- Hi, everyone, this is Jeremy Schifeling's
from Khan Academy.
Hope you're having a good hump Day.
I know we're kind of in a hub season right now
trying to get over this big thing as a society.
So, I appreciate you making time out of everything going on
in your lives, both professionally and personally
to be with us.
And speaking of that, I have to give a huge shout out
to Chris Casper here, because Chris is not only
a dedicated special education teacher in Arizona,
he's also the father of three kids, five and under.
So, when we talk about work life balance,
Chris is juggling as many balls in the air
as you can imagine.
And so we really appreciate you taking time out
of all that chaos to share your expertise
with us today, Chris.
- Absolutely, happy to be here.
- So just to give folks a sense of where you're coming from,
tell us a little bit about sort of what you do
as an educator in normal times,
and then how you're coping today given these
very abnormal times we live in.
- So, on a day to day basis outside of a pandemic,
I do special education math.
Specifically, I have an ELA counterpart.
And I do this year I'm doing seventh and eighth grade.
Last year, I did fourth through eighth grade.
And so I do a little bit of pull up,
but most of my stuff is pushing,
helping support the students and the teachers.
- Cool, and how are things starting to shift for you,
as you've gotten to this remote learning environment
all of a sudden, especially given
special education students.
- Special education students, for me,
it hasn't changed a lot.
I'm meeting more one on one.
Rather than like groups of three or four,
I'm just having kids schedule their time.
But before the pandemic started,
I was using Khan Academy to track and do goal progress stuff
with the students and allow them to track their own progress
and be aware of what they need to be working on.
So, that part of it hasn't changed a lot for me,
from pre-pandemic to currently.
- Cool, I love that you're still that lifeline for students,
even on a one on one basis,
'cause I know that's hard to scale,
but so important for students.
- Yeah, and I haven't been pushing it a ton
because they have so much other stuff going on.
So, it's been a few emails, just checking in.
I've done a few video conferencing
experiences with them, which has been interesting.
But yeah just letting them know that I'm here
if they need to talk, if they need to see my face,
if that's helpful.
And then just reminders that these can still access.
And I still need them to access that stuff
that they've been doing on Khan before the pandemic.
- Cool, and talk to us a little bit about sort of
what your expectations are with Khan Academy,
especially in this moment.
So, that folks who are trying to replicate that
for maybe the first time can get a sense
of how to approach it.
- So Khan Academy, in terms of special education
how I use it.
All the kids that are on my service roster are in my class.
And it's, I think the name changes every year this year,
it might just be Casper.
So, they're all in my class.
And then from there, I assign them specific standards
based on their goals in their IEPs.
So, if I have, I think I have a caseload of 14 this year,
so I assign 14 students different
assignments based on their goal.
So, if I have an eighth grader who's working
on one step equations,
their assignments will be gauged towards one step equations.
And then one of the things I really like about Khan Academy
is I can scaffold them up to that.
So, I might assign just combining like terms,
and they show that they mastered those different
components of solving equations,
I give them the actual equation.
- cool, just sort of illustrate
what you're talking about here.
Obviously, you can make assignments
from your Khan Academy classroom,
where you can search for the exact thing
that you wanna hand out throughout your exercises
in that area, and then assign it not just your whole class,
but the individual students.
So, you get that sort of differentiation
that you were alluding to there.
- And one of the most helpful things for me is,
when I've written that IEP, and it's enforced,
I'll go on Khan.
And I'll assign the standardized assignments that they need.
And then I'll change the due dates based on
when I want them due.
So, it like progresses towards that year and goal.
So they, so then I have it set up right away.
And so like on this when this pandemic started,
all my kids were already set up for year of
instruction because I did it at the very beginning.
- Very cool, and so even for folks
who are just getting started in this moment,
you can absolutely catch up with Chris
in the sense of getting your students onto Khan Academy
by handing out that course link or using Google Classroom
if you have it.
