0:00  
Hello, and thank you for listening to the teaching math teaching podcast. The teaching math teaching podcast is sponsored by the Association of mathematics teacher educators. The hosts are Eva, Sennheiser dusty Jones, and Joel Amidon. We are today just talking amongst ourselves about this move to online classes, and we're aiming to answer four questions. What classes are you teaching? How are you moving them online? What resources were especially helpful? And how did it go? We're going to take turns answering these questions and having a conversation amongst ourselves. dusty, do you want to get started? Sure. That sounds great.

0:40  
So the first class, the first question we have is, what classes are you teaching. And so I've got an online class, it was already online before this all happen. It was for teachers, it was a graduate class and analysis and also have two classes. For perspective, teachers. One's a history class for middle school teachers history of mathematics, and another is a geometry class for secondary teachers.

1:08  
Yeah, and so I'm teaching this is Joel, I'm teaching two classes. One class is a field experience class for a Master of Arts in Teaching. So doing,

1:19  
it's online, but you also are doing an observation component. So that's interesting. And then the other part is the other class that I'm teaching is on lesson design, which also has a field experience component. So that's for undergrads who are teacher candidates.

1:36  
Alright, and this is Eva, and I'm teaching a first content course for elementary teachers, which is a class that I have taught many, many times, but never online, it has a lot of group work. So that's an interesting transition. And I'm also teaching a senior capstone class called math in society, which has a community component as well. So I'm going to be talking about that later. dusty back to you. Yeah. So how I'm moving the classes online. Well, for the online, graduate class, it was already online. But I found out that my students seemed a little stressed, just because of the whole issue of of everything changing in our lives, maybe not just the math class. And so with that class, and with my other two classes, I really had to think hard about what material was essential for me to cover in the in the last few weeks of the semester, and what could go by the wayside. And so that was that took a lot of mental energy on my part, to decide what really needed to go or what what could go and what needed to really stay.

2:48  
My history of math class was taught in a flipped setting where students would watch videos that I had made in the past, and then we would come to class and they would present their solutions. And I decided against going synchronous with with all of my classes. And so in terms of making this class asynchronous, instead of students sharing their responses and presenting them to one another, they are now submitting all their problems to me. And then I'm taking their written work and making kind of a class response list that people can look over and see how students are at see how their classmates are answering those questions.

3:33  
The other thing that I'm doing in that class, and in my geometry classes, I'm making myself available during the week for Office Hours through our learning management system, we have some video conferencing tools. And that's been pretty helpful so far. I can talk about that in a little bit. What about you, Joel?

3:54  
All right, Joel, give it a go. All right. So after a brief switch to platforms, again, dusty handed off to me, and my internet went dead. And you look at my Wi Fi, and it was a many different devices, doing many different things in my house. And so that's just kind of the reality that we're in right now. But anyway, going back to the question that dusty asked, we're thinking about, what did I do to move my classes online? And so one thing that I had to think about was I had a online class, which was focused in on field experience, so it online but it also had some somewhat face to face components where I was doing observations, so observations from people all the way in San Francisco, Miami, Boston, and then here in Mississippi, where I do some face to face stuff. And so what was, you know, kind of surreal about this whole thing is that every one of those places from, you know, South Africa to, you know, Mississippi was being affected by this global pandemic and that's why it's called the global pandemic and but so thinking about how do we go about

