ShmoopTube

00:05

Well one of them and it's sort of been the

00:08

theme here all day In the sense of what happens

00:10

with poverty in the sense of with schools One of

00:13

the ways that we approached with having smooth is that

00:17

we we know most of our students don't have internet

00:20

at home Um or if they do have internet it's

00:23

tao up or if it's a computer that is incredibly

00:25

slow today's internet And so this is why we said

00:30

we have to reach these kids on campus We have

00:32

to open up our library We have to open up

00:34

earlier We have to close later to give them the

00:37

opportunity to be on the internet and surf the web

00:41

on a site that's going to help him be smarter

00:43

And it was sort of a cold we needed to

00:45

make a cultural shift and this goes from like i

00:48

said all the levels might might english learners that are

00:50

struggling to pass the cassie part on the way they

00:54

see it in english they see it in spanish They're

00:56

able to get more comfortable Um and i think that

01:01

plays a very large part and why we're able to

01:03

skid my e l myself level two's on my cell

01:07

level threes to be able to pass that test that

01:10

seventy five percent on their initials test that's going to

01:13

come in march the one that's coming up in a

01:15

couple weeks Um i think this also goes to why

01:20

we've been able to be more successful R r I'm

01:23

not sure if it's up there Well there's our results

01:26

herself is there ourselves One are self twos and threes

01:30

This is their pass rate now as eleventh and twelfth

01:34

graders and you know sell to sell to us very

01:37

limited english A lot of these air newcomers that have

01:39

been in the united states less than four years and

01:42

they're being able to pass that seventy five percent now

01:46

It used to be under fifty percent of these This

01:48

led to our dropouts Um and it's just really helped

01:55

us get them to be confident walking into the exam

01:58

This also i think has been a huge reason why

02:01

we've been able to increase our scores on the a

02:04

p exam like like philadelphia i track not just the

02:09

three four fives we tracked the twos and the reason

02:12

why is when i took over the program four years

02:15

ago and i always look at the ap european history

02:18

exam is my example this is you know typically done

02:22

in our high school tenth graders is they're first huge

02:26

exam that they take in the sense of a college

02:27

level I would say i test about a hundred kids

02:30

i would say fifty of them had quit within an

02:33

hour of the exam and probably the other forty five

02:36

percent had quit about about lunch break um now when

02:40

we take that exam because they've been on shmoop and

02:43

they've taken two three four practice exams they walk in

02:47

with a confidence of i could get a three and

02:51

they finish that examined when i say stop three and

02:54

hours and forty five minutes later they're like man i

02:57

got one more question i can finish it Give me

02:59

five more minutes and as an educator it's so wonderful

03:03

to see that they want more time to take an

03:05

ap exam versus when do we get out of here

03:08

Um and that's Why i think why we've seen the

03:11

score It is a cultural shift of i could do

03:14

better I mean when i took over the program we

03:16

had to ap scholars and both of those were students

03:19

that were accepted to uc berkeley this past year We

03:22

had twenty five um and one of them had our

03:26

energies a senior this year He's already passed seven ap

03:29

exams and the pressure on our campus right now is

03:33

you see the end coming Juniors I want to be

03:35

an ap scholar I could past seven I could past

03:37

six We went from a school that had to three

03:42

years ago on the entire campus and now kids air

03:44

like i could pass seven I mean it is just

03:46

a cultural shift and it all has to do with

03:49

then being comfortable with the exam And i brought an

03:52

example what we used to do This is a baron's

03:57

book two thousand nine english language i have about one

04:02

hundred eighty is in the library I think this was

04:04

the one that was most used I think paige is

04:08

one two and three have some writing in it We

04:11

bought these for years and years and years and never

04:14

got results and all the books with brand new well

04:18

this is now five years old and it didn't work

04:22

and now that we've gone to technology kids do it

04:24

at home we've been able to show them ways ways

04:29

to cheat and get more spines but in essence we're

04:31

showing them how we studied in college You sit with

04:34

two or three of your buddies that are taking ap

04:36

calculus and you hammer out how to get that right

04:39

question and it's clicked with them That's not cheating This

04:43

is what we need to do and our scores have

04:45

gone of last year I don't know why i used

04:48

ap calculus every single one of our ap score showed

04:52

