0:01  
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, Jesse Jones and me. I am Joel Amidon. Today we are doing something a little different. And taking a conversation I had on the Amazon planet podcast and put it on this feed for the teaching math teaching podcast is because we were talking with Jennifer wolf. So I had this great conversation with Jennifer Wolf, I was doing what we asked you to do on the, at the end of every one of these podcast episodes where we talk about interacting with other mathematics teacher educators. Well, I was talking with her about this upcoming semester, and she was sharing so much good stuff, I was like, Wait a second, can we put this on the ambit on planet podcast and we recorded a video and everything. And it was so valuable and getting such good feedback that we decided to put that same conversation here on the teaching math teaching podcast feed as well. And so it is a long one, but there's a there's show notes, there is a video that goes along with it. And there's also access to the resource that she puts together. And really, what's great is that the resource she puts together, this huge Google slide deck is available to you. But it's also cobbled together from resources that she is accumulated. And it just it just captures everything we want to do as educators right is to share and get better. And over and over again, you're going to hear throughout the conversation that we are smarter together. And so it's actually also a continuation of the conversation we had with Jen right, as COVID-19 started happening. And we're talking about converting our instruction. And she just basically ran with it. So this conversation that we had then back in, I believe March or April is continued here and you see all the things that she has put together. Since then it's it's quite amazing. So without further delay, here's the conversation from the Amazon planet podcast that I had with Dr. Jenn wolf.

2:01  
This is the eminent planet podcast, Episode 29. I am your host, Joel Amidon, thank you for joining me on this never ending quest to figure out how to teach better. And today on the podcast is Dr. Jennifer April, who is an associate professor of mathematics at the University of Arizona. But better yet, she is a good friend, colleague and one of the first listeners or supporters of the podcast. And I say that I think in the first episode, Jen, I said, No one person listens. It's, it'd be a good thing. And he was like, Hey, I'm listening, and keep it going. And so I appreciate that. Jen, welcome to the podcast.

2:40  
Thanks for having me. And we're breaking some ground. This is the first video episode of the podcast. And it'll become clear while we're doing that. But thank you for venturing on this journey with us. This is great. So first listener and first video. Yeah, I mean, we're just we're breaking ground, just plowing it up. So. And we have a kind of a unique task today. So

3:07  
I look to you as someone who is constantly pushing that you're teaching and I'm thinking about teaching better, which is like at the core of the eminent planet podcast thinking about how to teach better. You are someone who is constantly thinking about how to teach better, not just from your subject area, but thinking about relationships, thinking about the dynamics of people in your classroom, making it that everyone that is breathing is doing mathematics and has the ability to demonstrate their understanding in many different ways. And yeah, you're just someone I constantly look to that's going to be doing that. And just so nice. Thank you for saying that. Yeah, I mean, I think I think about like, why do we go into teaching? Why did I go into teaching? It's because I like learning. I like listening to people, I like getting better. I like I like learning. So I know, we all go into teaching for different reasons. But I think I just went into it because I like thinking about other people's thinking and just learning. Yeah. And so I came to you, and they say like, Hey, this is going to be a unique semester coming up and knowing that you will, we had another conversation on the teaching math teaching podcast, shout out, um, that we had at the when just when the global pandemic was happening, people were switching over, and you know, getting into a conversation with my colleagues. And we're like, Who's someone who's going to be thinking about how to do this? Well, because we're just had a major shift in our instruction. And you know, your name came up Jen, and so and from more than just me. So it was great. And now thinking about this semester, I went back and I'm like, I better talk to Jen again, before I get into my major planning, which is all stacked up here in multiple different books upon books, just waiting for this moment, but then we had a conversation. You shared with me some stuff and I'm like, Whoa, this

5:00  
is awesome. And it's too awesome to just and I know you've been sharing it with folks. But I'm like, I would wonder if she'd be willing to share it with the folks that are listening on the team or on the planet podcast. And you said yes. And so that's how we got here today.

5:17  
So can you get together? Right? Oh, yeah, absolutely. So we're all in this together. So I think that sharing, you know, we're smarter together, you know, we both we both right that way, right? The more resources that I could think through and think about, and then share with others, I think that our goal is to, to be with students, right, and to learn from them. And so like, how can I think about my own practice and help others out? But yeah, so um,

5:45  
so as you mentioned, I'm professor at the Associate Professor at the University of Arizona, and I teach across k 12. So I'm in the math department, and I teach pre service teachers at the elementary like k 12, k eight. And then I also do 612, secondary mathematics, methods, courses, which actually, I'm teaching math methods, virtually completely online in the fall. So I've been having to think about, okay, how do I go about teaching both what it's like to teach face to face in the classroom, but also preparing them to, they might be going into student teaching, and more than likely, it'll also be remote? Or some form of that? We don't know. Right? So think about how am I going to prepare them for both those potential

6:31  
teaching modalities? Right?

6:34  
Yeah. So as you mentioned, we talked about in the podcast, I do a lot of group work. And it's kind of centered around complex instruction and how you dismantle hierarchies of status. And in that podcast, we talked about like, hey, Jen, what did you do, right? Because we made that switchover pretty rapidly, like, Hey, I'm on spring break, and then they're like, oh, we're gonna do everything online. It's like, what? So how do I do groups online? What does that look like? And I had been pretty much I've always used PowerPoint. I hadn't really used Google Slides. And I started going to what I say is all the webinars, it felt like that week to figure out what to do, right? I think we were just like consuming and consuming. Like I What can I do with this. And then I i big shout out to Teresa wills. And the work that she's been doing. She's been teaching online for over 10 years, across, like k 12. And she really grounds the work and the five practices and the notion that, you know, it needs to be student voice. Have students be active in the slides, and then just attending a couple of her workshops and looking at all her templates, I was like, Oh, yeah, we can definitely get students collaborating in slides, right? And then how can we use? Like, in my case, my university was using zoom. And so how can I leverage Google Slides and also put them in breakout groups? And then what did the slides need to look like? And the transitions and just thinking about? How do I move things I can do face to face? What does that look like in the virtual space? Can it be done?

8:06  
Is it that, yes, it can definitely be done, I just kind of have to orient myself a little bit differently, or I have to get familiar with more tools that might allow for this to happen. Or it could be that maybe this doesn't translate well, to face to face or to virtual, maybe that isn't something that translates well. And so I think through all that reflective process, and

8:27  
getting through the rest of the semester with my students, and then thinking, you know, what can I do this summer, learning new tools, and then also being, you know, setting, okay, what's realistic for me to do? You can't do all the things. And I think right now, teachers, educators, everyone, they're getting so many webinars and so much information on all these different tools. And it's like, this is wonderful. But I also have to be like, what can I manage and handle right now. And I don't mean that from like a control perspective, I mean, that from a, like, I'm going through like emotional things, physical things, we're still in a global pandemic. So don't be so hard on yourself. Like you can't do all the things. So what are the things that you can do and try to do them really well, while I'm centering students? And I always think about it as your teaching students, I don't always think about his teaching content. If students come first and then the content is a way for us to to talk through those things, but I that's how I I like prioritize, right you prioritize learning community and the people in it.

9:31  
Yeah, that's kind of I mean, that was one thing that stood out to me in the, in the podcast with the teaching math teaching podcast is like, just, you know, how much you you put on Hey, I need to have ways to like intentionally check in with my students. How are they doing? Like what, what are their needs, and like, we'll get to the math, but that I mean, the math is, it's a win win situation, right? Because if you check it into see how they are, they're probably better prepared.

10:00  
To receive the mathematics versus like, No, we don't have time for that. We just need to push ahead with content. It's Yeah, it's you're not going to, to overwhelm is is is not going to work in this situation, right? Yeah. Yeah, no, definitely not. And that was something I was thinking about, right? Because they're like, my elementary future teachers were just like, how in the world is what you do in the space where it's really collaborative? We're moving around, we're using manipulatives. We're talking about how the world is that going to happen in this space. And I think they were pleasantly surprised that we were still able to do things and then just keeping equity at a focus. And if things didn't work, what can I do because I had students, you know, that had to go to parking lots to access internet, or they didn't have certain access to things. And so I'm like, Okay, we got to be adaptable. We got to be flexible, because this is about learning. And we also maybe have to problematize what is it that we've done in the past, that just isn't going to work? And you're just gonna have to change because you need to be aware of people's humanity and where they're where they're coming to in the space? Yeah, so I get that's a great, I mean, part of your background that you've kind of shared a little bit where, you know, some folks might be wondering, like, what's complex instruction? What are the five practices, and I mean, just, I'm just gonna vouch for it. Like, those are things like when we talk about what we want our math teachers to do, you're doing those practices within your math classes within your math methods, classes, in order to demonstrate to these future teachers, this is what good teaching looks like and thinking about. Now, how do we take that and do those same things within an online space? And what would I mean, every every time you start talking jet, it kind of blows my mind the fact that you said, like, I haven't used Google Slides until I started this, and I'm like,

11:50  
wow, I mean, you're really good. You're watching the video, and you're gonna see the resources that, that Jen has developed or is put together, it's, again, it's gonna be a double Wow. And and before we jump into it, just a quick disclaimer, and this is I think we both can stand behind this. And we usually offer this disclaimer when we talk about a book. But before we jump in this conversation, in no way were we going to communicate the whole value, all the stuff that we are going to mention today. And so we're going to go through the slides are gonna be a visual aspect of it, but we're going to try and voice it as much as possible, so that those just listening to the audio version, get as much out of it. But it is going to be a lot. And even if we did, you know, communicate the whole value of it, it's only going to be from our perspective. And that's I think, you know, we talked a little bit before we jumped on and hit record, is that part of this is that you're helping us process through what is this resource, but that's so that we can take and figure out? How does that jive with our own philosophies of teaching our own ways of doing things? And then how can we then use it within our own practice and thinking about how we can then share it with others as well? And that's, like we said, we're smarter together. Right? Right, right. So just a shout out to our good friend and colleague, Mandy Jansen, because she's been on this journey with me, right. And I think that taking a cue from the rough draft, wonderful, rough draft book study that you did this summer.

