EDT124 Bryon Carpenter, Tools for Visuals like Adobe Express, Canva, Google Drawings, and Google Slides

Welcome. Welcome in Duct Tapers. Welcome into a new episode. I apologize for not coming to you last week as I had planned two for last week. I mentioned it in the last episode that I was gonna do two in a week. I should have known better. I was not able to pull off two in one week. You all knew better. You heard me and you were like, Jake, there's no way you're doing two episodes in one week. We know you. This is gonna come out next week.

So yes, here we are this week with a great episode with my friend Bryon Carpenter. Can't wait for you to hear that. Um, because I am so unpredictable and it's hard to tell when I will unleash these episodes. You wanna make sure you're subscribed in whatever app you're listening to this in so that you don't miss those episodes when they drop. Speaking of when new episodes drop next week, we should. I can't make any guarantees here folks.

We should have an updates episode with a couple of EdTech and education news updates and a new soapbox moment that's already percolating around in my brain. So I think, I think I've got a good chance of having that ready in time 'cause I've already got an idea for what we're gonna talk about next week. So, yeah, make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss out on those. And then make sure you share with your friends with educators.

I wanna support as many as I can and share as much news and information with them as possible to help them out. They're all working so hard, uh, especially those of us here in the states that are winding down our year about to reach the end of the school year. We're in the tough days where it seems like it'll never end and we, we gotta get there and get it to summer, and then we get our big reward with summer.

But I wanna help those educators out as much as I can, so make sure you're sharing so they could hear the wisdom that my guests share and all the news happening in the education and ed tech space.

All right, without further ado, speaking of amazing guests, let's get to today's interview with Bryon Carpenter. All right. Today's guest is Bryon Carpenter. Bryon is in his 17th year of teaching math and science in an online environment, as well as blended learning and face-to-face in media design Abbotsford Virtual School in Abbotsford, BC Canada.

That is British Columbia. See, I know my stuff Bryon, he said in 2013, technology is merely a tool, which wielded appropriately can enhance this human endeavor that we call education. Sounds pretty educational duct tapey. So as you could tell, me and Bryon are aligned in a lot of different ways here with our thoughts about education and educational technology. You could find Bryon on Bluesky or Twitter at Bryon, B-R-Y-O-N-C-A-R, as in Carpenter, BryonCar,.

Um, or find his show at Fresh Air at five on Twitter, or check out at Fresh Air at five on YouTube. That will all be in the show notes, but not in the show notes actually, here in the podcast is the one and only Bryon Carpenter. Welcome in, bryon, how you doing?

And I normally get to hear Bryon's thoughts on the podcast. Three weeks after I recorded it. But now, now I, um, I, I get to actually have the live back and forth conversation. I'll have to wait for the response now.

Uh, the day you record normally as you're kind of rounding out your walk, you record those reflections and they could subscribe to the podcast or on YouTube, uh, and check out Fresh Air at five and hear your thoughts on, on a lot of different shows, which I I've learned new your, like sometimes it's like, oh, that, like I don't normally listen to that show, but that episode Bryon reflected on like, I feel like I should listen to that one.

Or sometimes I'm like, I need to listen to that whole show. So it's kind of a cool discovery thing for me. To

start off with a game here. Okay. Uh, So we're gonna play a game of which of the following is less torturous, which as you know, is like another game that goes. By another name

All Right. Let's get into the real reason you're here, which is not to To play, play games and

So my question for you is, 'cause I know, because I'm thinking about something else in your bio there. My question for you is, what tool or strategy would you use to have students create visuals? 2D not like a, video necessarily, but like a infographic, a diagram, a a, drawing a representation of something learned in class. I'm sure as a science teacher, there's a lot of times that's come up and certainly in your role in teaching media design, this comes up a lot. So

graphic design, Or Adobe Express. It was Adobe Creative Cloud Express back then. They have now shortened their name to Adobe Express, and my go-to today is Adobe Express for creating graphics, creating infographics, creating posters, creating icons for my, you know, student profile, my, my teacher profile on my accounts, creating visuals for the screens at school. you know, I use Adobe Express a lot, like a lot, a lot. I personally, in my personal life as well.

you know, the Fresh Air five logo was designed in there. And, um, yeah, so for getting students to do this, I would,

I would suggest Adobe Express. Okay. Now that is one tool and, we talk about choice paralysis, so I just keep it simple, right? I keep the tool belt pretty, pretty simple with specific tools. You and I have talked about tool belts in the past and having too many tools and walking into Home Depot going, I need to create a hole You know, there's all kinds of things from sledgehammers to, you know, circular saws, to you know, there's, I don't know, what else? Can you make a hole with a bucket?

that's not a great tool for that, but you could, there's a hole in the bucket Exactly. Or a drill. Right. And knowing your, knowing your most efficient means of getting to these things that I think is important that we have that digital literacy as educators so that we can go the efficient way to get there is this, you know, it's kinda like math, kinda like algebra, right? Algebra rules say do whatever you want to one side of the equation, you have to do it to the other, right?

