Practical Access Podcast

S12 E2: Unlocking Student Potential with Corgi: A Digital Organizer for Deeper Learning

• Season 12 • Episode 2

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In this episode of Practical Access, hosts Lisa Dieker and Rebecca Hines explore innovative educational tools with guest Bryan Dean, an innovation specialist at CAST. They focus on Corgi, a free digital graphic organizer designed to enhance student collaboration, engagement, and critical thinking. Built on a Google platform, Corgi includes features such as embedded teacher instructions, multimedia integration, and flexible permissions. Whether for middle school science projects or other subjects, Corgi’s versatility helps students visualize their ideas, collaborate, and easily revise their work. Bryan also shares how Corgi can be utilized by parents, homeschoolers, and pre-service teachers to foster deeper learning. If you're seeking a user-friendly, flexible tool to organize thoughts and lessons, this episode offers a fantastic introduction to Corgi’s potential in the classroom and beyond.

We love to hear from our listeners! If you have any questions, feel free to reach out. We look forward to receiving your questions on Twitter (@Accesspractical) or Instagram (@Practical_Access).

Corgi website: https://corgi2.cast.org/login 

Unknown:

Music.

Lisa Dieker:

Welcome to Practical Access. I'm Lisa Dieker.

Rebecca Hines:

And I'm Rebecca Hines and Lisa, our listeners don't know this about you, but trust me, everyone, Lisa loves a deal. Lisa loves to shop, and she loves a deal. So today's guest is perfect because he's bringing something that all of us can use for free. Lisa, what do we have?

Lisa Dieker:

Well, today we're continuing with this season's focus on math and science, and we have with us. Bryan Dean, who is an innovations an innovation specialist at CAST, talking about a wonderful piece of software called Corgi that is free, as Becky said, give me a coupon any day of the week. So Bryan, we're so happy to have you with us.

Bryan Dean:

Well, thank you. Thank you for the the invite and the intro, and I have to tell you, Lisa, if you want to talk later, I got a bridge that I'm trying to unload. If you've got, if you've got, you know, a couple, you've got some extra change right around in your pocket. You may be the owner of a of a bridge from here to Canada.

Lisa Dieker:

Well, Becky will tell you I like a deal, but I'm very frugal and I'm pretty savvy, so we'll see.

Rebecca Hines:

It is true, but

Bryan Dean:

this may not be the deal for you. I'm looking for investors who have more money.

Lisa Dieker:

So anyway, well, we're thrilled you're with us, and so Bryan, do you want to start off by giving us just a little bit of what is Corgi? Sounds like a beautiful dog, but we know it's much more exciting than that too.

Bryan Dean:

Well, it is a beautiful dog, and it is our kind of our mascot, but Corgi, which you can find at corgi.cast.org is actually a set of of graphic organizers, digital graphic organizers built on a Google platform so they are shareable. They are you can co edit those as you are working, and they are collaborative. And we kind of based the routines that we have. So we have several routines, which I'm sure we'll get into, but we've based those on the Sims project out of out of KU so we put them together, and we put in some supports for accessibility, and some built-in UDL supports, and we unleashed it, let it go.

Rebecca Hines:

It's out there. It's out there. Well, Bryan, one of the things about Corgi, I know that it's it listen. I'm a huge graphic organizer, fan. I hope all of our listeners are probably the best tool, you know, for all students, just as a really nice anchor to every lesson. But there's, you know, you provide a guide on Corgi so everybody's not just scrambling to figure out exactly what to do. Can you give us a little overview of like that guide and the intention behind that guide, so that everyone get what they need out of their graphic organizer?

Bryan Dean:

