Gradient Learning has debuted the digital tool Along to help teachers and students connect one-on-one (Gradient Learning)

Teachers’ ability to connect individually with students went from tricky to downright challenging during the pandemic. But a new digital reflection tool, Along, can help teachers create personal relationships with students while allowing each student to feel seen and understood.

After a pilot program with hundreds of teachers last school year, this summer’s launch of the free service invites teachers to send multimedia conversation-starting questions to middle- and high-schoolers via school email and have the students respond directly back, with video, audio or text.

“It is so great that you connect with your students weekly,” says Dr. Stacy Perez, principal of Classical Academies in Escondido, California, who participated in the pilot. “Building that trust is so important in that world right now.”

Samia Zaidi, director of educator success at Gradient Learning, which created Along in partnership with Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, says the tool is straightforward to use. Educators log in and select from a series of reflection questions, or create their own with the assistance of the program. The question can be about anything, such as asking what students value and why, or having them share a positive moment they recently experienced. The educator records a short video asking the question and answering it, to help open the dialogue. The video is then emailed to whomever the educator chooses, inviting a response and opening the door for further interaction.

“It has been fascinating to see the different ways people have used this,” Zaidi says. The most common practice during the pilot was for educators to ask a small group of students one question a week and to request a response back within a couple of days.

“I didn’t really know what to expect at first,” says Perez, who used the tool in the pilot with nine students. “Within the first two reflections, I started getting positive feedback from the students and their parents. They loved the weekly check-in and just couldn’t wait for 8:00 on Friday,” when Perez sent her email. “They were looking forward to my videos and questions. It was one minute of my time that was coming back tenfold.”

Sandra Liu Huang, head of education at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, says that with so much recent disruption for both teachers and students, CZI started to focus on tools that offered practical solutions to help educators in the moment. “Teachers are losing the in-person connection with students,” she says. “Even in normal times, teachers could use support and tools to really unlock a deeper relationship with more of their students. That was the genesis of Along.”

CZI had partnered with Gradient Learning on the Summit Learning platform, and engaged the nonprofit again to tap its educational knowledge, technical expertise and research depth to build Along.

“I think the core goal of Along is to help teachers help their students feel more seen and heard,” Liu Huang says. “What we understand from teachers is that feeling seen and heard is foundational for relationships and that relationships help unlock better learning for students. Our goal is to equip teachers for this and see students have more access to relationships.”

At the same time, “Teachers don’t have tons of extra time in the day,” Liu Huang says. “Along is a place that lets them create that one-on-one feeling with directed videos and gives students the space to respond as they have time and comfort. We are making it easier for teachers and students even though teachers’ time is limited.”

Perez says she’s planning for all her school’s 44 staffers to use the Along tool this year. “When we saw the effectiveness of it, I will hands-down continue to use it,” she says, “and encourage others to use it.”

Disclosure: The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative provides financial support to LA School Report’s parent company, The 74 Media.

W

The state was fortunate to receive an offer of help from a partner early on. Superintendent of Public Instruction Jhone Ebert and I had existing relationships with Renaissance’s myON, an online literacy platform, from previous positions we’d held. In April 2020, we were still trying to decide how to move forward for our students when Renaissance reached how they could help. With relief funding having not yet made it to schools, the company committed to temporarily providing myON at no cost; by June 2020, students and educators throughout Nevada had access to thousands of online books and news articles.

Part of the reason this happened so fast is that the governor issued an executive order streamlining the adoption process. Instead of going through several layers of review, we were able to flag the rollout as an emergency response to the pandemic, drastically shortening the process from several weeks to just days.

Part of the challenge the state faced, even with a generous partner, was that we knew the federal government was likely to provide emergency funds, but we didn’t know how much, when or what restrictions there would be on spending the money. In short, we knew we could launch the program, but we weren’t sure how we could sustain it beyond that. So we looked for partners to bring on board to expand this initiative beyond the Department of Education.

We began by reaching out to the Nevada State Library and Archives because it was already providing support and services to students and families throughout the state, from putting together packages of books and offering various mobile technologies so families could access the internet. It was a natural fit, so we asked them to start sharing information about myON along with their other offerings.

Next, we began working with our regional professional development program. We needed teachers to understand that myON was more than just a reading tool or online books, and to consider how they could leverage it for teaching and learning, given that the shift to remote classes was so abrupt and totally new to most of our teachers.

Finally, to inspire more excitement, we encouraged each school district and student to read as many minutes as possible through the READ Nevada partnership. To date, students have accessed more than 6 million digital books and read more than 58 million minutes. Meanwhile, my team and I began to address another statewide challenge: internet access.