And then you can start to give
these differentiate assignments.
I know a lot of teachers are really curious
what you do next, like what are your expectations
for how fast an assignment should be done?
Do you grade it, do you give feedback.
- So it depends on every student, right?
Not every kid is gonna go through their assignments
at the same pace.
I come at it from I have an assignment that I want them
to be able to master by the end of the year.
And so my due dates are pretty flexible.
Because what I'm looking for most is that skill mastery.
And even if it's taking a long time,
that's still giving me data.
And so what I talked with my students about
is one of the best things about Khan is that try again,
where they can do it.
And I can see their score and they can see their score.
And we can go over that assignment.
And then they can try it again.
To let them know that
just because they did it and got a certain score,
that doesn't mean they're done.
They have to keep learning it and
they have to keep that understanding with them
as they move forward.
So, I really like to try again, option.
One of my favorite things,
is when I go on and I see that kid has tried 14 times,
and then I go up to him like this is awesome
that you keep trying it.
Because we my school in particular,
we really preach that growth mindset.
And it's hard to have that growth mindset on worksheets.
It's just a lot of work to do worksheets
over and over again, in my mind.
I find the students a lot more willing
to try those five questions or those seven questions again.
Because it's easier than worksheets, in my opinion.
- Cool, I love that.
And I think probably now more than ever,
growth mindset is so essential for every student
all across the country all around the world,
who is now basically being asked to keep pushing
in the face of adversity.
And Khan Academy actually has a bunch of activities
and exercises that you can share with your students,
even right away.
That being said, when you share out these assignments
with students, how do you keep them motivated?
I know this sort of speaks to the growth mindset piece
but like a lot of teachers have been asking, okay,
motivation is even hard in my physical classroom.
Now, with distance between us,
how do I keep people engaged,
even in the face of everything that we're never up against?
- One of the things that I've found motivating
for the students is that when, like I tell them,
they have to reach a certain score.
And then they can be done and they just,
they can move on to the next thing.
And to me, the students being able to progress
at their own pace is motivation.
Like, they can be done as quickly as they wanna be done
depending on how much effort they're putting in
and how focused and all that.
So, I think just the self pace of Khan Academy
is more motivational for the kids.
- Cool, and so to that point,
where you assign multiple assignments
at a time so that students can work ahead if they want to,
as well as focus on just one if they need that mastery.
- Yeah, so I usually have like I said,
for this students with math goals,
I have them set with periodic dates.
And so it's like these ones need to be done by this time,
these need to be done by this time.
But as soon as they're done, they can move on.
And so like, all have kids that finish all that stuff,
and it showed mastery of their IEP goal
before the year is up,
which is just a huge point of celebration for them,
and then we can continue working
to continue progressing.
- Cool, definitely different ways to slice and dice it.
It also gives students that runway,
so they can really start to take autonomous ownership
over their learning.
Okay, so at this point,
I actually wanna switch gears a little bit
and take it over to questions directly from the audience.
And thank you to everyone who's been sharing those already.
If you haven't seen it yet, you can ask questions directly
to Chris and get them answered live
by going to the questions feature
of the GoToWebinar control panel.
Right now I'm seeing questions from Kathy,
and Carrie and Jeanne.
And we're gonna just take those as they come in.
So, submit questions whatever's on your mind.
Chris is brave enough to take them on left,
right and center, okay.
So, I think Kathy's first question
is being answered a little bit here.
She says, I'm a grade one teacher,
but I have students in my class who are
at a kindergarten level or grade two level
for certain skills.
How do I make sure that every student is getting
what they need, even with those different levels?
I think that's kind of what you were talking about
with one by one assignments.
- Yeah, so you can assign if you have your students
grouped by ability level, or however you have them grouped,
you can assign specific students.
So, as you're seeing on the screen,
you can pick what students are given what assignments
so you can have a 30 year class on the kindergarten level
standard that you're working on in your first grade class.