Yeah, well, so let's, let's actually take a step back and look at the design problem. If we could around that kind of inspired Corgi. So, so I love graphic organizers, too. I think if you're in education, I taught, you know, I taught secondary education quite a few years, and I had taught in special education, and I taught with some unique students, I taught in juvenile correction systems. And so you get students coming in, and a lot of them have not really been able to visualize analytical thought, and oftentimes graphic organizers are great, but they are linear and they are static. There's not a lot that you can add to them. There's not a lot that you can besides words, right? And if, maybe, if it's usually presented in like something like Microsoft Word or or something like that, you might be able to add a picture, but there's formatting issues. So, so that was part of the design issue is, how do we how do educators really get to see what students are thinking each step in a graphic organizer, especially one of the Sims like, you know, claim evidence reasoning or compare and contrast. How do students get to change that as their views change, right? So, how can they go back, revisit their organizer, maybe edit it without having to tear everything apart? And then also, how do we as educators see our students as they think through those pieces, right? Oftentimes, we have to interpret what has happened afterwards and say, Well, maybe there was a problem in step three or step four, step seven, or whatever. But in this case, with a graphic organizer, with Corgi organizer, you can go in and you can see directly where the step started to fall apart or the reasoning started to fall apart and need some more scaffolding or some support, or whatever else. And so in our graphic, in our kind of our guide to get you started, it, it gives you that information, and like this is how you can hear some of the features that that we have put in, that you can add, such as teacher embedded instruction for each step of the of the organizer, which maybe video or maybe, you know, might be a YouTube clip. It might be a diagram, might be an infographic, or just some words. And you can do that on each step when you when you then share it out with your students to kind of dive into that guide will get you set up and get you running with Corgi, but it gives you some like I said, some of those features helps you understand the permissions that are being asked, because the permissions are the biggest, probably one of the biggest hurdles, sometimes, with creating, with starting your Corgi account as an educator, or in education, because we want to keep data private, and Google asks a lot of permissions, and they ask them in Google ease, as I like to say, which sometimes makes it hard to kind of distinguish what they are. So, so it kind of goes through how to set up those permissions and what those permissions are really asking for. Talks about teacher-embedded instruction. Talks about student interface, how to add multimedia to your to the questions that are being answered or asked, tips around what essential questions are and how to kind of construct those for your students. So we don't just kind of stick to here are the nuts and bolts of Corgi in our get started guides or our PL resources, we also talk about what is the pedagogy behind it, what is the instructional use of it, and how do we see students using it in multiple ways.

Lisa Dieker:

So imagine I'm a new teacher. I go out to Corgi and I'm like, alright, I got a kid who won't get started, and we're doing a science project, or just writing in general. What, what would be your one like, you know, make sure you do blank when you get to Corgi to get yourself started, besides login and go to the site, I get that but, but what would be some of your go-to, and then I would love to hear you talk a little bit too about about this embedded of pictures and some of that multi-dimensional pieces that are in there. But where would I start? And like, what would be one or two things, like, Lisa, your maps will be better if you do blank?

Bryan Dean:

Alright, well, I will be honest with you, Google's kind of like Visa, right? It's everywhere you want to be, right? So you can jump in and you can decide, well, I want to see what a Corgi looks like, right? What does this Corgi guide look like? For compare and contrast, let's say or question exploration. We have a library of lessons that we put together with with the University of Kansas, around the 5e model. They're all science lessons for middle school, but they all have attached Corgi Corgis to them, Corgi guides to them. So you can click on those, and you can view Corgi guides that way. You can start with a sample. You can take a look at some of our PL information that we have some of our PL resources that will give you a structured Corgi guide, and how to use it with your students. If you have students that are having a hard time starting a Corgi guide, that's the beauty of that teacher, embedded instruction at every step within Corgi. There is a place when you sign in as a teacher that you can embed information, right? You can also fill out parts of the Corgi and then send that to your students. So if you want to use it as a guided notes tool, you definitely can. If you want to give them some you want to give your students some more scaffolding and say, you know, put in certain steps like possible or feasible answers. You can do that. If you want to give your students essential key terms for this lesson, or this Corgi, or whatever it may be, you can also add a key terms list that then students can add on as well. So we've really kind of designed it. It is now. This is my this is my coining. It is a thermos technology. I like to call it thermostat education because the beauty of a thermos is that it doesn't matter if it's hot or cold. It doesn't care what it goes into it. It just knows to keep it hot and cold, right? So there's immense amount of flexibility in the simplicity of it. So, so with Corgi, there's immense amount of flexibility with the simplicity that we've designed it, with the with the outward simplicity that it shows. And I think that's actually one of the one of the best parts of our UX is that it's very simple and and easy for students to grasp onto. Whether the classrooms that we have put it in, I will tell you our students run away with it and show me new things all the time about it. So, so it's actually, it's that that's where I would suggest we got any way you want to fit in and get in. We got it for you.

Rebecca Hines:

So Bryan, Bryan, so let me, let me ask you for a

Lisa Dieker:

Great. specific example, if you could provide that for us. So let's say I'm a, I'm a high school science teacher. How might I use this? You mentioned you know that that co-organizing is such a big piece of this, and I think that's a novel piece of it. Can you walk it, walk that through? If I'm a science teacher, and I'm thinking, Yeah, I'd like to add more of this. But how does it look on the instructional side?