a measurable gain except ap calculus um which is the

04:56

irony and like this year i'm measuring How are students

05:01

have done on the for the class of two thousand

05:04

fourteen i think it's up there we are expected let's

05:09

see it was mentioned earlier Well there's our gains We

05:12

have grown thirty eight points on the writing portion of

05:15

the this year math thirty for reading forty six we

05:21

have increased our levels to where students were scoring a

05:25

little bit under four hundred and we used to test

05:29

on ly i would say about the top seventy five

05:31

students of a class of five hundred which are pretty

05:34

much kids We're already going to be a through g

05:36

pretty much going to be able to go to at

05:38

least a cal state I'm now testing about one hundred

05:41

and thirty kids of my graduating class this year so

05:45

mathematically my score should have gone down because i'm now

05:47

using students seventy six through one thirty but it's sort

05:50

of fed into them We could do better They take

05:54

those practice tests Um look your example like the math

05:57

shack things like this that have been used they're getting

06:01

more and more comfortable and they walk out of the

06:03

exam thinking they did good instead of walking out deflated

06:08

Um you know and we've seen other results i mean

06:11

my c a t this year i've seen an increase

06:14

of a least one full point in all three portions

06:18

of the tea and when i went back i could

06:22

go back about six years We've never seen games like

06:25

this and the only thing that we really do different

06:27

is we've given him shmoop and we walk in and

06:30

we kind of tell them they could do it Um

06:33

and so we're very happy with what them with the

06:36

progress that we made through smith right now and we're

06:39

happy to charles s so now it's like teo turn

06:44

it over to the crowd for questions as we have

06:47

these wonderful educators up on the stage Obviously they have

06:51

fantastic stories so hopefully we can find out more of

06:57

the things that you would like to ask them Hi

07:00

um i teach special ed and i want to know

07:02

what it looks like for the spread students Um as

07:05

faras they're reading levels are concerned that say they're reading

07:08

at the fourth fifth grade level at a high school

07:11

So how have you addressed at how his shmoop help

07:16

increased their scores I'll take that I also oversee the

07:20

special ed department So you think one of the things

07:24

that i have done what we have done it indio

07:26

high school is a lot of times when you look

07:28

at a special ed class the problem is reaching rigor

07:30

and this also works with my english learners as well

07:33

You need to teach that special wet student or that

07:36

english learner at their level And so a lot of

07:39

times in the main class it's way below the high

07:41

school level But one of the things that we did

07:43

is we created support classes Well it with mice with

07:46

my special ed department we tune math at the special

07:49

wet level but in their support class we use a

07:52

lot of shmoop and we use the high school exit

07:55

exam on the shmoop program as the rigor And so

07:58

we've been able to not only expose them to the

08:01

problems and when you look at like the math shack

08:04

it will bring down the rigor to the level which

08:06

is very basic in the sense of the standards they

08:08

need to do to pass the exit exam And they're

08:11

exposed to something that they could Accomplish and slowly we're

08:14

able to ramp up the rigor to what they need

08:16

to do to pass the california exit exam Now in

08:19

california special ed students can grant a waiver two they

08:23

don't have to pass the exit exam to graduate Our

08:26

kids know that but we've been able to get more

08:29

than fifty percent of my stc students to successfully passed

08:33

the exit exam through them being exposed to the rigor

08:37

of the california exit exam through shmoop i think the

08:41

other the other piece toe addie did a great job

08:44

answering that but the s a lab i think is

08:47

the other component of it especially for you especially when

08:51

you're talking about passing a casey or something like that

08:55

It's not rocket science to pass that you know the

08:58

people say well how does a computer teach you too

09:01

Right You know and and a lot of i'm not

09:04

trying to offend any english teachers that are out there

09:06

but um but it's really not ah rocket science thing

09:11

in orderto pass the casey there's a certain level and

09:14

it's the same it's the same thing where i've seen

09:16

it be very effective in in a special ed from

09:19

a special ed approach to is that you have to

09:22

learn to write formulaic lee to a certain extent just

09:24

the past on dh Then you khun talk about the

09:27

arty later Um so i think there's a lot of

09:31

things that can be learned and can be gained from

09:34

a little bit of formulating grating on dh in the