You can have a 30 year kids
on that first grade standard that you're working on,
and you can have a 30 year kids working
on that second grade level standard.
So, Khan Academy is beautiful in the way
that you can differentiate and scaffold
for all of your students.
- Cool, hi, so I think that speaks to that.
Thanks for the great question, Kathy.
Little love here, Chris, from Andrea Anastasia.
Your fan club is growing.
So, we wanted to thank you for sharing
this awesome advice today.
Let's see here.
Kathy's asking another good question.
Is there a way to help students who are not confident,
especially about their reading skills,
given so much of Khan is reading based,
questions are sort of offered in this text based format.
Have you ever had to deal with that
with your students, Chris.
- I have a couple students that struggle,
reading and they on Google Chrome.
There's just the setting where
they can read the text to them.
So, they've been using
like the computer settings to have that read to them.
If you're talking about like right now
and you may be when be able to walk them through
how to turn on that audio.
It can be something.
I've had a student already during this pandemic, log on,
and she was struggling with slope
and she shared her screen with me.
And so I was able to like talk her through it while seeing
what she was doing.
And so that would be an option maybe.
She's working with first grade
so that might be difficult.
I don't know that's younger than I usually work with.
I know my kindergartner.
She's been doing Khan Academy Kids
and just in this pandemic.
She has started doing Khan Academy as her reading
has gotten better that she did Khan Academy Kids.
But when she was struggling to read what Khan Academy
was talking about, and she really loved that,
and my two year old those Khan Academy Kids,
and that's more geared towards I think kids
that maybe struggle with reading,
'cause it's not as literary.
- Yeah, I'll just second that,
like my own six year old who says, oh,
Khan Academy Kids is for little kids actually loves it
compared to Khan Academy, the regular version,
just because again, it's like really easy to engage.
It sort of reads aloud for you.
And it gets a student outcry from the beginning
versus all the sort of a different set up,
especially for early elementary students.
So, highly recommend checking that out
if you're teaching that audience.
- Yeah, and Khan Academy Kids has like,
their social emotional health, like the Khan Academy Kids
is like a whole child program in and of itself,
and I won't get into that 'cause I could.
But that might be another option you wanna look into
if your kids struggle with the reading part of it.
- Cool, I love that.
Okay, great questions, Kathy.
And thank you Chris for handling those so well.
Jeanne is asking a really good question.
And I've heard this from a lot of teachers,
that maybe thanks to the equity issue or just
sort of the complexity of the times we're living in.
But Jeanne has been sending out assignments
to all of our students.
Some of them have joined her classroom,
it's hard to do them.
Others have not actually signed up yet.
Is there some way, especially given that we're in this
remote learning environment,
where you can get those students over the hump
and get them into your classroom?
Or is there a way to reach students
who aren't even signed up with Khan Academy?
- That's gonna be hard to do remotely.
I always have the kids sign up with their like school email.
So, like our school district has every kid has
like a Google or Gmail.
And so they have like, Google Docs and stuff.
So, I always have clicked sign in with Google.
And that makes it simpler.
It's like one less password and username to remember.
So, I don't know if that applies to you that might help
simplify the signup process.
As far as getting content out to them.
On Khan Academy, you can assign assignments where
it's every student sees the same questions.
And so that might be an option where you can go
through that assignment where all the kids
that are already signing will be seeing
the same questions as you.
And you could record going through that and maybe email it
out to the kids.
So, they're seeing the same questions
and getting the same content.
That's the tough question, though,
is like how do you get these kids online
when you're not sitting right there
with helping them get online?
Our district is like sending home paper packets
for kids that don't have online access.
It's, I don't know you could try to send me video in it
maybe would be my suggestion with all the same questions
and then emailing them out.
- Yeah, totally.
I think you nailed it there, Chris,
'cause it is a tough thing to do even in class,
let alone with this distance in between us.