So students are like, well, I don't know what to do. I'm like, well, do something. It doesn't really matter. Whatever you want you, you'll, you'll be able to solve it eventually, right? But the most efficient is to recognize what is being asked at the outset of the question, right? So if a teacher asks, you know, how can I get my students to make visuals? I say, it depends. And we talk about the teacher's digital literacy. We talk about the student's digital literacy and the scaffold.

We, we need to get to one of these tools, right?

I would, I would compare it directly to Adobe Illustrator, which is big and heavy and complicated. As far as an object based graphics tool compared to taking a photograph, for example, and like Photoshop and being able to manipulate properties of that, right? So it's a very simple tool. you can put shapes, you can put text, you can put, buttons that link out to things that if you did have an audio file that you wanted to attach to a Google drawing, you could easily do that.

Google drawings are a one page, tool, so there's only one canvas. There aren't, there aren't multiple layers of canvases you can put, but the objects are all layered on top of each other, up and down.

how is that related to Google Slides? Google Slides is just a multi-page Google drawing, I think I would call it. Right? It's got, it's got a lot of capacity for doing presentations, but almost everything you can do in a Google drawing, you can do in Google Slides. It's simple to use. It's easy to access. You have one account that allows you to get to all these lightweight, agile, oh, and collaborative tools. We used to make our school newsletter. I took that project from the office.

For a class of mine for media design, my grade elevens and twelves, and using Google drawings, I would make an eight and a half by 11 size canvas, like a portrait canvas, and then we learned about margins and how we need to stay away from the, I can't print in this area on a printer, right? Quarter inch margin all the way around. We would stay outta that space, but we did all of our newsletters and you can see those on my school website if you're interested, in Google drawings.

So because of the collaborative nature, I could have a class of 13, 18 students all working on one document on different pages of that document right now. And it was fast, it was agile, it was very, very good. Right. And so that, that, that's a go-to if you've got Google accounts.

I decided against that. And there's other ways of getting at teaching, layering

objects and things like that. And, Adobe Express is, my other go-to it. it does a good job of being able to show you the layers. Stack of layers on the side of the screen as you're building something so you can see where actually it is. Right. You know, and you're like, how come I can't, how come I can't click on it? Well, it's because it's behind three other things. And if you click on it on the the layer stack, then it can, you can get access to it that way.

Like if they have come through, you know, the early years of elementary and I've been working with iPads and with drawings and having that language of being, being there, then Yeah, we could get to accessing these tools much earlier, right? But. We, don't do that in my school because our students who don't have that digital literacy background, even though we're a virtual school, we do have K to grade five in our building one day a week. And I do teach them about digital literacy.

But if I saw them more often, definitely I could be using Adobe Express. and those, that simple entry level tool, you know, as early as probably grade three with students, you know.

Do you need it an image file as a jpeg? Do you need it as a PNG, that can have a transparent background so that you can put it into something else? what else? I'm not sure the, you know, do you need it as a bookmark size? You're making a bookmark, right? So you could, you could actually take your ruler, figure out what size you actually want your bookmark to be. 'cause you have an awesome bookmark you got at the bookstore.

And I was like, I want to make bookmarks with my students that are this size and make something that size. And then with some manipulation, you can actually print it to scale to the right size.

an MP four file, which is a video format file, which opens a whole new world of all kinds of things, you know, takes me to that Disney song, Right.

Right.

With a creative cloud account with your district in the backend, students can have the pro experience in Adobe Express. So we are playing, we can play at the pro level in our classrooms because these tools, these companies have said, we think that, that's important, right? So. They want you to start using these tools before they leave, so then they're more likely to use these tools when they leave, even if there's a cost associated with them. Right?

You know, when we talk about change in technology and, you know, changing from one system to another and how, you know, you and I, Jake, we're big adopters of change, but when we actually pushed into that box and lid gets shut on us, we don't like it, do we? We don't like the fact that, Well. that we're being forced to change. Right? It's the, the forcing to change as opposed to the option to change. So.

