In today's episode of the educational duct tape podcast, we're diving into some big ideas and exciting updates. That'll transform your classroom. I'm kicking things off with a soap box moment relating to a new CommonSense Media report about the gap between the AI awareness of teens and their parents, and what that means for us as educators, then we'll explore five updates. We've got a game changing differentiation feature in Google classroom. A time-saving resource in Canva's teacher work kit.
An upgrade to pear deck with graded mode. A great learning opportunity from Google and a powerful classroom culture strategy called feedback Friday. When I think of my childhood back in the eighties, I think of He-Man. Uh, choose your own adventure books, Michael Jordan, and the book it program. Do you remember pizza hut, book it program. If you are a child of the eighties, you probably do maybe child children of the nineties do as well.
If not, it was a program where you were rewarded for reading books by getting free personal pan pizza is now the Pepsi's and those classic pizza hut, plastic cups. I don't think those were free, but the pizzas were, and it was a core memory for me book. It helped me fall. Fall in love with books and pizza, probably. And I think that today's sponsor Short Answer will help your learners fall in love with writing.
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Short Answer helps students improve their writing in any subject, ELA, science, math, you name it. Teachers try Short Answer for free at www.Myshortanswer.com. That's myShortAnswer.com. Use code JakeMillerWrites all one word. JakeMillerWrites for three months of premium access. For free. So book it over to my Short Answer.com. To see how they can help your learners. Love to write. Hey there, Duct Tapers, whether you are a longtime listener or you're tuning in for the very first time.
Welcome to the show. My name is Jake. I am a personalized learning and ed tech specialist and a former middle school teacher from Ohio. And by joining me here today, you are officially a duct taper. That means you are on board with the educational duct tape metaphor. Seeing educational technology, not as the end goal, but as a powerful tool, like duct tape used to solve problems. Achieve goals. And meet learning standards.
So typically I feature an interview with an awesome educator or sometimes pair of educators. But today I'm going to break from that pattern. Actually, I'll be doing that pretty regularly so that I can stick to a weekly pace. So in today's episode, I'm flying solo and you'll see me do that every other week or so do one of these solo episodes to save myself a little bit of time so I can come back to you weekly. I do have a soap box moment today though.
And I've got five pieces of education news that I am eager to share with you. Some of that I'm really, really excited about in here. By the way, if you haven't heard my recent episodes, you're going to want to go back to hear the two part series with Adam Sparks that just launched over the last few weeks. So many amazing insights from that conversation. Uh, and next week I'll be bringing to you a super episode featuring team AdaKat.
That is husband and wife, ed tech, duo, Adam Juarez and Kat Goyette. In which we talk about accessibility tools. It's another not to be missed episode. So make sure that you are subscribed. All right. Without further ado, let's get to today's episode. I have that skibidi rizz. just kidding. Well, maybe not, maybe I do have it, but I'm kidding by saying it. I should say though, on a related note, If you think about how clueless most adults feel about their kids slang, like skibidi rizz.
Well, it turns out that they're just as clueless about their kids' AI use. And that's more concerning. Check this out a recent report from CommonSense Media, which I will provide a link to found that seven in 10 teens. So 70% of teens in the study have used generative AI tools. Now that's probably not that surprising to you. Also unsurprising. The report found out that the majority of the time, this is for schoolwork, that probably is not coming as a surprise to most of you.
Here's the part that is surprising. This is the plot twist. Most parents don't even know their kids are using these tools. Only 37% of the parents in the study who have teens who are using AI are aware of it. So 70% of the teens are using AI of those 70% of teens, only 37% of their parents are aware they're using it.
So teens are diving head first into tools like chatGPT, AI, enhanced search engines, and even AI image generators for everything from brainstorming ideas to translating languages and homework, you guessed it. That's the big one. More than half of teens in the study said they're using these tools to help them tackle their assignments. But here's, what's striking. The adults are taking the L in awareness of what their kids are doing.