One little hack belfer out there is if you're
just having sort of trouble getting folks really
registered through that whole process,
you just need to get them doing something soon.
So, they don't sort of build those gaps
into their foundations, you will be able to notice that
for every single piece of content in Khan Academy,
there is actually a separate URL.
So for example, if you want to share out this video,
or these lessons all about growth mindset,
you could literally just copy and paste that URL
into an email, into her mind, in the ClassDojo,
however you normally communicate with students and families,
and they can access it without even registering
for Khan Academy.
Now, you don't get the great tracking and progress reports.
For the very least, you get less friction in the process
and the easiest place to start.
- Yeah, that's a great point.
And you don't have to have a login to be able to do
Khan Academy which is awesome.
It's entirely free and it's crazy.
So, they could just do it without a login
and maybe take a picture of their score.
So, they can at least send that to you
or just email it to you.
So, you have some bit of information.
But yeah, they don't have to have a login to access it.
So that link that he was talking about
is everybody can access it,
whether they have a Khan Academy account or not.
- Oh, great question, Jeanne.
And Chris, thank you for speaking to that one directly.
Jeanne's got another tough one for you.
And Jeanne is curious about specifically working
with special education students who have trouble
sort of processing information and getting ready
to sort of engage with these videos.
Can you talk about like what the Khan Academy
video feature is, how you might use it,
and how it might serve students in this audience.
- So when I use it,
it depends on the ability or level of the students.
A lot of students I work with, I can tell them to
watch the video and take notes.
And then if they don't, then it's something like,
that's a discussion we have.
One of my favorite things about the videos is the populate
they say, why don't you pause it and try it out.
And that's a great opportunity for the students to try
and see whether they're gauging it or not.
Let's see the videos based on to me, it seems like the
based on this centered, the grade level standard,
the videos are kind of at that grade levels attention span.
So, there isn't that it seems that eighth grade ones
are different than the third grade videos that I've seen.
One of the things that I talked to the students about
and we work on in seventh and eighth grade is
I kind of give 'em a taking form that they can like
follow along and fill out because a lot of kids
just don't know how to take notes on these videos.
And when they're in seventh and eighth grade,
they need to know how to take notes.
Yeah, I don't know if I can answer your question.
- No, that's awesome.
I think I'll just add two things.
Because all these videos are actually hosted on YouTube,
you have two really good features.
Number one, you have closed captions.
So for students who again, need a little more support,
you've got that channel available.
And you can always turn down the playback speed.
So, if students wanna watch it at three quarters time
or half time, they can certainly do that.
And absolutely pause and rewind, as Chris was talking about.
So, hopefully that gives your students some tools
in the sort of challenging time.
We have to (mumbling)
- And I have I've worked with students
who struggles with math as like, a gifted reader
and so like printing off the clothes,
like the script of the video and just having her read it
is unheard of math, it helps her understand it,
'cause we're using her strength of reading to help
with the struggle of math.
And so that's one of those things like you said,
and I'll print off those transcripts.
- Cool, that's so awesome.
Like, I think one of the things that I really
wanna emphasize about Khan Academy is it's really
just a tool for teachers to use
based on their existing knowledge of students.
And so it's not teaching your students for you
just augmenting what you already know to be true.
So, if you know that your students have certain gifts here
and certain challenges there, use the tool to fill
in those gaps and play to their strengths.
Great question from David.
And we were talking before Chris about standards,
making sure that you're aligned with that.
How do you find standards on Khan Academy?
How do you make sure that you're aligned?
- So they're in Khan Academy, there's a search bar
and you can type in a standard and the standard will pop up
or if you see on the video that's right there,
it tells you the standard that that video is.
And if you click on that right there, it'll open up,
just kind of like their standards menu.
And so over here on the left are all the grades listed.
And so if I'm working with a seventh grade student,
I'll click on the seventh grade.
Or if I'm working with the eighth grade student,
I'll click on the eighth grade.