5:00  
Doing observations, right now that you know, everything is being moved online or might even be suspended. So you know, some districts here in Mississippi, they're just not meeting and they're doing some things, you know, they're each doing different things in order to try to teach their kids in their district versus in South Africa, they're going to be moving to doing zoom type instruction, instruction through zoom. And so trying to think like, how can I do observation, so it could be dropping into a zoom classroom session. So that's what we're going to be doing. Eventually, when class gets back in session for some of the folks that are on break. And another one is, you know, thinking about how might a a teacher who's setting up asynchronous instruction? So what did they do to set that up? How are they evaluating? What are they doing to interact with students and observing from that perspective, I'm putting that in quotations which you can't see. So thinking about creatively how you can do those observations is something we're going through almost on a case by case basis for each of those individual students. So that's that course. The other course is a is a face to face course for undergrads. Right. And it's all about lesson design. But then there's a field experience component. So schools aren't session. So field experience component is suspended for now. And so going back to what dusty said about thinking about what's essential for the course, really, and so we have a number of different assignments. And this, this course, is something that all students take not just those that want to be math teachers, but all of our teacher candidates take this course. So there's a lot of things that get put into this course that we want all of our students to do. And so as a team, we would get together and think like, what's essential? What is the things? What is the core thing that we want to get out of this course? And really, it was kind of a meta sort of thing where we could say to our students say, we're thinking about what's the key objective? And how are we going to get to that objective, given the constraints that we now have? And so we could be very transparent with that with our students. And so for me, it was thinking about how can I streamline the course and taking out again, only keeping what's essential. So that would be designing units, and really thinking about designing units and lessons and thinking about breaking down standards into objectives? And how are we going to assess what are the performance tasks and traditional assessed traditional assessments that they're going to be doing? thinking about how we can we design around that? And then thinking about, how do we go about taking, giving them the opportunity to do that observation and do some interaction with instruction through some videos that we might have available. So trying to think creatively about how we're going to go about doing that. And so, really, what I did also, too, was think about streamlining technology, and not wanting to throw a bunch of different technology at them. So already, we had Google Docs were a major part of ours, a major part of our class like so I didn't use a classroom management system like Blackboard or canvas, I did use Google classroom, but really kind of up the ante with regards to Google Docs, and basically making one Google Doc, a central location where they would go for all the links to everything that they would need. And another thing that was kind of nice, is we already had an online textbook, one that we had produced ourselves like using

8:23  
using open access resources. So we already had a textbook there so that we could use that and link to that within our within this common google doc and then also wanting to have face to face interaction, so either through so we just use Google meat, but you know, could use anything but using that. So we could have some sort of face to face interaction, knowing that there is something about that human connection about building relationships about having that some other friendly face to look at, besides the ones that are just in the place where you're being, you know, self quarantined for a while. And so wanting to have that as a part of it. So not only having synchronous classes where we'd have 30 minute sessions, which we're going to have each week, but also, we're building in some one on one interactions, where we can really get some,

9:12  
you know, face to face interaction around their unit design, again, that central thing that we want them doing for this unit. So for this for the rest of the class, so really, again, streamlining technology, streamlining the content, but also making sure we're maintaining that human connections. That's what we're trying to do.

9:33  
Alright, so

9:37  
I'm going to talk about both my classes and since they're different, I'm gonna start with the content course for elementary school teachers. So typically, this class is a class where I go in and I pose a problem and then students work on their own and then in groups, and then they create a poster and they share. And when I first started thinking about how to move this online, it's

10:00  
seemed easiest to just do a synchronous zoom meeting. But then I was thinking about all the issues that students are facing, not just the connectivity issues that we just experienced with Joel dropping off the call. But also like mentally are they able to concentrate for two hours straight at a certain time when potentially they're worried about

10:27  
classmates or have little children or family around, or you know, like, only have one computer and five people. And so I decided to

10:38  
go asynchronously. And this made me rethink a lot of things. So first, like both dusty and Joel, I was thinking, what are the essential bits? Oh, and I should also mention that I'm in a different situation that our winter quarter just ended, and we're starting a whole new quarter next term. So I'm starting out with students I haven't seen, I don't know yet. They haven't signed up for an online environment. And I'm going to teach a whole 10 week course in the situation. So.

11:10  
So there's a few things that I

11:13  
did. One is spending a lot of the first week on technology, trying to figure out how the technology works that we're using, I'm spending a lot of time on introductions. So for example, one of the things I'm using is Google Slides. And every one of my students is going to create one Google slide where they're introducing themselves. And I'm giving them a lot of

11:40  
prescriptions on how to do that. So that at the same time, they're learning about Google Slides, Wilder, introducing themselves, I'm also serving them on what they expect from an online environment. And I'm doing this on Google Slides to so everybody can see it. And I'm hopefully learning a lot about what they would like it to look like sound like and feel like to have online lessons. And then hopefully, I'll be able to base some of the instructions on that. So that's a little bit first part of my lesson. And then the second part, I'm jumping into teaching routines, like we're doing usually like which one doesn't belong, or number talks or those kinds of things. And Google Slides is fantastic for some of these, because everybody can collaborate on one slide. So for example, and which one doesn't belong, everybody could mark which one they think doesn't belong, and then give a reason for it. For a number talk, for example, we could use an online discussion where everybody has to share their strategies before they see other people's strategies. So there's different technologies that work well for different things. I'm also using Mandy Janssens idea of rough draft mathematical thinking. So everything that they create and share, I'm labeling as rough draft thinking initially, just so that they're more comfortable, because again, remember, they don't know each other yet. And it's really hard to share something that maybe you didn't complete yet.