Before the pandemic, about three of every four students in the state had a mobile device and access to home internet. But many were sharing a single device among multiple siblings or with parents. And entire communities didn’t have broadband internet at all.

A first step in improving access was to have districts identify the technology they already had that could be distributed to students. We knew that federal funding was coming through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund that would allow us to buy the additional devices we needed. However, 49 other states were also looking to provide devices and connectivity for their students, and placing orders that wouldn’t arrive until the fall wasn’t going to help students who needed to learn now.

Fortunately, Gov. Steve Sisolak allowed Ebert to reorient the Nevada COVID-19 Response, Relief & Recovery Task Force to include Connecting Kids, an initiative to solve the issue of providing students with devices and access. The head of the task force, Jim Murren, and Elaine Wynn, former CEO of MGM Resorts and former president of the State Board of Education, really stepped up for our kids. They went so far as to use their private planes to transport devices from countries where they were manufactured to Nevada to skip the fraying supply lines and get devices into students’ hands.

Some students still lacked access to the internet, though. My department partnered with the Governor’s Office of Science Innovation and Technology to help districts distribute hotspots throughout the state, but there were still some students and communities we weren’t able to reach. Fortunately, people and organizations from all over the state stepped up to offer community access at schools, at local businesses or via school buses with wireless access. Only four months after the launch of Connecting Kids, 100 percent of Nevada students who were learning remotely had connectivity and access to a device.

The circumstances around our transformation from 75 percent to 100 percent connectivity were extraordinary, but the process is applicable beyond any crisis.

Begin with an inventory of what you already have and, crucially, what you need. Find partners with a genuine concern for kids and start a conversation about what you need and how they’re prepared to help. Partnerships with philanthropic organizations and businesses are important not just for what they can give students and teachers, but for how they can help leverage resources or provide access to powerful people or systems. Then, think about how to communicate with your stakeholders in a way that will get them invested, such as a contest to generate excitement. Next, measure the effectiveness of your implementation.

Finally, make sure to celebrate, because this is difficult work. It takes time, and celebrating those who’ve contributed as you reach milestones or achieve your ultimate goal will keep them engaged for the next push.

Dr. Jonathan Moore is deputy superintendent of student achievement at the Nevada Department of Education. He can be reached at jpmoore@doe.nv.gov.

During a virtual meeting of the Ossining Union Free School District in New York, Superintendent Raymond Sanchez told the school board he is aware of a potential for a five-month gap between placing an order for new technology and receiving it.

“We are going to need to start the timeline about getting computers in hand so when school does open, we have them,” he told the board at the April 14 meeting.

A report from EdWeek, meanwhile, said smaller districts in Massachusetts have requested to purchase technology from Boston Public Schools, unable to source it on their own.

A serious shortage of Chromebooks and iPads has reached its peak, says Lauren Guenveur, senior research analyst for International Data Corp., a provider of market intelligence, who studies devices and displays, tracking and forecasting national and global trends. She sees the sector correcting itself by the end of June, hopefully enabling school districts to get the technology they clamor for in time for fall.

“The demand in March and April has been tremendous,” she says. “Obviously, the shift to at-home learning created demand in the U.S. for Chromebooks and iPads, and to a lesser extent Windows laptops.” The demand really picked up by mid-March, after California and Washington State, followed by New York, went into lockdown. She says, though, that a healthier-than-normal inventory from 2019 stockpiles from companies concerned about increased tariffs helped to ease some of the crush. Still, “that inventory was quickly bought up,” she says. Guenveur expects to see high demand, especially for Chromebooks, which represent 65 percent of the educational mobile device market, to last into July.

Consumers suddenly forced to work from home stripped supplies of readily available technology from store shelves. That, combined with the massive surge in demand from schools, has added up to a delay in finding Chromebooks or iPads for districts.

“Most of this is coming down to the supply chain in China,” Guenveur says. “That is where most notebooks and tablets are sourced and shipped.” The coronavirus hit China early in 2020, shuttering a large portion of factories and, according to Bloomberg, reducing industrial output from the country by as much as 20 percent. The supply chain is now recovering, with many Chinese provinces nearing 100 percent manufacturing capability, prompting Guenveur to say she expects supplies to start becoming available again in May.

Microsoft declined to comment on its educational technology supply, and a request sent to Dell, makers of one of the most popular Chromebook models, went unanswered.

One important factor in a district’s ability to stock up is its size. “I think it is advantageous to be a larger district because you have the buying power,” Guenveur says. “As with things in high demand, there is a bidding war. If you have money to throw around, you are going to have an easier time.” At the same time, Guenveur expects consumer demand to dramatically decrease, so smaller districts may be able to consider sourcing technology through more traditional consumer channels, whether that be Best Buy or Costco.

