TRANSCRIPT: Bringing the World Into Your Classroom with Technology (feat. Natalie Anderson from Saline Area Schools)
7:48PM Sep 14, +0000
Speakers:
Nikki
Natalie
Keywords:
classroom
students
technology
educators
teacher
fifth grade
year
teaching
feel
kids
app
tool
hackathon
designing
natalie
opportunities
create
school
teach
passionate
We as educators owe it to the kids that are in our classrooms to teach them as unique individuals and not just teach the same thing every year. And I think technology is one of the ways that you can do that in your classroom by bringing the world into your classrooms so that your students feel represented or by bringing different learning experiences through the use of technology like coding or STEM projects in your classroom. So you're opening your students eyes to things that they might be passionate about, that they might not have access to outside of the classroom.
I'm Nikki Herta and this is BRIGHT: Stories of Hope and Innovation in Michigan classrooms, a podcast where we celebrate our state's educators and explore the future of learning.
There are so many new apps and programs out there, it's easy for even experienced teachers to feel dazzled and overwhelmed by all the cool things you can do with technology in the classroom today. Seasoned classroom innovators often remarked in the pivotal moment that they pierced through the gloss and shimmer and began to strip their technology use down to what is most essential and transformational. In today's episode, I chat with Natalie Anderson, fifth-grade teacher from Saline Area Schools who was recognized as MACUL's Iinnovative Teacher of the Year in 2021. We talk about Natalie's personal philosophy for using technology with her students, her go-to tech tools, and her experience bringing hackathons, virtual museum visits, and Genius Hour into her fifth-grade classroom.
All right. Well, hello, Natalie, thank you for joining us today for BRIGHT. It's a pleasure to have you on the podcast.
Thank you for having me.
To get started, I was wondering if you could just tell us a little bit about yourself, your school, and your students.
Yeah, so I am originally from the Metro Detroit area. And I've been living in the Ann Arbor area now for about four years with my husband. We moved here four years ago, I think, and I just finished up my seventh year of teaching, I've been very fortunate to have taught fifth grade my whole career, which has been awesome. And I have been in two school districts so far and currently teaching in Saline Area Schools, and I love it. And it is definitely the place for me that I just cannot be happier or more thankful.
And what is it that drew you to education in the first place? And how did that journey lead you to where you are today?
So the story's kind of funny, but it's true. So I originally just fell in love with teaching, just remembering my fifth-grade teacher and how I felt so connected to her because she was really the first teacher that I felt that she not only just cared about teaching us, but she just respected us and just was so comfortable with us. And it made me just feel like she really valued the relationships with her students and myself. And I just remember being a senior in high school thinking about like, oh, what do I want to go into. And teaching was really the first thing that came to mind. Because of the relationships that my teacher and fifth grade had formed with myself and my classmates. And just thinking about her, she just had this passion for teaching. And I was just so inspired by that despite only being 10 years old. That's crazy to me that I even remember feeling that way. But I just felt that like, that kind of was my first inspiration into getting into teaching that I wanted to also be a teacher like her where I just valued the relationships that I built with my students, and I treated them as individuals, and not just like the kids that are in the seats in my classroom. And that's kind of where I started, then just it like, even furthered my passion for teaching. When I started my master's program that through Michigan State University, through the MAET program, and just learning how technology, which is another passion of mine could be so intertwined with my love of education, it just really furthered my passion of taking both things that I loved.
So, you were the recipient of last year's 2020 MACUL Innovative Teacher Award, which is pretty awesome. Congratulations. I was wondering, you know, you just kind of referenced your passion for educational technology. But I was wondering if you could just talk to us a little bit about why are you so passionate about this? What is it that it can do for students, you know, the use of educational technology in the classroom, that can't maybe be done without it?
