- Hey everyone, this is Jeremy Shieffen with Khan Academy.
I'm so excited that you joined us today.
Not just because, Khan Academy really wants
to support you during this challenging time,
but as a former kindergarten teacher,
this session that's dedicated to elementary
school education and elementary school students,
is one that's near and dear to my heart,
and that's why I'm so excited to introduce you
to Lisa Orcutt, who's one of our
amazing Khan Academy Ambassadors.
Like me, Lisa is based in California,
and is currently in the same boat as everyone else,
trying to serve her fourth graders remotely
with the tools that are at her disposal.
So that being said we'll get into Khan Academy
in a second Lisa,
but if you wouldn't mind opening up with a little bit
about your background as an educator,
I think that would help folks understand
where you're coming from.
- So I started off as a sub when I was working
through my masters program.
And, at the time I didn't wanna be a teacher
it was just an easy way for me to do, all the curriculum
that's required for a master's degree,
while, having the ability to be flexible in your schedule.
Anybody who's taken a masters program
even if it's online like mine was, it's a lot of work.
And, what ended up happening is it backfired.
I fell in love with teaching,
and decided that that's what I wanted to do.
And so I finished up my masters program
and then entered my credentialing program.
And if everything goes right even with the shut-downs,
I will be, induction next year
but I've been teaching full-time
in the classroom since 2017.
So I'm on my, third school year,
teaching pretty much as the teacher on record.
And, that's where my journey has taken me so far
but it's five to six years, counting my sub years.
- Very cool.
I'm guessing when you were back in your
teacher education days it never prepared you
for teaching remotely during a pandemic, so here we are.
- No. (laughing)
- Well, that being said, if we just rewind
the tape a little bit- - (mumbles) completely
prepared us for. - That's right.
If we just go back a little bit to like your
sort of beginning with Khan Academy,
tell us a little bit about, why you chose Khan Academy
and why it was sort of useful for you and your students.
- So, I was long term subbing at a Russian
charter school, and I had a student.
And for people who wonder why there's a Russian
charter school, (clears throat)
the Slavic community in Northern California is very large.
And a lot of them...
A lot of people in the Slavic community
wanna keep their culture and their language.
Because we know through social science
that that's something that gets lost very quickly.
And they didn't wanna lose that.
And so they set up a public charter school
where they take any students,
but one of the things that is mandatory
is they have Russian class, which teaches
the language and the culture and the food.
And I got hired on to long term sub for them
in a fourth grade class of all things.
And I had a student who was testing,
six, seventh, eighth grade math.
Well at fourth grade when most of your students
are classified as English Language Learners,
you're pretty slow going on math
because this is where the word problems get really intense.
But she was breezing through the work.
And we all know that when kids get bored,
they act out, they get distracted,
they start doing things they shouldn't.
So I went and got one of the middle school books,
and was having her work on those.
She was breezing through that, she wasn't...
She was bored, everything was coming out.
And, I started looking at things that my husband
had recommended, and those were more geared
towards college students so it didn't work for her either.
And finally, I reached out to a colleague and I was going,
"What do I do for this young lady?
"She is too fast for the rest of the class
"and if I go at her speed, the rest of the class
"is going to fall behind."
And she recommended Khan Academy,
because she used it to study for her CSET.
And for those of you not in California
the CSET is what we use to test for our
initial credentialing process in California.
And so I pulled it up and I was like, "Oh, this is amazing."
And I set her up on grade four, so on our grade level
and at the very bottom of the grade level page,
it has something called Course Challenge.
And what that is, is it tests you on all
the major standards of that grade.
I said' "Start here, take this."
"If you get less than an 80,
"that's where we're going to figure out where you
"need to do your work."
And, she hit seventh, eighth grade word problems
and that's where she kind of hit the brick wall.
But she spent the rest of the time
listening to our math lessons, and doing the Khan Academy
to work on those seventh, eighth grade word problems.
And, I was able to slow down and go
the pace with my fourth graders.
And she loved it, her mom loved it.
Her mom especially loved it because when she went
back to her dad's, cause her dad lived out of country,
during the summer, she would have some way
to stay up on her schooling.
And I fell in love with it after that.
