The EduGals Podcast

This week, we are starting our book study with chapter 1 of Grading for Equity: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How It Can Transform Schools and Classrooms by Joe Feldman. Specifically, we will dive into what makes grading so difficult to talk about and even harder to change.

If you like what you hear, we would love it if you could share this episode with a colleague or friend. And make sure you subscribe so that you don’t miss out on any new content! And consider supporting the show by buying us a coffee or two!

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**For detailed show notes, please visit our website at https://edugals.com/130**

• Grading for Equity by Joe Feldman
• Find a buddy to talk about the ideas in this book!
• Structure of the book:
  • 14 chapters
  • 3 parts - foundations, a case for change, equitable grading practices
• Get comfortable with being uncomfortable - try to stay open-minded
• Teaching is challenging - grades are one of the only places where we still have autonomy
• Grades and grading practices are highly personal
• Changing grades by admin
• Grading is not really something that is taught in teacher education programs
• Most grading practices are based on prior experience
• We hate grading! and grade grubbing!
• Stress around grading
• Mastery grading and specs grading and other equitable grading practices reduces stress around grades and grading
• Web of belief:
  • Shapes our teaching and grading practices
  • What is your starting position?
  • When we learn new info - we either dismiss or accept it (depends on how it fits)
  • Question your reactions 
  • What barriers are we creating with our grading practices?
  • Acknowledge guilt around past grading practices and then let it go
• Discussion question: What is your why?
  • Part of our UnGrading journey - Jesse Stommel
  • Building equity lens
  • Build on learning and justify changes to grading practices (where is the evidence?)
  • Entry points for grading conversations with colleagues

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• Katie @KatieAttwell
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This week, we are chatting about providing options for comprehension in the classroom. Using the UDL (Universal Design for Learning) framework and representation pillar, we're going to share some different strategies on how we can help students make information accessible, but also how to transform that into knowledge they can use.

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**For detailed show notes, please visit our website at https://edugals.com/129**

• CAST.org - Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework
• Representation pillar - Comprehension guideline
• It's all about teaching learners HOW to transform accessible information into useable knowledge
• Why Don't Student's Like School? by Daniel Willingham
• Checkpoint #1: Activate or supply background knowledge
  • Value prior knowledge
  • Get to know your learners and their background knowledge
  • Consider using visual imagery, concept anchoring and mastery, KWL chart and other organizers, concept maps (whiteboards), pre-teaching with demos/models, analogies and metaphors, cross-curricular connections
  • Learning That Transfers by Julie Stern et al. (ACT model)
• Checkpoint #2: Highlight patterns, critical features, big ideas, and relationships
  • Difference between experts and novices
  • Use explicit prompts or cues to point to important material
  • Consider using graphic organizers, examples/non-examples (Frayer model), highlight previous skills (conceptual learning can be helpful)
• Checkpoint #3: Guide information processing and visualization
  • Transform information into useable knowledge
  • Consider using explicit prompts for sequential processes, organizational methods (tables), multiple entry points, "chunk" information, progressive release (Modern Classrooms and mastery-based learning), and ditch the distractions!
• Checkpoint #4: Maximize transfer and generalization
  • Generalizing and transferring learning to new contexts
  • Students need multiple representations and differing levels of scaffolding
  • Consider using checklists, organizers, mnemonic devices (decrease cognitive load), explicit review, new ideas in familiar contexts

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In this episode, we are exploring asset vs deficit mindsets in education. We'll go over our observations as well as some of our ideas to shift away from a deficit mindset in our classrooms.
 
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**For detailed show notes, please visit our website at https://edugals.com/80**

• Asset mindset - what are the strengths that our students bring to the classroom and how you can embrace that with high expectations
• Deficit mindset - what are students lacking and focusing on their weaknesses
• CRRP - High expectations, Cultural competence, Critical consciousness
• Grades contribute to a deficit mindset and don't give the full picture of the strengths of a student
• Ideas and Strategies:
  • Get to know students and don't look at past grades
  • Embrace first language
  • Google Sheets auto-translate words EduGIF from Jake Miller
  • Involve parents/families in school community - builds a positive school culture
  • Watch your language and avoid placing students into buckets (struggling vs striving, harmful language)
  • Destreaming is coming in Ontario for Grade 9 next year and needs asset mindset
  • Book: Going Gradeless, Grades 6-12 by Elise Burns and David Frangiosa
  • Becoming aware and speaking up against deficit language
  • Need PD on asset-based mindsets and language (peer conversations and dialogue, active learning, voluntary, accessing when ready, multiple opportunities, reflection)
  • Video: Asset vs Deficit Mindset Definitions
  • Recognize that our brains are wired for negativity to protect ourselves
  • Rachel's grading Twitter rant
  • Community and relationship building - conversations and conferencing with students, get curious about behaviours, collaborate with other staff
  • Avoid the silo and utilize the whole school team
  • Question your assessment practices, focus on personalized and descriptive feedback (tests = deficit, portfolios = asset for example), varied types, focus on skills

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• Katie @KatieAttwell
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This week, we are setting our goals for the upcoming school year. We'll chat about both our professional and our personal goals, from mastery-based learning to leadership goals and maintaining a good work-life balance this year. 