Bryan Dean:

Sure, so, so one of the things I love about Corgi is that it offers this opportunity for student collaboration. So you can have student groups conducting one Corgi and building it together, right? And then you so what I would say, like, depending on what we're we're working with, let's say we're working with a compare and contrast, right? I would have the student, I would build an essential question, and I would put that essential question up on up on the board for students to kind of play off of and think about. And then when they get into their Corgi, the first thing they do is they they enter in the essential question, which is, you know, crafting an essential question is actually deceptively difficult, right? Because it is this big phenomenon that doesn't necessarily have an answer, right? But you're asking this big question. And oftentimes students will ask a question, but it's a pretty finite question, and it's building off of that finite question into building a larger essential question. So either A - I could start, I could help my students by starting out with an essential question, or I could have them put into Corgi a question that they want answered, and then from that, we can take a look at it first thing, and we'd say, so, is this an essential question without really an answer, but one that we can kind of get to, or is this pretty finite in that we can answer it and from there, once we've kind of established the essential question, each step is a new screen, right? Or, or a new place, right? And there's prompting directly in Corgi to say, so based on your essential question, like, here's your essential question, which is always at the top. You know, what are the things that are comparative in this or what are the things that are contrasted? What traits are contrasted? What are the traits of A and what are the traits of B? And make the pairs that are comparative, that make the pairs that are contrasted, and why? And so you can watch your students do that directly. If they're if you have a small group of students, you can watch that over time. You can see the revision history or if they're working collaboratively, they can add and they can subtract on their own. And it creates this great kind of system for us evaluating our ideas and having our peers evaluate our ideas without it being in front of the entire class necessarily, because sometimes that anonymity is really important for students as well as they're as they're building something because they're sure or they're unsure. Does that, does that kind of get ayryt it Rebecca or?

Rebecca Hines:

Yes, yeah just.

Bryan Dean:

Do you want more?

Rebecca Hines:

Yeah, no, no. I wanted our listeners just to have an idea of of where to go with this. And I think that especially using it as a student-to-student tool, and people working together to build and it's not just teacher and student as the co-organizers, I think is a great point.

Bryan Dean:

Yeah.

Lisa Dieker:

Yeah, and my last question, go ahead.

Bryan Dean:

Well, I just want to tell you one of our one of my favorite features, is how you share a Corgi. We've got it. We put it down so that you can, you can share Corgi as a PDF, right? You can print the thing out. You can share it as a you can share it right in Google Classroom, if you use, if you're a Google Classroom, you know district. Or you can turn it directly into a slide present, a Google Slide presentation, just by one click. So if you want students to present on their ideas with solutions and and, and all the all the pieces of thinking that they put into it, one click turns it into an editable Google Slide presentation that they can turn in, or they can add more to, or they can change backgrounds on. I mean, they can fully customize that as well. So anyways, I want to get back to your question Lisa Dieker.

Lisa Dieker:

Yeah, no worries. So my last question for you would be, so I love, as Becky said, free, free, free. That is my favorite word. But I've been wondering if I'm a parent at home, and I'm either doing some homeschooling, or my students are really struggling and getting started with an essay, and maybe my teacher is not, you know, signed on to Corgi. There's any reason families can't sign on and use this just like everyone else. Am I correct?

Bryan Dean:

Yeah, if you've got a Google if you've got a Google ID, a Google account, please jump in and sign in. I mean, if you want to compare your 401(k)s, or investment options or buying a house, we invite you to use Corgi for that too. Because really, what Corgi boils down to is not necessarily its interface, or not even that it has graphic organizers, but it's but it's the thinking behind it, right? It's the habit of mind that it creates an analytical thought. So you can use it for anything and everything that you want to use it for. In fact, we encourage parents to log into it. We encourage educators to share it with parents so that you know that they can see what their what their students are, what their learners are working on, and if they can help them. I mean, that can't be bad, right? You know, again, getting as many people around students learning is, is what it's all about, really. Yeah, so there, it's open to everyone and anyone. You don't even have to have

Rebecca Hines:

I love it. I love it. Have you? Have you done any students. work with pre-service teachers and in training pre-service teachers to use this or it's just?

Bryan Dean:

You know that we would love to, we, we've, we've done it, not officially, right? So we've done it kind of ad hoc, random, but yeah, if you want to, I mean, if you want us to come in and speak and show Corgi at pre-service classes, I mean, I think that's fantastic. I love helping new teachers walk in with a set of tools that maybe others haven't seen, that will make their lives easier as they start in those first four years, right? We all know those first four years, first five years, really, but like those first, that road to induction can be really difficult. It can be really stressful. We want, we don't want you sitting at your at your in your classroom till nine o'clock at night planning. We want to help you, get you out there, and enjoy your life balance, you know. And Corgi, I think it's a tool that can help with that for sure.

Rebecca Hines:

Perfect, thank you,

Bryan Dean:

Yeah, yeah.

Lisa Dieker:

Well, thank you, Bryan, you don't lack any passion on the topic, and we really appreciate all the good work that you've done for the field. If you have further questions for us, please send a tweet at Access Practical, or you can send us a question on our Facebook page. Thank you again, Bryan for joining us today.

Rebecca Hines:

It's great to have you.

Bryan Dean:

Absolutely. Hit it. Hit us up at Corgi, if you want to, if you want to, you want to learn more directly from Corgi, either hit me up at bdean@cast.org, or hit us up at Corgi. Drop a message there and well get we'll get to you.

Lisa Dieker:

Alright, Thank you so much.

Bryan Dean:

Thank you so much.