13:16  
So those are some of the things that I'm doing, I'm using a lot of video.

13:22  
And one of the mathematical things, for example, I had to change. So to learn how to justify, we often use this famous problem of like, if you add an odd number to another odd number, are they always even always odd, sometimes even sometimes odd, and then justify. And usually what happens in my class is that there's different groups, go through it and justify, but they don't really define what even an odd means. And then once they do define it, often, our definition of evil doesn't match the definition of evil they're using in their justification. Now, because I'm completely changing, and it can't emerge in a group like this, I actually am starting with the definition of even an odd, I'm at the beginning, and then having them use pick a definition and use it and I found YouTube videos to go with that, and so forth. And if anybody's interested, I have put all my lessons on my website, which is a mess, anheuser@wordpress.com. And

14:27  
everybody's free to just use them.

14:30  
So my other class is the

14:35  
senior capstone class. And this one also, like, I'm finding myself in a situation like jolt where it had a field component. They were supposed to go out into the communities and work with the communities for two out of six credits. And we've decided to change this assignment to now they're going to create a website that serves as a resource for the community. They're gonna pick a topic, like

15:00  
homelessness, hunger, whatever topic they want. And then they're going to do some math modeling with that topic and collect resources, and then make that shareable. And this course, I'm starting, and I've never taught this course before. But this course I'm going to start this time by teaching through

15:23  
social justice or social context. So the first two lessons are mapping around the COVID-19, spread and exponential functions. And they're using either newspaper articles or online videos that I'm giving them and analyzing them and learning math, through consuming newspaper or other types of things. And again, I'm also putting those slides online. So I'm bouncing now back to dusty. Okay, so the next question that we had were, what resources were especially helpful. And one thing that's been very helpful is the learning management system that we have at my campus. And we haven't I hadn't used this video conferencing tool very often, but I've used it now a lot. And it's been really great. For my students, we were meeting like on Tuesday, Thursday, or Monday, Wednesday, Friday, when we were meeting, face to face. And I've just converted everything to a weekly list of tasks that students need to complete, watch these videos, respond to these prompts, submit these things by a certain time. And in the middle of that, like in the middle of the week, actually, I've scheduled

16:46  
a time when I'm going to be available through this video conference where students can drop in and ask questions. And it's been really helpful. We had one this morning with a couple of students, it's been really helpful just to hear their questions and let me know where they're at. And still try to assess that and giving them like Joel said, some sort of that still human interaction, that personal touch. Another thing that has been helpful is nctm principles to actions, I'm still trying to think about those things. And the first one of the effective mathematics teaching practices is establishing mathematics goals to focus learning. And so in this weekly, folder, or list of students things that students have to do, I'm making sure that I put in what the mathematical goals and what the objectives are for that week, so they can know for sure, here's where we're going with these things. And that's been helpful. And on a technical level, I've become a real fan of this app that came or that you can get for free, you can get for free on an iPad called PDF expert. And that's been really helpful where I can write something out, take a picture of it, convert it to a PDF, and then upload it and send it off to students. That's been really helpful. And then also,

18:13  
I'm a Mac user. And so my Mac has QuickTime Player on it. And what I did not realize, until very recently is that you can use QuickTime Player to also record videos, record screencast, or record audio. And so those have been some really helpful tools. I think, I think all of these are things that I had just laying around, and

18:36  
didn't really think how I could leverage them

18:40  
for this current situation, and now that I'm doing and I'm thinking that I might still be using some of these things, when we all get to go back outside and get in groups of larger people and see our students face to face. What about you, Joel? No, that's, that's perfect, like thinking about, you know, how do we respond to a situation like, you know, as an opportunity, right, and opportunity to develop? And so, when I'm thinking about the resources that I've found useful one is colleagues, and I think that's what's been another another bright side of this situation is seeing, like, you know, this podcast sponsored by mte, what amts done to support its membership, or even my own institution, what they've done to get together and think about, alright, what what, what do you need in order to hold all your classes online that might not have been traditionally online, or nctm, or any any of these organizations to that have been reaching out and trying to give resources out good resources, not just you know,

