UCF Professors Drs. Rebecca Hines and Lisa Dieker share practical ideas to help teachers think about how to use this new online world to still allow students to learn offline. This episode is anchored in practical ideas to get kids thinking away from the computer aligned with project-based learning and UDL. Remember to share your questions for us to answer on our Podcast to twitter @accesspractical.
PLEASE NOTE: Dr. Hines who mentions her teenagers were at the beach lives near the beach and they were practicing required social distancing behaviors at the local beach.
UCF Professors Drs. Rebecca Hines and Lisa Dieker share practical ideas to help teachers think about how to use this new online world to still allow students to learn offline. This episode is anchored in practical ideas to get kids thinking away from the computer aligned with project-based learning and UDL. Remember to share your questions for us to answer on our Podcast to twitter @accesspractical.
PLEASE NOTE: Dr. Hines who mentions her teenagers were at the beach lives near the beach and they were practicing required social distancing behaviors at the local beach.
spk_0: 0:01
Welcome to practical access. I'm Lisa Dieker,
spk_1: 0:04
and I'm Becky Hines.
spk_0: 0:06
And we're here today to kind of filled another question. Becky, how's the world for you going at this moment?
spk_1: 0:12
Oh, is that the question everybody wants to know? Lisa, the world is going amazing right now. Lisa Dieker
spk_0: 0:19
I know you're overwhelmed. I'm overwhelmed, but I guess we're joining. What we can say is we don't have five year olds on each arm trying to use our computer or our iPad at the same time my child has grown yours or what's in my grown
spk_1: 0:34
mother? Minor semi grandmother. The beach lady?
spk_0: 0:37
Yeah, got it. Got it. Well, and I'm waiting to see if my son still has a job. So it is part of the world. And I thought, you know, we should start with that reality check on. We know our families of kids with disabilities struggling, but so are teachers, and so are our kids. This change of routine, we know is not good for anybody, including us. So I can only imagine some of the households
spk_1: 0:56
Well, you know, not to be glib because I literally live near the beach, but my problem, as some parents of kids at the secondary level is getting them in tow. Want to come in inside and sit down and do this? This asynchronous work in particular?
spk_0: 1:13
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Time a day is gone Out of the window when you reached the age of tenor are great for 15 years and then it returns with bigger when you get more mature like us is what I will say. So the question I gotta ask Becky today I think is an interesting one. And I thought, Yeah, it's something that I haven't been thinking enough about. And the question was, How do we do online teaching without keeping kids online? All day on, I thought, You know what? That's a really important question to answer because I kids with disabilities probably have more screen time than their parents want already. So how do we reduce that? What? You thought?
spk_1: 1:48
Well, I would like to say first that, when it comes to kids with disabilities and screen time, I totally get the idea of, worrying about how much time kids are watching. But I think I'm not so afraid of that synchronised time if we do it purposely now. That said, I think that this is a really good opportunity to start using more things specifically like project based learning, which for kids who can't get up and around or go outside. There are things that can start exploring and weaken. Structure that up.
spk_0: 2:26
Yeah, I agree with you. I wonder about project based learning. And of course, when I heard this question, I immediately went to another tool kit, which is UDI. And you know, I kept I keep saying the teachers think about both. Can you do representation online? And can you do it off line? And if you think about you, the elders, three buckets, multiple needs representation, engagement, action and expression. How do we build those? And how do you see that kind of fitting into a project based learning model?
spk_1: 2:55
What if I were if I were teaching in the K 12 system right now, I think I would start every morning with a mission. So whether I'm doing it synchronously because we have an online meeting together and I said it out that way, or I shoot it out in an email. Today's mission I used the website often when I was teaching K 12 PBL checklist That website. It's nothing fancy. It's honestly not a fancy site, but it does it. Does it describe what what project based learning is? And it also in clean includes templates for rubrics to great project based learning assignments. So I would probably meet with my students in the morning. I would have created a little rubric. I would have set them on their mission. I might have a lunchtime check in, and that might again. That might be through a video call, and kids could just show me whatever the mission was. They could hold things up to the camera to show me where they are but having some regular check ins and then, by the end of the day, ending with something specifically accomplished. All of this really calls for us to think much more interdisciplinary than we probably used to, but I do think there's a value in seven kids out to the mission every day and having them think about what they're gonna have completed by the end of the day, but it doesn't necessarily have to be something. They're sitting listening to me. Tell them it could be exploration based.
