want to extend our heartfelt appreciation for you coming on this show and sharing your insights your expertise. Thank you, thank you for your invaluable contribution.

Sam
Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. This was a great conversation.

Husena
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