Right. Okay, so talking about the pricing thing. so Adobe Express for Education is, is free for K to 12. Um, but then there's also the Adobe Creative Cloud, which is a step up from that, right? It's, yes, and that's a paid one, but that brings in Photoshop and Illustrator and

Is there layers here? Is there, you know, are there objects? Is there a library of stock images that's available? Do I have to go get them? Import those things, and having that, that language, I think that's really important.

Um, but then there's also the Adobe Creative Cloud, which is a step up from that, right? It's, yes, and that's a paid one, but that brings in Photoshop and Illustrator and

You're more worried about the, the language that we use so that when we get to a new type of tool, we go, oh yeah, yeah, I need to put this layer. Is there layers here? Is there, you know, are there objects? Is there a library of stock images that's available? Do I have to go get them? Import those things, and having that, that language, I think that's really important.

Yes. It reminds me of the way that like guys, like you and I reacted when Google Docs became common in our workplaces. Like I'd been using Word for so long and before that I'd been using Word Perfect and when I started using Docs, there was like no, no transition period for me really, you know, like I just, I kind of just knew how to do everything. 'cause it really was a very similar interface and I knew I knew how to do things. Yes.

You know, and it looks, it's funny to look back and go, we have um, we have our cloud storage and you know, how do we buy music today? How do we do all the things that we do? And we are trusting the cloud. Yeah. You know, I look out the window and it's a different shape every day.

Let's go look at some examples of infographics, and then I want you to create your own. Mm-hmm. Right? Do I know? No. If they are using templates or not, I can tell because templates are Oh, yeah.

Mag magnificent, and they're very well designed as opposed to some of the work my students give me is not that, but others that are getting good at it, it, it's like, oh, I can still tell, because there's things about templates, you know, the way they do their seemingly insignificant graphics up in the corner and the backgrounds and things like that, you know, but that's, we can teach our students these things.

But if a kid comes up through the school years and doesn't develop that skill first and just starts using ai, that's right. It's gonna change things, which is the same kind of thing there too. I, I will, I will note, actually, I'll ask a question. , so you teach the media design, but you also teach science in science class if you assign them to do, let's say an infographic, , would you allow them to use templates there?

I'm not looking at your prettiness of your project. I am looking at the content of your project a hundred percent. So you can have the prettiest project in the world, but if you don't know what that word photosynthesis means and can't explain that to me, it doesn't matter. Right, right. Yeah. You're grading on mastery. Right? So it's about what are you trying to get to?

Are you looking at the product or the process and watching those things. Right. And so in my media design class, I'm watching my students in process every day. Yeah. They make really nice products, but that's not the point. Yeah. It's about how did you get to that? Right. And I do sometimes get them to reflect on that process. I sometimes get them to reflect, why did you choose the colors you chose for your poster? Right.

You know, and get them to do a flip style video of reflect on what you made and tell me why you made it that way. Right. Yeah.

It's the, the one part of AI where I'm not having to tell the chat bot that I want it to generate an image because it's just assumed through that portal that I'm making an image. Right. , So there's that, there is a voice to animate, which is a cool thing. It makes a little. Animated character. You can't make your own animated character, but you can use one of probably 150 characters that as it's talking, it waves, its hands around, the mouth moves.

It's totally in sync with what you, the voice gave it. Yeah. Right. So it's a, a different way of allowing students to record their voice and have it on the screen, but not their face, because a lot of students

are self-conscious about that. So there's that you can use, um. AI in there to get to changing the type of font like bubbles or clouds and you font effects so it can affect your fonts, which is pretty new.

And I, I use that for our, we have a salmon tank project and I take, you know, a little swimming salmon and I put a little mouth on 'em, like chatterpix and have, have it talk to the kids and put it into a bigger video. Right. So there's a way of getting it. Okay. I like that. I didn't know

So yeah, Erika Sandstrom, she did this at one of her conferences the way I was at a conference recently and talking to her - @GreenScreenGal - and she was like, watch this. And she types in jar of pickles and I'm like, that's cool. Yeah, like it's. The pickles are in a jar with a shiny thing with, you know, like, so there's that, or clouds, or, you know, waves of the ocean or, and get descriptive with what you're trying to get to.

And there's different ways that you can work

First off, we're gonna start off with one that I'm really excited about. So have you ever had a colleague tell you, oh, you could do that with this tech tool, and you're like, no, you can't. And they're like, yes you can. And then you realize that you totally missed a new feature and they're totally right. So that happened to me the other day, and wow was I glad that that person was right.

