0:00 (Marissa Naab from Lightspeed Systems)

Good morning, and thank you for joining us. I am Marissa Naab, I am on the Lightspeed Systems Webinar team, And I have the pleasure of facilitating today’s discussion, the most essential tools for remote learning. 

2:42 

Before we get started, I just want to cover a couple of quick housekeeping items. We will be recording this session, and we will be sending out the link to the recording once the session concludes. 

2:52 

We also will be taking questions from the audience in the last 5 to 10 minutes of the session, so if at any point during the presentation you have any questions, you would like to ask, please drop those in the chat box and we will make sure to get to them. 

3:04 

We also will be sharing Janet’s link to her presentation in the chat. So if you would like to follow along, you can do so there. 

3:13 

Without further ado, I am thrilled to introduce Janet Corder. Janet, would you like to tell us a little bit more about yourself? Yes, Marissa, thank you very much and for some reason, my camera is not projecting today. Whoops. I’m going to show my screen. For some reason, my camera’s not projecting but that’s OK. You can still hear my voice. 

3:36 

And I am a retired educator. I spent 33 plus years in education as a classroom teacher, an instructional technologist on the campus. And then as a district instructional technology coordinator in Texas you will hear a Texas accent from me, born and bred Texas and very proud of that. So now, what I do is I’m a consultant. 

4:01 

And I go around the country when I’m able to training teachers and administrators on how to effectively integrate technology into their curriculum. And right now, I’m desperately miss going into onto campuses, and into districts and conferences and things like that. But I’m going to go ahead and get started with my presentation. And what I’m sharing today, I’m using Nearpod to present from the main reason why is because that allows me to have an interactive presentation. And now, we have Google Slides. And we have PowerPoint, Prezi and …. 

4:37 

Tons of different ways that we can get content out to our students or that we can present in a meeting. 

4:44 

But, when you’re doing that, it’s just, people are reading slides, and I like for things to be interactive. 

4:51 

So, in the chat, there is a link to my lesson. Hopefully, you have joined that lesson I see one of you has, And I’m gonna move forward now. Morris is the only one that’s join my lesson. One of the reasons I like using Nearpod is because I can see which ones of my students are actually in the lesson. 

5:11 

So, in the chat, there is a link, if you would just click, and that should take you into my Lesson. 

5:20 

And the first thing I have here, and if you would prefer to just watch my screen, you can do that. Also, and you’ll get to view the lesson from the teacher standpoint. 

5:29 

So the first thing I have here is a draw lot. 

5:34 

And I love to have students and adults draw. It’s one way that they can express themselves. 

5:42 

It’s a really good way to have formative assessments, and this is built into Nearpod. It’s also built in some to some other tools. And this one is a social emotional learning check in, I get to see how my students are feeling, or how my faculty is felling today. And sometimes, with adults, these pictures get to be quite humorous. 

6:04 

But I can see what my students or my faculty, well, how they’re feeling. If I’m using Zoom or Teams, or gotoMeeting or any other tool, I usually say, as a grid, kind of a Brady Bunch grid, with everybody’s picture on it. This way, I get to see a little bit more, a little more insight into how they’re feeling, so I’ll say a few of you are drawing. now as the teacher, or as the leader of the meeting. I can see step by step. 

6:33 

Now, I could have put an image for you to annotate. On. 

6:38 

top of, which is what I did here. Or, I could have given you a blank screen. This is a really good way to gather feedback from students and educators alike, so we’re gonna focus on, because I know some of you are professional developers, you may be superintendent, curriculum director, principals, assistant principals, or you might be classroom teachers. 

6:58 

So, the tools that I’m gonna focus on today, will facilitate all of those job descriptions. Now, even if you’re not finished, go ahead and hit Submit. 

7:10 

And, if you, if I were in the classroom, I’d give my students a little bit of time to do this. 

7:15 

I have noticed that with remote learners, it does take them longer to login to your session. And this gives those that have logged in early, something to do. So go ahead and hit Submit. 

7:26 

And once you do that, you’re going to have student names so that I won’t embarrass anybody. 

7:32 

But once you hit submit, then I have the ability to click on one of these images and share it out with everyone. 

7:40 

So now you can see, notice there’s no name attached to it. So I wouldn’t embarrass a student. Now, I can see student names by clicking show student names. 

7:50 

Um, I can also share out another one. 

7:55 

If I were in a class or a meeting, we would probably guess who that is. So, we’re gonna move forward a little bit, and that’s our little early check in. And so, our topic today is the most essential tools for remote and hybrid learning environments. 

8:09 

It really doesn’t matter if you’re synchronous or asynchronous or you’re hybrid. 

8:13 

It doesn’t matter. These tools are going to work in all scenarios, OK? And that’s what we’re facing now. Again, this is me. I’m a retired educator and edtech consultant, trainer, and presenter. I’m a former classroom teacher, instructional technologist and administrator. I live in a community called Trophy Club, Texas, which is near Texas Motor Speedway. There’s my e-mail and my Twitter handle. You’re always welcome to connect with me. 

8:43 

And so the first thing I want to do is to have a really quick discussion. And I know that when you have remote learners, facilitating that discussion is difficult. And so I like to use some sort of a tech tool to facilitate that discussion. 

8:56 

I have found that remote learners, whether they’re students or they’re adults, often will not talk. 

9:03 

And so this is one way to facilitate that discussion. 

9:08 

So my question here, I’m not going to approve your responses. What tech tools are you currently using in your school or school? So if you’re the district level, you may have multiple schools that you’re dealing with. 

9:23 

And if you wouldn’t mind just put in there where you’re from so that I get an idea of where you’re from and then what tech tools or you’re currently using notice in the bottom There’s a white rectangle a bar that says share thoughts and or images there. 