And I'll give them a little bit of the eighth grade standard
that I want them to work on.
But I'll if it's an eighth grade standard
that they need a master I'll give them seventh grade
and sixth grade standards as well to kind of build up
and that also helps me identify like the day it happening.
And so from here too, you can click on scale drawings
and it'll up the scale drawing
And this is GA one.
And so they have seven things.
And from here you can click assign.
And you can assign this assignment to whatever students
however many students are needing seven.GA one.
- And just like Chris said, you can always
if you know the standards have they're burned
into your retinas or into your mind.
You can just rattle them off.
What was it called exactly what you need.
And I've also shared that common core map in the chat
for folks who wanna dig in a little deeper, okay.
- Yeah, and so that's why I do it right
after I write my IEPs
is 'cause that standard is in my head.
And so I just do them all the two grade levels below
and then leading up to the standard
that they need to master.
- Cool, this is a higher level questions are specific
to the world we're addressing today.
Kevin wants to know, how do you tackle accommodations
and modifications in this world of Khan Academy?
- So, I work with a couple students that have modifications.
And so one of them is in seventh grade.
And so when they're solving two step equations,
I'll go to sixth grade,
and do the sixth grade equivalent standards
or even the fifth grade equivalent standards.
And so that's just the biggest thing.
I mean, in general with accommodations and modifications
is the relationship you have with the
general education teacher,
if that student is in their gradebook,
so like I have a great relationship
with the students teacher and I'll
and like I have a great book for him.
And so when they're working on seventh grade equations,
I'm supplementing in modified assignments
that are at a lower grade level,
but it's still working on the same standards.
If that makes sense.
- Okay, cool, yeah, it goes back to that sort of core thing
you laid out at the beginning, which is you can pick
and choose what's right for your students
based on what you know about them,
versus having to have one sort of one size
fits all approach.
- Yes, and in even if, like, this is the conversation
I have with (mumbling) students or teachers all the time
is that you can accommodate for any student
that is in your class.
And so it's, that's the beauty of Khan Academy
is that you can, if you really standards,
and you know what the kids actually have to know,
you can adjust from there.
But Khan Academy is great for accommodations
and modifications, because you can assign
different standards or you can assign
below grade level standards.
One of the ways we have accommodated in seventh grade is
if you go to the so we use illustrative math
and Khan Academy partners with illustrative math.
And so under courses illustrative math seventh grade.
They have lessons for illustrative Excel drives,
you see that there's lessons one, two, three, five
all those lessons there
is we accommodate is the general teacher
and I go through and see which ones are the foundational
of lessons and will say,
student X is lessons one, two, five, 11.
And so we're making sure that they're getting
all the same standards, but they don't have
as many of the lessons that they have to do.
- Super smart.
- (mumbling) done the accommodation is
adjusting that mastery level we're asking for.
So in Khan Academy, each assignment has
like a familiar rating, a proficient
and then a mastery rating.
And then the mastery rating you get
if you've done the whole unit and the unit test,
and so we depending on the students,
we might adjust where like the proficient level is 100%
for that student, because we're good with the 80%,
or the 75% that that student is reaching.
So, just adjusting that a grade scaling too
is another way we accommodate.
- Cool, and then speaking of that relationship
with the gen ed teacher,
Ashley is asking a really important question, which is,
do your students belong to multiple Khan Academy classes?
You share one Khan Academy account with the gen ed teacher?
How do you sort of do that delicate dance?
- So, the eighth grade teacher that I was working with,
we started using Khan Academy more this year,
and so I was more familiar with so I created the class
on Khan Academy, so all the students were there
and I was using that to teach her how to use it
in a science stuff.
But the students were in her class.
And then I also had some students who are
in academic academy with me,
or the students that are on my service roster.
They will see multiple classes on that left side.
So, it might be gen ed teacher's classroom,
my elective classroom, and then it'll say, like,
my Mr. Casper students or something like that.