19:44  
and I think that's been good too, is having folks like really, you know, that I trust to curate, like, here's good stuff in order for you to use. I think that's really important, but also with regards to colleagues, just the colleagues I have at my institution, and you know, that being able to

20:00  
Get together and not think like, I've got to solve this problem on my own. I mean, the resource of colleagues and people, and I think that's, that's the thing that I always want to put first is the people that you work with, and the people that,

20:14  
that you respond to, like those. That's, that's such an important that and that the technology is a tool in order to facilitate people interacting with each other. So, you know, we we met as a, like the my undergrad group met as a team to talk about, how are we going to move our class online and bringing our ideas to the table. So you know, the ideas that I've already shared, they're not all mine there. They're part of a team and also for the MIT course, the, the guy that's in charge of that whole program, his background is in educational technology. So really going to him and saying, like, hey, what, here's some ideas on how we can do this. And, you know, he's obviously answers, pros and cons, each of them. So colleagues is one that I would say, previously introduced technology. So again, like I said, before, using a lot of Google products, because we have the Google suite available. And they've already been introduced to them, they're comfortable with it. And so not wanting to introduce a bunch of new stuff, but try to stay with things that they're familiar with. And also, one of the design principles I thought of for my online modules was what could they still use on a phone. So you know, some places in Mississippi in a rural place like this, there are places where there's not internet yet, in some of those places. So if they've got to use data on a phone,

21:28  
you know, we don't want them being tapped out of data. You know, I know, some companies are giving people more data right now. But, you know, don't want them having to expend extra money to get more data, just because I'm asking them to watch, you know, tremendously long YouTube videos or download an app that they don't already have. So thinking about what can they access on a phone, right, or if they have to make a quick hotspot to upload or download a document, you know, so thinking from that perspective, as well. So lots of lots of things in Google Docs that they can access, and then keep on their hard drive. And then thinking about for our synchronous instruction that's happening once a week and or else our,

22:12  
our one on one meetings, I also wanted to have a platform where you could call in. And so I know in zoom, and in Google meet, there's a call in option that they can do. So they can not have to be on an internet connection, they could just call via and do audio. And then, you know, because we have a shared Google folder that they can put in their unit that we're going to be looking at, they don't necessarily have to be online for that. So that's, you know, trying to think of like some of those things in the tools that I'm using. And, you know, because I in the past, and I think I've been preparing for this moment, maybe from previous time is like, one time I sat in pause because I was introducing another platform for my students to use. And I'm like, wow, that's like five platforms. I've got them on. That's probably not good.

23:02  
And so in recent years, I've been like, okay, I really got I know, yeah, that's a nice shiny object over there in the corner, that I want that new platform that I want to incorporate into my class. But I really have to make sure is that something that I want to add, you know, more complexity, because just because I think it's not a big deal to jump onto that platform, that might be a really big deal to someone who's not as savvy, yes, we want to expose people to technology, but we want to be intentional about it, and that it's really useful. And so and then, with regards to thinking about our field experience,

23:34  
oh, and so and then also to just given if, if they can't access or they, you know, because of family circumstances, they can't get to our synchronous sessions, we've been able to record those videos and put them on YouTube. And so, you know, a lot of people can access a YouTube video from their phone as well, in case they can't see those class sessions. And then finally, inside mathematics, the, those videos have been the videos that have been available there. I really like those because, and I know there's others out there, but just from a, hey, here's a lesson and here's teachers talking about the lesson. And here's the actual lesson and they get to see it in action, and they get to reflect on it, to have that whole process recorded and some of their public videos is nice. And I know there's others out there as well. But that's just been something that any sorts of videos like that that are out there. Those are pretty much gold for the situation I'm in where, okay, now I've got some experiences where my elementary or secondary math folks have something where they can really get inside the thinking of a teacher. So that's those are things have been useful for me. Eva, how about you?

24:44  
Yeah, I want to echo everything that both of you said.