13:17  
This is a rough draft, too. So that's part of disclaimer, right? Because I think some of us can get into a point where like, Oh, we make all these slides and we want to perfect it or something. This is literally just this is just a run through right? Like this is just my rough draft, kind of thinking about moving into this virtual space, because like you said, we've only kind of, for me, doing this is somewhat new, right, but jumping in just full force, it's like, oh, just put the ideas out there. And when you do, other people can come in and make things better, or attend to things that you hadn't thought about. And that just makes. So just knowing that this, this fine deck is kind of like an initial run of things that we just keep building and other people take from that and build on and share. And so, yeah, I'm trying to get better at that, that rough draft thinking and other aspects, not just math, right? Yeah. And I held up my copy of rough draft math, revising, to learn by Amanda Jansen. And knowing that in those conversations and how transparent she is in one of the chapters of her book, and like, hey, trying to do this, trying to put in my own implementation, it was a rough draft implementation of my own thinking about rough draft math, and it was like, This is gonna be whatever we do here, it's going to be interesting to even come back. Maybe this is maybe an invitation to let's come back after this semester again, and think about well, what did we learn and maybe even gathering what other people did with maybe these resources? And how can we do it orchestrating those discussions and like the ways that you engaged in the five practices? What did you find like really rewarding or the most challenging, maybe different in the face to face space than it was in the virtual space? So then thinking about Okay, what made that challenging and what

15:00  
Good idea to make it better. But yeah, these are kind of just rough draft ideas. Yeah. What do I mean already that got me because we did another book club for the teaching math teaching podcast summer book club on the high school math lessons to explore, understand and respond to social injustice. And then there is like a tracking tool for the five practices that they also interlaced with the social justice kind of, right. Yeah, thinking about that, that could be another slide with like a background and having kids thinking about the different, you know, things that they hear and how they

15:31  
make a note of that. Yeah, see, already already. We're, we're that we're working on version 1.0. So there we go. So um, and another thing that, that this connected to is something I've been involved with, in a conversation here at the University of Mississippi is this idea of resilient teaching. And hopefully, you get another thing that's more focused in on that. But resilient teaching is basically the opposite of what happened in the spring where we had our where both of us were we had face to face situations, and all of a sudden, we needed to transition to a completely online because the global pandemic. And that involved a we got a week after spring break. So we get to spring break, and then a week in order to like transition all of our teaching, and do all this scrambling, like you talked about going to all these webinars and figuring out how do we change our instruction versus resilient teaching would be, hey, I've got this structure already, I've got this thing planned out that if I turn into an online situation, my teaching might not it's going to be changed, there's going to be change, obviously, but there's not gonna be as much change, right. So if I was dependent, like, the biggest example that I can put is like, if I do quizzes all the time, and I do paper quizzes for my, for my face to face class, and I go into an online event, that's not going to work. Well, if I did quizzes, and they were on in some sort of like Google forums or something that I did face to face, you could use those in an online environment. That's a very, and I don't like using quizzes like that to test, I'd use the other things. But anyway, there's something there that you don't need to change all that much. And if you don't have to change your instruction on that much, you can then focus more of your attention on the needs of your students. That's what I really like about resilient teaching. And so I think a lot of the things that you have here are not just good for an online environment, they're probably good. They're good for any environment, that there's a lot of things that you can do here, too, that can be used in both face to face or no matter the modality, basically, right, right. Now, that's a really good point, because one of the things that I've been thinking about is that our students are going to be with a lot of screen time, right? And I'm teaching in the fall, I'm teaching a two and a half hour class, and I'm being I'm trying to be very cognizant of like, how much like, Can we be face to face zoom synchronous? And then what does the asynchronous component look like? Right, right. And I can think about, oh, well, you know, when I give assignments or projects, is that count is like an asynchronous component or not? Or I'm still working through how I feel about trying to do both. need to have both? It's an equity issue, right? It's a challenge. And I want to have both. So that's kind of where I'm challenged right now that I'm, I'm not gonna be able to do everything in this space. So how can I make the asynchronous component also quite robust? So Jen, just talk about that real quick, like we talked about, that's an equity issue, because maybe some of the listeners haven't quite thought about why synchronous and asynchronous why there's an equity issue on which format you're taking there. Yeah, so going into the space, I think, probably a lot of people experience this. But

18:43  
to be able to engage in synchronous, right, zoom, Google meats, whatever it is, you have to have a certain amount of bandwidth internet access. And so there's an assumption there that everyone has access to the internet or everyone and in its high speed internet. So assumptions about access are there right in the synchronous way? So if I had students who couldn't make it, I needed to have something in place that and not just a recording, right? I think recordings are great, like I would, I would record my classes. So my students could go watch it at another time, which again, it's about access, right? And so how was I able to create or respond in a way that my asynchronous components that if I had students who weren't able to attend for whatever reasons, it could be? You know, it could be I need to focus on my physical and mental health right now, I can't come to the synchronous session. And I'm like, sounds good. Here's where the resources are. Go ahead and do your best to get it done by this time. And if not, let me know. If you need more time to do this. I completely understand but just being very open, right that at the end of the day, the goal is to have students learning, right, and how can how can I support them in their learning? Right, and so that's where I saw it as being an equity issue.

20:00  
Because it's about the access to, to rigorous content, it's the access to learning.

20:08  
Yeah, and, and to, to think about the,

20:13  
all the different scenarios. I mean, even I was just, I was hanging out with my old school, they used to teach out there, let me listen in on some meetings where, you know, high school teachers planning on what they're doing. And just, you know, knowing some of the stories that they're having, like, you know, these are high school kids that are going home, taking care of their elementary school kids, then, you know, then having to go to work because they were trying to, you know, save up for college, support their household, whatever. And then after all that, then come home and do work and say, if it's a, you know, think about like, what kind of situation if it was a synchronous situation, it was really tough because they're doing childcare if it's asynchronous situation where there's a, I've got a one to one, like recording, I had a 45 minute class, I'm gonna do a 45 minute recording of class, that wouldn't work for this kid that is coming home at 11 o'clock to do that, like, what's, what is the instruction look like? And so, you know, there's lots of things to think about here. You know, I really was,

21:09  
like, at my university, we're told, you have to hold synchronous sessions, and I immediately I was like, whoa, wait a minute. That's, that's a that's an issue like I, I have to require them to come and psycho. Well, if they're not able to come, that's okay. But it's still like, Okay, well, then I need to think about if they're not able to be there, totally get it. What can I do to help support them in the in the space under these unprecedented times? Right, because I always go back to it's about, it's about them, right? What can I do to continue to support them in their, their journey to becoming an educator? Right? Absolutely. So let's, let's get into it. So because people can kind of see what we're talking about, um, again, this is a huge resource that you've put together, which you've taken a lot of things that other people that we already mentioned, Teresa wills, and we're gonna pour as much love on those folks that have shared those things. Because again, this is all again, we're all doing this thing together. So awesome. All right. So we're gonna kind of bucket this thing together. But you've kind of come up with a even

22:11  
some ideas on sharing resources that I didn't know to begin with. So I usually open up with just kind of a welcome slide and just a request to like, go ahead and mute your mics right? For the background noise. whether or not your students are have their video on or off. I'm an advocate of choice, right? let them choose whether or not they want to show their video. tahari, Jackson talks about video classism and thinking about I mean, when you open up your video, it shows things about your space, right. And there's certain things that can be assumed about you. Because of that, and just being aware of that classroom isn't real. And if your students want to turn their video off, turn it off, right? There's many reasons I know that that's something that's been going around about like video on video off, and I'm like, the goal is for them to be engaged. And so if they start off with video off for a walk fine, right, and then as the engagement starts to be more and they're able to collaborate inside, maybe they'll feel safe, right? And included that though, turn their video on. And maybe I'm projecting a little bit here, but I'm not one who likes to turn my video on either. And it's because like, for various reasons, but when I feel more comfortable in the space, that's when I'll turn my video camera on. So I try to I try to think about that, what I what I like about it, and they even, it's just a on this one slide, the thing that you've shown to demonstrate this, I mean, one, you're very explicit about, hey, here's where it is on zoom here, you can find where the mute is, and you've got it, hey, the microphones off. But then you're even the picture, you've shown the video being off. Like, I mean, those small little things that show like, Hey, I'm actually assuming your video is going to be off and that your choices to make it on I just, those are those little things that I think throughout this slide presentation, you're gonna see like, there's a lot of intentionality behind everything that Jen has put in here. So just think about that, right? Because we have bandwidth too. And we know that if we turn video off that sometimes that helps with our connection. So there's a number of reasons why people might want to have their video on or off, right. And so just being being aware of that. So I'm gonna, we're gonna jump back and forth. I'm gonna point some things out Jen has things she's going to share. But in this first part, even to just notice how explicit in this slide deck and you're going to get access to this slide deck, if you if you'd like it, but in the initial part, just how explicit Jen is with directions on what is being asked for or what what are some tips and things that you should note, so I just really like that. So right now, I'm showing this Google slide deck that I put together and like Joel said, I

25:00  
usually put some transition slides in there making sure that there's not only just text, but there's also images, right? So thinking about our emergent multilingual population thinking about, okay, like having these images

25:14  
available so that you can see, oh, she's talking about Google Slides, there's usually a Google icon or putting in snapshots or icons of whatever platform that you're using. So in this beginning part

25:26  
of much of the first, like 20, or 30, slides, is my attempt to say, hey, when you come into the space, don't make assumptions about what people know about zoom, what do they know about Google meets, or whatever, maybe you're using Microsoft Teams? So thinking about what are the tools of the space because the students and people that you might be working with, while they may be like really good with like, tick tock, and Snapchat, and all these other forms of communication? They may not be familiar with Google Slides, they may not be familiar with the zoom platform, and what resources are there. So these first set of slides I have are deliberate snapshots in the zoom environment. And we go through and we talk about, like, Where are these tools, so that when we start to communicate using these tools, you'll know where they are. And then we get practice with those tools, but being very deliberate about using the screenshots and pausing and allowing people to kind of see, okay, how do I save my work? Where's the participant window?

26:32  
And so, yeah, having having these slides, I mean, so she's got, Jen has it for Google meat and zoom, and very explicit all the different things that you can do. And

26:45  
in each of them looking for the chat looking for, hey, how can you offer some quick responses? Thumbs up, thumbs down? clapping, you know, going for coffee? Yeah, exactly. Right. So like, even in the slide here, 14, I usually have that as one of my first slides that they're like when they're welcome. Because the first thing I want them to do is open their participant window, open the chat. That way, when I asked theirs, they already have it open, so they can respond to whatever prompting question I have in the chat, or is everyone good to go give me a thumbs up and the participant window. So from the get go, they have that and that slides there. So they can always refer back to it If, for some reason, they're not able to find the participant window or the chat window or sharing or turning video off or off?