09:38

assay lab is able to produce that in a number

09:40

of different ways and it has the ability to teach

09:43

kind of the flowery outside stuff too but but we've

09:47

seen definitely the use of it i think and i

09:50

could go back to the continuation side of things too

09:52

It's the same same deal So for ill for special

09:55

ed for continuation especially when you're just trying to get

10:00

close those gaps and move kids up You gotta walk

10:04

before you can run and i think that's a lot

10:06

of steps kids up really really well i think the

10:09

literature learning guides as well i think every piece of

10:12

literature you can think of is listed alphabetically and then

10:16

it gives a summary for them in and you know

10:21

kid language So it's not difficult For them to grasp

10:27

that summary piece and it models for them What a

10:31

good summary is of a story or of a poem

10:34

Um i think it also helps teachers as well Help

10:38

that Take a piece that might be above the especially

10:42

for il l their level of comprehension And bring it

10:45

to the student level so that then they can move

10:48

to rigor This question goes teo the aspects of houston

10:55

the middle school i'm a middle school teacher and i

10:58

want to know how they were receptive to the use

11:03

of shmoop but also how do you change or how

11:07

did you address the culture of using technology on campus

11:10

such as a mobile device without it being oh you're

11:14

using your device give it away and because there is

11:17

a large phobia of using mobile devices for any kind

11:21

of sort of things that we have to um i

11:24

think i think it was that for me because it's

11:27

hard to them Okay exactly Um first of all the

11:30

phobia issue of using your own device which that's what

11:34

we have to do because we don't have a wonder

11:36

one We began a bring your own device initiative several

11:41

years ago it's been met with some resistance in some

11:44

areas middle school is one of those but honestly i

11:49

think this has helped them see the benefit of a

11:52

student getting their own mobile device out and using it

11:56

for a purpose in class which has been phenomenal and

12:00

really it's been because i didn't do it school wide

12:04

for middle Schools i presented it to some middle school

12:07

teachers and said if this is something you want to

12:10

do let me know and so it has you know

12:14

it has to be in that regard it's kind of

12:16

opposite from high school because of high school i've just

12:18

been flooding flooding flooding hey kids here's a trick to

12:22

get you around your teacher's kind of toe trick them

12:24

into getting online would really I was having the same

12:27

presentations for their teachers but at middle school i didn't

12:31

really it was teachers if you want to do this

12:34

and so i've had a lot of teachers on their

12:36

own take that initiative and say this is how i

12:39

think i can use it Will you let me so

12:41

that's been very exciting I foresee you know the next

12:45

step being we would then do that push to get

12:49

middle school students on it school Why Just like we

12:52

are at the high school But it's become more of

12:55

a grassroots at middle school Kind of like what you

12:57

described then it has been at my high school campuses

13:01

because at my high school campuses it was this is

13:03

what we have and let's let's make everyone use it

13:06

and love it and they do once they get on

13:08

it they love it It's just the question of getting

13:10

them there There's one other question What about if students

13:15

were walking around and i know they were talking about

13:17

the gamification aspects before three kids there at lunch or

13:22

a pre time they're walking around they're actually like the

13:25

cat in the competition trying to beat each other's shmoop

13:28

scores Have you had any of those incidents on the

13:31

high schools are side like i dream of those incident

13:34

given ward i would i would give i would give

13:37

i would buy steak dinners for those students but no

13:41

we haven't had that issue happened Um yet but someday

13:46

she weigh our shmoop ing over the world So someday

13:51

you know one of the things i would say and

13:53

this also falls along with all the common core stuff

13:56

that's going down I know what My site It has

13:59

forced us to get more computers on our campus Um

14:03

my district is really large under the chromebooks So last

14:07

year i bought five class sets that were sort of

14:10

designed for Classes that were sort of having to do

14:14

in essence shmoop or other stuff like that on And

14:16

i know this this year um we're buying where are

14:21

my district's buying mohr So i'm gonna have about a

14:24

thousand chromebooks on my campus Well actually have now they

14:27

just haven't given to the teachers We just got him

14:30

this week Um so there's gonna be a lot more

14:34

and i think schools are going to get a lot

14:36