And when I got hired on as a teacher where I work now,
I started doing it, to help backlog
and support my students because I teach in a very
low income, low academic, scoring demographic.
So I use it to kind of help catch up my students
who are struggling, as well as my students who are advanced,
so that I can focus our solo math time
where I am teaching in the classroom, on grade level stuff,
but they still have that extra support
and scaffolding that they may need.
- I love that story cause it really brings out sort of
the essence of why Sal Khan built this in the first place.
- Exactly! - No just to have
a bunch of worksheets online,
but to actually differentiate and serve students
at scale, whether they're far ahead or far behind.
I have a couple more questions for you Lisa
before we go to the audience questions.
I wanna cut to the chase here and address
the 800 pound gorilla in the room,
which is... - Yeah.
- If someone was starting with Khan Academy today,
and there are literally thousands of elementary
educators trying to do exactly that this week.
What would you recommend for them, to get set up quickly?
How can they bring Khan Academy
to their students in an effective way,
even in this remote learning environment?
- So first of all, don't panic.
There is a learning curve for Khan Academy
even for teachers.
Thankfully though, Sal and his team of developers,
bless them, I mean, bless them,
because they have made it so smooth
you can import your Google classroom
if you already have one set up.
The only thing you have to do manually,
is like our district, the Google class...
The Google names in Google Classroom
are actually the, student ID numbers.
So you as the teacher have to go in and manually
change to their first and last name,
but you can actually import, everybody.
Which means you don't have to send out invites,
you don't have to wait for them to log in
and, you don't even technically have to assign anything.
You can just tell them where to start.
And so, that's what I usually do
at the beginning of the year,
is I import my students for the first day.
And then I don't assign anything yet.
Because what I do, is the first couple weeks
we're getting in standards, what I expect of you,
what our expectations, what are their behaviors.
And I introduced them to Khan Academy.
And I tell them to play with the website.
Have some fun, get used to it, figure it out.
If you have questions, I'll help you,
because I'm teaching them, what we call
intermediate, elementary level.
So my students are a little bit more independent,
so they can play around with it and figure it out
and then I can be, a little hands off.
After that I explain what we're gonna be using it for.
And one of the things that I instruct
them on, is I tell them, "This is how
"you're going to be using it."
And I show them how to find that challenge test.
And then I get out the toys.
And as an ambassador, I have several pencils
that were gifted to me.
And I have some other prizes, like I have some pencils
that my students have gotten over the years,
they don't wanna keep from parties and things like that.
I put some of my crocheted goodies in there
because I make my own stuff.
I buy a lot of stuff off of Wish Geek.
So like I have, let me pull it out, where is it?
So I have stuff like this, and I get them in bulk.
And I tell my students, that for every grade level
you complete, you get a prize.
If you complete the one for our grade level
you get one of the Khan Academy pencils,
and another prize from the price bin.
So now there's this incentive for them to wanna do it.
But the rule is, you have to have, an 80
or higher, on the grade level challenge test.
And you have to complete, all
of the lessons for fourth grade.
And I kind of let the kids go it that way
because when they hit that 80%
that means they're proficient.
I'm not expecting perfection,
these are children, it's not gonna work.
Kids are gonna get bored, they're gonna mentally check out.
When they hit less than 80% I tell them,
"That's where your struggle is.
"And it'll tell you what section
"of that grade level you're struggling with.
"Those are the mastery lessons that you need to take.
"That'll help you get caught up on our grade level."
And I don't use it as my sole means of teaching.
I use this as a scaffold, this is strictly for support.
Because by law, in California keep this in mind.
By law in California, students have to be exposed
to all grade level materials, so this is my scaffold.
Now, if I have a student when we do our initial tests
cause in California, we do those kind of benchmark testing.
Where we find out where they are at the beginning
of the year, in the middle of the year
and the end of the year.
If I have some of these tests (mumbles) higher,
I have them start at fourth grade and work their way up.
And this is my way of giving them those challenges
because again, higher performing students get bored
easily they start getting in trouble
and then we have a whole mess.
Don't freak out if your kids are going very slow.
Because for some students, this is going to be new,
it's gonna be a struggle.
And if you have an EL student, like I have
10% of my class is English-Language Learner,
they're going to struggle with it more
because this is all written in formal academic language.