So. What I discovered was that Brisk, the AI tool already known for helping educators with feedback and differentiation has introduced a podcast generator. So this new feature lets you turn a source like a Google Doc, A PDF, A website, or a YouTube video into a short form podcast that you can listen to or send for your kids to listen to you just click the Brisk It button. Which as someone who deeply appreciates good barbecue, I can't help but think of smoked brisket every time I see that button.

But anyhow, this new feature is almost as awesome as a brisket sandwich almost. Uh, but anyhow, if you click Create and Choose podcast, brisk generates a podcast summarizing your content. And you can even guide it by specifying what to focus on. So if you're using a website that covers a range of different topics, you could say, I'm focusing on these specific topics that are on that website. You could even specify certain academic standards for it to focus on.

And it creates that podcast based on that guidance . Now before you get too excited, a quick reality check here. The length of the podcast that you can have generated depends on which brisk plan you're on. So if you're using the free version, you can generate podcasts that are up to two minutes long. Then the length depends on just what the AI chooses, but , the max will be two minutes. If you have the pro subscription, those podcasts will go up to four to five minutes.

So a max of five, they tend to be in the range of four to five. And if you have access to the Brisk for Schools and Districts plan, so if your district or your school pays for that, then your podcast that it generates will be up to 10 minutes long. So since they are short podcasts, it's not really for replacing like a full lesson plan, uh, but they're great for quick recaps or helping make content more accessible.

Plus, we know the attention spans of our kids are short, so I think those lengths are actually just fine with me. If your content would require more time, like you'd say you need 20 or 30 minutes, you may find that chunking it and creating shorter ones might be better anyhow relating to their attention span. So chunk that information into multiple of these short podcasts. Now if you're thinking, wait, doesn't NotebookLM already do this? You're not wrong.

But Brisk does a few things differently, and in some cases better, and in some cases, NotebookLM is the right choice for you. So first off, brisk gives you a transcript that you see as you play the episode. NotebookLM doesn't do that. Brisk gives you a shareable link so you generate a link, share it out to your kids in Google Classroom or wherever. With NotebookLM, you have to download the file and share it manually, like through Google Drive or something like that.

Brisk lets you translate podcasts into over 40 languages, so you could tell it to generate the podcast in Spanish if you want. Huge for English language learners and multilingual family engagement as well.

NotebookLM doesn't do that. That said, I do think the AI generated voices in brisk sound a bit less natural than  NotebookLM's. They're not bad, just a little less human-like. Like if I listen to a  NotebookLM podcast, I sometimes can't tell it wasn't real humans. With Brisk I think there's that uncanny valley and you can tell, but still: not bad. Still very usable. Also,  NotebookLM's interactive feature where you could talk back to the host. Really Rad. Brisk doesn't have that.

And the other thing too, with  NotebookLM number one, the podcast episodes are longer. And number two, you could put multiple pieces of information in there for it to generate the podcast from. Whereas with Brisk, it's just one, but you can maybe finagle it and combine multiple things into one Google Doc and then would use that too. And now for the feature in Brisk that really got me excited and makes me say like, oh, this is cooler than  NotebookLM For this reason, that's the Boost It button.

So the Boost It button has been there in Brisk for a while. So after you make anything in Brisk, including the podcast, you could boost it into an interactive activity. So we're talking exit tickets or pulse checks, or tutor chatbots. Stuff that not only extends the learning and makes it more engaging, but also gives you a window into student understanding. And because Brisk tracks those interactions, it's a built-in formative assessment tool with a side of oversight. That is powerful.

So I haven't seen this implemented in a classroom yet, but I've experimented with it and I'm impressed. If you've used it, I'd love to hear what you thought and how it worked out in the wild of a real classroom. So let us know what you think on Bluesky or on SpeakPipe #EduDuctTape or Speakpipe.com/eduDuctTape. Next, a few months ago, Google dropped a little preview of something called Class Tools, and it could be a big deal for classrooms using Chromebooks.

Now, to be clear, I don't think these features are live yet.

They're coming soon, and they're only coming to managed Chromebooks, which is most of you. Your Chromebooks are managed by your school district, but only coming to schools using the Google Workspace for Education plus Plan. So many of you I know are not on plus plans, so it's definitely not something every school will have access to. That said, here's what they say it'll include, so you'll be able to remotely share and pin content to student screens. You can send stuff right to the kids screens.