27:29  
And then giving examples of like, what does that look like? Once you've done it? What does it look like? Yeah. And I think you had somewhere a prompt on there, like, hey, let's practice. And so yeah, so there's, we did some sharing. So what that's one thing, one way that we can communicate in the space is through screen sharing. And I'm aware that in some places, you might have to lock screen sharing down. But in the event that, you know, students aren't going to always be with you and your synchronous sessions. They may be asynchronous and be like, hey, Joel, let's meet up. Let's start a zoom or a Google me right? In this case of zoom, and then let's share screen so I can share, like what work I've done, or we can collaborate another way. So not just in that space, but having them know how do I do this in practice

28:14  
is a good thing. Let them practice it in the space so that when they're not in the space, they'll also being able to do it. And one thing I guess, too, is that you know, whatever, you know, communication device you're using, like, and I know that you've attended many webinars and things like that. And I know that our own my institution is offering things but that there's also again, many different training resources out there from the specific products or from zoom or whatever, that you can go and figure out what can I do with this tool. And not just like, just use it, but also knowing that maybe your students know how to use it even better than you do and being open to those conversations, or, again, talking to colleagues, Hey, did you know you can do this and do this? And so like, even my wife came home from a training and she's like, Hey, did you know you can do this zoom? Like, I didn't know that. So it's like, things that I'm, I'm learning as well. And so those I mean, it's kind of a, an emphasis of this whole thing is that, hey, let's keep kicking the tires, these things. And as they keep getting used, guess what? They're gonna keep adding in new things that you can do with them. So 100% like, I have zoom and Google meats here. But if you had asked me like, I don't know, two or three months ago, I wouldn't have had the Google meats in here. This past summer. I'm working with a local school district where we've done this lab school every summer, my good friend, Maggie Hackett said, Hey, Jen, can we can we do some PD on how you would collaborate in the online space, as I'm sure, like so I know that the UVA uses zoom, but our district is using Google meats. And I'm like, cool. Yeah, haven't used meats other than just like joining them sometimes. And it's a very, it's a different space. Like they don't have breakout rooms set up just yet. I think they're going to have an extension for it. But like you said, I learned from the teachers, some of the features of Google meats, and so learning how to like

30:00  
orchestrate at Google meet. So it's a, it was a nice thing to learn how to do. But again being explicit about the tools and extensions, and yeah, different platforms, but and then having read again, if you have choice having reasonings for using it. So that was a really good reason for using it. I use Google meat in the spring, Becca and I had we had zoom available also, but I use Google meet because one, the time limit situation wasn't something for us, like we were limited to 40 minutes initially, now we're, we're can do it, whatever. But Google meet also had the dial in version, like zoom does too. But at that point in time, when everyone was on zoom, they're like, hey, that might not work. And I'm like, because of that access thing. I'm like, I want people to be able to dial into a meeting if they can. Right. And so that was a big reason for using Google meet. And again, just having choices, what are these, if you do have choices, make make that choice explicit. This is why I'm using this platform, you know, those reasonings behind the tools. Yeah. And then this one was that it was very important to me that I use that platform, because that's what the teachers were going to be using. So even though I was more comfortable with zoom, it was like, I tried to take the perspective of like, Jen, this is just another tool that you'll be able to use. And it would be great, because that's something that I know future teachers when they go into school districts, it's they're probably going to have to use the Google suite, maybe Google meets

31:23  
because of their particular district requirements. And so the next section, yeah, I'll set up the next section you put made as a bunch of Google tools and extensions that you would put onto Chrome. So you've you've definitely showed me some things here. And I'm excited to, for you to share them. So go for it. Yeah, so just some things that I found helpful with Google tools and extensions. In addition to Google Slides that we'll talk about the collaboration, there's that, you know, depending on how many devices you have open, or if you have one screen or two screens, I found that if you use Google Chrome, there's, you can pin your tabs. So sometimes we have a bunch of tabs open, and they take up a lot of space. And so if you go to the tab and you right click on it, you can click on pin, and it'll pin the tab and make it smaller.

32:13  
And so then you can have even more tabs open. But now the little tabs are smaller, right. And I actually found that quite useful in Google meats, especially because in order to have breakout groups with Google meats, right now, you have to set up several different Google meats. And so I would just set up my five groups with the five small tabs and a separate part of my screen. And then I'm like, those were where my breakout groups kind of sat. So that was quite helpful that can I think Penny has been around for a really long time. So even though something is new to me, I know that there's some of these things have been out there for a while. But that was new to me. Yeah, mind blowing to me. But yeah, some people out there pricing. Yeah, I've been pending for a while, but like, you know, but maybe you didn't see the reason for it. Yeah. And then with Google meats, they have a mute tab extension. And I mentioned this, because for those of people using Google meats, you're going to have multiple meat sessions open. So you'll have multiple tabs open. And so when your students go out into those Google meat breakouts, you're going to want to mute some of the tabs. Otherwise, you're going to hear all the voices. Right. And so having that extension I found was really, really useful when I was working in Google meats.

33:26  
And then just things like taking snapshots like you, I've got one here, it's called a Chrome extension called click full page. I know some Chromebooks have a tool called snippet. And so a lot of kids use snippet. And so you really wouldn't want this, you wouldn't have to use this. But even though students are using Chromebooks, the teachers might be using a different, like, operating system or device. We can also there's an extension for giffy. So if you want like gifties, put in there or I've got timers like timer, there's one called Simple tab timer that I have in my Chrome toolbar. And I really like it because you can set any time and then you you just have it go and it'll open up a tab with the running countdown of the time. And so when I would send people or people out to breakout groups, I'd say okay, go ahead and open up your simple tab timer, as well as say, we'll be back at a certain time in the chat window. So multiple places where we're keeping time for transitions and pacing and such. So I found that helpful. And then just ways that you can pin like after a while, you're like, oh, I've got all these extensions, which ones do I really need? Because they can start to take up a lot of room. And so if you go there's a little puzzle piece along your bar there. If you just click on that puzzle piece, you can pin and unpin and remove different extensions. Yes, people can see your screen and you've got lots of extensions up there. So yeah, yeah.

34:54  
You gotta organize those things. Yeah. Yeah. And then because we work in Google

35:00  
slides, there's tools within Google Slides like filling in creating lines, creating shapes. And that's a toolbar at the top of your Google slide deck. And so the slide I'm showing now is just a highlight. It was with a description of each of the tools like, here's where you go to create a text box. Here's where you go to create shapes. And so this slide is purposely put in here, because my students are going to be working in Google Slides. And this is more of like a reference. Oh, okay. How do I make shapes? Again? How do I make this? Where's that? And so I created this slide so that I can always have it in multiple places throughout the slide deck, but also hyperlink in some slides. So it's like, oh, where do I find this? Oh, how do I insert an image again? Oh, there it is. A nice kind of reference slide. Yeah. I mean, like so anticipating, hey, you might need to use this. I can just throw this slide in wherever I want. And then there you go. I've got all the information I need, like, oh, and they could refer to it right? Hey, remember that white slide that's got all the stuff. Look there for how to create your lines. But real quick, again, before we dive into Google's, me, because this whole thing's in Google Slides, why are we using Google Slides? You know, I've just I've grown up with PowerPoint or like keynote, like, why would I? Yeah, yeah. Right. So what's nice about Google Slides is that it has a feature where you can, you can invite anyone to be an editor into the Google Slides. And so I can set up a task. And then like you and me, we could go in there. And we could collaborate together. And you can say, Well, why not just use Google Docs,

36:33  
because we can collaborate in that too. But the powerful thing, and we'll see this a little bit later with some of the tasks with slides is that we can all be working on the same slide. So from an educator perspective, I can be I can have my students in like five different groups, right? They're simultaneously working on in their group on their slide. And I can actually see in real time, what that what I see happening in the slides, and that gives me information on where students, the group of students are and working with the slide. Or if I notice, oh, there's no movement in this slide. I don't see anything, let me go check in on that group. And when I've done that, sometimes it's because maybe what they want to do first is individual reflection time before they come and tackle it as a team problem. But just making sure like, Oh, so having Google Slides allows teams to collaborate within a slide to complete a task. And then from the educators perspective, you can see what students are doing in real time. And then that kind of informs your instruction on where you might go to and your next breakout group or you might you see ideas forming, you might go talk to them. And so this is that process of in the five practices, thinking about monitoring, your monitoring to set up, what are you going to select and sequence so that size, and it has all the tools kind of built in? And so yeah, it's nice, well to like, if we were gonna do a PowerPoint, or,

38:02  
you know, keynote, like, there's not the collaborative piece as well, or it's not as built into it as these are, I know that each of those things has ways that you can collaborate on them. But it's not as dynamic, or I think I say user friendly. Google Slides is, this is kind of like this live document, right? So right where they can come back to at any time. So we're sharing this now. It's like, Oh, my group didn't finish that up. That's okay. You have a link to it. So you can hop back in and you and your teammates can come back and finish the work from the sides. So one thing that I thought was pretty amazing was this next slide. And I don't know, can we do this? Let me make. Can I make a like a point just Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Make a point. Yeah. So with the Google site, so in this slide, that's some helpful tools. One thing that the audience will notice that they got to look at this as I've color coded everything. So I feel like color coding is one of those, those teaching things that we do that we should do more of. Right. So then that helps me especially in the virtual space to be able to communicate Oh, do you want to know how to change color for lines and connectors? Oh, that's the purple, the purple and right, you could use pointers, but that that notion of like, thinking about how can I use color coding to my advantage in a lot of these these slides?

39:22  
And yeah, you'll definitely see that coming up to when we get into our group work, actually, as well. But yeah, this was the a pretty cool thing that you showed that, you know, because we're also thinking about who's participating in our classroom, what are the needs might be and one of those things might be closed captioning. So captioning Yeah, so shout out to Katherine. Yay. So when I went into this, I was like, Katherine, what do you do and what are you gonna be doing for this virtual space? And so she shared some slides with me and then she had put it in presenter mode, and captioning came up. She's like, I'm like, What is that? She's like, Oh, yeah, you can do captioning in

40:00  
In Google Slides, I'm like, what, what is what? So the thing about and that's great, right? Because sometimes I have a tendency to talk really, really fast. And then other times, you know, you've been in sessions where it's like, you look away for a second, and then you come back and you hear things, but maybe it's helpful to see the words that go with it. The key here is that with, you can do closed captioning and zoom. But you have to have a third party, you can do closed captioning, and Google meets, it's already there. But let's say I'm in zoom, which I am. And then I want to have closed captioning, you have to put your slides in present mode. So if you're looking at your slide deck, and you go to the upper right hand corner, there's a button that says present. And if you click on that button, which Jen just did for our listeners, yeah, if you go to the bottom left hand corner, once you've done this, it'll bring up a toolbar for the slides like advancing the slides, a pointer, but it also has captions, there's an arrow to the right of captions, that if you click on it, you can position where you want your closed captioning to be on the top or the bottom, as well as the text size. So to get captioning to work, you just have to click on the little CC there. And you'll see at the top

41:17  
all the words that I'm saying and that Joel joke, actually and I can say some words too, and things you can but I have my headset in, oh, if I had my headset out and the audio coming through my computer was being picked up by the microphone from my webcam, then it would pick up your voice as well. Oh, okay, that was different than when I Okay, awesome. So yeah, well, we had talked earlier, I didn't have the phone. And so my audio is all through my webcam, and my computer. And so that's why it was able to pick up yours as well. So for those that cannot see this, if you're on the strictly audio version, I mean, what Jen is saying is just going across the top of the screen and you and somebody and it will let's just break through some things. So some people might think, well, I don't have anyone in my class who is hearing impaired? Well, Closed captioning is for more than just that. I mean, like Jen said, like, sometimes it's useful just for comprehension, like I'm missing with the last things that were said. And now I can see him going across the screen. Also be for the someone who doesn't have the earbuds doesn't have audio capability. And just you know what, what they can do is they can read what's on the screen. And that's that's going to be their way of accessing what you're saying. And so there's so many different things that you could use to access for closed captioning. That's going to be very useful going forward. And if you do something like this, that we're recording it,

42:41  
recording and screen capturing what's happening. Now you're going to have captions already for your, for your video that you're making your videos, and you're going through your slides. Right there. Right there. Right there. I'm seeing that there.

