Creating Coursework: A Formula that Works

My name is Rachel Doty. I'm with Broken Arrow Public Schools. I'm here my team today, Austin Sweet Courtney Drydale Jordan, Dunkersonhurst, and my boss, Brandon Chitty. So creating courseware a formula that works. Just to give you guys a little bit of background, Broken Public Schools has around twenty thousand students. We have the largest high school in the state of Oklahoma.

Three thousand doesn't sound like a lot to like people from Texas. I get it. But most high schools in Oklahoma cap at about five hundred. So it's big in comparison to all, but, like, what, four or five others. So we have a lot of students, and we have a very student body.

Okay. So that's what we're working with. We are K12s if you haven't picked it up. What do we have in here? K12s, higher ed, other? Okay. So the first step when you're looking at creating coursework to use within your own district, or, you know, on teachers, pay teachers is understanding the need What needs are you trying to fulfill and what gaps are you trying to close? So for those of you who aren't familiar with Oklahoma's Place an education right now.

Our big one is funded. It's a big one. I I put quality here, but I want you to know. Our graduates from our education programs are spectacular, and they're all teaching in Texas. So quality becomes an issue, and teacher readiness becomes an issue.

Okay. How can you leverage the expertise within your organization? Okay. This guy here, Mr. Chitty, is excellent at leveraging expertise. He nabbed all of us from the classroom.

I taught high school social studies. I have a master's degree in education and library science. We have a math teacher here. We have an elementary slash middle school social studies teacher and another elementary slash middle school social studies teacher. And he poached us all.

So as well as our one who's not here, who was an English teacher. So leveraging the expertise within your district. We are lucky enough that mister Chidi has created what we are called the success team In our district, he's created a team for instructional technology. We don't handle IT. We handle instructional technology, canvas, Google, all that.

And what are some roadblocks? So any of my notes? Sorry. Roadblocks, funding's already up year. We have also encountered a lot of issues with purchased coursework. The first course we noticed a really big issue with was our state history course. Not a lot of companies write stuff for Oklahoma, specifically.

So that was the first course we made from scratch was Oklahoma History. Our first iteration very much followed the platform but ingenuity or edmentum any of the others follow. There's content delivery, video reading, whatever. There's a quiz, rinse and repeat, for sixteen weeks. Right? So we didn't love that.

So that's the first course we did. It's in its second iteration, which we will start delivering this fall now, and we're very excited by it. Then, teacher qualifications. We have a lot of what we call emergency certifications in Oklahoma coming in, especially to high school and middle school. What that is is it is someone with a bachelor's degree, but no educational background.

So I'm an alternative certification, which means that I don't have a bachelor's degree in education, but I have at least thirty hours of master's work in education. So I'm a non traditional teacher as well, but an emergency cert hasn't none of them. Okay. So we have people coming in who may be an expert in content, but they don't have classroom management. They're missing the soft skills.

So we want to take that content creation off of their plate so they can focus on creating the skills to be successful. Emergency search generally don't last more than two years. And we're trying to change that. Okay. So step one.

Outcomes. We all know state standards, right? State standards. That's what our students are supposed to learn, but is it in language they understand? We rewrite our outcomes to student friendly language. I want a little bit of discussion here. My lovely assistant Jordan has a microphone So feel free if you have anything to add to speak up.

Why do we want clearly defined learning outcomes? Why do we begin this process with that definition. And how do we craft them? Okay. This is sort of our situation. We have clear communication, measurable outcomes growth mindset and scaffolding objectives. So is it clear? Is it in language your students understand? Keep this in your brain.

We're gonna go to the next slide so I can show you what we show our teachers first. We made a lovely little chart It's blooms, it's De Okay. We're familiar with all of that. If you go up to a first grade student and say, Hey, can you recall the structure of a plant for me? They're gonna have trouble with that. Right? But if you say, can you draw a plant for me and tell me what the parts are? Just changing the language makes it achievable for students, it is still recall.

Okay. So anything please, please add. I've done this twice in my hotel room. It only takes twenty minutes. So Sorry.

Am I Yeah. Oh, yeah. Sure. Can you go back to the page that has the questions that you'd like you wanna engage? One of the things that I that was really we started doing this? Hello? So We are really fantastic. Stick.