more of these devices on campus because of all the

14:38

money that came from from the governor because of common

14:40

core and i think i think that's gonna have to

14:43

disappear really quickly I mean i know my prince my

14:45

prince has been inside for twenty two years and he

14:48

doesn't believe in cell phones and so it's like that

14:51

that attitude has got to change because there's so much

14:54

good available on the internet right now to help us

14:57

get through this transition that we're gonna have to embrace

14:59

it And a hope that you use your technology money

15:02

to buy devices the kids could use and be mobile

15:05

in some way we didn't get that common core money

15:12

So one of our responsibilities i think is teach students

15:16

to use the devices they have in front of them

15:18

well and to take advantage of what is there so

15:21

our students are going to be on their phones whether

15:23

texting or communicating otherwise so why not teach them to

15:27

use these tools to enhance their learning Our students take

15:30

public transportation to school every day and so do i

15:34

and it's great to see a student looking at flash

15:38

cards on their phone or putting a post on it's

15:41

like facebook for schools we use school aji for their

15:44

classmates to see you're answering a question or we had

15:47

an issue it's a real issue two years ago where

15:50

students created a hashtag for their a push class before

15:53

the exam and and that's how they were setting So

15:58

i think we need to take advantage of the tool

16:00

that they have in front of them instead of telling

16:03

them put it away because that's when we're going to

16:05

face the most problem i think if we if we

16:08

make it taboo to use the tool then they're going

16:11

to use it for reasons that we don't want and

16:15

so let's take advantage of what the powerful tool that

16:17

they have in front of them i think we were

16:20

were obviously we benefit by the fact that our community

16:25

wants technology and they wrote it in a bond and

16:28

are willing to pay their own tax dollars for that

16:30

i'm so our community in essence wants this but the

16:33

one thing that we learned when we went for this

16:35

bond as we flew all over the country looking at

16:38

places that had done one two one programs and bring

16:41

your own device programs and everything else and it's all

16:44

with philosophy from the top down our superintendent believes in

16:49

it our city council believes in it Our school board

16:52

preaches it we give training's too all of them we

16:55

give training's the parents we give training so everybody so

16:58

that you can take the phobia of what kids are

17:00

doing with a device away And so then what the

17:04

benefit is if they're you if they're structured well so

17:07

that takes me to structure it Well you know we

17:12

if there's anything that i think was done right that

17:16

i've seen done right and other parts of the country

17:18

And other and done horribly wrong in other parts of

17:21

the country where they had to learn the lesson the

17:23

hard way was you have to have the infrastructure You

17:26

have to have the board policy that supports this You

17:29

have tohave parents that believe in it You have to

17:32

have teachers that air trained But nothing replaces the teacher's

17:37

ability to control their own environment in their classroom having

17:41

high expectations for kids and structuring their lesson to truly

17:45

use the device to be a positive contributing factor if

17:50

free time is a killer and that's why killer whether

17:53

you got a phone in front of you are anything

17:55

else If you're giving them just free unstructured time that's

17:58

not moving you towards your target in the class kids

18:03

they're going to manipulate that so your high end third

18:06

are probably not there going to be the ones on

18:08

the flash cards and things like that But the middle

18:12

bottom are going to mess with that if they get

18:15

the free time and you so a lot of it

18:17

is Are you planning your lessons Well Are using time

18:20

effectively Are you using that device and telling kids how

18:24

To use it well enough so they go after mohr

18:27

content so that they're collaborating more so that they're setting

18:31

up the different opportunities that you've heard But the downtime

18:34

is the killer and uh but i would say i

18:37

honestly i'm not being sarcastic when i give the kid

18:40

who's using it at lunch an award they're going to

18:43

text anyway I mean i've seen kids text through their

18:45

pants better than you honestly like any it's it's sad

18:50

but i mean the kids that i've expelled there suspended

18:53

for drug dealing those kids text through their pants better

18:56

than any person i've ever seen they don't want to

18:58

give it away that they're setting something up but that's

19:01

just the worst case scenario of what they're doing with

19:04

that The best case scenario is i've also had kids