42:55  
me here. And then. Yeah, so just closed captioning seems really good for all the points that you said there. I mean, I go to these webinars, and I'm just like, we listen to really brilliant people, and they say these things. And I'm like, oh, how did you say that? We've, like I've had, you've probably had these experiences to Joe, where you're like, you're working with your colleagues and your friends. And you're like, what you just said was brilliant. What did you say? Yeah.

43:22  
I think that that helps.

43:24  
And student and you know, you might not know who is a student who's learning English as another language, right, as well. And so there's all these sorts of another reason why Closed captioning is excellent. So excellent. Sorry. Yeah. So this next section is just a share some additional ways that you might be able to share work. And, you know, one of those things might be screenshotting. So different ways that you can screenshot in different platforms, whether that's windows or Chrome OS or your Mac. So I have a screenshot of how to screenshot. Yeah, I'm

43:58  
very explicit directions on all the different things. So yeah. Awesome. And then also, how do you share a whiteboard in zoom? So how do you share surfaces? How do you share screen and so this is one of those. I've got, again, screenshots of the tools in zoom and the process you would need to go through to be able to share your screen. But then I also show my students with screenshots to how you can share your iPhone or your iPad via airplay through zoom and I show this deliberately. So we do have students some have iPads or iPhones. And there's a way to share that so that you know, you can share the work that you're doing. You could create your own webcam basically out of your phone or your iPad. Or maybe you have the iPad and the pencil or some of my educators out there you might have an iPad and a pencil and you can write directly on the iPad and pencil using whatever software you have or application you have on your your iPad and then you can choose

45:00  
share that out. And this next picture is just different ways you could use your iPad or your camera to create your own document camera. Yeah, it's a life hack, basically, like lots of sees like a locker, like locker shells

45:14  
with those wire things that you recognize, and then there's clipping onto a lamp and there's a webcam and just literally clamped their webcam onto a lamp and then created that space to be able to have like a dot cam. Yeah, the lat the one that we question there was with just balancing an iPad on a water bottle, I wouldn't suggest that one. But hey, it works.

45:38  
Like,

45:39  
kind of, yes, and then the Lego one.

45:43  
Really interesting. And then just, you know, thinking about jam board. So I've got a slide here that says, Here's jam board, and then a video. So across the sides, other things that I'll do is I'll embed videos that describe whatever that tool does, I don't have to recreate things. So that's one thing I just want to put out there is that I know a lot of teachers are awesome, and in creating their own videos, but I highly recommend go out because you may not be the first person who's thought about that, right? And oh, yeah, let's leverage some of those ideas and resources that are out there and have those video capabilities so that they can just click watch a video and kind of learn about that space.

46:24  
And then, so those are the tools, right? But I think with any anytime we go into a class, and we're starting a new class, man, this was a big, like, you know, and the response back in the spring, it was like, okay, it felt like, okay, we're gonna figure this out, we're gonna survive, try to thrive in that space. But we had already had established relationships with our students at that point, right? For many of us. Yeah. So now we're going into the fall and thinking about, okay, how am I going to build relationships in this space? And it's key it is it is key, right? If you can, if people feel seen and heard, and you're leveraging their brilliance and their strengths, and honoring that, and cultivating those, like those, those relationships, that any content area, I think you're going to get students on board, right? Because they feel like, Hey, this is our space. It's not, it's not the teacher space. This is our space reflective learning. In the Think about that from a, just just to tie back into what you said before about, like, complex instruction, right? That's a huge thing with complex instruction. What are the assets that our students have? And how can I build my relationships and thinking about how do they best communicate? How do they best show their understanding? How can they mess contribute to groups? How do I, you know, how do we position them to use their strengths in order that again, we all get better together? Right? And so and that involves developing these relationships? So yeah, it's so that's Yeah, that's a big concern for I think a lot of teachers right now, if you're going to be primarily online, or you're starting online, or whatever you think, like, how am I going to do this work that we did prior to being online before? So I could lean on those relationships. But now I'm starting from scratch. So you certainly have scratch, you have lots of ideas. This is great. Yeah. And in fact, I mean, that's, that's a huge chunk, I'm gonna spend a lot of time building those relationships, because we want to feel comfortable in the space, we want to feel like we can bring our whole selves to the space. And that takes time. Right, that takes time. But that's how that's how we need to start off going into the fall is thinking about how am I going to cultivate these relationships?

48:34  
together? Well, it was eye opening to me, Jen, as you get to that net, like slide 44, where you describe your learning community, and you kind of go through some things like putting away distractions reduce back and like, going through a list of expectations for what might happen within your virtual space. And, and some of these things that will directly translate to you could use them in a face to face space as well and thinking about, what are we going to do to make everyone feel safe so that they can thrive in the classroom? What would what struck me is that a lot of times, you know, I, I'm very deliberate with like, I want to set up my classroom for success from the beginning. And the thing is, like, I think, oh, okay, it's been said, it's been done. And now, I might not talk about anymore. And then when somebody violates one of those things, or just, you know, does not hold it up, I get upset when like, when was the last time I talked about this, it was the first or second class. Versus I could have a slide where it's just a quick reminder and using images to say like, hey, here are the things that we are standing for in this classroom that you know, that we all can agree on. It's not just the two things or three things that I said at the beginning of class, and that's what you had to remember versus No, no, this is something that we're all accountable to, throughout and we're getting reminders of it by putting it on a slide and so I'm thinking why don't I do that? I can, it's just something so simple. That's a really good point. Like and

50:00  
To build on what you just said, you'll say. So I think sometimes the reason one of the reasons that norms and things can kind of fail, or these agreements of how we're going to interact in the space fail, or feel like they're failing is because one, we don't revisit them enough. And throughout the year, it's not just that first week or two, where we're setting things up, it happens throughout the year that we come back and revisit. The second thing I would say is, how are you revisiting them? So sometimes I've seen it, we revisit these norms of interaction, or the ways that we've said we're going to interact together. And it only comes up when you violated the norm. Yeah, but why aren't we always attending to when things go Really? Well? Yes. Like, when are we attending to the norms, like, I really liked how you attended to your right, to make mistakes, or right to you know, thinking about tours is right, so the learner and Krystal and kelenic, cragun, her work, shout out that, you know, like, you have the right to say what makes sense to you, and you just did that, thank you for helping me grow. Right? It, it seems like it's, oh, we're gonna have to revisit it. But it's an all those little moments those with Deborah ball causes discretionary spaces, right in the that you make those decisions, that could change the dynamics of what happens in your classroom, where they say better, better caught than taught, right? You know, noticing those, we got all sorts of rhymes. Exactly. So that's how I started off the session. And I am what I found in the spring, what I've done in the spring, and here is, I also take a moment to invite people to kind of just breathe,

51:45  
right? So we come into the space, we're experiencing zoom fatigue, we're still in a global pandemic. There's lots going on. And it manifests itself in our bodies and our minds, our mental health. And so I usually invite everyone in the space to take a few minutes to just follow along with this beautiful like polygon gift, the breathe in breathe out gift is on this slide. And the idea

52:10  
that you can't pour from an empty cup, like you can give and give and give. But what are you doing to fill your cup and so we, I invite you, the people in the space to come and just do a little bit of breathing with me, they can opt out, you might say you might want to turn your camera off for this, feel free to do whatever you need to do to kind of set our intention for learning and community today. Like taking deep breaths in and out relaxing our shoulders, recognizing where we're feeling tension and just letting it go. And knowing that we're in this work together, and we're going to learn a lot from one another. Right, like learning and community but also just recognizing, let's take a breath here. What do we need, and one that we've used with my child, but then I also use it myself is, you know, sometimes we need to take five and if I tell my my youngest to take five, he puts his fingers out this is from the Center for the Healthy Mind automatics in which they probably borrowed it from somewhere, too. But anyway, that's where I learned it. But it would trace your hand and as you go out, you like from my thumb to the tip of my thumb you breathe in. And then when you come back, breathe out and breathe in just tracing your hand. Oh, that's beautiful, good tip. And like, you know, basically to say to my, you know, students or so when I'll go into an elementary classroom, sometimes with my energy I get get them all jacked up, like, Alright, now let's take five and then you know, hey, if they're getting a little accounting practice, especially when they're younger, you know, and they're also like, hey, let's prak practice on recognizing your breath in and out. And we're slow down. And they're following me and they're, you know, just

53:45  
a hands. And then they're getting the counting in there, too. Yeah, that's like that. Yeah. So you're given things not just for yourself, but you're also giving things for your, for your students, right, that guy could be using the future. Yeah, so these next couple of slides 48 through 50 are slides that I got from Theresa wills, and thinking about getting students like it's about student voice. And these slides here in particular, are chicken slides, you can think of the thing about which one doesn't belong. So this slide kind of has that which one doesn't belong feel because you've got the four corners, it has pictures that represent different emotions. And in the middle, we've got a star that it's created a draw pile there, where you can take the star from the draw pile, and you can just drag it along, like I'm really tired today. And your students can just drag stars and kind of put them wherever they're feeling. So it's that check in, right. So I would say when you go into you're starting everything and you're building these relationships, take the temperature of the room, check in with your students. This could be through a visual, it can be through chat, but how are you checking in with them not just taking attendance, right? Like, how are you checking in with how people are feeling in your space?

55:00  
Rather excited, it looks like excited and then I'm angry, I'm tired, you know, like insane. And this draw pile just like you think about it from a game. It's a it's a never ending stack of stock or, well, there's eventually an end to it. But like you make as many stars as you need. And we'll show you there's going to be a slide later to show you how to do that, which I learned. But it's kind of neat, because like, because everyone can be represented on this single slide, which is, and this is anonymous, too, right? So in some of these, it's like you, you go into Google, sometimes you're anonymous, sometimes if you're in the school district, you actually know which person it is by the little bubbles that are that show up. But here's an example where you can take a temperature and it's not any one person singled out like you just got a sense, Oh, looks like a lot of people are feeling very excited today, I'm happy to hear that.

55:48  
The next slide is a variation of that. So it's the same for pictures, but there, she's Teresa wills has put text boxes over them. So you just say I invite you to grab a text box, and then just type in where it is like why you're feeling that way, or you put your name in, but putting it in the different spots gives you information. And the next one is not anonymous. So that's another option where you have the same four pictures. And they're labeled ABC and D. And then there's textboxes, where you can fill in your name, what letter corresponds to the emotion you're feeling? And then why are you feeling that way. So just three variations of kind of a check in, depending on the purpose of the check in and what you want to know from it. What I like about this set of slides, Jen is that it gives, hey, I'm not just I'm doing the same basically doing the same thing we're checking in, I want to know how you're feeling. But it gives different levels of Okay, may I want everyone to be anonymous, or I want people justification or I want that. It's just the reasoning behind it. And so now I can think about doing this with other other images or other things. But now I'm what's the intention behind it? You know, this, you could even use this for,

57:00  
for problems like, Hey, I think the answer to this question is this. Here's my, here's, there's me, there's my letter, here's my rationale. And you get to see what other people have to say. It could be the same sort of thing. And you could do it very anonymous to very,

57:16  
very anonymous, right? So right. And so even though you and I are in math education, you can see about how like you could reach out to other colleagues and say, how might you use this in literature? why might you use this and other

57:30  
things that you teach? It's not just for math teachers? How could you use this particular template and the work that you do with your students?