Yeah, so I think just going back to my first few years of teaching, my love of technology in the classroom just started off very kind of surface level. It was just me being just passionate about, oh, I'm gonna try the latest and greatest things in my class I like couldn't get enough. I went to MACUL for the first time, it was like, wow, this is just so cool. But then, like I mentioned, the master's program that I went into, that really kind of like change my mindset on using technology in the classroom. And, for example, like Punya Mishra, we read a lot of his work in my master's program. And he talked a lot about how technology is not just meant to be this shiny object that you use in the classroom. It's meant to be used as a tool to either further student learning or or do something you do as a teacher better by using technology. That was the first time my mindset changed from just wanting to use technology to be like the cool teacher to using technology purposefully, right? And I felt that like, as soon as I kind of started learning more about that, I just realized that technology can really open up the like doors for so many opportunities in my classroom, both for myself and my kids. We did a lot of this year, especially with COVID, we did a lot of virtual field trips through it used to be Skype, but we use Flipgrid and Zoom this year. And that really helped them make connections and things like social studies and science where we are reading out of a textbook a lot and doing what we can with hands on things, but showing them connections outside in the world. We Zoomed, for example, with the National American Museum of Indigenous People. I think it was what it's called, and that connected what we were learning about in social studies to the classroom, and really helped it make it be more real for the kids. So just in general, I just feel like, like just making those opportunities in my classroom, I think is why I think technology is so important our day is for both teachers and students.
Yeah, you kind of described it in one of your materials, as I think, bringing the world into the classroom and putting them in contact with opportunities that may not be available just right in your geographic center, especially imagine for rural schools, you know, places where, you know, they almost certainly don't have those opportunities, getting to bring them into the classroom.
Yeah, absolutely. And another thing we did to another way that I feel that you can bring the world into your classroom, too, is through books. We read a book every day in my classroom. And although that's not technology, we still had some opportunities to connect with authors and illustrators on these books that we were reading, even if it was just through Twitter, or we were fortunate enough to have a virtual like face-to-face opportunity with an author illustrator. But I feel like that's a really cool way to bring the world into your classroom to because it's not only making the connection, like visually, with the author of a book that we've read, but also helping every student my classroom see that they're represented by not just like characters in a book, but the people that are writing and illustrating them, too.
That's so cool. Another really neat project that you spoke about was the hackathon. So I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about this. And maybe like, what, what inspired you to decide to do this? And what did it allow your students to do?
Yeah, absolutely. So the hackathon was, honestly, to date, one of the coolest things that I've ever had the opportunity to do as an educator. It was a collaborative effort between myself and two other teachers in my building. And it was, what it was around that time right before winter break. And we were like, we want to keep these kids engaged. What can we do? So, we were like, why don't we try to do a hackathon with our fifth graders and use code.org. We decided to use the code.org app lab and have them come up with an idea of how we could help either teachers or students in the school setting by creating an app that would solve a problem. So that was the first kind of intro that we posed to the kids. It was three classrooms of them, and we decided to kind of help them do this by taking them through the engineering design process each day.
So, we started, like I mentioned, by posing the problem to them and and getting them to start ideating solutions to the problem: How can we solve issues that teachers and students might have at our school? And then from there we went through each step of that engineering design process each day and the kids sketched solutions. We had them come up with as many solutions as possible, sketch them, pick one, and storyboard what their app was going to look like. Then, the second to last day was just the day where they were coding and designing what their app was going to be. Then, the very last day right before a break was our "showcase," that was what we called it. We had all of the kids meet in our bandroom, so a big, giant room, and we had them all set up their Chromebooks to show off their apps to other students. We had other classrooms come in. And it was just amazing to see the things that the kids came up with. And it was just a week that we did. So it was a very fast and they they got it done. We really enforced the idea with them that this is not meant to be like a perfectly designed app. We're designing a prototype that could be like furthered in the design process and continue to be worked on it. It was just it was incredible to see what they came up with in the short amount of time.
Can you give us a couple examples of student apps that came through out of this project?
Yeah, so I had two boys in my classroom that were so passionate about what they created that we actually ended up trying to use it after break as a class. They decided that in our own classroom, they felt that there was an issue of our bathroom passes always being lost. Fifth-grade problems. And so they decided to come up with an app that was like a digital bathroom pass, and it had buttons like you could pick if you were going to the boys restroom, or the girls restroom. You had to put in your name, and then when you came back, you would she like check yourself back in. They also thought of like if a kid's gone for too long, there would be like an alarm or something that would go off to know like, hey, this kid has been out for way too long. So, like I said, it was so exciting to see how excited they were about this app that they came to me right awa, and they were like Mrs. Anderson, we have to use this in our classroom, or you let us do and I was like, sure.