19:07

check out projectors and computers and things like that because

19:10

they're having a pee movie night at somebody's house and

19:14

they're gonna pack forty kids into a room to watch

19:16

videos You know whether it's videos from here or elsewhere

19:20

so you gotta see the good with the bad You've

19:24

got a structure the downtime and then it's a positive

19:27

Experience I i want to follow up with the They're

19:33

comment about exposing the students to the rigor I want

19:39

to know How do you know that the students have

19:42

mastered the rigor besides the drill and the amount of

19:46

time that they've spent on that particular subjects Is that

19:52

for me Anybody for anyone Charles well yeah i mean

20:02

i guess i would just look at the data in

20:05

the sense of when i see an sec student pass

20:08

a portion of the exit exam we celebrated within the

20:11

special ed department and we celebrate it when we have

20:14

a low e l stood way also do it Bye

20:16

bye lingo alternative program at our school we really celebrate

20:20

when a student passes the exit exam that is that

20:23

is the bar that we've sort of said for them

20:26

and i know what like four years ago they weren't

20:30

passing and so it almost was there was no celebration

20:33

because none of them were passing or only one or

20:35

two were passing And now like i said this year's

20:38

seniors class i believe i have we'll have about seventeen

20:41

stc students i believe seven of them have passed at

20:44

least one portion of the exit exam and most not

20:48

my school If you're classified sstc you're very pretty low

20:52

so i mean it's it's a it's a real struggle

20:55

for them to pass but they've been able to embrace

20:57

it and it's just been another tool that we've used

20:59

i mean that's the only empirical data i have i'd

21:02

say other than i mean it's really nice to see

21:05

a student that's really low say i want to study

21:08

math i mean normally it's like oh i'm ditching math

21:11

class you know And like no we're gonna go work

21:13

on points we're gonna get more points today i mean

21:15

it's that that that should be enough evidence alone that

21:18

it's working that they want to study math and i

21:21

think exposure to rigor is also something that are at

21:25

least in texas are teachers have to get used to

21:27

a swell We went from a minimum standards test called

21:30

tax to an end of course star test called star

21:34

that's essentially an achievement test of that year's content and

21:39

all of the questions or double coded So what i

21:41

mean by that is one question might have one or

21:44

two processing skills along with a content skill and so

21:48

no longer are the questions just a tte the knowledge

21:51

level on their tests that they take it the end

21:54

of the year So our teachers air having to practice

21:57

this open ended questions higher higher levels of thinking you

22:01

can go through costas you can go through lots of

22:05

open ended discussions and dialogues but one of the things

22:08

that i see shmoop is being able to allow is

22:12

having those big ideas and big questions for students and

22:16

those comparisons of literature to pop culture because they are

22:20

being exposed to it and they don't even realize it

22:23

It just becomes part of what they're doing but it

22:27

really is exposing them to that higher level that's required

22:31

of them again on whatever state we're talking about The

22:36

thing that jumps out to me about rigor is the

22:39

i'm excited about some of the future editions that i've

22:43

heard with wish shmoop being able to search it with

22:46

depth of knowledge for example being ableto go through there

22:51

um and i really am a big believer in that

22:54

and i think the other piece of it is too

22:56

if you're talking about blended instruction or flipped instruction or

22:59

anything like that you have to get the lower levels

23:02

of depth of knowledge You've got to get the factual

23:04

knowledge so you can go to a greater death Andi

23:07

i think what this does is assure the one in

23:09

two so that it allows the teacher to be a

23:12

teacher and a facilitator and a person who can help

23:16

kids collaborate and get you to those higher levels of

23:19

death of knowledge in those higher rigor levels once you

23:22

getting class But being able teo once you can identify

23:27

what's a three or four you know dok question when

23:32

you're talking about building courses and things like that i

23:36

i want to push that rigor but i want i

23:39

want to guarantee the baseline one into knowledge and so

23:42

that i know as a teacher i'm confident with coming

23:44

in tomorrow with much harder questions because i know where

23:47

the base line on my kids is So i think

23:50

that's a value and something i'm excited about for the

23:53

future a specific example that that reminded me up in

23:55

my district for middle school We have the requirement in

23:59