57:38  
This slide 51 is also another one that Teresa wills created. But this idea of like, what are your successes and celebrations, right, so like, that's another way that you can do a check in with your kiddos with your peers, whoever you're collaborating with, like, what I like about this slide is that it's just blank, right? In terms of it, we've got the background. But let's say that I want students to get used to some of the different Google slide tools, I can say, okay, go grab a shape, but make it a different shape. Go grab a Pentagon, some of you might grab a hexagon, but then you're kind of embedding like, oh, what's a hexagon? What's a pentagon? What if I said, Everyone, everyone to go grab an octagon and fill it in? Right? So that might be some way that you get some?

58:23  
Some formative assessment kind of thing? Yeah. But also getting them familiar with the tools in the space. And they also get to share out what are their successes and celebrations. Right, that was one thing we talked about, like in something else. previous conversations was using a tool in some maybe non threatening or non threat, like low risk ways or low, you know, like, even low academic, just answering some things personally about myself, I know the answer. It's It's my own answer, right? Where I'm using the tool to do that. So now, I'm not thinking about using the tool when I'm doing a letter for maybe a more academic purpose, right? So building in those experiences, as much as you can just even what you said, drag the star, hey, they're figuring out how to drag and drop something within Google Slides. There you go. That could be Yeah, so my dad, I want to be anonymous. I just want to see hey, can you drag something around a Google SWAT? Yeah. And it's a tool that they'll be able to take with them when they collaborate outside of the classroom when we're in the classroom, like in the space that Oh, yeah, I could just use an arrow to show you what I mean. Or, yeah, I think that it's multi layered. I'm getting information about them and their lives and successes that I can revisit next week or the week after I remembered when so and so put this on, because you can invite them to put their names on it or not. Yeah, that's another thing that you could do with that. And then you're you've got more information about your students, and you're starting to see them

59:47  
be able to try to bring their whole selves to that space. And I say that because that transitions nicely into this next slide that I'm showing here. So if I'm asking my students to kind of share

1:00:00  
their experiences themselves and I want them to be able to bring their whole selves to the space, I've got to do that too. Like I need to model ways in which I'm vulnerable. If I say that this is a community of learning, and I'm here to learn from you,

1:00:16  
it's not just about learning from me, then I have to share things about myself. And so this slide is just a set of different pictures. And I have to give a shout out to our good friend, Teddy Chow. Oh, yeah. It because he does a lot of work around digital storytelling. And so he introduced me to this work of digital storytelling, how we, you can use pictures that kind of represent different aspects of your life. And it doesn't have to be just that it could be like, what was mathematics like learning for you. And so these are just images that I put up that represent just a little bit about me that you might not think because when you go into a space, you might look at me, someone might look at you, and they make automatic assumptions about who you are, what you can do, right, that comes into play. And so one way that I know that you and I are actively trying to get people into mathematics, in particular, students of color, going into maybe math, or stem or whatever they want to pursue, is that, that they see that represented in images, right, like representation matters. Um, so that's kind of how I frame this is because I am a biracial, Thai, American. And so my mom is Thai. And she immigrated here, my dad was white. And so being biracial, and growing up in a predominantly white rural area of Kentucky, my experiences might be quite different than you might assume they would be given that what you know about me is that I'm an associate professor, I'm in math education in a math department. That's just one facet of my humanity. So showing pictures and telling the story, honestly, was quite therapeutic for me. I didn't realize how much I needed to tell it

1:02:14  
to people. And, yeah, it shows a more human side of me, I guess, because I think sometimes there's this disconnect between you as an educator, and then your students, right, we talked about how you, you go to the grocery store, and they're like, Miss what, like, why are you at the grocery store? I said, Well, I got it. I got a grocery. Yeah, right, right. And so these images here just kind of represent how I came to where I am today, like, what my journey is.

1:02:43  
Growing up where I did, and how I did had a huge influence on whether or not I spoke up in class on whether or not people thought I was capable,

1:02:55  
to be in that space.

1:02:58  
So all of this, I like this particular picture, some people ask me about this. And the bottom right hand corner of the slide is this person with a green backpack hugging me and you can see the nctm symbol in the background. And this is a special moment for me, because the other slides I had shared in this talk that I gave it, it was the first invited talk for nctm I'd ever given. And this participant came up to me after and asked if they could hug me because they that my story resonated so much with them, because they too were mixed race by racial educator of similar descent. And it just resonated with her because she's like, she told me, I see you. And I value what you say like it was it was pretty beautiful moment. And so it just it reminded me that

1:03:49  
that my mere existence, right can help so many people, right, and representation and those stories that we tell and showing that vulnerability. They just think about how much you share, I mean, just how much is there within six pictures. And then if we give our opportunity for our students to do something similar, and then you and then you get to see probably the intersection of some of these things that they're you know, they're revealing about themselves intersect with others in a class or even with you as an instructor. And it's like, those could be powerful connections or conduits in which again, we all can get better by having those ways of communicating with each other that those connections, those relationships, and, again, figuring out how to do that in a an out of distance. And here's a definite example how to do that. I think if we're asking our students to share, then we should be willing to share ourselves because this is a community for learning. I'm part of that community. And so going into any community space, knowing that I'm here to learn from and with you, right. So it actually reminds me that actually reminds me something

1:05:00  
It is like a conversation we had a pmea years ago. And we're, you know, I had shared some things about my faith and you had a situation a teaching situation that came up where you wanted to have a conversation about that. And that ended up we had, what an hour long conversation? Yeah. Because again, we both knew a little bit about each other, and then able to have that connection, that allowed us to get better that facilitated these conversations have in the future facilitated us being better for our students. It's just, you know, it is one of those things like we do, some people want to be,

1:05:37  
and there's a reasons to be protected about things. And we, you know, we we know that that's that, there's reasons for that, but also to if there's a possibility, if you are, if you do rip model, the kind of relationships or kind of vulnerability you want your students to have in order to, for them to have with their own students to be imperfect. I mean, we can do that we can do that. And there's some beautiful things can happen. And so I don't know, just putting that out there. And I know we both benefited from having that. So yeah. So we've had really good conversations that we have. Yeah, we've had lots of good conversations. Yeah. So just, you know, sharing, sharing our stories, I think brings us closer to people and exercising that you see their humanity, right. And then you can, it just provides a much more

1:06:28  
lively space where people feel like they can be them. Right, right. And you can honor that. And I just talk a little bit about my positionality. Like, I'm still this educator and progress. And then just some questions on kind of how I orient how I teach, like, all students have brilliant ways of knowing. So how do I promote and value students participation in mathematical discourse that position them as mathematically competent? Or take out mathematically and just insert your own? Right? Like, what is your your discipline area? Or how do I cultivate a learning environment where students develop positive mathematical identities and a sense of belongingness?

1:07:07  
Because while I do think students are going to learn the content that's in your course, if you think about things that are really powerful for you, it's about how you felt maybe in that space, that experience you had, hopefully it was a positive one, but negative ones should have just as much power. Right. Right. And so that's why I say people first before the content, because it's about those experiences that you have, and those feelings that get generated in those spaces. Yeah, and then, you know, shout out to our friend, Mandy, again, right? Like, how do you learn to shift students views from of competence from performative, to participant to worry? And then in my own work? How do I move it from it's about the individual to the collaborative, I feel like students have a lot of experience doing things individually. But there's power in collaboration, we hear this a lot be like the collectivism, right? collaboration, what does it look like? And have you felt that power before? Right?

1:08:07  
And so yeah, building relationships, and then the next set of slides are just really, like, what are some ways that you can get to know your students like something that's really popular right now? Is that this or that?

1:08:19  
Right? Do you like sweet? Or do you like savory? Do you like pasta? Do you like pizza, and so on this particular slide, set up one of those, this or that and four different columns, and each student can kind of put their name in a column, and then they grab these checkmark draw piles, and they just put in where, what they prefer, and then you can send them to breakout groups, and they can talk about the different preferences they had. And you can then take the data that's generated from this. And you can make like bar charts and graphs and have a data analysis, but it's generated from what they like, right? what's beautiful here is then you show this whole setup that we've got this or that set up the breakout groups, and then the roles and then a slide for what are the the the definitions for what is going into each role. And the turn taking protocol is very explicit there and then a slide for each group to then go and engage in that within their breakout groups. It's, and this is kind of going to be reflected throughout what we're going to show going forward with tasks but like, how can you use these slides to set everyone up to having every group having their color, every color, being very explicit about what what is being expected? from folks? It's kind of a beautiful thing. Yeah, like so slide 61 through 65. Like when you open up the slide deck, you're gonna be like, Oh my gosh, these are a lot of slides, but in some cases, it's multiple. It's just duplicate so you can kind of see what it would look like in a slide deck. So as Joel said, You've got I've got these five slides in the background for my first slide is purple because breakout group one is

1:10:00  
My purple team and it's explicitly written in words, but also you have a purple background. And then within the slide itself, I've hyperlinked by highlighting the turn taking protocol text, hyperlinked it back to the slide that describes the protocol. Or I have the list of the the purple team who's in the purple team, there's an image that I snapshot it of, like, here's the task, monitor the different roles, and then it's also hyperlinked. So you can go back to the description of the roles at any time. And that's done for each of these slides like my next slide, breakout group twos, the blue slide, and breakout group threes, the red team, and so on and so forth. And so they, they go and they collaborate in their slides, they're in their breakout rooms, and I can see all the checkmarks moving around, and then I can hop around and see, see what's going on in the conversations that are happening, I can jot down some of the things that I heard, so that when we come back the whole group, if we have a whole group discussion around those, like, what did you like this or that, that I can call upon people or invite people to share their ideas. And something to again, going back to resilient, like, this is something you could totally use in a face to face environment as well, giving everyone access to the thing, but everyone can also see it at the same time. It's, it's, it'd be better than having a chart paper that's only facing one way. In a Yeah, right.

1:11:20  
But you can also think of it that way. What are ways that I've used chart paper in my classrooms? Could I take that idea and move it into the virtual space? Or my gallery walks when I do gallery walks, what are those? That's the nice thing about slides, right? Because now I can take a virtual like a gallery walk within the slides.

1:11:40  
The next set of slides are just ways that I've gotten to know my students. So Sarah van der werf has a lot of great resources on her site, one of which I know has been super popular is name tense. And so these name tents that you can use in the face to face you've got a table, it's like a just think about a name tent, right? You just fold your cardstock. And inside the cardstock is printed

1:12:05  
a table that has like the first five days. And then it's a two row table that has like five columns. Let's just go with five days. And then you have a prompting question.