9:37 

So that’s where you type and then you’d hit post your comment. So hopefully some of you will answer if you’ve joined in light. That’s OK. One of the nice things about the tool that I’m using now on your body is that students who come in like they’ve been to the orthodontist are teachers who had a parent conference afterschool and they’re late to your faculty meeting, when they join in the lesson? It’s going to take them where you are. 

10:05 

OK, OK, OK, I’m seeing one response. 

10:11 

I’m going to wait for a few others. 

10:14 

Microsoft 365. 

10:18 

I love Sway, which is part of 365. 

10:22 

If you do not use Sway, it’s awesome. 

10:24 

And if you didn’t know that educators and students can get Office 365 for free, so that’s always on us, to just Google that Chromebooks iPads, Google Classroom, Microsoft Teams. OK, so we have a combination of Google people, and Microsoft, most of the tools I’m going to show you will work in either environment. 

10:48 

So this is one way I can facilitate a discussion, is by having you collaborate, and we’ll talk about some collaborative tools later. 

10:59 

So content delivery is really important to me, whether it’s in the classroom, or it’s in a meeting setting. 

11:06 

I really believe that we need to make our content delivery interactive. 

11:11 

Not just use a PowerPoint or a Google slideshow, and those two tools are awesome. 

11:16 

The how can we make those lessons interactive so that our students are doing more than just reading a slide. Our faculty meetings are doing more than just reading a slide. So I use this lesson is in near pod another alternative would be pear deck. 

11:32 

And I know that there are others. 

11:34 

But these are my two favorite and this allows for me to have that presentation then to make it interactive. So you’ve had a draw slide. You’ve had a collaborate board so inside of my presentation up with those collaborative pieces. 

11:50 

So we’re going to talk about some strategies. 

11:55 

And one of my favorite articles is Signature Practices to Build Community. And this is done by the Castle Group, which I’ve referenced it here in the bottom. Also, when we’re through with this lesson, you will have access to a handout. Not only will you have access to this presentation, but I’ve created a handout on how to use these tools, and if our reference something like this article, there’s another one I’ll reference later, you’ll have access to that. There’ll be a link in the handout that you can access that. 

12:28 

So, this organization has signature practices to build community, and they’re talking about opening each class period, each meeting or each professional learning experience with a welcome, welcoming inclusion activity, routine original. So we did that. We use the draw slide to show me how you’re feeling about this presentation, and that connects your audience. It connects to the work ahead. 

12:54 

Also, you need to embed engaging strategies, including brain breaks. And I don’t care if you’re dealing with kindergarten students or adults. Those brain breaks are important, especially when we are on a device. We’re looking at a screen all day long. So we need to have those brain breaks. And we also need to close each training, each class period, each meeting in an intentional way. 

13:18 

So we’re going to experience some of those three options there. 

13:25 

one organization, is a lead4ward, and you may or may not be familiar with them. But they have an expansive playlist of instructional strategies for face-to-face learning, and they’ve had this for awhile. But now they’ve recently added this playlist for virtual learning. These strategies are suitable for the classroom and many of them are suitable for meetings or professional development. 

13:50 

So what I have here is a link to that playlist. 

13:54 

Now, when I talk about using an interactive tool to deliver content, this is one of those interactive pieces. You can click on this and access this article, and you’ll have access to this at the end. But you can click on this and access this article. You did not have to open another tab and type in a URL. 

14:15 

And that’s one of the great features of using an interactive tool, or an interactive presentation tool, is to give students and teachers access to websites without them having to type in a URL slope. 

14:31 

Here’s their playlist, and you will have access to this. 

14:34 

Now, this article is one of my favorites and it’s done by Jake Miller. If you do not follow Jake Miller, I highly advise you do. Follow him. There is his Twitter handle. 

14:46 

and this is 10 Steps for Supporting Students with Special Needs and Remote Learning. It’s a blog post, and when I first saw it, I saw this is great. Because, you know, all teachers have to deal with supporting special needs students, and sometimes we don’t have the tools. We don’t know about the tools. And when I started reading this blog, I was like, this is not just for special needs students. This is for everyone. So, when we open up this blog post, Again, you do not have to open another tab. You do not have to type in a URL. But when I first saw this blog post, I was, I was really quite blown away because it’s not only how do we support those special needs students, but these tools are amazing. 

15:29 

And so what he’s done, is, he’s collected ideas from teachers all around the world. 

15:36 

And so, it deals with remote learning, but if you read this, you’re going to find some things that you may not know about. So here are all the accessibility features in a Chromebook. 

15:47 

And when I started looking at this, I’m like, oh, my goodness, there are many adults that need to increase the size of screen text, and visuals that magnify the screen reader, how to adjust the mouse us, and then it goes on to talk about iPad, accessibility features. 

16:05 

Then it talks about Microsoft accessibility features. And so, this is all about accessibility features with a focus on our special needs students. 

16:14 

However, I think this is good for all of us because sometimes we have students that maybe just, you know, we don’t consider them special needs. 

16:22 

But then they need that font enlarged or they may need the screen, something read to them. So this article, it’s excellent. 

16:29 

Again, in my handout, you will have access to this. You’ll have a link to this article. I think it’s one that needs to be shared with teachers, just because they’re not familiar with every device and the accessibility features. 

16:43 

It’d be a great PD session. 

16:45 

So let’s look at my favorite tech tools are my top ones. 

16:51 

I love to get feedback from every participant. 

16:55 

I like to give every student in every staff member a voice, and I don’t care if you’re face-to-face or if you’re remote. 

17:03 

Some students and some faculty members will never say a word. 

17:06 

So, how can we give them a voice with technology, and so that we can allow everyone to speak? 

17:15 

I want to know what my audience thinks about things now. There are many tools to do that, including, Mentimeter, Padlet, Jamboard, and Collaborate. We’ve already used the Collaborate board, and Nearpod, that was a sticky notes. 

17:28 

But I’m going to show you, Mentimeter, Padlet and Jamboard throughout this session. 