And that is the hardest thing for EL students to learn.
- That's great.
So just to recap a couple of the key things there.
I think, first of all, you're definitely not in a rush
to sort of roll out Khan Academy,
no matter what you're hearing from the district,
because it does take time. (laughing)
Even when Lisa has her- - It does.
Students right in front of her,
it takes them a few weeks to sort of get
them acclimated to this.
So, one thing you could say is, "Hey,
"I've rostered you on google classroom,
"I've rostered you manually in the student section.
"Now, all you're gonna do for the first week,
"just come in here, and search
"for the things you're interested in.
"Whether you wanna search for, multiplying fractions,
"or addition, or what have you,
"just play around with it."
And that actually sort of leads into another question,
which is coming to us from Courtney.
Now I'm gonna switch to some questions
from the audience here. (clears throat)
Courtney says, "These exercises are really cool.
"But I also see the Khan Academy has all these videos.
"Would you recommend using the videos as well
"or just focusing on the exercises?
"How would you prioritize?" - For sure.
Use the videos. So, storytime.
Our district, had some issues with curriculum
for the last few years.
And I was using Khan Academy a lot
to show the demonstration videos.
Because Sal and anyone else who's doing the videos with him,
really breaks it down into nice, easy to digest chunks.
And for some students, they are visual learners.
Just doing the problems for a visual learner
isn't going to make any sense.
They need to see someone, doing the work
so they can follow along.
And for some students they need to hear
that audio instruction.
For other students, they just wanna read
because, Sal is really cool, and he puts everything
in closed captions on the bottom.
And so it's very adaptive.
So it has all, four modalities of learning
built into the videos.
I encourage the kids to watch them
especially when they hit that brick wall of struggle.
And it's like, you're struggling with word problems
here's the video on how Sal shows you
how to break out, all the important information.
And, Sal walks through it step by step,
and the kids can walk through it with them,
and then they can try it again on their own.
Don't skip the videos.
The videos are very, very vital.
And they're amazing to help your students
particularly if you use this for small groups,
or math centers, which is what I've been using it
for, before we went on, hiatus.
As I would pull a small group after the main lesson,
we would work on what they needed
to work on and I would have some students
on our curriculum digital site because again,
our curriculum is slightly hybridized.
And then I would have others doing,
prodigy, all that good stuff.
And then I would have another group doing Khan Academy
and they would cycle through all three, or four
or five, depending on how many you wanna use.
So they're getting the same stuff from multiple sources,
to kind of build on those skills.
And the videos are something that I love
about Khan Academy, because I do have those students,
they have to see it, being done
and they can slow it down, they can pause it,
they can look at what he's trying to pick out,
and try to figure it out on their own,
and then they can get that courage to ask for help.
- Very cool.
And so now Sylvia, (coughs)
your fellow California educator,
has a sort of advanced level question for you
which is okay, "If we played this all out.
"You know, we've started with Khan Academy.
"Our kids have started watching some videos,
"doing some basic exercises, maybe they've taken
"those course mastery challenges at the end of each course
"just to see where they are.
"But now we're gonna flash fast forward a little bit,
"maybe like six months from now,
"and our kids are hopefully coming back to school
"in September, and they're way behind
"because, it's been tough to sort of fill those gaps
"over the next couple months.
"What can I use Khan Academy for, to help my students
"be ready for that next grade level,
"even with all the challenges in our way?"
- Use it to fill in the gaps.
Have the kids do it as their homework.
One of the things that I've taken as a philosophy
for homework, is if your child...
If your student, is on grade level
it's fine to send them grade level homework.
If your student is performing below grade level
I try to send them home remedial homework
to develop those skills.
So, I have had students where, they're still
struggling with number sense.
I'm not gonna send them fractions when we're working
on fractions in class, home is homework.
Because I don't know if their family
or anyone in the family knows how to help them.
I don't know, if they even have anyone who can help them.
So I'm gonna send them stuff on number sense,
to build that up.
And if I know that student has access to a computer at home
I'm gonna be going, "Alright, I want you to work
"on number sense, on Khan Academy.
"And if you can't find it, send me a message on Dojo,
"you have my email address, you can email me.
"And I will assign it to you because you can do assignments,
"and then you don't have to worry about trying to find it."