1:12:16  
You might say,

1:12:19  
what's your What's your favorite book? Or video? Or what do you like to do in your spare time, some kind of prompt, and then the student will write their response. And then as the teacher I would go in and I would respond back to them. That's a physical nameplate, they would at the end of every day and they turn it in, I fill it out, give it back to them the next day they get to see. And that way we can communicate across so I thought what what does that look like in the digital space? So Sarah, had posted work by Kristin fosse and her Twitter handle is here, but she created name tents through Desmos.

1:12:54  
Right. Yeah.

1:12:56  
It's wonderful. Right. And so one of the things I mentioned for the listeners out there is that when you go to the slide deck, make sure that you click on some of the images, because a lot of the images I have in here have been hyperlinked. Yeah, there's links everywhere. There's links everywhere. So if you're not sure, just you mean just click on the image and it may be already hyperlinked. So this one is where it's Kristen's development of the the name tense, you can go in and look at that Desmos activity. desmos now has a a feedback feature where once a student put something in, you can respond back to them, which is perfect for the name tense. There's also an image and a link to 100 different prompts that you can use. So sometimes I'm not the most creative, and I have to think about the prompts. But here you go, 100 prompts, 100, choose from there, and then have them respond and you can respond. And it's the name test is great because it also has the ability to upload a picture. And then it has the picture and then it has the name tag right next to them. So then you have a picture in the name tag within Desmos. And these name tents when you're responding. so wonderful.

1:14:02  
flipgrid is another resource. And we've been using flipgrid that's Yeah, I think it's great i you know, students can go in and kind of respond through reflection, they can share their work, you can make the make them private or public, right? Students can comment and other students or you can just make it where it's the student and the teacher. But it's a quick way to or another venue right for students being able to show their understanding of whatever concept or topic or that you've been talking about in class.

1:14:36  
The next slide of slides like 7372

1:14:40  
listeners are probably like 7372

1:14:44  
it's just a more around that digital storytelling. So I have a snapshot of the story and pictures that I told and what I one of the things that I have here is that there's a description of like, share or create two visuals that are best for people.

1:15:00  
Your feelings and experiences learning math, describe how these visuals represent your feelings. So what I might do is invite the students to create their own Google slide.

1:15:11  
And this, these would be the prompts, and then have them create their Google Slides, upload their Google slide into classroom or whatever platform you're using, and then have it, have all those slides, put them in a slide deck, and then have everyone do a gallery walk to kind of look at the different things they see. And then I might do.

1:15:31  
I learned this from teaching tolerance, constructive, listening, dyad, like a protocol where I could pair you off. And then you have a timer, and you have like two minutes to address each of the prompting questions I have around your math, geography, if you will. And then you have to listen generously. And then the other person takes two minutes. And they only take the two minutes to share their story.

1:16:00  
And then there's again, an activity where you're getting to you have slides of the different ways that students think about themselves and with respect to mathematics, or their own identity as learners. And then you can have them talk to each other and get to know each other, you can do a gallery walk around the images. But and this is something that I am totally replacing, because I would have my students do math history, none of mythography, math, history, and all one word, and we would

1:16:28  
do it as paper. And it's like, a lot of papers to read versus like images, I think might be more powerful, right? Something to, to kind of show and like how

1:16:39  
a lot of you, that's how we communicate, right? A lot of times it's through images, like a lot like how much has been said in your the six images that you've selected for yours. It's almost like instantaneous versus like, right? And then we can have conversations around that. Right, right thinking about what are the different ways that we can express what we know and communicate it, it doesn't always have to be written. It doesn't always have to be oral, it could be through images, it could be maybe a so many other ways that I haven't even thought about, right. But it's that journey of figuring that out that can open up doors for more people being able to share who they are. And their thinking. It looks like the rest of the lots of different prompts and things and ways to communicate.

1:17:23  
Communicate some some thoughts, like again, took a look back at Digital Storytelling from Teddy challenge, probably shout out there. And then. And then even the ideas about smart anuses and math and like, given some prompts that way. Yeah. So this the next set of slides is really looking at like how do we cultivate what it means to be smart and math and like, what we want to do is, this is just an activity where for the first for the next three minutes individually, think about three different ways you're smart in math. And then we're trying to broaden the notion of what it means to do mathematics and who can be met do mathematics, right. But in particular, it's not just about calculations and procedures. There's lots of things that we do that are very mathematical, right, that aren't focused on performing. And so generating those what what does it mean to be smart in math. And then I just the next couple slides are just slides that have a background of note cards. It's a decorative background, but they just grab a text box and drop in what are the different ways that that they're smart in math.

1:18:25  
Here's yet another one, that's just a bunch of cloud bubbles that have created a background. So you might be like, oh, what do you mean background, so you can create slides. And maybe there's parts of your slides that you don't want removed. This is key, this is very key, this is very key, because things will go around everywhere once people start collaborating. And so there's going to be pieces of your slide, you don't want moved if you design that ahead of time. And you know, these are the pieces I don't want to move, then you can

1:18:54  
take that slide and you go over here, I'll just do it, you go to File, download and then and later on in the slide deck, there's actually a video on how you do this. So no worries if you don't get to this particular part in the zoom session here we have recorded and then you just save it as a jpg.

1:19:13  
And then if you once you've saved it as a JPEG wherever you've saved it, you can open up an add like a blank slide, and then go to the word background in your toolbar and you can choose the image from wherever you've saved it.

1:19:30  
And then drop it in there and it makes that background and there you go. None of the things are gonna move on that side that you just made. Yeah, and again, that's key because especially when you have things that you want, like the thing where you want people to drag around stars, if you just had a bunch of images that you're that you're dragging stars on to all of a sudden they're gonna be dragging those images around and like now you don't know who's picking what and for it like you only want things to move that you want the students to move so again, make everything else the the

1:20:00  
background image. So, image never, I mean, that was one of those like, ah, I mean, it makes sense. It's just like, it's one of the things like that we need, we need each other to help there. And it's not something that you would have thought of necessarily until you experienced it. Right. So in the spring, I was doing Venn diagram work for sorting shapes with my students, and they kept moving the circles and I was like, oh, man, I shouldn't make the circles not move. Okay, how do I do that?

1:20:27  
Right, right. So then, you know, you check out Google. Yeah. Well, what's cool here is like, I mean, you've got how many different ways here to show to do this one thing about how to be smart? And like thinking about, again, one for any teacher, like you can change that to whatever content you're doing. Right? What does it mean to be? You know, if I'm teaching French, what does it mean to be a French speaker, like proficient in French? What does that mean? or What does it look like to be, you know, a good reader or whatever, like a reader. And we have different ideas about what that is. And so all these different ways that we can communicate that, you know, clouds and things, yeah, word clouds that you know, there's a Google app, add on called slideshow that'll create a glue like a word cloud for you. So you could just have them get off their devices, go to this website, put in the word that makes the smart. And then it creates this word cloud, there's another one called mentee that you could also use, it would create the world word cloud. And one of the things I liked about it is it and we talked about this before, it has a profanity filter and all the languages so if that's something that you're worried about, then minty might be an option for you there. Someone's gonna swear in Dutch, you're ready to texture.

1:21:43  
And then it's still kind of like, it's all that setup. The I mean, a big chunk of these slides are like, how do you set up that going into the first couple of weeks like, this is our classroom, like what makes you comfortable in a classroom? What helps you learn math in a group. And so this next structure is just some slides laid out to? Okay, here's a slide that specifically says you have eight minutes to work on

1:22:07  
the prompting questions that were in the previous slide, I'm going to use the simple tab timer extension we talked about before to set the timer. And then the next set of slides are just like individual slides that are color coded. So I have four people and the purple group, I have four purple slides. And each slide has for those four prompting questions in a text box that they can respond to. And they just grab one of the slides like I'm going to take the first slide, and then Joe is going to take the second slide, and then they're working individually on those eight minutes in their sides.

1:22:42  
Yeah, and then you as the instructor can quickly cruise through. So yeah, you do have, you know, so many slides, but it's really quick to see like, oh, there's not a lot of action happening is like what's going on? Is there. I mean, it's just like walking around the classroom. You're just cruising around these slides. Exactly. Yeah. And then just some transition slides. So one of the things that our listeners have probably noticed if they've gone into different webinars is that sometimes you get sent to breakout rooms. But then you're like, what were we supposed to do? Yeah, like, what were the prompting questions? Did somebody take a screenshot of that? slideshow in the first room? Were those Oh, my goodness, yeah. Right. And so just as when educators were engaged in facilitating our lessons, we have to think about our transitions. Same thing in the virtual space, how are we going to transition from one activity to the next, or one discussion to the next. And so the next slides are just some examples of things that you might do. Like I have transition slides, where they may just be images, like here, I have an image of the Google jam board icon, an image of the mic, a timer, like a little clock image, Padlet icon or like a little pencil colored pencils. And so these images represent, hey, these are the resources that you'll need for our next activity. And it's in a slide, they can always like, Okay, I need to go get paper, I need to make sure my mics working, or I need a timer, or whatever it is they need. But I also have it in written form. So like for the next breakout activity and just written out, you could have your icons in there too. But before I transition them into the breakout group, here are the things that we're going to need to know. Are there any questions? What questions do you have? drop them in the chat? Is everyone ready? Give me a thumbs up in the participant window if you're ready to go, and then send them to their breakout groups. But those slides are there. So then they get in the breakout groups and they're like, what are we supposed to do they know that once you've got that routine of Oh, remember the instructions and transitions are always a couple before our group activity, especially thinking about if you're using zoom and you're setting up your breakout rooms and like you know if you have to manually do it or you're you know, whatever there's there's a time for transition that's happening there. You're waiting for people to go into the

1:25:00  
rooms, hey, you're telling them exactly what they need to do to prepare and it doesn't get to be. I got in there now we're gonna now got to cruise around to every breakout room, hey, you need this, this and that. And like, no, it's like set it up. So you're, you're not wasting time. So exactly this slide 110 is another way to organize that transition and the breakout activity. This again is from Teresa wills, where she has different text boxes and it says insert group structure here you doing pairs or triads. So it's also a reminder for you that transition, when you're going through this, like, How much time will there be? What are the instruction, and here are the links that you need for this activity. So it's all in one slide. It's there, it can help you as the educator, but also your students and what what should be going on? All right, Jen. So the next 100 slides are

1:25:55  
not exaggerating.

1:25:57  
Example tasks, and you know, we're not going to walk through every single one, but I wonder if there's something that would kind of, and so again, they're all set up. So like, these could be used by Jen in tomorrow, if she's got the right numbers set up for, you know, with the groups and all that. But if there's a few of them that you want to just highlight that kind of take out these principles of, I mean, we've kind of gotten some things from the building relationships sort of section of this tools. But I mean, like, you're trying to do things that people probably haven't thought about, like trying to do complex instructions, again, group work that's trying to break down some of the power dynamics that are that can typically exist within whenever we use groups, when you're trying to do that. And so there's lots of different structures here. So I don't know, is there one in one or two tasks in particular, you want to highlight?