17:32 

There are many other tools, but these are just four of my favorites and four that I have found to be very successful in a hybrid environment, in a remote environment, and in a face-to-face environment, which is what our focus is today.  

17:49 

All you need to do is to click, and I’m going to open up my Mentimeter account. 

17:57 

All you need to do is click, and, um, I’m going to click on my presentations. now, Mentimeter has a free version, and a paid version. 

18:07 

I am using the free version. 

18:10 

If I were going to use meant a meter daily, and you know, all the time, I’d probably go ahead and pay for that in the free version. It does what I need it to do. So, I’m clicking on my lightspeed presentation. 

18:24 

And, if you’re just following along, go to another tab, and tap in, believe it’s minti dot com, let’s see, it’s going to tell me here, and go to mini dot com. And the code is 679-8237. 

18:52 

And I’m saying that right now two of you have joined … 

18:58 

session, and some people can see that three of you have never used this tool. 

19:06 

So very quickly, I have gathered input from my audience. 

19:11 

It doesn’t matter if they’re face-to-face, if they’re remote, or if we’re in a hybrid situation. And this works with students and with adults. 

19:19 

one reason I really like this is because I have the ability to put in these animations. You can add a column gifs, animated, gifs, however you want to pronounce it. 

19:30 

But I can put those in which is very engaging. 

19:34 

So I have four of you that have never seen Mentimeter in my handout. I have a direction step by step directions on how you can use this. It is super easy to set that up. So, one of the options is a poll. 

19:49 

That’s my next option. 

19:52 

Let me see if I can minimize this. 

19:58 

I’m gonna go back and I’m gonna present again. 

20:01 

I’m gonna go to my next slide, and I’m going to present this. This is 

20:09 

A word cloud. 

20:11 

So it’s still the same code. So what is your favorite flavor of ice cream, very educational there? 

20:17 

What is your favorite flavor of ice cream, and a lot of you have used word clouds in the past, but what this does, is it takes the most often used word. 

20:27 

And it will enlarge it. 

20:29 

So, if you lost the code blue is 679-8237, so the more a word 

20:42 

Is used, the larger it will come, so right now I’ve got three of you that have done the exact same thing if someone else puts in black, cherry, black cherry is going to enlarge. 

20:54 

Obviously, the more people that are involved, it’s going to be more interactive. 

20:59 

So, this is Mentimeter, one of my favorite tools, just to gather that audience impact, 

21:05 

Input, but I also like it, because it’s very visual, very, very visual, and again, I was using the free version. 

21:13 

So, go back to my Nearpod lesson, go back to that tab within your pod, and let’s look at another favorite tool of mine, And there’s two of them. There’s whiteboard dot FI, or some people say what whiteboard and there’s whiteboard chat. Now, if you joined late and you want to join this presentation, if someone from lightspeed would put the link in the chat, and that way, you can join in. 

21:41 

And that’s one of the great things about this tool, is students can join in late, and it will put you on the slide that we’re on. 

21:49 

I have found that especially math teachers are always looking for online whiteboards when you’re face to face, you have that whiteboard in the front of your class, but when you’re remote, you don’t have that whiteboard in for your students and so these two websites are both 100% free. 

22:09 

They have backgrounds built in, and there are a ton of fun. I absolutely love both of them, Whiteboard dot Chad just read this week on Twitter, has added a bunch of new components, so I need to study that, so we’re gonna look at whiteboard dot FI. We’re going to try it out. 

22:27 

If you’ve not used those. 

22:30 

So, um, I’m going to go to my whiteboard dot FI. 

22:37 

And I’m going to create a new class. 

22:41 

And I’m going to call it lightspeed. 

22:43 

I could spell it would help. 

22:46 

Now, one of the things, if you are using this with students as you can, enable a waiting room. 

22:50 

So, I’m going to create a new class, and what I’d like for you to do is go to Whiteboard. 

22:59 

What you’re going to have on your screen will be a Whiteboard. 

23:19 

And the Whiteboard has a lot of different options up there in the top left. 

23:25 

Um, up at the top, the Menu Bar, including Emojis, you can put in images, There’s staff paper for music classes, the graph paper for math and science. You can draw, you have different colors that you can draw with. There’s a palette, so I’m gonna give you a few seconds to just play with Whiteboard data and use those different tools. 

23:50 

Then I’m going to toggle my whiteboard and I can see, as the teacher, I see three different students have joined my lesson. 

24:01 

Now why I love this one is because as a teacher, I can see what my students are doing. 

24:07 

I can download it as a PDF, which is awesome, so then I’ll have access to it later for assessment purposes, and I can watch what my students are doing. 

24:18 

You do not see each other’s. You only see your own. 

24:22 

Now, I’m going to toggle back to my whiteboard, and I’m going to insert, this is actually an activity I did with some ninth graders this week, and high school in Alabama, though, it was a seminar class. 

24:35 

And so they were studying Black History Month, and they were studying courage. And so, I went in and I found a picture of Amanda Gorman. 

24:51 

Who is the young lady who read a poem at the inauguration and at the Super Bowl. 

24:59 

So, whoops, I didn’t mean to put that drawing on there. 

25:03 

I’ll have to erase that. 

25:04 

But, anyway, I pushed this picture out to my students, just like that, I’m gonna push it to all of you. 

25:13 

And I had them take the text tool, and I wanted them to tell me via text what made Amanda Gorman, courageous. Why do you think she was had a lot of courage? What I wanted to take courage to get up in front of the people at the inauguration, and the people watching on TV. Why did that take courage? So, I actually did this lesson this week, I had several slides that. I had my students use and afterwards? The teacher, she stayed online. And she said, I’m going to start using that for my essential question. On the day my opening question that I asked my students, you could use it as a bell ringer. You could use it as an exit ticket, you can use it in your staff meetings. So whiteboard data, If I am whiteboard chat are both free. 

26:04 

And when I push that out, I can see that you have responses. 