If you like what you hear, we would love it if you could share this episode with a colleague or friend. And make sure you subscribe so that you don’t miss out on any new content! And consider supporting the show by buying us a coffee or two!

We would love to hear from you – leave a comment on our website OR check out our FLIPGRID!

Featured Content
**For detailed show notes, please visit our website at https://edugals.com/128**

Professional Goals:

• Mastery-based learning - building more whole class activities
• ChemEd Conference 2023
• Conferencing with students - try roster checklists
• Data collection - what is the impact of mastery-based learning?
• Tweaks to grading practices
• New SERT role (special education)
• Other PBL projects in ESL (podcast, video, something else?)

Leadership Goals:

• Supporting implementation of de-streaming in grade 9 and new courses in grade 11
• Political landscape might cause a lot of challenges to our roles
• Avoid social media to avoid negativity
• Leading Grading for Equity and Street Data book studies with leadership team

Personal Goals:

• Try to leave the building at a reasonable time each day
• No email at night
• Complete prep at work to avoid working at home (leave work at work)
• Explore opportunities in academia (M.Ed. program, conferences, collaborations, etc)
• Continuing hobbies (violin lessons, strength training)
• Maintaining balance - being ok to say no when something doesn't align with our goals

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• Rachel @dr_r_johnson
• Katie @KatieAttwell
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This week, we are talking all about how to build buy-in for ungrading in your school community. We'll discuss ungrading buy-in strategies for various different stakeholders such as teachers, admin, parents, and most importantly, students. Let's start talking about ungrading!

If you like what you hear, we would love it if you could share this episode with a colleague or friend. And make sure you subscribe so that you don’t miss out on any new content! And consider supporting the show by buying us a coffee or two!

We would love to hear from you – leave a comment on our website OR check out our FLIPGRID!

Featured Content
**For detailed show notes, please visit our website at https://edugals.com/97**
Teachers/Admin:

• Start with conversations about grading and grading practices
• Why aren't traditional grading practices working? 
• Leverage opportunities informally in your workroom, more formally in department meetings
• Keep in mind - slow and deliberate changes towards ungrading (it's a spectrum)
• Many ways to ungrade (mastery, standards-based, feedback, etc)
• Focus on the feedback and learning over grades
• Look at printouts of marks for students, rubrics we're using (single point vs 4-level), success criteria, moderated marking
• Try to find common ground, team dynamics matter
• Rethinking Letter Grades - Conversation Cards
• Grades are very personal - Grading for Equity by Joe Feldman
• Share your own vulnerability
• Open your classroom space, share your ungrading practices
• Honour professional judgement
• Invite colleagues and admin into your classroom
• Keep your admin in the loop - let them know what you are doing with ungrading and be prepared with a plan

Parents:

• Parents are allies - need transparency, clear communication of grading practices
• Pitch/justify your why of ungrading - send out a newsletter early in the school year
• Mastery can start a strong parent-teacher relationship
• Start an FAQ document to share with parents, teachers, admin, etc - post on website, LMS, etc

Students:

• This is the trickiest group to build buy-in!
• Consider the language you use to talk about grading, assessment, and feedback
• Expect pushback - this takes a bit of time to learn
• Involve students in the grading practices
• Start with having a conversation in general about grading
• Have them track their progress with a portfolio
• Build in reflection opportunities
• Know that emotions can be high - some students might feel anxiety and stress

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Connect with EduGals:

• Twitter @EduGals
• Rachel @dr_r_johnson
• Katie @KatieAttwell
• EduGals Website
• Support the show

In this episode, we are exploring ways to set up your Learning Management System (LMS) effectively and efficiently to optimize course organization and learning for your students. We'll go over tips, strategies, and ideas for setting up your LMS, whether it is Brightspace, Canvas, Schoology, Google Classroom, or something else.

If you like what you hear, we would love it if you could share this episode with a colleague or friend. And make sure you subscribe so that you don’t miss out on any new content! And consider supporting the show by buying us a coffee or two!

