Let's take a trip back to high school. Do you remember what participation felt like?
Did you have to raise your hand to answer questions? Were you loud or
quiet or somewhere in between? When I think back to high school, I think about my 11th grade math
class. There's this huge white board at the front of the room. As the teacher lectures,
I'm scribbling down everything that I see on the board verbatim in my notebook. The
teacher pauses to ask a question and I feel butterflies fluttering in my stomach immediately.
My palms are getting sweaty, so I sit on my hands and I hope that the teacher doesn't randomly
call on me next. I'm paying attention. I've done all my homework. I'm getting an A in the class.
But when it comes to having an answer on the spot, I'm scared, uncertain, anxious. I haven't had time
to process all the notes I've scribbled down. What if I give the incorrect answer in front of
all of my classmates? I don't want to be wrong. My friend raises her hand to answer the question.
I'm so relieved but I also feel defeated. Certainly I must not be as smart as her. If I was,
I would have been raising my hand, right? Here is a fundamental flaw in how our classrooms operate.
Students raise their hand to contribute, or teachers cold call on them to respond. Students
who regularly speak up earn participation points and receive positive reinforcement for
contributing. Teachers might even mistakenly assume they're having a truly dynamic class
because of a robust and lively conversation with a few hand raisers. And this doesn't just happen in
schools. Even as adults we often do the same. We just don't assign a letter grade for contribution.
We still assign value though. We still give weight to the ideas of those who are most vocal and
quick to have something to add. What's more, we consistently miss out on the contributions of so
many when we don't make the space for everyone's ideas and thoughts to be represented. Everyone
loses when we don't hear from all voices. I'm here today to show you how we can leverage technology
to create more equitable and empowering forums for discussion, to shift from a culture that praises
the first person to raise their hand to one where every individual has a platform to make their
ideas seen and heard. I'm talking about using simple web apps. This topic matters deeply to me
as that introverted perfectionist who needed time to process and formulate a response before I was
ready to share. I began to confuse faster with smarter. Because I saw my peers answering more
questions than I was in class and getting praised for that, I struggled to feel like I measured up
and this took a toll on me. I started to believe that I was not good enough.
And so as a math teacher it's become my mission to find ways to shine the spotlight on all the unique
voices and personalities in my classroom and to celebrate the diverse approaches students choose
rather than focusing on one answer. Technology has helped me provide a safe space for all students to
contribute and to highlight what everyone in the room is thinking. The loudest voice is not the
only voice in my classroom and the last person to respond has the same opportunity for their
reply to drive the conversation further as the first. Using the right technology, not only did
I discover ways to hear from the students like me: the quiet students, the processors, the ones
who might be anxious to answer first, I found a way for us to hear from everyone in the room.
Today, I want to focus on how educators can use technology to, one, see what all students are
thinking without calling an individual student out, two, emphasize process over product, three,
celebrate multiple approaches to a problem and, four, provide an environment where all students
feel safe and comfortable in sharing so that we're able to build next level relationships and trust.
And though i'll focus on my experiences as an educator, and what we can do in the classroom,
I hope this message will reverberate much further to leaders, event organizers, parents.
Let's start with that first idea. Providing all students a space to share their thoughts
whether or not they choose to raise their hand and share. Pear Deck was a game changer in allowing me
to help each student feel safe contributing to the conversation. What is Pear Deck? It's
an interactive presentation tool where I can embed questions directly into my Google Slides
presentations. Students can reply to each question from their own device. What's more, as students
are typing, drawing, or selecting their responses from a list, I can see what each individual
respondent is contributing in real time. What this technology does is help level the playing field in
the sense that it gives those students who need time to craft a reply from behind the screen a
chance. This isn't to say that tech integration is about students hiding behind their laptops,
typing or drawing their thoughts. For students who are more vocal, their best work might be
that moment when we bring the discussion to the board to talk about the various answers.
What we are doing here is providing platforms that allow us to create a safe space for all
students to contribute. We open up an opportunity to see all ideas represented and we can shine the
spotlight on contributions that would have gone unheard. With a tool like Pear Deck, answers are
displayed without names attached so we can discuss mistakes and analyze errors without calling an
individual student out. Creating that safety is an important factor which flows into my second idea.
How we can leverage educational technology to emphasize process over product. As i strive to
help students see that mistakes are a critical component of learning, I can use tech tools to
draw attention to an incorrect answer without the class knowing who submitted that response, helping
me build a classroom culture that honors mistakes as part of our collective growth. In addition,
the real-time nature of seeing students work in a tool like Pear Deck provides a snapshot into how
students are thinking through a problem. I have a class set of Wacom tablets which my students
simply plug into their laptops so that they're able to write out their math with an actual pen.
As i started using Pear Deck for class warm-up I realized how many unique approaches I never would
have realized were marinating in a student's head had I not provided them this platform to express
that half-baked response. And when i brought these ideas to the board for discussion how many
students were suddenly eager to contribute because they saw a variety of solution methods highlighted
on the projector. Let's look at my third point. Celebrating multiple approaches to a problem.