26:08 

So close off to that tab, and let’s go back to our Nearpod lesson. 

26:15 

And another great tool that I found a recording tools, are several reasons. 

26:21 

The teachers can record their lectures and demonstrations for the students, and I can demonstrate how to use a tech tool or find the science teacher, how to do that science experiment. 

26:32 

If I’m a CTE teacher, how to use that sewing machine, how to cook pizza. 

26:41 

So, as a teacher, recording, tools are amazing, as administrators, you can create video updates for your staff and parent, and I really liked the ability to do that. Because, sometimes, when you use videos, it makes it much more personable much more. 

26:59 

They feel a connection there to you, as opposed to, here’s my text newsletter, which is awesome. But when you can put it on video, then you have really grab their attention, and you’ve built that personal connection. You can flip your staff meetings, and you can record announcements for your students. 

27:17 

So the two tools that I that I personally prefer, I know there are many others, are screencastify and loom. 

27:25 

Now, screencastify is a Chrome extension. There is a free version, and there’s a paid version. 

27:32 

I use the paid version, because it does allow for unlimited length of videos, but also, it’s very inexpensive. It’s not much at all in their school versions. 

27:44 

Loom for educators does the same thing, it is web based, and it is an extension, and loom is 100% free for educators. They do have to apply for the educator account. 

27:58 

And so, as an administrator, I think it’s critical that we find those tools for our teachers that are free if they use the educator account, and you just show them how to do that. So, I love to record myself when I’m doing things, for students and for teachers. My daughter, who teaches high school records a lot of tutorials so that her kids have access to them, and the students are very appreciative. 

28:25 

Now, one of the things and our signature practices to build community, that we talked about at the beginning, is we need to build in a brain break. 

28:34 

We need to have those opportunities in the middle of our lesson to just kind of relax, but also, as the presenter or the teacher, we need to know, where’s my audience? 

28:45 

Because with remote learners, it’s really hard to know where are they. 

28:51 

And so we’re going to do a little boring break, and we’re going to hope this works. I’m going to use Jamboard, which is another one of those tools that we talked about for collaborating. Jamboard is free. 

29:03 

It is by Google. It’s just a Google App. I believe it’s up to 50 people. A lot of people. So if you’re a high school principal. 

29:33 

Oh, I’m cutting out a little bit, OK. If you’re a high school principal, you may have 250 faculty members. 

29:40 

And so how can you have that collaborative piece in Jamboard with that many people? 

29:46 

So what I’ve done on here is I have a calendar with my 12 months. And so you need to click on the month you were born in. 

29:55 

OK, so I’m going to click on December, because I’m a December baby. 

30:01 

And this is what Jamboard would look like. 

30:03 

So over on the left the 1, 2, 3, 4, the fourth option down is a little sticky note. So I’m going to grab that sticky note and I’m going to write my initials on it JC. And I’m going to save it. 

30:17 

And I’ve just created a sticky note.  

30:22 

And I can click on that sticky note and I can size it just like I can an image. 

30:27 

So if you have a lot of sticky notes going on, you want them to shrink it down, I could have changed the color of it. And I want you to put that sticky note. 

30:38 

Wherever you feel you are with this session. Are you good? You understand everything. You’re OK. 

30:46 

You’re kinda in the middle, or you’re just totally confused. 

30:51 

So this is another brain break, but it is a check in for the presenter. 

30:56 

Or the teacher to find out where their students are, their faculty, where they were, how they’re feeling? Now, I have 12 excuse me, 12 Jamboards. 

31:08 

So as the teacher, I can go back. 

31:11 

And I can look at those Jamboard, and I can see where my students are. If faculty members are only using one Jamboard. It’s really easy. 

31:22 

But what I did on this lesson are on this slide with the months on it, is, I connected each of those calendar months to a different Jamboard. 

31:34 

So Jamboard is another way that I can use a tool that I can use to collaborate with. 

31:41 

It is free. 

31:43 

Now, one of the biggest drawbacks in my opinion, I taught middle school for a very long time, and those are the, that’s the age where they’re going to try to do something, they’re just going to try. And so one of the negatives about Jamboard, in my opinion, has been that students could erase each other’s work. They could erase yours. They could put something inappropriate on there, and there was no way for the teacher to track who did that. 

32:10 

Well, one of the newest updates to Google that’s coming out very soon, this was just announce, is that on the Jamboards, they will be able to track who did what. 

32:21 

You’ll see that history. So I think that’s very critical, especially if you teach that age level, where, you know, they’ll take the punishment just, too. 

32:30 

No, to trust somebody. Alright, so that’s Jamboard. 

32:37 

So let’s talk now about some engagement. I love to have fun, whether it’s face-to-face, or it’s remote, or it’s in a hybrid. So let’s look at a couple of fun things. 

32:47 

And the first one is a Chrome extension. 

32:51 

I love my Chrome extensions. I like to teach teachers how to use these. But my favorite one is relatively new, and it’s called confetti confetti. 

33:02 

And what it allows you to do is to use a keyboard shortcut to shoot a confetti cannon across your screen. So I have used it with adults, and they all loved it. They love, I’ve used it with kindergarteners, and of course, they love it, I’ve used it with middle school, high school students. They all love it. So why would I use confetti confetti well at someone’s birthday? 

33:23 

Someone has given me a great answer. I’ve a student of the week. Someone contributed in a faculty meeting. So I’m going to show you, I’m going to use, on, I’m on a Mac. 

33:34 

And here are the keyboard shortcuts. 

33:35 

So I’m going to use command plus B, and you see that confetti just shoots out across my screen. 

33:44 

It’s just tons of fun. 

33:45 

There’s nothing more to it than just confetti. I will tell you the negative. 

33:51 

Mac, command B, is also the shortcut for bolding something for pay, for taking a piece of text and making it bold. So now, when I’m doing something, and I have to make it bold, accidentally did command. They shoot confetti, cannons instead of bolding my text. So I have to go back to the old, fashioned way of doing bold. 

