EDT123 Think big, Start small, and Scale fast with the Eisenhower Matrix. Plus, helps me prioritize what matters. Plus, updates from Snorkl, Google Classroom, and SchoolAI

Ever feel like the important stuff keeps getting bumped by the urgent stuff? In this episode, we dig into that tension, starting with a quote. I really like think big, start small, scale fast. Then we'll look at how the Eisenhower Matrix can help us make decisions in our classrooms that prioritize what matters. Plus some updates from Snorkl, Google Classroom and SchoolAI, and a candid book reflection. Let's get into it. So I'm coming to you a little bit late today.

I should have had this episode to you last week. I could have recorded it one night at like 11:00 PM I was all ready to go, but it was 11:00 PM and I didn't wanna do that to myself, so I apologize. Gotta take care of ourselves though. Folks, so I'm here a couple days late and earlier in a week than I normally am releasing on a Monday. Don't normally do that. Uh, I'm gonna aim to release two episodes this week.

The episode right now that you're listening to that should have come out last week and later on, like Thursday, the episode that should have come out this week just to keep myself on schedule. So hopefully you are, subscribed so that you don't. Miss that episode when it comes out later this week. I'm liking this pattern of an episode like last week's episode, or two weeks ago, I guess it is now, uh, with an interview.

The episode's coming out later this week with an interview would be Bryon Carpenter this week, , and the episode like you're listening to today, , which just has a soapbox moment and some EdTech updates, and so I'm cycling back and forth between the two of them. They both have the updates piece in them. But . I'm cycling between a soapbox moment one week and interview the other week, making it a little more manageable for me, and hopefully it's keeping it interesting for you too.

Uh, before we get into it for today, I would be also appreciative if you would share the show with your colleagues. Provide a rating in, , apple Podcast or Spotify or anywhere else that you're listening that might have that option. , or give the show a review in there if that's an option. We're going into the slow months for, uh, education podcasts. And shows, as we approach, uh, the summertime. So it helps if the word's out there so that the listenership stays.

I've got a lot of stuff I wanna update you guys on, so I don't want to, uh, take time off in June. I wanna , keep coming at you with episodes, so it'll help if you keep pushing it so that people are hearing what to show. And I, I really just wanna help them, uh, with education and educational technology. So hopefully by you sharing them, , that'll help get the word out there.

So a few episodes back, I told you about my oldest child getting his learner's permit and how the idea of him behind the wheel like totally freaked me out. Well, we're a few months in now, and here's what I've learned. Teaching your kid to drive is less about one big moment and more about a hundred little ones. We didn't start on the highway. We started in a parking lot, then an empty park with a few winding roads, then our quiet neighborhood, then slightly busier roads, one red light.

Then two.. By the way, I use, uh, Waze directions. Like you just Google Maps. There's Apple Maps, there's Waze. I use Waze, WAZE. Uh, I use Waze in my car and my preferred Waze voice comes from the comedian Nate Bargatze. Uh, he cracks me up the whole time, like even no matter how many times I hear the things he says in there, they cracked me up. Uh, but one of my favorite things he says is, in one mile turn, right. Right Turns are one of the easiest turns a lot easier than that other way.

Makes me chuckle every time he's joking of course. But he's right err I mean correct. Not right. Correct. So yeah, we started with right turns, they are the easier of the two ways. And then we moved up to left turns, then right turns on busier roads, then left turns on busier roads. And each time we drove I had him do a little more. Go a little faster, a little more complex of a ride, a little more to think about. And honestly, that's what progress actually looks like.

Not just when you're teaching your 15-year-old how to drive, but in everything. As I sat in the passenger seat pressing that imaginary brake pedal every now and then, I was reminded of a quote from Jim Carroll. He said, think big, start small. Scale fast and that's what we're doing with my son in the car. Right? The big picture. It is big and it's clear he needs to be road ready, but we're getting there intentionally one drive at a time, but we're doing it regularly, right?

We we're started small, right in the, in the parking lot. We are scaling fast now. He's driving on regular roads and we're thinking big him driving by himself someday. Right, and it's the same in our classrooms. We want to grow as educators. We want to build future ready learners who are critical thinkers and collaborators and are ready for whatever this world and AI throw at them, right? That's the thinking big. That's our big goal.

But if we try to leap straight to that finish line and do too much too fast. It'll be worse than if I took my son driving on the highway on day one. Like that's the equivalent of it, right? We don't wanna go driving on the highway on day one. You don't wanna try to do everything in your classroom on day one either. So. What if you just start in the parking lot, right?

Instead of letting your kids use a full fledged, large language AI model right away, could you just have them interact with a really simple custom chat bot in MagicSchool instead of recording a podcast? Could we start with recording a few responses to questions in a Padlet or with Mote? Those are just examples, but think about like, what's something really big you'd like to do that seems overwhelming, and how could we start small to get us to there?