Yeah. Sorry, you had to go back to the slang there on that one, but seriously. There's a ginormous awareness gap between the teens and their parents. While, they're teens are busy experimenting with these powerful tools. A lot of them are flying completely under the parenting radar. Many of the parents are oblivious. Here's where we as educators come into the picture, schools are still playing catch up.
The same report found that six in 10 teens either said their school had no rules about AI, or they weren't sure if there were any. Think about that, these tools are revolutionizing how students approach learning, but many schools haven't established clear guidelines or even opened up the conversation. And I think there's also a possibility that those rules and guidelines do exist and those conversations have happened, but they haven't been communicated to the learners and that's problematic too.
Now when I call for guidelines or policies or rules, I'm not asking for a stern, no AI policy. Definitely not. But I'm asking us to think through what's best for our learners and their future. So I recently saw Ken Shelton give a keynote presentation in which he shared one of legendary UCLA basketball coach, John Wooden's favorite phrases. And it is so apt here. Wooden told us players "Be quick, but don't hurry." "Be quick, but don't
hurry." Wooden used it to teach his players to act with urgency, but without carelessness, With urgency, but without carelessness and isn't that exactly the mindset we need right now with generative AI, we have to act with urgency, but we cannot act with carelessness. We don't have the luxury of dragging our feet. We have to be quick. 70% of teenagers are using it according to this study, but we also can't afford to rush into bans or rigid rules without thoughtful planning.
We also can't rush into wide open use of AI in our classrooms either. We can't hurry. We have to be quick, but we can't hurry. We need to move quickly. Yes. But with intention. We need to balance urgency with clarity, creating a framework that doesn't just restrict AI, but teaches students how to wield it wisely. And here's what we need to think about Wooden's goal for his team was to score more points than the other team, right. That's how you win. That was his goal.
So when he said "be quick, but don't hurry." That was his strategy. To get them to winning basketball games, being quick, help that hurrying did not. So we need to think about what our goal is. How do we want our decisions about AI to impact our learners today? Tomorrow? A week from now? A month from now? A year from now? Five years, 10 years from now? What policies, rules, guidelines, and guardrails. Can we put in place today? To make that ideal future happen. If we hurry.
We'll skip considering these questions. We don't want to hurry. But we need to consider these. We need to do it quickly. Let's act quickly. But with purpose let's act quickly. With urgency. But without carelessness. All right. So in lieu of an episode today, my main content are five updates. Uh, and the education and ed tech space that I thought you'd love to hear about. So I'm going to dive in first with one from Google. So differentiation just got so much easier in Google Classroom now.
Before I get you too excited. If you're using Google Workspace Education Plus, or the Teaching and Learning upgrade, there's a new feature. You'll definitely want to check out. It's called student groups. Now, if you're not on one of those versions that was Education Plus, or the Teaching and Learning upgrade. If you don't have one of those. I apologize for rubbing salt in that wound, but you do not have access to this feature.
If you want to, you might want to jump like a minute and a half forward, so you don't have to hear any more about it and cry about it. I'm sorry. I wish you had it. I wish it was free. It's not moving on. So anyhow, for those of you who have it, this update allows you to create groups within your class. And assign content directly to specific students or groups of students. Now you've long been able to manually select students out of a list.
Uh, on check the boxes next to their names and assign things to them. Um, but now you could set up groups and reuse them on future assignments. Imagine the time savings you could set up groups based on reading levels or interests or scores on uh, pre assessments or map test data, or even the pace at which students are working. And then those groups are saved for you to reuse. For example, let's say you're teaching a math lesson.
Some students are working on multiplication while others are ready for division. Now you can easily create two different groups and assign targeted practice to each group, ensuring that every student gets what they need. Without slowing anyone down. And the flexibility here is key. These groups are saved to be reused, but they aren't fixed. You can adjust them as students grow their needs change, or even just for specific projects. And students can be in multiple groups.