And then another one that stood out to me too, was one that a girl my class created. It was an anti bullying app, or like a bully reporting app that was designed to be used throughout the whole school. Because she felt that a problem at school was that kids were being bullied regardless of what grade they were i. My building is fourth and fifth grade, so her idea was that every classroom would have this app. And it was just a safe way and an anonymous way for students to report either they were being bullied or they witnessed an act of bullying. And they would just report it on the app. And then it would go straight to the teacher and the principal. And I thought that was so incredible to that the student was thinking of like every student at school and how she could make the school experience better by reducing bullying by reporting on this app. So that was another really great thing to see.
I really like the way that you kept the scope of the problem, like, What's something that affects like the students in your classroom or the teachers in your classroom or the students in your school? I'm wondering what type of intentionality came behind that choice to keep it local? Like, what do you think they learned by going through that process?
I think that one of the big things that they learned was just thinking of others when it comes to using technology. Because I feel like, especially like I mentioned, I teach fifth grade, they're so focused on like the video games and like Tik Tok and all this stuff. Like that's just helping them with enjoyment. And it really, I think, open their eyes to how you can use technology in other ways and more purposeful ways and how it can make an impact on not just you, but it can make an impact on your community. And you can use technology to to solve problems at the same time.
Another really cool example that really blew me away was when a group of students came to you and asked to create a video for peers of their school on strategies for intervening with bullying, discrimination and racism. I'm wondering if you could tell us about this project to and what it emerged from. Like, what assignment did you give your students that prompted this? And then what did these students do with it and what did they create?
Yeah, so that actually started, because we had a couple of incidences in our district that happened last year that were racially charged, and it was a very difficult period of time that our whole district was going through. We as teachers in my building felt that it was something that we needed to discuss with our students, even though it didn't happen like in our school setting. So we started off just by having a lot of conversations in my classroom, and we read some books together. I wanted to give them space to kind of process what they knew or what they had heard had happened. And that's where it kind of started from. I had a group of boys come up to me one day after our we had conversations where we were reading a book or something, and they had expressed that they wanted to... Well, they didn't even want to make something right away, I think they just wanted to have space to talk through things a little bit more. I invited them to come in during lunch one day and just gave them, like I said, space to just talk through kind of what they were feeling about everything that was going on because I could tell they were very, very, like passionate about wanting to do something with what was going on, even though they didn't know what that was going to be just yet. I gave them space to talk, and eventually it kind of spawned into them wanting to do something for the whole school, so that they could prevent this from happening in our school setting. Because one of the things that they mentioned after talking it was that they had either experienced things like what had happened in our community themselves, or they had seen something like that happen. So I had recently been taught from my principal at the time about the Speak Up At School Protocol from Teaching Tolerance, which now has a different name that I can't think of. But it was a very clearly drawn out protocol of how you could stand up for somebody who was experiencing racism. And I shared this with them and kind of taught them about the staff. So then they decided that they wanted to come up with a skit to teach like the students at school this protocol because they felt that it could be a great tool for others to help like stand out for others when something happens at school, if that makes sense. So from there, myself and another teacher helped the boys like create a skit, and they designed something that was like a scenario of something happening to a kid in the school setting. They walked through each of the steps, and we shared it at our community meeting.
What an empowering experience. They were being treated like adults, like, hey, if you see a problem and you want to do something about it, you're empowered to do something and to act. That's got to be an experience that will that will stick with them.
Right, and I think just the fact that it's showing them that they like it might be able to do something that they might not have necessarily thought they could do anything about it, or that they were even passionate enough to do something about standing up for racism and social justice in the school setting and showing them that hey, like you can do something about this. This might be something that they're passionate about going forward. They might go into middle school and want to do something more, and stand up for others and kind of help advocate for other students in the future, too. So I think it's cool that it just opened their eyes to the fact that this is something that they care about.