I recently read a reflection from an educator I support. She had just seen a presentation from an another teacher and she wrote in her reflection, I can't possibly do all of that. And you know what? That's okay. She doesn't have to do. All of that. At least not yet because most big things don't happen all at once. They happen a little at a time with purpose and practice scaling, right? Thinking big and scaling fast. One small step at a time. The way my son's driving skills are happening.

But it's important to remember the think big part. We have to know what our goal is. We can't just do small things in our classroom if we don't know what we're trying to get to. Right? Don't just start implementing AI or other ed tech tools because you think it's the next step. Do it because it's the next step on the journey to your ultimate goal. So we have to think big first. We have to have that goal, and then we take those small steps. Here's the tricky part though.

Taking those small steps often doesn't happen because we get caught up in the parent emails, the requests from the office, the planning for today's lesson, right? We get caught up in that day-to-day stuff, and so we have to remember that while those things are urgent. They are, there are other things that are important but not urgent. That's where those small steps fit, right?

Using AI in a new way today or using a new ed tech tool, or trying a new strategy, or giving our students , some agency over what they're learning, those don't seem urgent. but they are important, right? They're important for getting us to our goal, but they're not urgent right now. But we have to scale fast, so right. We have to keep doing those things to keep the scaling happening, and that's where the Eisenhower Matrix comes in handy.

It is a time management tool used originally by President Eisenhower and later popularized by Stephen Covey, and it divides tasks into four quadrants. Urgent and important. Important but not urgent. Urgent but not important, and neither. So we're thinking about how urgent is something and also how important is something. When my son first got his learner's permit, we went weeks without practicing. We really did. He was ready to practice.

We didn't start, I knew we should be doing it, but it was tough to find time to fit it in, not because it wasn't important. Yeah, but because it didn't feel urgent, and that happens to us in our classrooms too, right? It's something important, but it's not urgent and other urgent things come up. So we don't do that thing. And here's the thing, if we'd waited until it was urgent to teach my son to drive, when it was time to take his test, he wouldn't be ready for that test.

He wouldn't be ready to drive safely. And the same goes for us. If it's important, we can't wait. We have to prioritize it even when there's no alarm going off to get it done. So with him, since learning to drive is important, we took it one step at a time. Consistently scaling fast in your classrooms. Think about what are those important things that it's time to stop putting off. What are the small steps that you can take to scale fast?

You might not be ready for highway driving yet, but you could find a parking lot version of that. Think big thing and start there. Because when you start small with the right vision, you could scale faster than you think. Before we jump into today's edition of EdTech and Education News and updates, a quick reminder if something in today's segment makes you go, Ooh, I need to try that, or, eh, not for me, or even, yeah, but I've got a better option for that, Jake, let me know.

I really do love to hear your insights post about them on Bluesky using #EduDuctTape or leave a voice message at speakpipe.com/eduDuctTape.

First, let's talk about Snorkl Coach. It's a new feature in Snorkl that acts like a just in time support system for students. Kind of like a virtual TA that sits quietly in the corner until needed. Before we get too far into this exciting announcement from Snorkl, let me point out that it's only part of the premium accounts, so. When teachers who are a part of a school or a district with premium plans, toggle it on a little button appears in the bottom corner of the student's screen.

So yes, you could choose if this is on or off every time you launch an activity. When students click that button, they could do three things, ask it questions, use text to speech, or get the content translated. The coach even sees what they're working on through the whiteboard, so the guidance is personalized to what the student needs, right? Then not generic, just based on the question itself.

This means that if, for example, the student is solving a math problem and they get stuck halfway through it. The coach would make sure they're on the right path and then help them with the next step rather than just starting from the beginning. Regardless if the student needs help with the beginning stages of the problem, I think this is some awesome applications of universal design for learning here, making the content and the question more universally accessible.

But it doesn't stop there because students still then have to finish by answering the question in their own words. So that blend of scaffolding and accessibility and then accountability feels really intentional, and I like it a lot. And what's cool is that it not only supports the learner, to me, it also makes the assessment piece more accurate because we're seeing their knowledge and their ability to apply their skills with those scaffolds in place.

But if you're worried that it'll make the assessment inaccurate by having those scaffolds, you can always turn it off when you launch the activity. Again, though, this is only for users who are a part of a school or a district with a premium plan. So those of you that have those premium plans, have you tried it yet? Let me know with the #EduDuctTape, or drop us a message at speakpipe.com/eduDuctTape.

Next up, let's talk about Read Along in Google Classroom, because this tool just got a big upgrade.

So if you missed the original announcement, read Along is a Google Workspace for Education feature that helps students build independent reading skills using ai so teachers can assign texts from a library of. 800 plus books, including books from Heggerty and ReadWorks and others, , plus some that include Spanish support and the teacher assigns them and then gets insights into students' reading, accuracy, speed, and comprehension. So that's, that was already a solid win.

That's good news, especially for early readers or multilingual learners. But now educators can upload their. Own content to read along. So the books that they had were great, but you can now put in your own content for the learners to use in there.