34:14 

But confetti confetti is a fun, fun thing to use with adults and with students. 

34:21 

Now, this is going to apply only to the Google people, OK? I’m sorry about that, but I just had put it in here, because this is one of my favorite things. And when I’m working with teachers, this is one of their favorite things. Teachers like to be creative. And if you’re an administrator and you’re doing PD, or you’re a principal or assistant principal, curriculum director, whatever, sometimes units need to show your teacher something fun. 

34:46 

And just to give them that little, hey, they really do appreciate me. They like to show us what’s fun. So I’m a big font person. I love to use different fonts. And my handout, you’re gonna have a list of all of my favorite fonts that are in Google. 

35:03 

So let me just show you something. I’m gonna go on my screen. And well, this is how you would add fonts in Google Apps. 

35:13 

You don’t have to go out to a website and download the fonts and then unzip them and doing all that. It’s very simple, where you have your fonts listed. Like, typically, I have Ariel as my default. There’s a drop-down arrow, and I can go in there and I can add all these different fonts that Google gives me, and teachers absolutely love this. 

35:37 

Now, I do have to go in, and I always want to talk to them about readability for their students. We’ve always heard, you know, about Comic Sans and how for some students that’s difficult to read, but kindergarten teachers love it. 

35:51 

And so, I always want to talk to my teachers about these fonts are fun and they’re awesome, and they’re creative. But if you have Dyslexic students, you have students with vision problems. 

36:03 

You need to make sure that the bulk of your text isn’t something they could read. They don’t need those fancy A’s. And those little curly cuties works great for titles. 

36:20 

But it does not work well for a text that they need to read. So in Google, you can search for more fonts. And you can find the sensor fonts, which are easier for students to read. So if you are working with teachers, and they’re using all these crazy fonts, and it’s on the bulk of their text, you need to make sure they understand that. That’s not good for every student. 

36:44 

OK, so I love working with slide templates, and these are the sites here, are amazing, and these are free, 100% free, and there’s three of them that I love. 

36:57 

Slides Go, Slides carnaval and Slides Mania. 

37:02 

These are for a PowerPoint and Google slideshow Templates. And what I have done here is I have given you a link two slides ago. 

37:12 

The reason I chose Slides Go, now, you can look at all three of them. But right now, I’m going to give you a second to look at Slides Go. 

37:20 

The reason I like Slides Go is they have content specific templates. 

37:25 

And so if you teach math, though, our math templates, if you teach science, there’s Science templates, there’s medical templates. There’s all these different templates. And I get tired of the PowerPoint and the Google Slides templates that are built in. 

37:40 

So I really enjoy using these. 

37:43 

Now, my big warning, there are ads. So you have to move around those ads and just ignore them. They’re tempting, but just don’t look at those ads. So, while you’re looking at that, I’m going to pull up an example. 

38:00 

Well, it’s something I’ve done using. 

38:11 

Slides Mania so that you can look at it, and you can see as a professional development person or an administrator that you might be able to use, and so I’m going to use the elevator. 

38:26 

And I’m going to pull this up while you’re playing with Slides Mania there, or if you’re watching my screen, it does take it a second to load just because there’s so much content in this one and it is interactive. 

38:46 

So, this is for a school that a friend of mine and I did professional development, it was all done online, which was interesting. 

38:57 

But what we did is we wanted to provide the teachers with access to all of our resources, and we wanted to provide them digitally, but we wanted them to be engaging. 

39:09 

And so if you’re on the Nearpod tab, go ahead and open up the tab that has my screen on it. And this is this was for Bessemer High School, which is a school in Alabama. 

39:23 

And so we customize this for their school. They’re the purple tigers. 

39:29 

And so this is from Slides Mania. 

39:32 

And this is a template in Slides Mania. So I click on the elevator doors. And it takes me to floor one. 

39:41 

Then over here on the right, I click on and I enter and I’m in the elevator. 

39:47 

And these are the different floors of my elevator. So if I wanted to learn about Quizziz and Word Wall in Socratic that’s on floor number seven. I click Floor Number seven. 

40:00 

And if I want to learn about quizziz, I go in the quizziz door, then I go back with my exit. So I can go back in the elevator, and let’s look at Chrome Extensions, and here are my favorite extensions. 

40:14 

And I exit, and I have my adding extensions. 

40:17 

So this is a template from Slides Mania that the elevator is there and you just put in all of your content and I absolutely. 

40:30 

I’ll tell you, it took a lot of work to build, but it really is an engaging way for you to teach your teachers or for you to work with students, and you can make it as, you know, difficult or as easy as you want to. So, all three of those slides Mania slides go and slides. Carnival have these different backgrounds that are applicable to the school setting. 

40:58 

And they make your, your presentations. They make your lessons more engaging, and we really have to do that with our remote learners, in my opinion. So, that’s just using some PowerPoint templates and all that. 

41:13 

Now, one of the things is, I believe, in closing each experience in an intentional way, and we talk about that in our signature practices. 

41:21 

How do we close each experience in an intentional way? We have to think about that when we’re planning our lesson. 

41:28 

We’re planning our staff meeting, and so, I have a closing activity here that I’d like for you to participate. 

41:35 

Now, if you’re just watching my screen, you can access it by going to padlet dot com slash J two, training, slash closing. 

41:46 

I’ll leave that on there for a second. 

41:48 

If you’re in my lesson, padlet dot com slash J two training slash close, you can just click and you’ll be there. You’re here on the screen, and you just click and it opens it up. Now, Padlet is another collaborative tool. 

42:06 

I use it in meetings all the time. I’ve used it in with students and with adults, and it’s very easy to use. 

42:14 

There are two versions of Padlet. There’s the free version and there is the Paid Version. 

42:20 

Um, if you’re going to use it a lot, you probably will want to pay for it. 