24:49  
If I think back to like 12 days ago, I don't know that I would have known much about online teaching and just having like all my colleagues

25:00  
on different social media platforms, creating groups, and

25:05  
to me very useful were the two webinars that AMT hosted about asynchronous and synchronous online instruction. And I've actually used both of those and mush them together

25:20  
for what I'm doing. And then, literally like just talking to people, and both, like you said, getting together with colleagues to just have coffee and check in with each other, but then also go like, wait a minute, how do you use whiteboard and zoom, let's just try this out and draw some stick fingers. And so I feel like every conversation I'm having with colleagues, I'm learning something new, that is useful. I'm coming back to what dusty said, I think the structure piece is really important for asynchronous teaching. So again, I took this from the webinars like starting and ending my weekly slides with a checklist of things that students have to submit. And just like dusty, even though my class meets twice a week, I decided to release slides once a week, because it's just easier. And then, so I'm mushing them together, but the class times that we would have had, I put my office hours and so also via zoom, and I have a slideshow of how to get into zoom, and people could call into it. And we have it through our university. So everybody has access to it. And then they can come in and work on the slides there if they like. But they can also do it on their own time. But this notion of structuring and reducing the work on our end as well. So I have a Google Doc at the end, where students just fill in the checklist like, yes, I did this, yes, I did this. And I can just look through that, and then check back and make sure they actually did it. But like this, I don't have to kind of go through plus it holds them accountable.

27:00  
So I think that's important. I also a friend of mine told me not to release slides on like, Don't make homework, do Sunday nights, because then you're going to be fielding emails all weekend. So I'm releasing my slides on Wednesdays and having them do Monday. So I get Tuesday to kind of look at what students did and be able to incorporate that into the slides for the next week. So that's my plan. And they only have to deal with like, once a week, one deadline, one day, I get my slide. And the next Monday, everything has to be done. I have no idea how this will work out because I'm using all kinds of discussion where they have to respond to each other. So I do have in there, like don't start on Sunday, you know, start on Wednesday, and actually interact with each other. And I think we talked a little bit ago that we might meet again next week or the week after, to do a follow up to this podcast, and I can let you know how it is worked out. Need more deadlines or not? That's right. Sounds like a good recipe. But you gotta see how it cooks. The other thing I think dusty said the sewer like the discussion forums, I use through our online

28:17  
thing, have a button where you can say, Oh, you have to post a thread before you can see other people's. And I've used this discussion forum for 10 years, and I never knew that button existed. And it's so powerful. And these are just the things that now that we actually need these things, right? Because we can just do it in class, right? And we're finding them out. So Oh, there's so much more. But I also don't want to like talk for two hours. So I'm gonna jump back to dusty. So our last question is, how did it go? And I mean, I'm in the first week. So my graduate class, I have six students, and all six of them have been active this week so far. So I count that as a win. In my history of mathematics class, I have two students that showed up today for the office hours. And so that's been good. But I've also had a good number of students, over half of them have already submitted the online quizzes that aren't due until Friday. So I'm really glad about that. And then with my geometry class, I'm meeting with them tomorrow. So I don't know how that's going but I got an email I'd love to share with you guys.

29:30  
It came on Monday, and I just released the videos for this class on Monday morning. And a student of mine says Dr. Jones, I've watched the three videos you uploaded for chapter seven. I can honestly say that I do still feel like I am in class with you like normal. I just wanted you to know that. And then I was just as excited about the Equis circles as you are in the third video. I also love the expanding brain meme. I think it was your dad jokes that really made me feel like I was still in class. All in all

30:00  
Love the videos and being able to have your explanations along with your drawings. I'm looking forward to seeing more. And so I immediately wrote that student back and said, You don't know how much this warms my heart and makes me feel great. So dusty are doing okay. Is that advice here to continue telling cheesy jokes during a lecture? I mean, if you tell bad jokes and fantastic, then then just keep throwing them in there. Yeah. That's awesome.