And so the students can be in multiple classrooms.
You might be able to speak to this a little bit more,
but I haven't found a way to have multiple teachers
on one classroom.
- Yeah, no, is it tough point,
if we're looking at right now,
but if there's a co-teacher environment,
special education teacher and gen ed teacher,
sometimes they do share accounts.
You know that's not ideal, but that's sort of
where we are right now.
I will just sort of show you what the
learner dashboard looks like.
So, just to give you a sense of how one student
can have multiple teachers on Khan Academy,
down here at the very bottom,
under this teacher section, you can always join any class.
So, if Chris has his own class code,
and then the gen ed teacher in eighth grade
has their own class code,
that single student can easily inhabit both classrooms
without having to create a separate account
or have a separate email address.
So, that's probably the easiest way to get folks started.
And if you're ever curious about the learner view looks like
just go to your name in the upper right hand corner,
and then learner home, and you can see exactly
what students do, okay.
- Yeah, so those are the other classes
and our seventh grade ELA teacher actually started
using Khan Academy this year, too.
So, the kids are doing seven good math,
and I'm in seventh grade ELA and so they would see
both their classes.
And then I'll say even if so if they're
in the gen ed math teachers class,
and they're one of my students in the activity view,
if you go to students and you go to activity,
you can see what their working on, whether it's
for your class or someone else's class.
And so that's another way to stay up to date
on whether they're doing what they need to be doing
for gen ed math class.
So, you see assignments here,
so they might see the stuff that I've assigned them
under my class.
And so if then if you click to activity log,
you can see the videos they're watching,
you can see the exercises they're doing.
And you can see the scores,
you can see how long they've been taking on them.
You can adjust the range.
And so even if they're not in your class,
they can add you as their teacher and you can still see
what they're doing.
- That's awesome that way, you have that total sort of
visibility into a student's full experience,
not just your little slice of the pie.
- Definitely.
- Well, I know we're at time,
I know you've got your own kids,
both your students and your children to take care of course.
So, I just wanted to end with one final question, which is,
I know there are a lot have other questions out there
across the country.
If you were gonna recommend one or two resources
for folks to get help with Khan Academy,
what's been useful for you and your own practice?
- One of the most useful things is me going on
and like doing the work of asking the students to do.
So, I understand the experiences that they're going through.
So I usually try and watch the videos and do the assignments
that I'm asking them to do.
So, when they have questions,
I can kind of respond a little bit better to that,
especially when we're doing things remotely
and I can't be standing next to the computer
when they have their question.
And then I think the biggest thing is,
it's not gonna be perfect.
Like I started out by just like trying things
on Khan Academy and then kind of refined it from there.
The kids do it like.
As long as kids are on Khan Academy,
it's not gonna hurt them, I think would be my advice.
Like, just get them on.
And then I really push it as a resource 'cause
I work with seventh and eighth.
And so I really harp on that, it's a good resource for them
when they go to high school, because of that search tool,
if they don't understand something that they're doing
in high school, they can go in
and they can search that topic.
And they'll see videos and they'll see exercises.
So, it's a resource if they don't understand
and it's an incredible study tool.
Conversation I have over and over again with the my students
is that to study math, you're not just looking at notes,
you have to do the problems over and over and over again.
And that's why it's another great resource.
- I love that, especially in this moment.
We're all sort of like living day to day, crisis to crisis,
taking that long view of, hey,
our students have a big road ahead of them,
how do we set them up for success,
even with the roadblocks are facing this moment,
and kind of definitely be a part of that.
So, Chris, I wanna thank you so much for taking time away
from your own class, and your kids to share your expertise
across the country.
I wanna thank everyone else
for joining in and investing time in this session.
Wish you a lot of luck and success on this tough road ahead.
And if there's anything we can do to support you,
please just let us know.
Thank you so much.
- Thanks for having me.
- Bye, all.