42:25 

So what you’re going to do is, down at the bottom, there’s a little pink, plus in a circle, pink circle with a plus sign, and so I’m asking you, what’s your take away from today? What’s the one thing? 

42:38 

Are two things, are three things that you can take away from this session. 

42:44 

OK, the elevator and the doors, the biggest takeaways you need to implement, and I can see as you’re writing. 

42:56 

one of the neat things about padlet, is that there are templates for, like, timelines and other things that you can use in the classroom, OK, yes, you did. I totally agree. 

43:11 

You do the tools that I have to make things more engaging, especially when our students are remote, you really have to make things more engaging for them. 

43:23 

It’s, it’s a sad situation, but that’s what we’re in, and we have to make the best of it. 

43:28 

But, I think by using these tools, not only will your remote students be more engaged, but your face-to-face students will, And I am a firm believer that, and, if you are leading a meeting with adults, you need to model the tools that you expect them to use with their students. 

43:47 

Because, that just makes it more important to them that they use these tools. 

43:52 

OK, so, I can see what my students are, my audience has written, and you can, too, so I love, I’ve been using Padlet for years. 

44:02 

It’s been around a very long time, and it is one of my favorite ways to gather input, and what I have found, whether I’m working with adults, or I’m working with students, is not every, every audience member is going to participate. 

44:15 

They don’t like to raise their hand and speak that they’re more likely to put things down in text, and this gives everyone an opportunity to participate. 

44:26 

OK, so, now I see that you have your voice there. 

44:33 

The presentation can be found right here at bitly slash present lightspeed. 

44:45 

And, and then, the handout is bitly slash lightspeed handout. 

44:52 

So, you have access to this presentation. 

44:56 

You have access to a handout in that handout, has step by step directions for the tools that I have shown you. 

45:05 

You’re more than welcome to share that with people in your district or your school. 

45:11 

And, they’re putting the links in the chat that I’ve had. 

45:19 

And we’re also going to have a question and answer time in just a second. 

45:27 

And, we would love to be able to answer your questions, whether they’re about Lightspeed can do, for you in the classroom, or in your district or the topics that I’ve talked about, and by no means, did I share all of my good things. I have tons, and tons, and tons of good tools to use, but these are my favorite. And, these work well in meetings, and in the classroom. 

45:51 

And, they work well with remote students, with face-to-face students, or if you have a blend. 

45:57 

So, I think we are just about out of time, so I’m going to turn this over to the Lightspeed, and I’ve had a great time. I’m going to take over here. 

46:13 

Thank you, Janet, appreciate it. 

46:16 

Great presentation. We appreciate you taking the time here. I’m just getting my screen here. 

46:20 

Set up 33 years, of course, supporting, uh, of course, K through 12 and a lot of great information you provided. I think the favorite thing I saw there was probably that Confetti Cannon. 

46:35 

And again, we appreciate you being on. Thank you for taking the time. For everyone still on the call, thank you for joining us as well. My name is Kyle Ball I’m the Regional Sales Director for Lightspeed Systems, and we’re just going to talk real quickly about two of our products that we offer. 

46:50 

Specifically, for, of course, supporting K through 12 in the classroom, as well as a little bit of added value for your Superintendent CFOs. 

46:59 

Anybody who’s concerned with data, or even student data privacy, so we’ll go through that, know, our mission, here, as you can see on screen, is to protect and make online learning, safety, and effectiveness stronger for every student. 

47:12 

We do a phenomenal job of supporting K through 12 for the last 20 years. Started in 1999, we now support over 28,000 districts in 38 countries across the world. 

47:23 

As I move to this next slide, you can kind of see, here’s where we land in the US. 

47:28 

We have a 95% customer satisfaction, customer satisfaction rate, currently, again, with 28,000 schools that we support. 

47:36 

And we do a really phenomenal job, of course, you know, working with schools from A to Z on things that they want to implement, and add to make their tools more successful for their districts. 

47:48 

We offer five products here at Lightspeed, which you can see now on the screen, specifically, we cut our teeth on our Lightspeed Filter. Again, today, as it today stands, we require zero hardware. We have the largest database for K 12, filtering websites, YouTube videos, all that you can imagine, of course. 

48:06 

Then, we literally are just making more innovations every year with our product. That’s one of the reasons I love working here. We’re constantly taking our product to the next level. We take feedback from all of our districts. And if it makes sense to implement or add it to one of these tools, do you see on the screen? 

48:21 

We, of course, do. 

48:22 

So, we’ll talk today about Analytics a little bit towards the tail end of this presentation, which provides some heavy return on investment, as well as some student data privacy protection. 

48:32 

Lightspeed Alert is another tool that we continue to evolve. It’s built into our filter, as it stands today. We actually just added a new human element, or a human review element to the alert tool, which means, of course, if someone is, we’re concerned with safety, or self-harm, or something along that lines, we can actually send a notification directly to the counselor principle, or even safety teams that we see being created. More and more for larger districts, to, of course, get a student teacher, or a staff member help immediately. That’s Lightspeed Alert. Very special product. One of the reasons why, I think, I’ve been with this company now for four plus years, being able to, know, truly speak, to saving lives, for protecting a student teacher staff member is one of the reasons we love to do what we do here at Lightspeed. 

49:19 

We, of course, saw, some folks talking about some other MDM is on the presentation prior with Janet. We do offer an MDM solution and most schools don’t realize we do have an MDM that competes with Jamf, Airwatch and some of the other MDM providers out there. We actually built our platform for our filter that we stand at, stands today off of the MDM. 

49:41 

And it’s also integrated inside of our filter for 1:1, one spot to manage. Very easy to use, the actual Mobile Device Manager. And then finally, in the top right corner is the Lightspeed Classroom Management product. 

49:55 

I’m actually going to talk about that first and foremost. 