Providing all students an opportunity to verbalize their thinking process on video has opened up
awesome pathways for peer-to-peer learning in my classroom. Flipgrid is a tool that i will
highlight here. What is Flipgrid? It is a threaded video discussion platform allowing students to
record and post a video directly to a grid of responses from their laptop or their phone.
I have students solve math questions on video with an emphasis on teaching their classmates
how to solve the problem they are tackling. First off, this gives me great insight into
how students are thinking about problems. But even better, by posting to the grid we can
celebrate multiple approaches to the same problem and students learn so much from their classmates.
This becomes even more powerful when we extend this activity beyond the walls of our classroom.
I have been able to set up collaborations with other schools where all of our students
are posting to the same grid of video replies. In this way, my learners can see how students with a
different teacher in a different district or state would approach a topic. We're able to compare
similarities and differences and students can learn new strategies from one another.
This is such a simple way to set up powerful peer-to-peer learning moments for everyone
involved. Just take a look at some of the engagement numbers we have tracked in Flipgrid.
My AP Calculus group has picked up 10,938 views and 366.5 hours of engagement to date. It's been
incredible to see some of my quietest students find their voice on video. I think there are
multiple reasons for this. For starters, students have the time and space to script a response
before recording if that's their style. Others will casually just talk things out to the webcam.
Those students know that their classmates will watch their responses once it's posted. They still
have the opportunity to record in an environment that is most comfortable to them. I noticed that
some students only record at their desk at home. Others record anywhere and everywhere.
And there are always the one or two students who record on their phone while pacing their room.
What's important here is that students get a chance to choose where to record, how to record,
and whether they want to re-record before submitting. Which brings me to my final point.
Leveraging tech tools to provide platforms so that all students can find a space where they feel safe
and comfortable in sharing so that we're able to build next level relationships and trust.
O'll stick with the same tech tool here, Flipgrid, but change up the focus from a public posting to
a private one where the video is visible only to me. I call these private Flipgrid check-ins.
Before every assessment, I have students post to a private topic so that they can
talk out what's going well, what they're nervous about, and anything they want to share. It's been
incredible to hear what students have to say when I open up this forum for them to talk.
When i say that giving students a chance to share through video has transformed the relationships
I've been able to build in my teaching, I'm not exaggerating. Let me tell you about Derek,
a student who I will never forget. It was October and I sat down to listen to his
private Flipgrid check-in. When the video started, he's sitting there with a stack of
papers laid out in front of him and he picks one up and he starts talking to me "Hey Miss Roshan,
okay, so the first question is what mistakes did I make on the last quiz? So, in number one
I confused the bounds of integration," and then he holds up his paper to the webcam and he says,
"I don't know if you can see it but I highlighted how I should have drawn out this problem so now I
definitely understand that and I will make sure to sketch out the picture next time."
And he continues on and he shows me which problems he struggled with originally and why he now feels
comfortable solving them he talks to me about how my corrections have helped him better understand
the concepts. I get this awesome snapshot into how Derek is processing feedback and growing from it.
This is the side of Derek that i wasn't able to see in the classroom. After watching his video,
I responded back to his Flipgrid, right in Flipgrid actually, so we were able to have this
two-way communication channel and Derek was able to receive private and very personalized feedback
from me. He knew that I had listened to everything he had to say in detail and so he continued to
open up to me more and more on those Flipgrid assignments. I told him how impressed I was
by his thoughtful reflection and the time he was taking to look back at prior work and with this,
his confidence grew. This confidence boost carried over to the public Flipgrid assignments where
students were tasked with recording a solution their classmates could learn from. The videos
Derek recorded were so detailed and clear, as if he was a teacher making a tutorial for the class.
It's not easy to make instructional videos, but Derek put in that extra time and effort to make
sure that his classmates could easily learn from his explanations. I never would have had a chance
to see Derek take on this level of leadership if i hadn't built that trusting relationship early on
and then provided the opportunity for him to share on a platform that worked best for his style.
And that's the heart of it. When we give our learners the right forum to express their ideas
and integrate tools that allow them to respond in a format that is most comfortable to them,
we allow each student's most powerful voice to shine. We show students that there are a variety
of ways for them to contribute their thoughts and make an impact. We allow them to feel safe
in sharing and are able to coach them based on what they need as individuals. As I close my
talk today, I want to thank you for this chance to share what has worked in my classroom. I hope that
an idea or two has resonated with you and that you will feel empowered to leverage technology
into the design of lessons you will build to open up the chance to connect with your learners in
whole new ways and to provide platforms in which students will share their thoughts in a format
that best fits their style. These tech tools are so powerful and easy to use. Only our
imagination is holding us back from building more equitable and empowering classrooms. Thank you.