I promise. All of us were in a Toyota Highlander yesterday. I'm sure we'll be fine. Yes. So one of the things that of the reasons why we decided that we needed to create our own curriculum was not only because of the box curriculum didn't fit with our students, didn't fit with our teachers.

It was because we wanted to make sure that we had a sense of ownership in our district and buy in for our teachers and for our students. I, as a classroom teacher, I never opened the textbook in my fifth grade classroom. I did I looked at the standards. I saw maybe maybe I had a couple of questions that were great, but I knew my kids. I knew the, the what the diversity of my student socioeconomic of my students, what they would have at home if they needed to do a virtual experiment.

So I had all of those things in mind when I was teaching fifth grade, but not all of the teachers that are coming in with emergency certification have had any of those beginning courses to understand what a manipulative is? Like, what manipulatives are? What can as manipulatives, what you can pull from regular household items. And so we really started diving deeper, especially for our virtual school on creating curriculum that mattered to all stakeholders. From the parents, the students, the teachers, and that's really why we we we decided to get rid of the boxed curriculum and come into and create with each other and with our own teachers, something that we can all be proud of and know that what we're giving our students is what they need. It's our heart. It's this is what we have to have in order for our students to succeed the first place.

Well, and when our standards change, we own the course, and we can change the content I've taught US government. We've had some big standards changes. So just hold it in front of him. I don't they don't need this. Oh, it's being recorded.

Oh, it's being recorded. Oh, thank you. See, that keep me in line. So I'll try to be quiet so I don't burn yours out because I'm a loud talker, but In Oklahoma, we, deal with teacher shortage, like crazy. Right? So right now, we're at seventy nine teachers short.

And it's very stressful. And, you know, if we were in a situation where, we had something like this, fully done with all of our content, it would be less scary because then the way that you could get creative would be a lot more meaningful. The problem with, you know, these box curriculum, you know, delivery methods and all this is when you really investigate them, everything can either be googled, everything can be skipped and everything now is non authentic because it's all written. Their authentic work is written, and now no longer written work is all authentic. Right? And so as a virtual student, or somebody, it doesn't even have to be virtual.

Let's say that we're short teachers, and we're wanting to use this box curriculum to deliver to all our of our teachers to, to, you know, take a couple of our, teachers and spread them across. So they're just giving feedback. They're not having to do as much. Right? But we can't do that We know it's not quality instruction. And so, when really talking to our leadership and telling that story, that really came out and and really challenged because how can we sleep at night knowing that, like, this this really is an education that's happening.

And so that's something that we're dealing with. And so when we look at these assessments, one cool thing that that they have done is, you know, we have some common, like, submission types and, kind of like choice boards that they can really choose the type of mission we want, whether it's a podcast, whether it's a presentation, something that's authentic to them, and that's going to be different from the other students, is very unique. And, know, we're hoping to get to a point to where we can maybe focus on the courses that we need more. And this is not just a discussion about our virtual school. This is not just a discussion about, you know, the students that might need to, to take this online.

It's really we don't know what school's gonna look like in, you know, in ten years. You know, if we're, we might just be on the top, you know, just starting to go down that hill when it comes to teaching. We know that, dinner table conversations are not positive around teaching. So those generations are not going to school. Our local we have huge, a huge tea education, college, re really close to us that I graduated twenty students last year, like, like, people don't aren't graduating with degrees.

Program, and we graduated twenty with a masters my year. So And that's scary, right? Because and, and we and we've just we've experienced quite a a substantial pay raise, that before they were even coming in this it didn't mean anything. So it's not about money. It's really about behaviors, you know, and that's something that our leadership is addressing and trying to get to. But if we don't have teachers, we're gonna have a issue.

We're gonna have to get creative. And so this is, one of those I was trying to help you out. You said twenty minutes. I was just trying to fill it in. You know I can talk.

Thank you, sir. I don't need that high feeder, but I'll get this for in the recording. Yeah. I don't talk high school. Talking about your emergency cert folks.

Right? I mean, and I and I say this as part of, you know, the CNI crew, in the room. You know, you look at state standards and sometimes work used of what they mean. But by clearly defining outcomes, right? It helps those people brand new -- Yeah. -- to the classroom understand. This is where I need to get the kids.