49:59 

Today, Lightspeed Classroom has really changed the game for us is the last few years for distance learning, supporting of course, on, and off premise devices, whether those are Mac, Windows, or Chromebook specifically. 

50:12 

What we really have seen is the ability to, of course, give our teachers some more power in the classroom with this product. 

50:18 

Of course, what you’re seeing on this screen is kind of a screenshot of what the teacher would see, you know, having the ability to, of course, jump into individual students screens, locked tabs, close out specific tabs, you can actually send customized messages to students to get them back on task. 

50:34 

Hey, I noticed that you’re not working on the project, or not following along with the presentation, you know, please do so. We have the ability, of course, to share links directly with the entire classroom. No more and gone are the days of writing you know, HTTPS. 

50:48 

Backslash on the board with along, of course, descriptive website, you can now just cut, copy, and paste, click that over, in, just a few clicks. We also have some power that the teacher controls, where they can actually lock all screens, get eyes upfront, or even view all screens in one shot, which we’ll get to here in the next slide. But just think of this tool is an ability to give your teachers some more power. Some more control around what’s being viewed at all times during their class period, and really seeing what those students are doing. 

51:19 

And making sure they’re staying on task. Again, whether that’s on premise or off premise, that’s the beauty of Lightspeed. We’re able to support those devices, no matter where they go into, of course, support the teachers. 

51:30 

And as far as all the pieces that come with being a teacher these days, what you’re seeing here on this slide is, just, of course, being able to ensure that all students specifically are interacting with the right curriculum at the right time. 

51:42 

We have a few different views on this screen. On the far left-hand side is actually our list view that’s just allowing, of course, the teacher to see all the students in one quick shot. 

51:51 

Whether they’re actively online or maybe absent that day, keeping attendance levels straight in the middle is that the UI I spoke about, where we can view all screens in one quick click. So, this gives you the ability, of course, to make sure we’re all taking the same quiz at the right time. I can, of course, see those users at the very top who may be navigating away from that project, or that quiz, or that exam, for example. 

52:13 

Then, on the far right is actually a heat map that we created, which really is, is more beneficial. We see first, for teachers that are in the classroom, still, they can walk around, have the classroom tool on their tablet, for example, and be able to see a student that’s not as active, or engaged as, say, some of the other ones here with this color heat map. So, the main goal here is to make sure we have multiple views with our classroom product to make sure that teacher can stay efficient stay on top of it, and see what her students are doing in real time. 

52:43 

I mentioned before that of course, you have the ability with this tool, as well, to just send a link in one click. That’s what this slide is kind of advertising. No more wasting time for students to enter the URLs, or get lost, and putting it into the right browser. 

52:57 

We actually have the ability here to just cut copy, and paste, it’ll open a new browser for the students, get them all in the right page, at the right time, making sure that the class stays on track here. 

53:10 

The main, the main goal for Classroom, of course, is to keep students focused. So, we have the ability here to, again, look at full screens, go into the individual student’s screen. I can look at all of their open tabs. 

53:22 

As you can see on this screen, I can go through the browsing history, which is a really powerful piece that we added recently, you know, allowing our teachers to be the first line of defense. And if they notice, hey, this student is not their active or happy self, maybe I should go into that browsing history, and maybe take a peek around at what they’ve been looking at that week. 

53:38 

Of course, on top of that, we have the ability to record snapshots of the student in reverse time. So, for those, those students that I’ve said, hey, you know, you’re not supposed to be going up to this specific gaming side during my class period, I’ve warned them multiple times. Now, I can just record that student, that’ll move that over to our reporting section. You can decide, if you want to send that to a counselor principal, anything of that of that nature, of course, to reprimand that student. 

54:04 

And, then, of course, I mentioned the ability to send messages to students. Whether that’s, you know, a positive, hey, great job on that presentation, or do you need help? Or if you have a question, being able to easily work back and forth with the students, and communicate with some of their needs specifically inside of this tool. 

54:22 

At a high level, that’s Classroom in a nutshell, very easy to deploy. Again, that works specifically with our MacBooks, Chromebooks and Windows devices for a seamless integration. 

54:33 

We, of course, can pull that in with yourself in a couple of different avenues. Whether that’s AD or Google and of course, push this Extension or the MSI file down to those devices with ease. 

54:45 

I’m gonna move over to Analytics, which is the other tool we wanted to talk about for a few minutes. Now, keep in mind, this might be more for our, you know, curriculum and instructional leaders, are even, you know, high level CFO, or superintendents, to pull in some of this data. But what Analytics does is actually, once we push out this application to your devices, it is literally feeding us all the back data on all of the applications that you’ve purchased, whether they’re purchased applications, free applications, and even rogue applications. So I had actually a district that notice that when we rolled out this demo, they actually saw that Netflix, for example, was sitting on their Chromebooks at a small amount of users. And they said, well, hold on a second. We’re not supposed to have that, of course, on our devices. And I explain to them that somehow these users were able to get around their firewall and put Netflix, for example, on those Chromebooks. 

55:37 

And we’re able to, of course, drilling granularity all the way down to those individual users and say, here’s the 5 or 6 kids that were doing that. So that’s the first piece that’s very beneficial from a rogue agent perspective. 

55:52 

We also have the ability to, of course, look at real-time insights. So, I’m gonna move over to this next slide and talk about some of the data that you’re going to see. From a dashboard perspective, we have the ability to identify all the applications, again, on your network. We also have the ability to, of course, quantify those applications that you paid for, and really be able to provide the usage, you know, calling out, Hey, you paid X amount of dollars for this application. It is now halfway through the year, and only half of your users have touched it, and it’s costing your District X, as you can imagine. So, these slides are a little bit smaller, but you can see that, the heavy dollar amount, that can be associated here, with that data, mentioned being able to track the student time of, activity day, of week, the activity of time, of day, and day a month for this the parents, or, excuse me, the, that. the staff users as well, and then the, the full breakdown here of what is it costing us for those applications 

56:48 

And who have we not seen specifically online recently, as well. 