Some of the largest districts in the country were already ahead of the demand curve. Los Angeles Unified, the country’s second-largest district, tells LA School Report that it has already spent $100 million sourcing Chromebooks and iPads.

“Our goal is to connect every student,” Austin Beutner, superintendent, wrote to parents. “We started in high school, where students will be most able to learn independently, and should reach all elementary schools by May as devices arrive from supply lines around the world.”

Other large districts, from New York to Chicago, have also recently purchased new devices.

Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the country’s fourth-largest district, had been preparing for the possible closure of schools since early 2020 and had an excess of 200,000 devices readily available for students, thanks to a $1.2 billion bond issue in 2012.

“More than 100,000 mobile devices, including phones with Wi-Fi that serve as hotspot for connectivity, are in the hands of students and being used for distance learning,” said Jackie Calzadilla, Miami-Dade County Public Schools spokesperson. “Our principals continue to contact parents to ensure that every child has the needed digital tools to facilitate online learning, including students who are homeless or live in migrant camps.”

Having already moved forward on technology, Calzadilla says, the district has no plans to acquire new products.

With the normal peak of school district buys happening in the second and third quarters, anyone needing a device right now — or into this summer, for that matter — may be stuck waiting.

This article was published in partnership with The 74. Sign up for The 74’s newsletter here.

TeachersPayTeachers.com

Teachers Pay Teachers represents a growing online marketplace — once dubbed the Etsy of Education — that now has seen 6 million teachers in the past year buy or sell classroom resources. It’s part of an effort to help teachers to help one another create fresh approaches to instruction while getting paid for their work.

And school districts are getting on board.

“As a first-year teacher, you aren’t handed very much to work with, and you are expected to learn the ropes of being a great teacher while at the same time creating much of the material you use in your class,” says Kristin Hodgson, vice president of brand marketing and communications. “Many, many great teachers came before [founder Paul Edelman], and the things he was creating had already been created. He thought, ‘What if I could get access to amazing resources from other teachers around the world?’”

Edelman, a former New York City public school teacher and now a Teachers Pay Teachers board member, created the site in 2006. Since then, there have been over 1 billion downloads, and 4 million resources are available today.

Some educators sign up as authors/sellers, while others browse the site for materials that could work in their classrooms. “The teacher-buyer is getting what they need and solving the problems around time and access, and the teacher-author is getting compensated for their work,” Hodgson says. The average resource costs less than $5, and the average transaction totals about $15.

The resources span K-12 and include everything from math curriculum to art lessons, reading materials and science labs. “Because we represent the collective wisdom of teachers, it is a swath of what has been tested and used across the community,” Hodgson says.

Teachers Pay Teachers doesn’t vet or review the teacher-authors — of the roughly 150,000 of them, several thousand do the majority of the selling, creating community followings — but users can rate each seller on the site.

Internal research has found that 98 percent of buyers use the lessons from the site to differentiate instruction in their classrooms at least once a month, and 67 percent do it at least weekly.

“I find that many of my teachers just want additional lessons to either help students that are struggling with the concept or to enrich and push students who have mastered the concept and can work with the skill at a higher level,” says April Becherer, principal at Parkview Elementary in Illinois.

Some lessons contain videos that model how to properly present the lesson or guide implementation of the resource, and once a purchase is made, the teacher has the right to future updates when the author adds, modifies or extends the material. “This is something that is useful,” says Becherer, “as education continually evolves and changes.”

As the site has grown, Hodgson says, its 130 employees have, among other things, created a crowdsourcing option to help specific teachers ask others to chip in for the resources they need. In the early launch stages in summer 2019, the pilot program saw 10,000 teachers quickly raise as much as a total of $100,000 toward resources. “The initial signals show that by unlocking more access for teachers and getting them more funds, we are going to allow them to get more of what they need to reach their students,” Hodgson says. “That is the priority we are focused on.”

This article was published in partnership with The 74. Sign up for The 74’s newsletter here.

US Ignite

The world of 4K microscopes is generally limited to high-level research universities. These ultra-high-definition scopes allow for enhanced detail that make a regular microscope look downright analog. But a push by the National Science Foundation and a nonprofit organization called US Ignite is opening 4K science research for under-resourced high schools across the country, bringing gigabit internet connectivity with data transfer speeds at a billion bits per second into communities such as Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Lafayette, Louisiana.

Schools where science research was largely read about in textbooks can now offer their students access to the most advanced microscopes in the country.