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Featured Content
**For detailed show notes, please visit our website at https://edugals.com/56**

• Use your LMS, even if you are fully face-to-face
• Layout and Homepage:
  • This is your doorway into your virtual classroom
  • Easy navigation - minimize the links to the essentials
  • Link all of your other tools within the content area
  • Include contact info on homepage
  • Announcements 
  • Brightspace Part 1 and Brightspace Part 2 episodes
• Organization:
  • Embed third party tools (EdPuzzle, Google Slides, YouTube videos, etc) into your content area
  • Link in Google Docs when it makes sense
  • Use consistent naming & numbering systems (reduces cognitive load)
  • Folders - units, weeks, whatever works best for you
  • Use your announcements to lay out weekly expectations
  • Include student voice in planning and organization
  • Include visuals and make it look pretty - design is important (consistent fonts, icons, emojis, etc to reduce cognitive load and increase engagement)
  • It's okay to set up your LMS to meet your needs, just make sure you create an intro video to help your students navigate it - Screencastify is great!
  • Canva is a great tool for design - Canvas Banner, Canvas Button, Google Classroom Header (also a Style Your LMS category available)
• Inclusion Ideas:
  • Include important cultural celebrations 
  • Add your personality - Bitmoji or GIPHY is great and integrated into Canva
  • Have students design your classroom banners - include languages represented in your classroom too
  • Design With Canva YouTube channel
• A Scary Suggestion:
  • A little bit of basic coding (HTML and CSS) goes a long way!
  • Code Academy (look under Web Development)
  • This helps with interactive elements in your LMS - buttons, flipcards, etc.
• Final Advice:
  • Use student-friendly language to increase accessibility

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• Rachel @dr_r_johnson
• Katie @KatieAttwell
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In this episode, we are talking all about an amazing, and easy-to-use tool called Canva. We will be diving into the how-tos, ideas for using Canva with your students, features within Canva, and the differences between the types of accounts (free, pro, and education).

If you like what you hear, we would love it if you could share this episode with a colleague or friend. And make sure you subscribe so that you don’t miss out on any new content! And consider supporting the show by buying us a coffee or two!

We would love to hear from you – leave a comment on our website OR check out our FLIPGRID!

News and Updates

• Our 10 most popular EduGals podcast episodes of 2020

Featured Content

• Canva is a great and easy-to-use graphic design tool
• Canva website
• Canva for Education account sign up - a bit intense! For K-12 teachers only
• Canva Pricing Chart - gives you some idea about features in each type of account
• Getting Started with Canva Tutorials
• Canva for Education Tutorials - setting up classes and using Canva with students
• Canva Templates
• Font Combinations Tool from Canva
• Canva Colour Palette Generator
• MOOC's (Massive Open Online Courses) - Coursera, edX and many more
• Canva Design Types - so many options available!
• SVG file types + Cricut/Silhouette - for classroom decorations, manipulatives, etc
• Canva Distance Education Resources
• Ways to use it in the classroom:
  • Design lesson plans, worksheets, etc for your classroom
  • App smash with Google Tools like Slides or Jamboard
  • Bitmoji Classroom Templates 
  • Classroom Kits Templates
  • Flashcard Templates
  • Customize your LMS - headers, navigation bar icons
  • Newsletters to communicate with home/parents
  • Resume templates
  • Social Media accounts linked to your school
  • Infographic Templates for Education

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This week, we are discussing the why and how of creating effective instructional videos for your classroom. We'll share some considerations for creating videos, as well as tools you might want to use and tips and tricks to help you along the way.

If you like what you hear, we would love it if you could share this episode with a colleague or friend. And make sure you subscribe so that you don’t miss out on any new content! And consider supporting the show by buying us a coffee or two!

We would love to hear from you – leave a comment on our website OR check out our FLIPGRID!

Featured Content
**For detailed show notes, please visit our website at https://edugals.com/67**

• Personal not professional!
• Why?
  • Learning in a mastery-based classroom
  • Create a clone of yourself
  • Frees up your time in the classroom to help your students
  • Access to videos anytime, anywhere
  • Helps with absences
• Considerations
  • Determine your learning goal BEFORE hitting record
  • Keep it targeted to a single learning goal
  • Use your curriculum docs to help with planning - Unit Planning Template
  • Use lots of purposeful visuals and minimize text on your slides
  • Add interactivity - questions, pause and connect -  Screencastify interactive questions in E064
  • Notes - differentiated for support levels needed (freehand, scaffolds, sentence starters, sentence frames, cloze, etc)
  • Provide guiding questions BEFORE watching the video
  • Retrieval practice for note taking
  • Make it personal, include your face and your personality
  • Keep recording time short, 6-9 minutes is ideal and less for elementary
  • Try out animations to control the flow of information
  • Include the big picture and progression
• Recording Process
  • Create your slides, docs, and plan it all out
  • Collaborate with others and create slide decks as a course team
  • Create an outline for your recording (use speaker notes in Slides)
  • Go for done, not perfect - mistakes are okay!
• EdTech Tools
  • Presentation Tools: Google Slides, Explain Everything, Prezi, Powerpoint, Keynote, Genial.ly
  • Recording Tools: Meet, Teams, Zoom, Screencastify, Screencast-o-matic, Loom, Flipgrid Shorts (use your screen as your virtual background), Explain Everything, OBS Studio, Quick Time Player
  • Learn the keyboard shortcuts!
  • iPad & Apple pencil - use an external microphone or headset with microphone
  • Above all else, use tools that meet your specific needs!