1:26:52  
Um, I think about that. So I think across the task, one big theme is that you want to set up the test, but I always think about students need to be doing, right, like, they don't need to hear from me constantly. So how am I setting up the tasks so that it requires them to, to make a video or to go grab an image or to type in some text or to create an audio file or something, right? Because that thinking about those, like, okay, maybe this task, how long is it going to take? Are they doing something? Are they reflecting are they writing? Are they engaging, and in doing so I think across the task, what I've tried to do is keep it where students are having to do something in that movement, where they're able to show their voice and their thinking. So like this first task is similar to another task where it's basically set up where go find an image, like we're talking about the mythography, or digital digital storytelling, go find an image that represents some this whatever your prompt is, like, what was the transition like for you? That's one that my colleagues crystal colonic Craig and Naomi Jessup Jews when we facilitated a session, thinking about equity in the in the virtual environment, like what's the transition look like for you set up the slides, and then just go find all the funny gifts, it's actually a nice way to get people talking to each other, like, some of the gifts are really funny. But that's something that you could do or a similar task that's in there is same structure is what is six feet look like? We're in a global pandemic, they keep telling us social distancing, what is six feet look like? And then let's find some mental rulers of six feet. So you're kind of engaging in like estimation, you're looking at your measurement tool. you're engaging in Oh, I'm being socially responsible, and making sure that I'm six feet apart. Right. And I think some of the images that you had with the

1:28:52  
with the shopping carts, yeah, shopping carts, a moose,

1:28:57  
Canada, better Canadian folks to like a hockey stick. Yeah, or Wisconsin badger football fan, I talked about buches ax, they kind of used to throw that out there or a cow, maybe.

1:29:09  
But they're doing something right. Like they're learning. They're, they're bringing in images that resonate with them that give them these mental rulers and engaging in safe distancing for the pandemic that we're in right now. So they just dropped those slides in. The ordering number task is one of those when we were talking about ci and how to make a task so that it requires the intellectual efforts of everyone in the group, but also a wide range of strengths. And so with this one, it's basically a game board, right where you can drag cards and you're ordering different representations of quantity, and then having to come up with a different strategy for ordering them. So this is very interactive. The students each find their corner of the board, it's color coded only they can move certain cards

1:29:59  
and that's

1:30:00  
communicated by color again. So like the purple group has purple background, but then each, each player of the four within the group, and again, they can only move their cards is. So each player is indicated by a different color, shade of different color. And their get to move the cards. And when we did this in in physical form, it was really nice, you had a card that you would write your name on, and only you can move that card. And so now how you're signifying it is by color. And so put it wanting to put these cards in order so that they match, or they are in sequence from least to greatest. And what's great about this task is that again, it was a way to translate something that you know, I thought was a, it was a very physical task, there's a lot of cutting and putting things together and clipping things. And then here's a set of slides that I can then translate into a online environment. And what's cool is that you created ways to hop back and forth between two slides and where there's a typing icon, where if you click the typing icon, you go to where you're supposed to write your justifications. What is this? Or what are the strategies you use to order the quantities like we compared to we saw common numerators, we saw common denominators, we, you know, translated something to a fraction or a decimal. And so anyway, and then once you've recorded your strategies, it's hyperlinked back with another round on that recording page to get you back to the game board. And so just being able to like that's another thing like hyperlinking, back to resources that they might find helpful within the task

1:31:38  
is something that I try to do across the tasks. And what's cool about this, this activity is I can use this sorting activity with anything that I want things to be put in some order, I could use,

1:31:52  
you know, I could use it as a timeline, I could use it in, you know, ordering, or grouping

1:31:59  
different functions of different degrees or different, I mean, different ways of putting graphs and tables and different representations of different things together. So there's all sorts of ways we could use that set up.

1:32:13  
Which is kind of cool. So yeah, the next set, like that highlight I would just like probably bring out is again, getting students to move things right and talk to each other and collaborate. One that I like is our good fat friend, Matt. Felton, Kessler, yes, has has a great YouTube channel where he is known as mathy, Matt. And so in this, the timing back in the spring, he created videos in response to how we were all teaching now created these videos. And it happened to be that he had created some ones around area and I was doing area we were talking about the concept of area. So this was set up, I had students work individually on finding the area of different shapes, only using their knowledge of the area of a rectangle. So they would do that individually. Then they came into groups. And that was the session for the day. And I said for homework, I want you to finish that out. They came back to class the next day, what am I going to have them do? So I consult my good friend, Matt here, and I'm like, let's watch a video of Matt talk about the different strategies like informal area strategies. And so what they did is they watched the video. And then they each have their own color coded slide. And it's a card matching based on the video. So I have images snapshots from the video. So I learned this from one of Teresa wills PD that it's very helpful if you can take screenshots of the exact thing they saw in the videos that when you go to do a card store, or you go to do something else, it sparks that kind of memory.

1:33:45  
And so with this one, they have different strategies, they can move the cards like maybe this is the the chunking strategy down here. And then the chunking strategy description card, they move it, they double click, and then they can put this in here. What I like about this task that I'll bring up is that this is a task I could see easily being adapted for group group collaboration around it, because you're working together to try to describe the strategies. But this can also be one that if I had a student who wasn't able to be with us that day, they could go into the slide. Or they could give them a blank slide, they could watch the video and do this themselves. Right. So this has the potential for collaboration, but can also be done individually if the student wasn't able to meet with us,

1:34:30  
in person. And then just some reflection slides now I want you to think about each person, how do your strategies or your group strategies connect to what you saw Matt doing his video? What's the same? What's the different How might you apply these strategies in a different for different shapes? And so that process of reflection in each of those tasks that you bring? So I think that we've talked about collaboration but also thinking how do you get students to reflect upon collectively

1:35:00  
You were able to learn from one another through the task. And what I like about these is that okay, now I've got these think pair shares slides, I can use these whenever I want to do this structure. Again, same thing as I would have certain, like my core set of structures that I would use in my class. Now I can have sets of slides that dict that are demonstrating that and then use those within my future classes like, Hey, we're going to do another thing fareshare, we recognize the visuals, and we can put those into play. So Oh, this is nice. Yeah, when you work, student work. So another one that I've done is like, we were sorting shapes. And I had given them a homework like for prompting like tasks, where they had to create the Venn diagrams, relating, let's say, the set of squares and the set of rectangles, right, create a Venn diagram. So they did that work individually. And I said, upload it to our, you know, Google Classroom or detail or whatever platform you're using. And then I went through and I selected right as part of our five practices selected certain work, right? for a purpose, that whatever the learning goal is, right, picked it out, and then put in samples of student work, and then ask them to do a notice and wondering. So I set up little text boxes, as you can see, on this slide, I have four samples of student work around drawing a Venn diagram, relating the set of squares and the set of rectangles. And then, like a

1:36:25  
table with two columns that have little text boxes that are color coded. And looking at what do you notice, what do you wonder around these four solution representations. And so they could do that across each of the four problems. So this is a different structure than the each group has. Its that each, all the groups are going to go into the one slide and find their little text box color, and then talk of their noticing and wondering that way, when we go to whole group, and we go across the four different questions, they can see the responses across all of the groups. I don't know if that explains it really well. But like, maybe when they look at the slides? Oh, no, I think it I think it does. I mean, again, it's a Now again, it's another structure where I've got a way that I can use student group, I can put the prompt that I use for that student that work. And then I've got, I've already used color coding for each of my groups in my groups can see, oh, each group is going to have a notice in wondering for each of these sets, right? And so what am I going to notice? Or, you know, what do we notice? What do we wonder, and those, again, create good conversations, and it leans on something that I know what we're supposed to be doing, because we want to position our students to be doing things within class and not just sitting and listening to us, right? And they could go across and use the tools like, Are there certain wonderings that resonate with you, or serve at noticings? And then they can go use the tools and checkmarks in different scribble tools or emojis or whatever. And then it's like, oh, a lot of people are really wondering about this wondering, yeah, and then that can give you information on how to carry out the whole group discussion.

1:38:09  
So I'm going to skip down, because I think that's pretty good highlights of the tasks. What do you think, Joe? Yeah, that's pretty good. So just that bit about on to 20. Here's some different ways to get students like in self reflection, getting some of that formative assessment, if you will, like what's going to guide your instruction moving forward. Teresa wills had a nice like Tweet Deck type of slide where it's got the what has been successful so far, in your learning over our time together this week. I think that was my prompting question. But I used her for slide there. And it's just got this tug of war where it's easy for me hard for me and you just go grab

1:38:47  
a text box or shape or whatever and put in like, Where are you along this kind of this rope that looks like tug of war was easy for me on one end and hard for me on the other

1:38:58  
end, you got the stoplight. I like the stoplight. And then Teresa wells had this three to one template that I really like. What three things you learn today, what are what's three things you learn? What are two things you're wondering about? And what's one thing you're ready to try. That might be a nice one to do at the end of a week like you've gone through like a week or two. This might be a nice one to do. There's also the the compass points template that you might use where it's like north, south east, west, the directions. What's something you need to know what's something you're excited? What's your stance worrisome? And you could have little prompting questions again.

1:39:36  
I really like this, this slide on to 25. It's a reflections prompt from growing professionally from Jenny Bay Williams and Karen Karp where

1:39:48  
the prompting questions are what are three main points? What are two things that hold square with your beliefs. One thing that's going around and around in your head and one thing that costs you reflect on your own beliefs or practices. So you can

1:40:00  
Adopting and change those up. But I use this a lot when I have students do a reading. So this could be a reading reflection responses to those, or maybe it's an activity that we did or a discussion that we had. And that's one where I translated, translated into the virtual space. Yeah. And it points it again, it's one thing to that, overall, this thing points you at doing something with like the reading, like, I'm just reading it to read it. No, no, I'm looking for three main points and two things, you know, like, I'm looking for these things, like, again, you're it's versus passive versus active. Like, I think you're leaning when you give those prompts like you leaning in.

1:40:39  
Exactly, in the very last section of this immense site.

1:40:45  
It's just some Virtual Manipulatives and other resources that I found helpful. So one thing that is just amazing. I've talked about Theresa wills quite a bit and her work. So on slide 227, there's a direct link to the different templates and PDS that she is offered it is amazing, I highly recommend it. Yes. And very appreciative of the work that she's doing for our community. Another couple of links that I have here for todos todos has been holding a lot of professional development, a focus on mathematics for all students with a focus on sorry, excellence, equity, social justice, a lot of phenomenal people doing work.

1:41:26  
There, and a lot of professional development sessions, as well as nctm has had 100 days of professional learning. All those videos that they've had are available up until October to go there. They have live webinars right now, through October, and then you can go back and look at video recordings.