pre ap social studies classes that they all begin to

24:02

be accused of sixth grade so and then they increase

24:05

in the numbers they go up but the teacher can

24:07

go on and look at any of the a p

24:10

social studies courses and get an example a good well

24:14

organized example of a d b q that they could

24:17

show in middle school whereas that teacher may not have

24:21

had access to that before they do now because middle

24:26

school teachers i don't know about how it works in

24:29

your state but in our state we have a lot

24:30

of generalists who became middle school teachers and so they're

24:33

content knowledge is sometimes part of the issue when we're

24:37

talking about raising rigor in a middle school classroom because

24:40

they don't have the content knowledge and background So i've

24:43

also seen this as ways to help those teachers learned

24:48

that rigorous need in their content I think the other

24:53

part two is in order to be funding you have

24:55

to be fairly smart Andi the sum of the witty

24:59

humor that's involved with the site in general Um if

25:03

you want to get the joke you have to kind

25:05

of understand it S o i think it really motivates

25:09

the higher end kid tio if they didn't get that

25:13

it kind of hurts you know So they have to

25:17

understand why why it was funny and i think that

25:20

you know kind of a back side away or maybe

25:23

that i know that wasn't the intent with the funny

25:25

maybe but but it comes back and helps you with

25:29

the differentiation in that sense too And now i think

25:32

that new hover feature too that it will be able

25:34

to explain it to the kid who maybe didn't get

25:36

it Um i think that's going to help and again

25:39

it's a levelling of playing fields So yep why is

25:42

this funny will be on shmoop soon Was there one

25:46

more question out there Two questions questions one Well for

25:51

one question for me and that is you guys have

25:54

talked a lot about the curriculum axe back the ap

25:58

casey all of those how do you do any of

26:01

you work on the sort of the non core side

26:04

of like the d m v or the job or

26:07

the job smorgasbord or any of those How do you

26:10

how do you uh let the teachers know about those

26:16

the career one i've demoed a lot for our alternative

26:21

campus and for middle schools that's one that's one that

26:26

i've done i haven't done any of the others at

26:28

my school we all of our freshmen take a class

26:31

which is sort of design Tio i don't get on

26:34

a focus of a career of some kind and they're

26:37

starting to use the career I don't know what it's

26:40

career path or career career test test and they're starting

26:44

to look at it I know it's called real poop

26:47

all the has but it has a lot information on

26:49

and i know attacks about you know all the kids

26:51

think they're going to be rappers or movie stars or

26:55

mba or whatever and you know i love it how

26:58

it has like the odds of you becoming like you

27:00

know n b a all star and i don't know

27:03

what it is but like you know one in three

27:04

million and so i've seen that more and more on

27:08

my campus where all right let's look it up You

27:11

think you're going to be a rapper That's let's look

27:13

it up You think you're going to be an astronaut

27:14

that's looking up to see how much money you're gonna

27:15

make I know on our campus we dio i just

27:19

was in a class on friday and they were looking

27:21

up This is in our computer tech classes do we

27:24

do in a place certification Class and they were looking

27:28

upon shmoop how much a computer tech makes and they

27:31

were going through all the stuff they need how much

27:33

education they make and i think on it it says

27:35

well if you have this degree you would be starting

27:37

at like forty two thousand dollars or something like that

27:40

and if you get a bat masterson here's something you'll

27:42

perhaps starting around sixty thousand and so this was something

27:45

that we're using in classes that it would never intended

27:47

something that we never would never introduce too smooth but

27:51

it's just the word of mouth like a shmoop has

27:52

his career tech thing that's pretty good and you know

27:56

it has i don't know what you three hundred years

27:58

or so i mean it has a lot of careers

28:01

and that's something we have used i know our students

28:04

also did the as fabric practice as the exams of

28:10

exam we test about one hundred fifty of my sight

28:13

so the kids that were signed up for the as

28:16

fab we're told they think it did they take the

28:18

practice test on the as fab um about you know

28:22

when they signed up with the career center so i

28:24

mean some of that stuff was used to my campus

28:25

is well we're really interested especially next here as we

28:30

expand our wonder one programs and things like that and

28:33

paul and else and we've already had some elementary conversations

28:37

about this but we're currently using edge uf aya's our