So if you've got maybe some culturally relevant material or texts about students' interests or texts that relate to local situations or your local government or your community or something like that or you just have content that fits your curriculum better than what's in the library, you can assign it directly and still get the same AI powered reading feedback. This feels like a really smart move toward flexibility and representation in literacy instruction.

That said, it is worth noting this feature is only available if your district has Education Plus, or the Teaching and learning add on. I always like to point out, it's hard to know which plans your district has, but it's good. Kind of become, kind of like a logic puzzle for you. If you're a teacher and you don't know, if you don't have the read along option for Google Classroom, um, then you're not Education Plus and you don't have the Teaching and Learning add-on.

So if you don't know, this is an easy way to confirm if you do or not. If you're using Read Along or thinking about trying it. Let me know what kind of content you'd want to upload. So what are you using this new feature where you can upload your own content. What are you using that for? Share with us using #EduDuctTape or leave a message at speakpipe.com/eduDuctTape.

SchoolAI just added a new space called Video Explorer, and I think it's one that a lot of us will want to play with. So here's the idea. You drop in a YouTube link, you describe your learning goals. What are you using that YouTube video to teach the kids about or get them thinking about? And then SchoolAI creates an.

Interactive video experience for students as they watch the video pauses at key moments and the chatbot asks the students questions that check for understanding, kind of like guided notes meets chatbot based review. This is a really neat alternative to tools like EDpuzzle, , or Screencastify quizzes or other tools for formative assessments during videos. Except here it's a chat bot experience. That's pretty rad. I think it'd be really cool.

Uh, the issue is i, I don't think the formative data would be organized in a way that's quite as beneficial as using a tool like EDpuzzle. Uh, but still I think this is a really cool, , potential experience here. And because it's tied to the learning outcomes that you set. So you tell it what the learning outcomes you're looking for are. It feels like a customizable layer of scaffolding rather than just like. Algorithmic guesswork by the ai.

So it's not just saying like, oh, I think these are the questions from this video I should ask about. You're saying these are the specific goals that I'm teaching here. Focus on that with your questioning. So all that said, I have not tried it yet myself, so I'd love to hear from folks who have, uh, how well do the pauses line up with your goals. Do students engage with it differently they than they do with a plain video? Do they like it more than a tool like EDpuzzle or Screencastify?

Let us know with a #EduDuctTape. Or leave a message at speakpipe.com/edu.

Duct tape. So a quick follow up about a book that I've mentioned a few times here and on Social, more Than Words by John Warner. When I first heard about it, I was intrigued and genuinely hopeful. The premise of reinventing how we think about writing instruction, especially in light of AI, really resonated with me.

Some of the sneak peeks I saw pointed to ideas like moving past the five paragraph essay, making, writing a more metacognitive experience, writing about your thinking, your learning, your growth, and talking with students about when AI should or should not be used. So I was excited as I got it or found it and learned about it. When I first had the copy, I shared quotes, I highlighted passages. I was all in to the idea of this book.

But. After finishing it, I've got to be honest, I did not vibe with this book. There were definitely moments that pushed my thinking and a few lines I'll carry with me, but overall it felt uneven, more rant than roadmap. Um, at times it read more like a love letter to writing or a vent about AI with a few valuable, sharp insights mixed in. And, and that's okay. Not every book has to be for every reader. I still appreciate the questions that Warner is raising.

It's clear he's an awesome writing teacher. I'm always grateful when authors take risks, even when I don't fully connect with that execution. So just to be clear, it's not that I disagreed with everything in the book. In fact, there were parts I strongly agreed with and parts I didn't. And Warner makes a great point actually. In the book, he talks about how we should learn from people we disagree with, not just the ones we align with.

So even though he and I disagree on some things, I. Still can learn from him, and I could not agree more on that front. So no, it's not because his view of AI is less optimistic than mine, that I didn't enjoy it. It's just that. I didn't, and that's okay too. And I, I felt awkward sharing this on the podcast. At first. I was like, do I really wanna share a less than positive review of a book? Um, but I think we have to be honest with each other.

So I wanted to tell you, I've, I've talked about this book before, and then when I read it, I was like, yeah, I didn't really love it. And so I felt like I should be honest with you and share that information with you. So if you picked it up because I mentioned it and you've read it, I'd love to hear your take. Did it resonate for you? 'cause looking on good reads and things like that, there's plenty of positive reviews for this book. So maybe you loved it.

Um, were there parts that stuck for you? Were there parts you really liked? I'd love to hear your thoughts. #EduDuctTape or speakpipe.com/eduDuctTape. Well, that's it for this round of EdTech and education news and updates. Got thoughts on any of today's topics? As always, I want to hear about them. If there was a tool that you're using differently or something you're trying based on this, or something I should have included or should include in the next episode, hit me up.

#EduDuctTape on Bluesky or speakpipe.com/eduDuctTape. I love hearing how you're using these updates in real classrooms. Thanks for being here. Please make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss that next episode, which I hope to release here in a few days with my friend Bryon Carpenter. Peace out everybody.