And then my students can build that also
that sense of independent studying,
because, we are coming up with
something that I've discovered
and I think a lot of teachers have discovered
is over the last few years, a lot of students
have slipped into this, passive learning mentality
of, "Just tell me what you want me to tell you."
And I want them to build that sense of independence
and that sense of, taking ownership of their education.
So that's one way that I do it is I'm like,
"Okay, if you can't do this without me holding your hand,
"and just giving you fill in the blanks,
"I'm gonna give you what I know you can do,
"and I'm just gonna increase the hardness a little bit."
Cause we're building that strength.
And so, if I can only lift a five pound weight,
why am I going, to go home and try to lift
a 25 pound weight?
- Totally. - So I'm gonna go home
and I'm gonna work with a six pound weight.
And then when that gets too light,
I'm gonna go up to an eight pound weight.
And then I'm gonna work up to that 25 pound weight.
Cause if a kid is working and they can only lift
five pounds and you send them home,
telling him to bench press 25 pounds,
they're not gonna do it, they're gonna give up.
- It's always having that sort of zone of proximal
development, that sort of ri- - Yes
Next challenge, not too much, not too little.
- Yeah. - Actually,
this idea of empowering kids sort of feeds
wrapping into a question from Sandy.
This is such a great question from Sandy
cause it speaks to the dilemma for elementary educators
in particular during this time.
"You know, it's tough enough to motivate
"and keep students engaged in an elementary classroom.
"But now that we're in this remote learning environment,
"how do you actually hold students accountable,
"given all the other distractions, and the difficulty
"you have reaching out and engaging them?"
- You can't.
Not in the sense that we could in the classroom.
You gotta remember their parents are stressed,
some of their parents have lost jobs.
Some of these kids are maybe the older sibling
looking after the little siblings.
And so what you can do is just encourage them
to take that independence.
Look, I know you're stressed, you're scared,
you're afraid, you don't know what's going on.
Your parents are freaking out, your parents are at work,
and you're by yourself, and...
Just use this as a focal point.
Give me 10 minutes a day, and that's all I ask.
That way we don't fall behind.
And, because I'm gonna tell you right now,
if you start calling parents, "Bobby didn't do
"his math work this week."
Most of the parents are gonna be like, "I really don't care,
"I'm more worried about feeding Bobby at this point."
So it's about understanding and being patient
that for some of these kids, they're not gonna do it.
But for some of these kids, they are going to do it
and they are going to thrive.
And so it's understanding that, it's
our zone of control now.
They are no longer, directly in our proximity.
We can do our best and call it, a day on that.
We can adore them from afar and encourage them
and remind them that we want them to succeed.
And just hope they'll take it
upon themselves to finally listen.
(laughing) (mumbles)
- And I actually wanna pick up on that thread of parents
and family is cause, as someone with two young
elementary school kids myself at home,
I know that I'm struggling personally to keep them engaged
and to stay in touch with their teachers.
Anni wants to know, "Lisa, do you have any tips
"for making Khan easy for parents?"
Obviously to your point, they're stressed,
they've got a lot on their shoulders.
How can we explain this whole Khan thing
to the parent community.
- Make it very well known that this is free.
Cause the second you say it's free, guaranteed free
most parents will relax just a little bit.
And explain to them you, "It's really easy
"to play around with, just go have fun,
"the kids can figure it out.
"It's very independent and easy to use.
"If you need help, please email me.
"There's lots of help pages,
"there's videos on how to use it.
"And it's just a matter of take your time,
"click around, play with it, and if you
"still have questions, I can help you."
And for those of you wondering how you talk to parents,
if you don't wanna do email, or you need to talk to them
over the phone, star six, seven or set up Google Voice.
It'll mask your phone number, no muss, no fuss.
And, explain to them that, you can assign work
if they're worried about the kids
not finding the stuff that's good for them.
Because you as the teacher can actually see specifically
where they're, growing and how they're doing
and, what they're working on.
So it's not, fully independent because you
can still monitor and check on things.
- Cool, and then sort of continuing this theme
of, making sure that folks feel supported on the home front.
I think you could probably speak to this Lisa,
given the underserved community that you teach in.
But Christan says, "The struggle for me
"is that many of my students don't have the technology
"or the internet access to do online learning.