1:41:44  
There's also a couple of links here, the of different people who have put together just like pages of resources from our community, like thinking about which one doesn't belong to Virtual Manipulatives

1:42:00  
that I have here, some different links that you can hop onto I know a lot of people are looking for Virtual Manipulatives or other tools or strategies and resources. So I've hyperlinked them here. And so it's like other people that have done what you have done collecting things together. And so these are, it's it's like a like a meta

1:42:22  
data collection.

1:42:24  
I'm trying to find this Oh, let me go find this. Yeah, in our meta collection of Okay, I know that Janet Nova koski, she did a nctm session was wonderful, where she has a blog where she put in all these different virtual manipulative sites and places you can go to for that. And so I was like, Oh, I will just, here's her her Twitter, little tweet that she put out. And so I just hyperlinked it there. And the very last set of slides are just things that I found helpful when creating these slides, like, on 229, how to remove backgrounds from images. So depending on what kind of slide deck you have, you might find that, oh, there's multiple ways to get images. This was just one that I was like, there's just times when I want to remove a background from an image. And I just didn't know about the site. And then I learned over the last few months, oh, hey, I can do that. Like you mentioned before, Joel, how to create a draw pile. So this is hyperlink to Teresa wills video, she calls it, how to clone hack. It's a Google hack for cloning. So that's how you create those draw piles. There's video linked right there.

1:43:31  
We talked about the background slides, how you create a background slide. So things are moving. There's a video that Teresa, she created there, and she calls it how to lock slides. So I just said how to create backgrounds, the locks background, because some people are like, oh, but I don't know, if I want to give my students editing access. Can I lock down the whole thing? And as far as I know, you can't. You either let them all do all the things or none of them there is you can't lock a particular slide. So the best next best thing is like, here's something that can't move.

1:44:04  
And then Google Translate, I embed that in a lot of places, like think about the words that you put in different slides that you might want to hyperlink those words, a to Google Translate so that your students can go and oh, let's see what this word means. And maybe a different language, where like, we'll go ahead. And again, Teresa, will she has a video that I've hyperlinked in here about another trick, Google Translate hack for distance learning. What I like about these three slides is, again, we're using a similar format, so I know exactly what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to I can click on the link, I'm going to get a video. And then I've got more like demonstration from a visual on the right. And so each of these slides, the one for me, Jen, it's like I don't have to think all that much. Oh, I want to show a video and give a little explanation on how to do something. Yeah, I'm going to copy this slide. I'm going to put the title of what I'm doing.

1:45:00  
I'm going to link the video onto the TV. And I'm going to put a little image on the other side or some text description. And boom, I'm done for me, for me being that perfectionist like, like, I have this format down, I've decided it's done. And

1:45:15  
but now my students know what to do. I don't have to make it. No, I don't have to make some cute new thing every time. No, no, this is gonna signify video direction. And I know what to do here. So it's like, I love this part of it. Yeah, it's because I see it. And they're like, Oh, I know that this has a video embedded. Now you might have to explain why there's these little antanas coming out of the

1:45:39  
right, or what are those?

1:45:41  
What are those? What is that? Like? Why is there not just a big screen like a screen?

1:45:47  
And then

1:45:50  
why is it a piece of furniture?

1:45:52  
Right. Now this image? That's exactly what it looks like? And I think that yeah, I mean, we're old enough where we remember having that exact TV in our home. Oh, yeah. Console TV, you put some put some artwork on top of it, man.

1:46:09  
tray, can eat dinner on top of it. It's like the two blue out and you're like, What's that? What's that mean? Yeah, the two TVs and this. So this slide we're getting towards the end here has been really helpful for me. So again, like I said, I had used PowerPoint before and how do you you know, move slides from one PowerPoint to another, I would just copy over. And I know people do that with Google Slides. And then I learned that you could import slides from other previous PowerPoint or sorry, Google Slides that you created. And you don't have to import the whole slide deck, you can pick particular ones. And so like you said, If you know that this format works for you, like with the TV, you know that you did that yesterday, just grab that slide and put it into your next slide deck. That's a nice again, that's something I learned is beautiful. That's a beautiful thing, especially if I just have images on it, right? It just says header file, go to import sides. This is what it looks like. And so it's like explanations through visuals. So doesn't always have to be a video. Right? I think it's great you put video in. But you can also just as you see, probably throughout this whole thing that I do a lot with like inserting images. Yep. Lots of arrows and things. Yeah. Again, coming up with the way to communicate. And just being consistent with it's going to be go for long. go a long way with helping your students understand what you're trying to get across, get across. Yeah. And this very, very last slide is an idea that I got both from Teresa wills. This is her the slide that she created that's on her website. But also this idea from Katherine gay, I got that have a virtual parking lot at the end of your slide deck so that at any point during the session that you have with people, if they have questions that maybe they can't ask right this moment, or you don't want to put it in chat just yet, go ahead and just drop it into the very last slide of the deck. And you can say that at the very beginning of your session, if you have questions throughout go ahead and drop them into those virtual parking lot. And I'll get to it at the very end. Or if other students end up going there other people they might be able to answer the question for you again, that collective idea that collaboration, you might have a question that Oh, Jen can answer somebody else in the community can answer. It doesn't have to be just me. And so there's that space for that.

1:48:34  
That's awesome. And again, that's something that I did, I would have like, hey, uses Google form to provide me any questions to get answered. But I knew I would do that. And it's like, well, I wanted them questions beforehand. But how many people have questions like how many people know the questions that they're going to have about class before class? Like this is like, Hey, we acknowledge that during class, there's going to be a time for a question. And it might get answered with your group, but it might not. So let's make sure to put it at the end. And then or put it on that parking lot, slide it there, that's always going to be there, again, another structure that it's going to be there. And so we're going to make sure that those questions get answered. If it doesn't get answered today. I've got it written out, I could bring it to the next day. And exactly, put it on something else. That's just kind of like a highlight of things. Like I've got a lot more that I've done, but I was trying to put together something that I could share with others that kind of gets like big ideas or things and structures that you could try out, right? Well, we are. I am just so excited that you're you're willing to share it and willing to put the time into the that we could create this video, and that we could share it through the podcasts. And I think a lot of the things a lot of the thinking behind some of this stuff. I think that's a helpful thing to communicate here and thinking about how do we how do we teach better? How do we handle the current situation that we're in but then also, how do we just use it as an opportunity to again think about how to teach better, so it no matter if we're faced

1:50:00  
To face or online, that we're doing things that limit the amount of like havoc that if we have to switch happens, and we can focus more on our students and more on providing that caring environment that that we need that we all need to be caring for each other. And I can't do that if I'm converting all my instruction. And so, again, Jen, thank you so much for wanting to share. This is a this is, I mean, I think that's how we grow and we learn and then yeah, I mean, I've benefited greatly from a lot of the things that other people have shared, right. So I, I wouldn't be able to do what I just did here had there not been resources out there that other people have shared, to be able to create this. And then I can think about my own situation and adapted. And so this, there's got to be, I hope, a few things throughout here that resonate with other people, even if it's just one or two things, right, that they feel like, Oh, I hadn't thought about that. I can tackle it this way. Oh, that's not too bad. Look, this templates already there. Okay, so I just need to modify it. Right. So um, hey, Jen, if you could not share your screen and more than we can see. Yeah. And then we're gonna, gonna close out with one more question. And that question is, what is the best thing you do for your teaching?

1:51:20  
What? What is the best thing to you do to help your teaching?

1:51:24  
Oh, that's such a good question. So I think the best thing that I do for my teaching is that

1:51:34  
I try to be really reflective like I going into the learning space, it is a community of learning, and I am part of that community. So if something goes really well, what was it not just me, but my students, the whole community that made that thing really awesome? Or if something doesn't go as planned, or something didn't work out as I had hoped? What was it about the community? It's not just me, it's not just the students, but as a whole, like, and how would I how does that change? So really thinking about collaboration and collectivism to move the thinking and the ideas and the community forward? So I'm, I try to be purposeful and reflecting on

1:52:22  
our space and learning together, but also problematizing? My practice, I think that there are things that we wrestle with that we need to pause, like, I get this a lot from Katherine gay, right, that idea of pausing and thinking about, like, why are you doing what you're doing? Who is it for the benefit of the community? And I think that's really helped frame my thinking. And I think I'm a better educator, because of that, because I look at it as I'm an educator in progress, right? Like thinking about the work of Mandy, right? We're never done, right? Woman finished work. Oh, yeah, we just get better each day. But it's because we come to the space honoring one another, seeing one another's humanity. And just being I think that's probably the best thing I can do for my teaching is recognizing that every time I step into a space, I'm really excited because it's, it's different. We have different students, we have a different community and like, I get to learn from people, I get to learn about them, I get to learn about myself, and I get to learn about us in community. That's what I think is the best

1:53:29  
thing I get to meet awesome people like you job to have time with you. Well, that's what I was just thinking, I mean, in all our conversations, and even like having the conversation that was at the beginning of this transition instruction and the global pandemic. And thinking about when you're on the teaching man teaching podcast and the way you were talking, I was like, man she is, she's thought a lot about some of the issues that we're all dealing with. But at the same time, she's presenting all these additional ideas and questions and things that she's still thinking about. And like, you know, it could have been really easy, Jen for you just to say like to position yourself like, yeah, I figured a lot of this stuff out and just do that. But you never do that. Like it's always this, like, I'm here, but here are the things that I need to keep growing on. And here are the things and then also, what do you have to offer about like those things I need to keep and it's like, right, for the for for everyone. And it's not. It's always putting this loving, caring way. And that's, that's beautiful. That's so nice. Wow, you're so nice. It's just so great. But

1:54:37  
anything, anything else to share with it before we close out here?

1:54:42  
Yeah, I mean, a couple of things. I would just say, just remember, you can't do all the things on a global pandemic. And I want to say that you are enough. I think we can be really hard on ourselves and we don't think about how you are enough and I know that everyone is really going in there with the best intentions.

1:55:00  
To help our community so like, let's let's lean on one another honor one another, to move us forward.

1:55:08  
Yeah, I was I was asked recently about what's one book I would recommend, and I know if you remember this one from my earlier episode of the podcast, it was rest. Like, a if we're gonna be doing good work, we also need to have good rest, especially right now. And like, I think about that image that you had in the slide deck of like, but having an empty cup like camp for out if there's nothing in there, like, and just care self care. And you are enough. That's that's a that's a good one. Um, so thank you, Jen. Thank you for sharing. No, thank you. I love this. This is great.

1:55:48  
All right, there was two hours of fun, but hopefully you got as much out of it as I did. And I know a lot of folks out there are getting a lot of value out of that conversation and in the the amazing resource that Jen has put out there. All the links will be at in our show notes. You find that the teaching math teaching podcast

1:56:09  
website, and you can also look for it at the m&m planet podcast episode avodat planet.com, forward slash Episode 29. So thanks again, for listening to the teaching math teaching podcast. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast. We hope that you were that you were able to implement something that you just heard. I hope you do because there's lots to implement there and take an opportunity to interact with other math teacher educators.