You'll have live screen viewing, so you'll be able to see if they're off task by looking live at their screen, and you could see what they're working on in real time. There's also a new live captioning and translation feature where your voice as the teacher at the front of the room gets captioned onto their screens, and individual students can choose the language that they're seeing on their screen. Sounds pretty amazing.

I'm not sure what exactly this one means, but Google says that teachers can create workbooks and send class content to their students' devices. Now, I'm not sure if this is some special workbook feature that's part of it or if they're just saying, create a workbook in a Google Doc and you can send it to your kids' screens, I'm not sure. But we'll have to wait to see that until it launches. If this is giving you, , GoGuardian or Hapara or Securly vibes, you're not wrong. It's very much like that.

This feels like Google dipping its toe into that space. the keyword blog post gives us a few more sneak peeks into what this will look like, and the core idea is similar, more visibility. More accessibility and quicker ways to engage students during instruction. So have you heard anything about it yet? Do you maybe have access to a beta of it if you have let us know what we think on Bluesky or on SpeakPipe.

Now on a more serious note, SchoolAI recently made a set of changes to its historical figure spaces, and while it's a tech update, it's also a story about accountability and ethics and what we should expect from EdTech companies. So, here's the backstory. Some educators raised very real concerns and very valid concerns about how school AI's AI avatars were handling complex, sensitive historical topics.

Specifically how figures like Anne Frank were being portrayed, including disturbing and historically inaccurate responses about the Holocaust, not okay. Definitely not okay. Not even close. The worry was that students might encounter simplified or inaccurate or even harmful portrayals in these AI generated interactions. So SchoolAI not too long ago, released a statement, a blog post of sorts responding and announcing that they have made some thoughtful updates.

They've now added safeguards to prioritize historical accuracy to provide fuller context.

It's a good step and a necessary one, and it's encouraging to see a company respond directly to criticism and to feedback, especially when it comes to how AI shows up in classrooms. Now, while it's a good step, some people would say it's not far enough. They'd like them to go further than this and not have these historical figure spaces at all. They have a handful of reasons, all of which are valid.

I think, uh, those include the implications of making technology seem more human, potential bias that may creep into these spaces, the risk of inaccuracy, the weirdness of quote unquote talking to deceased people, , and the fact that these figures did not consent to this usage of their persona, and also the troubling notion of pretending to speak to flawed figures like past presidents who were enslavers. How do we feel about that? Right?

So I think there's a lot to think about here and a lot of discussions to be had, but I wanted to make sure you were aware of these issues and this update to SchoolAI, even if we think they maybe should be going further. I think it's, it's important to be aware of what they have done so far. So what do you think? Are these updates enough? Uh, where should we be speaking up , and encouraging 'em to do more?

Uh, where do we need to be talking out to these companies in the way that people did with school ai? And they responded, , which is exciting and, and good news. So let us know what you think on Blue Sky or SpeakPipe. And our final one for today. I just finished watching The First Class, a documentary that follows the first graduating class of Crosstown High in Memphis.

I thought it was a powerful look at what can happen when a school prioritizes community creativity and real world learning over test prep and doing things the way we've always done them. The film showcases project-based learning, problem-based learning, interdisciplinary projects, and a different way of thinking about school culture. It's a great conversation starter for anyone curious about what that could look like in their context.

I found the stories of the actual learners that are centered in that school to be inspirational and moving. I really enjoyed the movie just as a viewing experience, but I also thought there was a lot to learn from and to think about there as well. And I also wanna give a shout out to my friend Deion Jordan, director of Teaching and Learning at KnowledgeWorks because he was one of the founding educators at Crosstown High, and he's featured in the film.

I probably would not have heard about this work had it not been for Deion's involvement. So thanks to Deion and congrats on that work that he was a part of there, , and to this great, , project that , this, , documentary film became. , So I highly recommend this film. You could watch it for free on their site, and if you do, let us know what you think on Bluesky or SpeakPipe. As always, Bluesky with #EduDuctTape or speakpipe.com/eduDuctTape. Well, that does it for today.

Thanks for being here with us. I hope you enjoyed the show. I hope your May is going wonderfully. I hope you've got some great spring weather. Uh, if you're in the continents that are having spring right now, I hope your school years wrap up well, uh, if you're in that same situation, thank you for all you do for learners. Thank you for tuning in and have a great day.

Bryon is in his 17th year of teaching math and science in an online environment, as well as blended learning and face-to-face in media design at the Abbotts Ab. Abba. Abba. Abba. Abba, Abba, Abba. That's gonna, there's an outtake right there