spk_0: 4:27
Yeah, And I love that idea to you because I think it goes back to something we talked about earlier. Like using a tool like seesaw. Where for a kid to don't have technology, sending them that checklist and say, Look, by the end of the day today, you should've accomplished these three tasks. And I love your concept of a mission. I think that gives kids a different kind of this isn't a lessons, is a mission. Go find the following. You know, it is I think about representation. I'm gonna kind of take it from your project based learning. To what if I can't do a whole project because I don't have that much time with kids or don't really feel comfortable with that. And I know we both have been kind of pushing for teachers. I call it the Panera pick two, you know, pick two tools to be good at it, don't keep adding and adding and adding so you're overwhelmed. But let's just say that I'm not ready to do a whole project maybe under UDl I just think about, well, how could I represent something? And my lesson says say, we're doing fractions now, but I hope have kids represented offline and I always say, Think of something super simple. Don't make assumptions. Kids have measuring cups and you know all those things that everybody's baker and, you know, simply say fine. Three glasses Fill him up at approximately 1/3 and explain why. And be ready to show me your three cups of water and 1/3 or, you know, do something simple like go get six pieces of grass or six rocks if you don't have grass in your yard and then divide them into three groups and decide you know which one is 1/3 and tell me why. So I think sometimes we overthink things that make them complicated. And I think project based learning is meant to be simplistic and its nature. What are your thoughts there?
spk_1: 5:58
Well, I think I think sometimes less is more, which is what you're saying, and I think we have got all of the assessment piece have become so convoluted over time. It's in my opinion, so I think this is a good chance to get back to, you know, at the beginning of the day, what's the goal? And by the end of the day, what do you want them to have learned? You know, I think we can make it almost that simple right now because this is again brand new, uncharted territory. It is the one time that we have a chance to not worry so much about the assessments because they're off the table right now. Anyway, high stakes want a spin
spk_0: 6:36
in Florida, they are.
spk_1: 6:37
But in Florida Yep. So? So I would I would definitely say this is a chance for people to trying new things. Yeah, and and then really look critically at what worked and what didn't work when this is all over.
spk_0: 6:49
Yeah, and I keep thinking about really simple, like engagement. Honestly with you and I when we can see each other, it's extremely engaging. When we're just on the phone, it's engaging for a while, but eventually that human contact is needed. And yet, what I think is interesting as teachers air talking about worrying about kids being engaged online, what they're finding is many times they are very engaged, but you can't be sustained for hours and hours. And we expected kids to be in school for six hours a day and be engaged. So I've kind of been using that rule of 15/5 for engagement, you know, 15 minutes online. Get kids five minutes break. But better yet, give them a 15 minute project to go out and do something fun in the environment to get them engaged. So again, I'm gonna go back to the lesson on fractions. Well, I've been gave them in an online discussion now engaging them off line. Better yet, could they involved big of her sibling? Could they talk to each other? Could their parents be involved in that discussion? I think that's kind of what we're thinking. And I think kids can show us what they know things that project based learning, which is 1/3 component of beauty l and a way that we really don't think about in traditional. We tend to go to paper and pencil. What we can do that through Google docks online. But you can't do that with the first grader is easier. You can't do that all day long with high school kids. So how do you see that action and expression kind of aligning with project based learning.
spk_1: 8:06
Well, you did you mention seesaw? I would definitely say we have to think, Think differently. Just from years of experience teaching online, having kids upload files and then you going into it, you know, it does get very laborious. So I do think there's got to be what I would almost call online demonstration stations setting that up so that kids can just come in pop in show you. I do think that something that this is a great chance to pilot for anybody who can do things remotely with their students, just demonstration stations, but that are not formally scheduled times for kids. But here's the math demonstration time. So come in sometime during that time and show me what you know. Show me what you've accomplished. So I do think that's one of the big keys. And I would I would say, at least a kind of as we're wrapping up. Teachers sometimes think that project based learning is about fun versus standards. And that's not at all the case. So the best way to get started would be to just google your grade level. Your stay and look for project based learning ideas and just give it a try. This is the time to do it.
spk_0: 9:17
Yeah, and I'm just going to kind of wrap us up with Just keep expanding your thinking? Could kids draw you something? Can they use sidewalk chalk? Can we get them outdoors? If they do have an outdoor space, can they create a YouTube video? Yes, that's more screen time, but it's not them. Sitting on a screen is actually somebody videoing them and put it on your teacher tubes so that it's safe to be able to share it, you know? Can they go watch a TV show? Okay, yes, it's more screen time, but now can you come back and have a conversation about something? We had a shared experience. I'm a huge lover of math in the movies. It's a website by a Harvard professor, has got little short segments from Shrek and Pinocchio. And thinking about those shared experiences. I think action expression could be different if we don't just assume it has to be what we did in a brick and mortar space. And I think that's what we both love about online. Yet we know that's the challenge in an online environment.
spk_1: 10:09
Yeah, if you if anyone who's trying any of these things, If, as a teacher, go to the PBL checklist website yourself and create your own rubric so that you could just have that open when a kid is telling you something verbally or showing you something, you could just check it off of that rubric so that at least you'll feel like you have some something on your end to show his evidence.
spk_0: 10:33
Where if you need a permanent product, slip great is also another way. You could record it and have that horse. He's also again. That's what this Webcast and podcast is about is about practical ideas. Ah, we encourage you to send us questions on our Twitter feed, and it's @accesspractical and the Twitter feed. And just today we're happy you could join us for another episode of practical access