30:31  
What about you, Joel? How's it going so far? So yeah, I'm in the first week, we had a week in order to transition classwork. And now we're in we're in the midst of it. And so I had

30:43  
two class sessions. So on my Tuesdays is my when we meet synchronously. And so but before that, I created a YouTube video where I kind of explained the whole layout for the course, posted that posted the document, the home document that we were going to use, and kind of let that go until we met on Tuesday. And so looking at the video, I have, like, I think around 40 people in my class, it's, the video has been watched 58 times. So some people watched it a couple times. And they watched in, everyone's been watching it about the same amount of

31:18  
minutes that it is in length. So looking at my analytics, but that video, that's good. But so from a and then looking at some of the tasks that I already listed, so I put everything in the Google Doc that they're going to be doing throughout and so seeing that some of them have already taken up the tasks. Um, so that was all that was productive and didn't get

31:39  
didn't get many emails, like with questions. And if I did get emails with questions, we actually use the Google form for them to go post that question so that we could then use those questions as a basis for when we did meet together so everyone could hear the answers. And so when we did meet, though, I did. So I had two class sessions, and they had different, you know, when was at 8am, and one was at 230. And I picked those times, because that's when the original class met, just in case they were trying to keep some sort of normalcy to their life, I didn't want to say, Hey, we're gonna meet at these completely different times. Right? So obviously, the the 231 went better, because it was a second time doing it. And some things I learned is, you know, when you have, you know, a, you know, even with three of us, it's tough even to say like, Oh, am I gonna talk over dusty, you know, Ava's got something to say, you know, like, that's enough. But if you've got, you know, I had had 10 in one and, you know, over 20, and another,

32:31  
where, you know, that's a lot of people to manage. And so trying to use a moderator. So I have a grad assistant that works with me. And so I made her the moderator of the course. So like, she would pay attention to the chat, and to see like, okay, someone's asked a question someone,

32:48  
you know, can you unmute, and then they can ask their question, or else, you know, the moderator can then ask the question to me, or also,

32:57  
one thing I also learned was to integrate interactions just to keep people on top of it. So Hey, where are we at? Right now, I just got done explaining this part of the course. Where are we at from in one thing I like to use is like a fist to five in class. So like, five, if you're feeling like, hey, everything's great to fist is like, I have no idea what's going on. And, you know, numbers in between. and So hey, in the chat, give me 55. Where are we at with understanding this? And so getting to see, hey, some people put some twos in there, right? So what's some clarity that we could bring? Okay, we're all at fours and fives. All right, good. Keep moving on. And so using that using their questions to kind of see what was going to be in those synchronous interactions, and M has been useful has been very useful. So now, I think that not only do they have the face to face interaction, they're getting their questions answered. But then they also have the videos to go back in case they need more explanation about either technology where we, you know, if I showed some how to get some links, or access to something, or how to do something technical with regards to copying a document versus

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versus trying to just, you know, connect with me during the one on one session, so they've got that those resources available. And I think we learned a decent amount about how to have a good synchronous class. So, so far, feels feels good. And we've got some, you know, one to one meetings happening tomorrow. So I'll have more if we we come back and do some more sharing. Cool. Okay, so I have not yet taught so I can't answer the question. How did it go except for grading finals and submitting grades last week, but I just want to summarize what I learned from both of your responses to the last question is tell cheesy jokes and use fist to five. There you go.

34:48  
I know so I know that you're an experimenter, though. So what have you done to prep yourself? Maybe that's something

34:56  
um, yeah, I I did a ton and I

35:00  
I put that all out on my website. And I do think that we're gonna come back together next week, and maybe for a few weeks following to just kind of,

35:11  
you know, share our experience. And also, if people want to reach out to any one of us and have questions or want us to tackle anything, we'd be happy to do that, or invite somebody who has expertise in helping us transition some of this stuff to online.

35:32  
So please contact us and tune back in and go ahead. Yeah, Neva, I'm gonna, you said your website, I'm actually creating a page, it'll be up by the time this post of you know, like the video that I originally used to set up my online modules and stuff. I just want to put as much out there to be as transparent with teaching as possible, in case others need, like you said examples or just ideas. It's a way to collaborate. Even if asynchronous collaboration, you will I actually was just thinking that I'm going to create a video like you did. So I'm just by participating in this podcast, I learned a ton. There we go. So um, alright, so thank you all for listening to our teaching math teaching podcast, be sure to subscribe to the podcast. We hope we hope that you're able to implement something that you just heard, and we would love to hear back on what went well, maybe what didn't go so well. And so forth, just so we can all learn together. Thank you.