The program began in 2014 in collaboration with US Ignite, a nonprofit dedicated to creating a “smart city movement,” after Chattanooga’s municipal provider of internet service and fiber optics brought gigabit connectivity to the city. The University of Southern California partnered with the city’s STEM School, a public magnet school, to use the advanced fiber network to stream USC’s 4K microscope into a Tennessee high school’s biology classroom. Not only did high school juniors get to watch USC researchers use the microscope in real time and talk to them about what they were doing, but the connectivity enabled them to remotely manipulate the scope. The following year, Chattanooga students began sending their own slides to the university and using the microscope 2,100 miles away to conduct local research on water quality.

With the program such a success, funding from US Ignite and Mozilla, maker of the Firefox web browser, allowed the STEM School to add its own Olympus 4K microscope, housed in its biology classroom, in 2017. Other schools in surrounding Hamilton County then joined the program, using Chattanooga’s high-connectivity network to engage in the same type of science experience that STEM School students previously had with USC.

Now, the program has grown to include six schools, giving hundreds of students access to the Chattanooga microscope. And new funding from the foundation and US Ignite will bring in five additional schools, in Jackson, Tennessee, and Lafayette.

“This is about the STEM work, but also this network approach to education, bridging a lot of these gaps because of the quality of connections and opportunity these platforms bring students who wouldn’t otherwise speak to each other are now able to interact,” says Geoff Millener, digital equity officer at The Enterprise Center, a group supporting minority entrepreneurs and under-resourced communities and part of the team running the microscope project. “Now it becomes a collaborative network of peers, lab assistants and scientists working with each other.”

US Ignite and the center hope to roll out real-time collaborations to the additional schools this summer and offer a full classroom launch for fall semester, giving STEM curriculum to schools that wouldn’t have the opportunity without the program.

Shannon Seigle, a STEM School biology teacher, clearly remembers seeing the first image from the USC microscope in 2014: a rotifer, a microscopic aquatic animal, feeding and creating a microcurrent in the water by beating cilia back and forth like oars on a boat. “I have multiple degrees in science, and I had read about it, but to actually see it, it clicked,” she said. “I never thought I would see something in that detail and share it with people in different states. The resolution between regular microscopes and 4K is night and day.”

During biology class at STEM School, Seigle uses the 4K microscope to help students investigate the micro-impacts of organisms on local water sources. A typical unit with the microscope has students running project-based learning experiments on how human interactions impact fresh water through microbial populations. Experiments involve multiple trials with a human variable — e.g., a pollutant, such as oil — and water from a local source. Seigle said students collect data on their experiments over time and use the microscope at least three times during the process, learning how to not only manipulate the instrument but also understand the information it provides. Former STEM School juniors serve as lab assistants during their senior year.

For the remote schools, students run the same experiments with their own local bodies of water and the STEM School slides that they can examine by operating the microscope remotely over the fiber network.

“So many of our schools are on creeks, ponds and lakes that it is an experience that replicates really well across the city,” Millener said. “Students are able to compare their level of pollution in incredible detail to figure out just where on the [pollution] scale their local body of water rests.”

Jarren Carr, a senior at STEM School who took biology as a junior and is now a 4K lab assistant, said working with the microscope is different because nobody else has the ability. “You are a diamond because you have skills that nobody else has,” he said. Carr, who has an interest in mechanical engineering, said he can apply what he learned about micro distances to that field.

Ashlynn Verstrat, another STEM School student lab assistant, said that from talking with friends at other schools without access to the microscope, she realized how fortunate she is. “That gives us a leg up going into college,” she said. “For me, I have always been interested in science. To get here and do a project and work with the whole 4K team was very eye-opening. I never expected to actually get to use one of these microscopes in a high school. I definitely never expected to see living things on a scope and then be able to use it. It has been a good experience.”

An unintended benefit of the 4K microscope has been the growth of the students’ soft skills as well as their understanding of science. Along with the professional application process required to become a lab assistant, the popular program routinely brings through tours of teachers, officials and peers. “It is not just about the tech, although we are extremely lucky to have gigabit connectivity and feel having that in rural schools is an advantage,” Seigle said, “but also the personal aspect is just as important as the critical thinking.”

STEM School Principal Tony Donen said that he looks not only at the tech but also at how students are transformed. He believes the 4K microscope experience is doing that across his school. Both Carr and Verstrat, he said, were socially reserved or uninterested in academics when they entered the school. Now, Carr speaks in front of groups, welcoming staff and students every morning, and Verstrat has found a passion point that gets her excited about school.

“We are seeing things happen with students,” Donen said, “that transform their experience and how they act.”

This article was published in partnership with The 74. Sign up for The 74’s newsletter here.