I'm Nikki Herta, and you're listening to BRIGHT, a podcast that's made possible by Michigan Virtual, a nonprofit organization that's leading and collaborating to build learning environments for tomorrow. Today, I'm chatting with Natalie Anderson, a fifth-grade teacher from Saline Area Schools who was awarded as MACUL's Innovative Teacher of the Year in 2021. Up next, we talk about how Natalie brings voice and choice into her classroom, her top three tech tools, her favorite teacher, and her vision for student learning.
So, another use case, I think that you gave was using technology to provide students with more voice and choice. I was wondering if you could speak a little bit about that.
Well, yeah, I think the example that I had mentioned was when I was doing Genius Hour. I think it was last year or two years ago, but I've been doing Genius Hour in my classroom for the for a while now. But one of the years that I did genius hour I gave students the choice of how we wanted to share out our work at the end of the round of genius hour that we were doing. We decided to do what what like was basically a Edcamp-style presentation, where all of my students were presenting but they they signed up to present in shifts. Then, when they weren't presenting, they got to choose which presentations that they wanted to go visit, and they would travel around different like stations in the classroom. It was kind of like a little mini-conference, which was really cool. I think Genius Hour in itself is a great way to provide kids with voice and choice because, if you're not familiar with Genius Hour, you just kind of guide them into thinking about what they possibly might want to choose as a project, but it's a passion project. So they're choosing something that they either want to further their learning on, or they've always wanted to learn how to do, or that they don't know how to do it at all, or something that's totally new for them. It's a great way, I think, to incorporate voice and choice in the classroom, for sure. And it's, it can be a little scary at times. When I first started, I was like, this could be a disaster. Because it's very hands off from the teacher's perspective. But that's a fantastic way to not only give them voice and choice in the classroom, but also, like we mentioned before, open their eyes to what they possibly might be passionate about, or what they might possibly see themselves doing in the future, even at such a young age of being in fifth grade.
Some other ways that I used voice and choice in the classroom. Especially this year, with teaching in a pandemic, we did a lot of things digitally, obviously. Google Jamboard was a great way that I incorporated voice and choice because they sometimes I would give them the opportunity of choosing how they wanted to express their answers to a question or they could choose how they wanted to that choose how they wanted to respond using different tools on Jamboard and things like that. That was a really great tool that I loved.
So, what is Jamboard?
So Google Jamboard is kind of like a digital whiteboard, basically. You can add multiple different slides. What I used it for a lot in my classroom was having students share out, whether it was in small groups or having them share out individually. It gives you little tools on the side. One of the tools is like a sticky note that they can type on, or they could type in a text box. They could change the colors. Sometimes I had them change the colors of the sticky notes or the text to show how they were feeling about whatever the question was that I was asking. They can also add pictures, and I think you can also add videos, too. There's a lot of different things that you can use, and you just share the link with whoever you're using it with. It's just a big, collaborative whiteboard, like I mentioned. So whoever has the link can add things to it.
So if you had to pick three of your favorite tech tools, whether they be popular ones or lesser known ones that you would like to share with fellow educators, what would they be? And how do they help you in your classroom?
Yeah, so this was probably the hardest question for me, to be honest. But I feel like my one of my number one tech tools, especially this year, became Flipgrid. Every time I use it, I feel like I'm amazed with the new features that keep popping up. Flipgrid, if you have not used it before is like a digital video response tool, I guess is how I would describe it. You can use it for so many different things in your classroom. You could use it for something as simple as just giving students a question and having them explain their answer through video format. Now there's a tool that you can have students share their screen and talk at the same time in Flipgrid, so they could show you something on their computer screen. I'm pretty sure also there's like a writing tool that they can use as well. Actually we used it for our science fair this year. In fourth and fifth grade, we use Flipgrid to have students share their science fair projects in a digital space. Then, we just shared out the link with the whole school, so you could use it for something like that, like a digital presentation tool. Also, I think it's new this year but it might be new from just the previous few years, but there are great virtual field trip opportunities that I use quite often this year, especially because of being in the pandemic. Flipgrid, I forget exactly what section of Flipgrid it's called, but they have a lot of different field trip opportunities that you can choose from, or you can also connect with experts that they have on their website as well. I think it merged with Skype in the Classroom because Skype in the Classroom doesn't exist anymore. So, that was also a great way that I use that this year.