28:40

cyber bullying and digital literacy curriculum but were not thrilled

28:44

with that And again i'm trying to go back Teo

28:47

one stop shop approach I like the single log in

28:50

i like the fact that so as i see those

28:54

things added here it's really exciting because i think if

28:59

we can find a way to bring that and it's

29:01

really something that we're digging into right now andi i'm

29:04

hoping that we can make work with our middle school

29:06

and high school kids bringing them in and doing the

29:09

cyberbullying which we absolutely mandate And i don't know any

29:13

disciplinarian in the middle school or high school who doesn't

29:16

mandate something like that right now because you're dealing with

29:19

a cell a text or ah you know an e

29:21

mail or something that fight on facebook or something almost

29:24

every single day so uh we wantto say we've trained

29:29

kids well in those areas and they know what our

29:32

expectations are and that's part of that infrastructure that i

29:35

was talking about before I mean i'm hoping that shmoop

29:38

could be a major player and helping us frame that

29:41

infrastructure for our kids and that one the one program

29:44

on dh then with a b eighty six that two

29:46

hundred fifty six million dollars pathway trust thing with careers

29:50

in california Um we have twenty different career pathways on

29:55

dh One of the things that i'm touting here and

29:58

and hoping that will be a major player in getting

30:01

us a portion of that money is that they do

30:03

have the career angle and that we do have access

30:06

for all of our kids to do that type of

30:08

ah career exploration with this on dh hopefully get them

30:11

into those right pathways so that they can move on

30:14

to a community college or for a year in the

30:15

appropriate area So that's all exciting And i'm glad it's

30:19

a one stop shop like you said Okay one last

30:24

question okay I have kind of to the other one

30:28

one of them really easy but the first one is

30:31

can you talk a little bit about how did you

30:36

how are you able to train your teachers How do

30:40

they get to invest in this And the second question

30:44

is is there any way we can get emails of

30:47

you guys so we can send some stakeholders to you

30:50

for some information Because we may be convinced here but

30:54

there may be others back home That art that's Great

30:57

Would you like to give your email address before i

30:59

speak for You know what My email address is ridiculous

31:04

So wait Right But you guys are okay Yeah well

31:07

make sure everybody gets that for sure But grant if

31:11

you can talk about the training that you do it

31:13

just because i think you have a fantastic program that

31:15

you built there Yeah Like i said i'll keep going

31:17

back to the infrastructure piece It's what We saw that

31:20

major broke Any digital thing You have to think it

31:23

out before you put it in And the bigger the

31:26

scale is for your district the more you have to

31:29

think about it You and it's so stereotypical and it's

31:33

Not true In all cases i have to do my

31:35

my preemptive strike on this But the older your population

31:38

of teachers is the more difficult and more walls you

31:41

might have to break down But we we did thirteen

31:47

digital learning coaches like i talked about a little bit

31:50

earlier where their full time job is to provide professional

31:54

development Find resource is mentor people in technology on dh

31:59

try to hook people up with this when i know

32:01

you you have a problem in this area up I

32:03

got a solution for you When did you get your

32:05

log ins Are all of your kids on on And

32:08

then we send himto one person in the district One

32:11

person garrett kerr is the name of the guy in

32:13

our area So for twenty four thousand kids if you

32:16

have a question about shmoop or you don't know how

32:18

to get on you go to one guy That way

32:20

the messaging is controlled the loggins or easy he has

32:25

access to everything and if not he has their cell

32:27

phone numbers so on dh that's been the best part

32:31

on di didn't get an opportunity to answer that question

32:34

today and got him a a good salesman I need

32:36

a bonus but the enough for the the best part

32:41

that that i've liked about using shmoop and i don't

32:43

know if i'm sure you guys can can echo this

32:46

but but i do have allison's cell phone i do

32:49

have paul cellphone and if something goes wrong i mean

32:52

it hasn't yet but if something went wrong i know

32:56

i could get a hold of them and we're working

32:58

on a lot of really exciting future things that aren't

33:01

out there yet building a lot of the courses and

33:04

and especially in the middle school level and they've been

33:07

so receptive if like i said we have a conservative

33:11

community and we had a video that had an intro

33:15

to it that wasn't inappropriate but for an ultra conservative

33:20