"Any recommendations for filling that sort of digital gap?"
- Most digital learning programs,
such as Khan Academy have apps.
I think it's called Khan Kids or something like that.
- Yeah, I'll just clarify there.
So, Khan Academy has an app, that very much replicates
the exact thing you see, on the website for iOS,
iPhones, iPads, Android, Android phones,
and Android tablets, those are all free
and you can download those from the app stores.
(clears throat) In addition there is
a separate app called Khan Kids, that's really dedicated to,
sort of, two year old to six year old set.
- Yeah, and if you have an EL student,
the Khan Kids is a really good way to help them
develop their English skills cause of it teaches
that fanatical awareness, that is very hard
to teach in distance learning.
And for the, lack of the technology,
a lot of districts are stepping up and letting students
check out, Chromebooks, in computers.
If your district isn't doing that, I'm afraid
they're gonna have to rely on mobile devices.
As for internet, a lot of ISP providers
are providing students with months
of free internet hotspots.
I know here in California Xfinity is doing it.
It's two months free.
I'm a little, lucky in that our district
has already formed some contracts
so we have some hotspots that we're able
to give out to the kids.
And our district is 99%, one to one.
We have like, I think the adult learning
and a few other ones might not be.
So we're able to check out the Chromebooks
and send them home.
But again, they're going to have to rely
on mobile devices and get creative.
I wish there was another way to put it.
But, here's the cool thing.
Google classroom, and most of these apps are also compatible
and I haven't tested it with Khan Academy.
But I do think it would work because it's not
flash enabled or anything like that.
Most game systems, have a built in web browser.
You can use, 90% of digital learning activities
on these game systems using their web browser.
So, even if your kids just have a PlayStation four
there's a way for them to get into distance learning.
They just have to figure it out and take
the time to play with it.
And trust me, 80% of our kids,
are better at technology than us.
And I'm in my early 30s, and some of my kids
have figured out things that I don't know.
(laughing)
- Cool, and so, I'm seeing a lot of questions
pouring here, folks are saying, "This is amazing.
"But can we take one big step back
"and just talk about like, how do you even assign
"stuff in the first place?"
So if you wouldn't mind sort of walking us
through that, I'll mimic what you're saying
on the screen here, Lisa. - Sure.
So, I first of all sign into my teacher account.
(clears throat)
And then there is a nice fancy little tab
that says Classes, Students and Resources.
Your Student ones are individual.
And that just lets you monitor their progress,
Resources are ways you can use this,
how you can use it, different things like that.
It's kind of like a help button, for the teacher.
And then under Classes, you pick your class.
So, we have all of these neat little classes
we're just gonna go with algebra one.
Under assignments, you see a little button,
it's a drop down button so you have to, click it down
if it doesn't auto drop, cause it'll look like that.
Then you go to assign, and it allows you
to pick things, based on the topic at hand.
So I always pick fourth grade.
And then I pick whatever we're working on.
So, early math is usually a good one to go with.
If I have specific students that I know are struggling
with something, I'll click around to where they need.
Let's go with counting small numbers.
You click the little checkbox,
and it will, assign everything under that window.
But in here you've only got the worksheet.
Now if you look at counting the lesson,
it does all the videos, plus the little quizzes.
So I always pick the whole lesson.
Unless I just need a student to review
then I just pick the video.
Then you hit assign, and it will show up to the students
that you choose, or your entire class.
And I always have the randomized option for the questions
I don't do the same question set
because then the kids can share answers.
It's a way to discourage, fibbing.
If it's only one or two students,
I'll find them in the drop down menu under students
and just click those students.
If it's all of my students, I do it.
I try to give them a large window
when I'm doing the whole lesson,
because they need that time to digest the video
and go back and review it.
So I usually give them about about a week yeah,
about a week, and then you hit assign.
And what ends up happening with that, is it pushes
it out to the students and the students can check on it.
Now the way the students check on it is a little different.
So if you go to...
Is this a fake student profile?
- Yeah, and so just to be clear
you can always see what students see
by going up to your name in the upper right hand corner,
and going from your teacher dashboard
to your learner home, cause you also have
a student view. - Okay.
Yes, and so it'll show all of their little goodies
and if you look, there's little badges
and price points and all that mastery points.