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• Katie @KatieAttwell
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In this episode, we are getting into the debate of which tool we think is better - Google Slides or Google Jamboard. We'll do comparisons of different features and give you our overall impressions and preferences for these two tools. So stay tuned and make sure you listen right to the end!

If you like what you hear, we would love it if you could share this episode with a colleague or friend. And make sure you subscribe so that you don’t miss out on any new content! And consider supporting the show by buying us a coffee or two!

We would love to hear from you – leave a comment on our website OR check out our FLIPGRID!

News and Updates

• Set up Google Meet breakout rooms ahead of meetings in Google Calendar
• Version history now available for Jamboard on web

Featured Content

• Google Slides: slides.google.com
• Google Jamboard: jamboard.google.com
• What features do we compare?
  • Template Gallery in Slides
  • Background Images in Slides vs Jamboard
  • Tools for interactivity - Toolbar in Jamboard - esp. Sticky Notes
  • Collaborators in Jamboard vs. Slides
  • Software vs. Hardware for Jamboard
  • Add an image into Slides vs Jamboard
  • Explore Feature in Slides
  • Different versions of Jamboard - web vs devices
  • Number of slides vs number of frames
  • The adjacent possible - Jake Miller, Educational Duct Tape
  • Version History in Slides vs Jamboard
  • Adding hyperlinks in Slides
  • Adding audio and video files in Slides
  • Simplicity of the user interface of Jamboard for littles
  • Workspace in Slides - esp when changing slide dimensions
  • Zoom tools in Slides
  • Adding items to the grey space outside of the canvas in Slides
  • Editing the Master in Google Slides
  • Comments in Slides
  • Different backgrounds in Jamboard
  • Adding diagrams via Insert > Diagram in Slides and smash it with Jamboard

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• Twitter @EduGals
• Rachel @dr_r_johnson
• Katie @KatieAttwell
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This week, we are talking about the use of digital portfolios in the classroom. We'll explore why you would want to use portfolios, how to assess or evaluate portfolios, and our best tips and suggestions to make portfolios a success in your classroom.

If you like what you hear, we would love it if you could share this episode with a colleague or friend. And make sure you subscribe so that you don’t miss out on any new content! And consider supporting the show by buying us a coffee or two!

We would love to hear from you – leave a comment on our website OR check out our FLIPGRID!

Featured Content
**For detailed show notes, please visit our website at https://edugals.com/74**

• Why Use Portfolios?
  • Fits well with ungrading or mastery-based grading
  • Demonstrates the learning journey by student-selected work
  • Great as a final performance task
  • Works best as a semester or year-long project
  • Focus on reflection, student voice & choice, ownership
  • Any grade, any subject
  • Rachel's blogging assignment
  • UDL - buffet of multimedia options (Katie Novak)
• Curriculum
  • Select work from each strand (ESL)
  • Explaining misconceptions (Science) or lab notebooks
  • Regardless, it develops thinking, metacognition, problem solving skills
• Useful EdTech Tools
  • Google Sites
  • Google Slides (Templates from Slides Mania)
  • Book Creator
  • Wakelet
  • LMS (Brightspace portfolio tool)
  • Notion
  • Screencasting/Curation tools (Screencastify) - see E068 for curation ideas
  • Audio tools (Mote, Vocaroo, Google Read&Write) - see E050 for other audio ideas
• Tips/Strategies for Implementation
  • Limit the number of pieces of work to highlight (adds creative constraints)
  • Include a list of possible reflection prompts
  • Include conferences/interviews at regular intervals
  • Focus on the process not on the product
  • Grade it only when needed (midterm, final)
  • Conferencing prep example - Evidence Journals from the Human Restoration Project

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Connect with EduGals:

• Twitter @EduGals
• Rachel @dr_r_johnson
• Katie @KatieAttwell
• EduGals Website
• Support the show