And then another one that was new to me this year that I loved and my kids were obsessed with was Gimkit. I had never heard of it until this year, I think I saw it on Instagram or something of another. It is similar to Kahoot, if you've used that before, and it allows you to just create your own quizzes or just questions that you want to ask your students. I used a lot with math in my classroom just as kind of like a review, or you can use it honestly, with anything. It's similar to Kahoot in the sense that the kids were just answering questions and choosing which answer they feel is correct. But it's so much more than that because it's game based. My students, I'm sure along with a lot of other teachers' students this year, were obsessed with Among Us the video game. So, they have this option on Gimkit, where it's basically like an Among Us game that the kids are playing with each other, but they're answering the questions at the same time. So they can't actually play the game without answering the math questions that I gave them or whatever it might be. So that was so fun. Just taking anything and making a game-based, I think, is just so cool in general. It also just makes the kids realize that like you can learn and have fun at the same time, which is always awesome.
And then the last one that I think I definitely would choose, again it was new for me this year, was Google Jamboard. I know I've talked a little bit about that, but that is a tool that I think although I started to use it in the pandemic setting, I think I definitely will see myself using Google Jamboard in the future from here on out because it can be such a great collaboration tool with my students, or it can be a great way for me to collect feedback from them. And also, it's a great presentation tool. I had two girls in my class this year, choose Google Jamboard to create their Genius Hour project, which was really neat to see. I wanted to mention that not because just of the fact that it helped me in the pandemic, but I think I'll definitely be using it in the future.
Those are great answers. So why was it hard? Just to pick only three? Was that the challenge?
Yeah, I'm just always up to try new things, so I was just thinking about all of the different technology tools that I've tried and also all of the things that I love. It was just hard to narrow it down to three, but I'm happy with the three that I chose.
Alright, slight shift here. Can you tell me about your favorite teacher, and why they were your favorite?
So her name was Ms. Sotcher, and she's still teaching nowadays at Leonard Eementary School. And she just was, like I mentioned, she was the first teacher and honestly one of the only teachers that I felt very connected to as a student. And I just remember even still to this day feeling like she cared about me and my classmates. And she didn't just care about teaching. And I was excited to come to school every day. Because she was , I could tell even from just being at a young age, that she was confident and just being herself with us. She always will be my favorite, too, because like I mentioned, she was really the biggest inspiration for me and becoming an educator myself. Still, to this day, I feel like I stop at least like once a year and just think about, lik, how am I doing with my relationships with my students? Do I feel like I'm giving them the same feeling that I had as a fifth grader when I was in school? And I kind of use that to keep myself in check and think about what students I maybe need to reach out to a little bit more to make sure that as much as I humanly can possibly do, I'm trying to make those relationships and build those experiences with the students that are in my classroom each year.
So cool. Did that influence why you chose to teach fifth grade?
Yeah, that was part of it. And also, I felt like it's a great balance, in my opinion, between them getting more and more mature as the year goes on, but also they're that like goofy little kids still because they're 10 years-old. And I love that about them.
All right. This next question is kind of a big one. Can you tell me about your vision for student learning? And so the way I break that down a little bit is if it were up to you, what would you want to see for every student?
Yeah, so my vision for student learning... Two things that really stood out to me were a focus on equity and also focus on individualized student learning and less of a focus on like test scores and grading. So what I mean by that is feedback is so important in the classroom right, but we need less of a focus on traditional testing and grading because that would allow educators, in my opinion, to focus more on individualized student learning. So designing more experiences that are focused on giving our students what's best for them. Not trying to make sure that we're getting all of our students to get the perfect grades or the perfect test scores. Because I know from my experiences as an educator, and I'm sure probably others feel the same way, it's very hard not to feel that pressure to make sure that you're getting the perfect test scores, or your students are getting great test scores, or your students are all getting A's, if that makes sense. You see that with your own students even in fifth grade. I see that every year that my kids come to me and they're so focused on just getting all A's and doing the best that they can, which there's nothing wrong with that. But there's lots of a focus on doing what's best, and that changes every year, right?