clientele the kid thought it was funny showed dad and

33:23

dad didn't like a glove snap on on ah video

33:27

that was on there for pre calculus for his eleventh

33:30

grader i thought that was interesting but but he didn't

33:34

like the intro to it but thought that the math

33:37

was incredibly sounded that the video is showing so we

33:41

wanted the meats but we didn't we wanted it without

33:43

the set up because it was really hard tio assign

33:47

something where some parents felt that it was inappropriate and

33:52

gosh i'm talking about out of three hundred videos are

33:55

three thousand videos one that we've had any concern over

34:01

and but the responsiveness was like right now i mean

34:04

i emailed and within a minute i had an e

34:07

mail back and on dh that's something where you think

34:11

houghton mifflin's going to e mail you back in a

34:13

minute it's not gonna happen I give them a lot

34:16

more money and they don't get them when they won't

34:18

get back to you ever they don't care Maybe i

34:21

should ask for a raise Exactly I was going to

34:25

add one of the things that i have my sight

34:28

my librarian no shmoop so much better than anyone else

34:32

on our campus and i'm really said he got promoted

34:38

to the district office so he's going to be gone

34:40

next week so i think i'm gonna have to answer

34:42

all these questions but having support staff no shmoop and

34:47

how like the log and i mean doing the magic

34:49

word and all that stuff to get your account set

34:51

up it's so important to have a one or two

34:53

people in your sight then take a walk class through

34:57

walk a teacher through our walk students through um and

35:01

i know like the same thing i know sam would

35:03

call up to shmoop all the times i hate this

35:04

isn't working or this kid's counts locked or whatever and

35:07

like same thing they'd be back that emails back within

35:10

the day saying hey okay his countess opener with this

35:13

is the problem when we fixed it or something that

35:15

so having your support staff noam know the ins and

35:19

outs will help you a lot especially like a librarian

35:21

or something that we're having lots of computers i find

35:24

that having access to alison is really great if i

35:29

ever have a question she's certainly there but also knowing

35:32

how to use our students is resource is the more

35:35

the students use shmoop maur teachers will be motivated to

35:39

use it and the more they will learn about it

35:42

We have ah few early adopters in our school who

35:44

will grab anything that you put in front of them

35:47

and run with it but what i find most successful

35:52

are easiest with implementation of anything new shmoop being one

35:55

of those things is that as soon as students see

35:58

the value in a program or something then the adults

36:03

run with it so there's so much that comes top

36:06

down within our within our district and it's not adopted

36:11

to the extent as it is when it comes from

36:13

students and teachers so that student ownership you put it

36:16

in front of them and they'll love it And i

36:19

was talking earlier today about our five computer science students

36:23

who i thought would never be into shmoop because it

36:27

was just too witty and and they've really just like

36:30

the content and they sit and do do math problems

36:33

for fun and there on it all the time and

36:36

then we have students who who i thought well they're

36:39

really not so into this and they're also on it

36:42

so it really reaches the masses on different levels and

36:46

and i find just that students really enjoy using it

36:49

and that's when the adults take hold Of it and

36:52

in my district i'm i'm the person so i call

36:55

allison a lot for help but i have done you

36:59

know meetings I've offered meetings at all of my high

37:02

school's before school after school during their conferences i've told

37:05

teachers they can call me and it's so easy shmoop

37:08

isn't such a great job of making it so easy

37:11

to learn that i can say ok get on your

37:13

computer log on and here's what you're going to see

37:16

and i've done this as i'm driving to a meeting

37:19

so i'm like okay And i just pull down that

37:20

pull down menu and go to passes and you're going

37:22

to get to where you need to go but i'm

37:25

very excited as i talked earlier that five hundred students

37:28

have logged on in just this month I know those

37:31

five hundred students could have potentially increased my my phone

37:37

number for teachers because they're going to be calling me

37:39

saying okay i've forgotten how to get on shmoop but

37:41

my kids were talking about it but that's great i

37:44

don't care i've just made it where i will go

37:47

to them at any time if they want to see

37:49

it Know about it or hear about it Well thank

37:54

you very much That was a lovely conclusion to this 00:37:58.379 --> [endTime] panel discussion

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