For example, you may have a learner who struggles with reading, but excels in writing. Or maybe pre-assessment data indicates that they need more support in unit three, but are ready to rock it. And unit four, we don't want to track them. We want to differentiate, and this tool helps you do that Again, it's important to point out that this feature is exclusive to premium accounts, Google workspace Education Plus, or the Teaching and Learning upgrade.
So if you're on the free version, I don't believe it's available to you. It makes me sad that they're not making this pedagogically beneficial feature available to everyone. But I suppose I can understand the notion that if companies are getting money for their service, they're more likely to put their weight behind adding good features. And so if it was a free service, maybe we wouldn't have this at all. Anyhow. Off that kind of sore subject there. I'm curious.
How would you use this feature in your classroom? Share with us on Bluesky. Use that #EduDuctTape and tell us all about it. Okay. Moving on from Google to one of the other ginormous. Um, companies and the technology space nowadays Canva. And this one is mostly for the elementary teachers out there. So Canva can't help you elementary teachers with things like tying your kid's shoes or rustling them into their snow pants. Have you been dealing with the Ohio winter? Like I have.
Canva can't help with those things, but there are new teacher work kit might just save you a ton of time on lesson planning. And I guess that gives you time more time to tie shoes. Maybe. I don't know. I hope that's not how you use it. So, what is the teacher work kit? Well, it's a collection of ready-made templates. Designed specifically for teachers. So you'll find tools for creating review games. Um, guided practice activities.
Uh, SEL or social-emotional learning resources and more they're all in their, pre-made the best part. No design skills necessary. More importantly, no time to design required. So you could just pull up a template, tweak it to fit your needs and have something professional looking and engaging. Ready in minutes. Let's say you need a quick jeopardy style game for a test review. They've got ya. Let's say you want an SEL activity to use during morning meeting? You're covered.
There are even sequenced lesson plans. So lesson one, lesson two, lesson three, and so on to help you string everything together smoothly so that you can get multiple connected lesson plans in order and use them over a series of days. It's all about making your work easier and freeing up your time to focus on what matters most. Which is tying shoes and snowpants. No, I'm kidding. Which is your students. And unlike the previous update from Google that made us a little sad. Here's the great news.
Canva for education is completely free for teachers in schools, as long as it's approved in your school district to be used, which means you can access all of this without worrying about budgets. Just log in. Explore the templates. See what sparks your creativity. And that's what I love to do with any pre-made or AI stuff. I don't often use it exactly the way it was made. I use it to get my creative juices flowing.
I think that's the perfect idea for those like Monday mornings when you're short on time, or just need a fresh idea to spice things up. So we're coming up on super bowl Sunday that next morning use one of these Canva lesson plans. If you try out the Canva teacher work kit, please let us know. Reach out on Bluesky, #EduDuctTape and tell us all about it. Third, if you are a pear deck user, you've definitely felt this one before. Students entering an answer on a slide.
And then during the discussion that you had with them, because you're a good teacher, they magically fixed their response to make it seem like they had the right answer all along. Well, good news Pear Deck has introduced graded mode. And with it comes a brand new submit button for text, number, poll, and choice slides. So here's how it works. When students type in their response and hit, submit their answers, get locked in. No sneaky edits allowed. So I'm excited about that.
But I do think there are times when I want students to be able to revise their answers based on discussions with peers or with the teacher or the full class. I mean, that's learning, right? So sometimes I do want them to be able to change that answer before it's submitted. And Pear Deck must value that as well because they're giving teachers control over this feature. If you want to allow resubmissions, you can turn that feature on if you don't, you've turned it off.
So it's great for moments when students need a second chance or when you want them to revise their thinking after feedback. But I think there's the overall is a game changer for combining the benefits of formative assessment, which Pear Deck has always been really good for, um, and data, which is kind of a new thing that could be used for now that it auto grades and calculates the scores and lets you lock an answer. So that data is accurate. Now we get the benefits of formative assessment.