And I feel that also the equity piece. That kind of goes along with individualized student learning in the sense that we as educators owe it to the kids that are in our classrooms to teach them as unique individuals and not just teach the same thing every year. I think technology is one of the ways that you can do that in your classroom, by bringing the world into your classroom so that your students feel represented, or bringing different learning experiences through the use of technology like coding or STEM projects in your classroom. So you're opening your students eyes to things that they might be passionate about that they might not have access to outside of the classroom. And I also feel like to designing the unique learning experiences with technology in mind, too, allows you as the educator to kind of step back from giving traditional grades and instead use technology to help give them more helpful feedback, so that at the end of the day, the most important thing is that we're preparing them for life in the real world. A letter grade isn't necessarily going to do that. But if you're using technology to give them helpful feedback, or just giving them more individualized feedback for themself as a learner, that's what I feel like is really going to help prepare them for life just as a human being in general, if that makes sense.
And also social equity, too. I think, with student learning, I see that as educators teaching students about equity as well. I think that piece is really important, too. Because as the world continues to change and evolve, that's becoming more and more clear that it's so important not just to teach students 21st-century skills, but also to teach them that equity piece that they need to learn about different people that might not be in their classroom community or their community that they live in. But teaching them about different people all over the world so that when they go out into the real world, they're equipped with skills to interact with people that might be different than them and just be an overall well-rounded citizen.
I love it. Thank you so much. My last question is, so this past year, obviously, was a pretty challenging one for many educators and students and families. Do you have any words of advice or encouragement that you'd like to offer fellow educators right now?
Well, I think what I would just like to say to just the education community, the stakeholders, and everybody involved -- so that includes parents and students and families -- I think that the fact that we all survived this school year is just so inspiring to me. I want everybody to think about how inspiring that can be to you as well. Because the fact that we survived the school year means, to me at least, like we can do anything, right? Everybody talks about how difficult this was, and now that we're done with it, I think everybody deserves like that virtual pat on the back. It's kind of exciting to me because it shows that we can stretch ourselves in ways that we never thought were possible. Yes, it was incredibly difficult, and I don't want to have to do it again. But I think it's just inspiring to think about the fact that we all working together can do honestly anything. I think that's so helpful, especially thinking about what's best for kids, which is what we're all here for. I think it's just it's exciting to see that we all came together in any sort of way and did the darn thing this year.
There’s certainly an art to using technology in the classroom in a way that aligns with your goals for student learning.
Natalie shares some excellent examples of this art in practice by using technology to bring the world into her classroom for her fifth-grade students. Through innovative projects like Genius Hour and the hackathon, Natalie empowers her students to learn a variety of critical skills and lessons.
Perhaps the most important of these lessons is that technology isn’t just something we consume but also something we can create. A powerful tool that can be used to invent solutions to community problems. By modeling this process, Natalie shows her students that their voices matter and that their ideas can, in fact, transform the world around them
Without a doubt, it’s challenging to sift through all the noise to determine which technology to bring into your classroom, in what quantity, and in which situations. But with leaders like Natalie forging our path forward, if there’s one thing we’re certain of: it’s that the future is BRIGHT.
Thank you for joining us for this episode of BRIGHT: Stories of Hope & Innovation in Michigan Classrooms. This podcast is produced by Herbie Gaylord, is hosted by me, Nikki Herta, and is shaped by many of our passionate and talented colleagues. Big thanks to Christa Green, Anne Perez, Anne Craft, and Brandon Bautista for their contributions to this episode.
The BRIGHT podcast is made possible by Michigan Virtual, a nonprofit organization that’s leading and collaborating to build learning environments for tomorrow. Education IS changing faster than ever. Discover new models and resources to move learning forward at your school at michiganvirtual.org.