56:56 

As far as customizable datasets, we also have this nice tool, which is our chart builder gives you the ability, of course, to compare one application to another. So, maybe, you want to look at a free application that you’re, that you’ve been using it at the district level with a paid app that you’re recently pulled on. You can break that down to the amount of days. You can actually look deeper at the data and say, you know, how much are we leveraging, the one that we paid for versus free. It helps you make those decisions. Again, for budget purposes, do we decide to go forward with that tool in the following year? 

57:28 

You get this nice breakdown of the distribution of costs chart, not to mention the app spotlight at the bottom left-hand corner. This is calling out literally the adoption rate and the highest adopted application. That last 30 days, for example, which is calling out Starfall here, and the lowest adopted application, here at 8%. You also see the biggest increase in, the biggest decrease of applications being used in that last 30 days. And we’re finding more and more that this data allows schools to really make strategic decisions around, do they keep using a specific application, like many of the ones that we’ve mentioned today or saw with Janet: Or Do we decide to, you, know, and deploy, or do some more research on some other applications out there that may be better on cost, and maybe offer some more functionality and feature sets that we’re not seeing? 

58:19 

Of course, the whole goal for Analytics is to be able to optimize your technology against some really great graphs on being able to see the breakdown of adoption. What are we using the most? What are we not using? What can we afford to potentially give up and save the district some money next year? The Distribution of Costs Chart, again, I had another district that we literally deploy this tool for two weeks to give them a demo. They were able to pop in an application that they spent a million dollars on in January. When they did the testing. It was October. And we were able to identify about $500,000 worth of savings, because half of their users hadn’t touched that application, yet. 

58:57 

The CIO and CTO literally said to me, so you’re telling us that, we have about a half a million dollars here. That in savings, that we’re that we could be using, or decide to not use this much of the application next year. I said, Yeah, absolutely. So, that’s, that’s been a major play here. If we can save your district, some return on investment, that’s a major add on for the Analytics tool. 

59:19 

Not to mention, you know, what’s being trending, what’s up, what’s going down, as well as your online attendance. Being able to track that information is becoming more of a factor for distance learning than ever. We want to be able to see who’s online, if they were in class they attended, and what’s really going on with those students off premise. 

59:38 

Finally, as far as the compliance piece, you know, I think Janet mentioned she’s from Texas. I’m based here in Austin. 

59:44 

We’re seeing the student data privacy laws change every single year and become more of a factor. We’ve actually built in a compliance portion of this Analytics tool for our curriculum side of the house, as well to be able to look through applications that are on your network, decide if they are, of course, something that you want to continue to use. Are they in compliance with you as a district URL, to make changes on the fly and be able to see that the reporting needs for some of these applications, specifically? 

1:00:14 

We, of course, list of certifications that are out there, whether that’s COPPA requirements, we give you actual links to specific vendor websites. You can do some more research on your own. And now you can even submit applications that are, you know, up for grabs that you may be looking at, that you may not see in our, in our tool itself. We’ll go do the heavy lifting for you, we’ll research those applications, specifically. And then we’ll pop them into the tool and give them our ratings, as well, whether those are positive or negative. We’d like to share that information here in the Student Data compliancy section and really give you the tools to, to save some time on digging through every new application that comes up or K 12. I imagine there’s probably a couple hundred or a thousand built per year. 

1:00:58 

With that being said, I’ll move to this. This last slide here. It looks like we’re doing OK on time. 

1:01:04 

But we, again, we have five specific, five specific products, folks. And we’re happy to, of course, talk about these at anytime with, with your teams. Happy to reach out to me directly, if needed, to get you to the right spot. 

1:01:16 

We again, support 28,000 districts now across 38 countries, and I’ve been supporting K 12 for 20 years. I’m pretty much the top of my time, want to make sure we save some room for, for questions, here. And I’ll give it back to the team. 

1:01:33 

Yeah, thank you, Janry and Kyle, for those very valuable insights. …, you guys taking the time to share with us today. We have time for one quick question for Janet. 

1:01:46 

Janet, thank you so much for sharing so many great resources. Where do you suggest getting started? Where would you start when it comes to implementation? 

1:01:56 

Ooh. That’s a tough one. 

1:02:00 

I think the biggest thing right now that I’m seeing with teachers on campuses is that they’re being inundated with new tools. 

1:02:09 

So I would pick 1 or 2 tools, such as, maybe. 

1:02:16 

Maybe Nearpod. And I might look at Nearpod, and one, something like that, at presentation tap tool, so that everything can be integrated together, or maybe choose an assessment tool that you want to use. I would narrow it down, get a committee of people, and look at some different tools, narrow it down, and start with just a couple of tools. Because if you throw 25 different new tools at your teachers, they’re going to be so stressed out that they won’t be successful with anyone. So, just try a couple of tools, 2 or 3, and show your teachers. Let them get competent with that. Build some teacher leaders who can help the teachers on their campuses with those tools. And then add a couple of more. But my big thing is don’t stress your teachers out by showing them 25 new tools to pick 1 or 2 and then just add to it gradually. 

1:03:10 

Yeah, that’s great, thank you. 

1:03:13 

We are out of of time. Thank you to our presenters for joining us today. We really appreciate you guys taking the time and sharing all of these valuable resources. And thank you to all of you who joined us. Know that everyone has a very busy schedule, so again, appreciate you guys taking time out of your day to join this presentation. 

1:03:34 

The contact information for Janet Corder is located on the screen, as well as her information for J2 Training. 

1:03:41 

We also have the information for our next webinar, it’s going to be Thursday, March 18, it’s about how one school district saves students’ lives with their incident response protocol. We’re very excited about it, and we hope you can join us. and thanks again, for joining us today. Have a great rest of your day, and hopefully, we will see you next time. Thanks so much, Bye!