(clears throat)
But if they go, they can go and they click assignments,
And that's where all the teacher assigned work is.
So here they have everything they did,
it shows what they did.
The videos always show is completed.
The lesson overall shows is completed
but the actual work, shows the percentage
they got correct or completed.
So in this case this student is scoring hundreds.
I would start applying much harder work,
to find out where that student is struggling
so I know where the student needs to focus
when they are within the classroom.
- Very cool.
Hopefully that gives folks a sense of, how to get started.
One last question for you before we wrap up here.
I know there are some more questions coming in,
if folks wanna sort of get to the next level,
"Okay, I've played around with Khan Academy.
"Maybe my students have played around with it now
"but I have more questions,
"I wanna get more help more support."
Any recommendations Lisa,
based on all the resources out there.
- YouTube. (laughing)
Sal has so many videos on YouTube
on how to use Khan Academy.
They're actually linked on the Khan Academy website.
Again, under that My Resources, there are training videos.
Training videos, that show you how to use it.
There's also I believe a Contact Us option
where if you really, really stuck I think you can email.
I've been lucky I've never had to use it.
- Yeah, and let me actually pause you for one second
cause this is so important. (clears throat)
I was actually on the phone with Comcast
for about four hours this weekend.
And so I know that like everyone is struggling
to provide customer service right now-
- You and me both. (chuckling)
- Khan Academy however, has completely
ramped up our offerings here.
And so now, if you go to the help section,
again, it's your name, and help right over here.
You can come over to the section called Report a Problem.
And it could be a technical issue, or it could just be,
"How do I assign assignments?"
I forgot what Lisa told me.
We're happy to answer any and all questions,
and here's the really incredible part.
Even in the midst (clears throat)
of this crisis, even as a nonprofit,
we typically respond within a couple of hours.
So if you have other questions that were not answered today,
this is a great place to go and get some support.
- Yeah, and I'll tell you right now,
we used to use this support program in my district
and I had this student.
Oddly enough, he was an EL,
but his math skills were amazing.
The scaffold program that we had built into our curriculum,
he beat, in four months, in the school year.
So less than, a third of the way
through the school year, he was done.
I put him on Khan Academy, I still to this day
give him assignments, even though he's now in sixth grade.
Because he is breezing through our current curriculum.
So I have reached out to his grade level teacher
and I'm like, "Yo, he's still in my Khan Academy classrooms.
"I'm still seen his work.
"Would you like me to assign him other challenging things?"
And his teachers are like, "Yes, please.
"Oh, my goodness, he's already done
"with our curriculum stuff online."
And I'm like, "Okay cool, no problem."
So it's also a good way if you're a parent, intent,
you can set up a parent account,
through your teacher account.
And you can actually set your kids up on this
if you wanna give them extra help, too.
So it isn't just as teachers, and it's amazing.
And, I am so grateful that Sal took the time
to go from doing this just on YouTube,
to doing this on his own website.
- Absolutely and, Lisa, I wanna thank you
for, sharing so much expertise and knowledge with us today.
If you would just sort of finish up with
any words of wisdom, (beeping)
as educators across the country are thinking about,
"Wow, I've got a lot of my shoulders right now.
"How do I move forward in this challenging moment?"
Any last sort of words of advice you wanna share?
- Breathe, take it one day at a time.
One lesson at a time.
Remember, the kids are just as up in the air as we are.
The districts are just up in the air as we are,
the parents are just up in the air as we are.
Give them work, that you know they can do.
Give them work that will challenge them.
But don't expect them to be 100%.
Just, breathe and let them learn at their pace.
Because now we don't have to teach the test,
standardized testing is suspended.
Let them learn at their pace.
They've got this, we've got this
we need to be calm for them. (clapping)
- Wow, couldn't say it better myself Lisa.
Thank you so much (chuckling)
for, leaving us a little inspiration
on our otherwise tough day and thank you everyone
for investing time in this session.
You will have a recording after this in your email,
feel free to share with, fellow colleagues
and thank you again Lisa,
for making us all a little smarter today.
(chuckling)
- Not a problem, everybody good luck.
Have an awesome (clapping)
rest of the year as best we can.
- Cheers. - Bye, bye.