And data, and we can have the benefit of having those class discussions too, about the answers they put in. I also really liked that the students have to hit the submit button themselves. So it's not like they're going to be surprised that they can't change it as, as they already committed to the answer. They clicked. Submit. Um, so it's not like, oh, I want to change it. No, you clicked submit. So at least they do know that again, if you try it, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.
Bluesky, #EduDuctTape. Okay. Fourth update. If you are ready to level up your skills with Google tools, you might want to check out the 10 part product training series that they just released. It covers everything from Gemini AI, Google's AI tool to the newest AI powered innovations for Chromebooks and for Google workspace for education. So if you want all the way to learn about all of the AI stuff happening in Google land, this course is for you or this series is for you.
So I haven't gone through them yet, but it looks like there's plenty in there for teachers like. Learning how to use AI to personalize learning as well as for admins, like finding new ways to be super efficient or it leaders like optimizing your setups. So the series also appears to be really well tailored to educators at every level. And it looks like they're providing practical step-by-step guidance, you know, it's truly step-by-step and applicable. So that's perfect too.
I also like that you have the flexibility because it's an online course to pick and choose sessions that matter most to you. I just attend the ones you want. And if you can't attend them live, the recordings will be available. So you can learn at your own pace. Again, if you try it out, please share with us #EduDuctTape. I'd love to hear all about it. Our fifth and final update. This next one is something I think every teacher needs to hear about.
I recently came across an article on Edutopia about feedback Friday and the concept of unconditional positive regard. So I was familiar with feedback Friday, but I had never heard of unconditional positive regard. And as Lloyd Christmas would say in dumb and dumber, I like it a lot. Pretty excited about unconditional positive regard. So the idea is simple but powerful.
If you're creating a classroom environment where every student feels valued, no matter what they do, it's unconditional positive regard. It's about showing students that your belief in them isn't conditional on their behavior, their grades, or their attitude on any given day. Instead it's about building trust and making it clear that you're in their corner. Always.
By the way, if you've read the book Never Enough by Jennifer Wallace, which I've read and loved, you know, the importance of this kind of belonging and mattering that unconditional positive regard brings about. So the article highlights a specific practice that ties into this mindset and that's soliciting regular student feedback. The author of the article, her name is Nicole Greene. She recommends doing this through something like feedback Friday.
So Greene shares about her system, where she meets with every member of her class. One-on-one each week for a quick check-in session. Again, obviously that happens on Friday cause she calls it feedback Friday. Now Greene has a small class. I think she said she has 12 kids or 11 kids or something like that. So really realistic for her to spend 20 minutes talking to all 12 of those kids for a teacher, with a higher number of students, that's going to be really tough.
So if you've got a larger class load, you may not want to meet with each student every Friday, but you could meet with subsets and you could use a tool like Google forms to hear from everyone efficiently, or maybe you meet with three students a day. And by the end of every two weeks, you've met with everybody. You can certainly have another system to make sure you hear from them all regularly.
I think this process really could build a deeper connection and help you tailor your teaching to meet the needs of your learners. But most importantly, it gives students a voice. It shows that we value their voice. It's about listening and acting on what they share. Whether they're telling you how they feel about a recent lesson. Uh, the classroom environment or even their own struggles. These moments can be classroom culture, transformers.
But can also deeply impact your students as learners outside of your classroom. Uh, if you use feedback Friday or a similar strategy or unconditional positive regard, or you have thoughts on how to implement it again, please share on social media, use that #EduDuctTape and tell us all about it. All right, folks that does it for today. Thanks again to today's sponsor Short Answer. You could find that code. Uh, back at the beginning of the episode, JakeMillerWrites at myshortanswer.com.
Uh, thanks to them for sponsoring today's episode. I hope that I will see you all next week. I guess. I don't see you. You're listening to me. Neither of us can see each other. Uh, but I hope that you all return to the show next week for that awesome episode with Kat Goyette and Adam Juarez, a team AdaKat, as we talk about some amazing ideas from them about accessibility in the classroom, some AI, some tech, some not tech at all. Uh, so please join us next week. Thanks for being here.
Have a great day.