Right? So they at least understand -- Yeah. -- you know, the the finish line outside from looking at state standards and understanding, you know, what does this even mean at the end of the day? So and it's sad that northeastern state is only producing twenty students. Yes. Yes. Very, as an alumnus.

Yes. It is very sad. And this is not what we're talking about today. Look for next years, I guess. We have a program called Elevate that we use for teacher professional meant.

We use micro credentialing, but it's to get those skills to teachers. Right now, the lack, the big gap we're faced with elevate is time. If they're spending all of their plan time frantically trying to find resource resources because they don't have an Oklahoma history textbook this year, They're not gonna spend their time improving on their pedagogy. Designing engaging content, if any of you guys ever taken a purely online course in the past fifteen years, there hasn't really been a lot of change since my undergrad. I took several all online courses because I worked full time.

Video, assessment, video assessment, video assessment, video assessment, often only multiple choice. Maybe some discussion boards where, you know, you make your post, but you have to reply to too. And you're like, great point. I agree. Post.

The students do that or the other trick that they'll use on Canvas is they'll post just like one letter or a space or a period, read someone else's and copy it. Sorry. So it needs to be engaging. And that's what was really lacking in a lot of those canned courses for us. So we've been experimenting multimedia presentations, interactive maps, interactive videos, simulation, We have kids at our high school that have, you know, their their teachers give them a dead week, make a make a game to study with, and they've made a video game in And so they share it with their peers, a teacher adds it to their course, and it becomes part of the course.

Yeah. The big one for us is h five p. If you guys haven't looked into h five p, check it out. It makes all of making all this so much easier. My social part of me loves the timeline feature because you can just add to it.

And it's great. That's photos every So they're not using AI for you can just write text and it will create or give you suggestions the fifty seven, you know, tools that they have and you can assist and verify that it's good and plug it in. Yeah. And if you I don't know if it might be a second. The big other thing is accessibility.

We make sure All of the content we deliver through these courses we're building is read aloud by the instructor is able to be read by a screen reader and is on screen as text. You're like, well, if the screen reader can read it, why does the instructor read it? Context and relationships. If you guys have ever taken an online course, And you don't even remember your teacher's name, are you really gonna maintain that that knowledge beyond that? So relationships. We ask our teachers to build those relationships. Our virtual school does just as much as our in person schools.

So we don't have, you know, a virtual school with four teachers slaving over five hundred students. Our virtual school. How many staff do you have now? So we we do a ratio very similar to in person. About that all day too, but, it's it's a little bit more. I think we allow for five to ten percent more than that average thirty per teacher.

But So a Brown a dozen for our virtual school. For our our I have about five hundred. I have four hundred and fifty kids. Four hundred and fifty five hundred kids. Twelve teachers.

K. P. K. Through twelve. Three element.

So six through twelve is hybrid. And they offer they have a campus students can come to for help. It's not completely ver like, you can do everything from home, but if you're struggling, you have a place to So accessibility is a big part of this as well. A lot of times, those courses that you can purchase are not always accessible or require you to download outside apps, we try to avoid that. Collaborative activities.

Students aren't just coming to our schools to learn the content, or to learn how to learn. They're learning how to be. I told my government kids, they were all four mean, told my government kids. You're here to learn government. Yes.

But you're here to learn how to be people. How to be citizens. And all kids deserve that. Virtual in person, you know, maybe they have to be gone a couple of weeks, doesn't matter. They deserve that chance.

So you guys have preferred platforms for collaboration. We love padlet. It's up there for us. Anyone else, collaborative platforms. Canvas is a big one as well.

Right? But it's, you know, a lot of our elementary teachers in our district will have a special Instagram or Facebook page that's just for school. Canva is our other really big one. All of the content we put out is made in Canva, including this presentation. So, I mean, I had to use the Instructure one, but that's from Canada. So we really encourage collaboration.

Kids are not an island, and we need to make sure they are collaborating with each other, and they know who their teacher is. And then what types of activities do you find work well in person, but are hard to replicate online? Because there are, you know, a lot. And We started seeing that a long time ago. Our class periods are only fifty minutes. So collaboration has to happen outside the classroom at our high schools.

High school. We have a freshman academy. And I used the collaboration's towing Canvas every semester in the classroom. Because it gave me a place where students could collaborate without, you know, messaging each other on Discord or going outside of the safety of Canvas. Leveraging technology.

So what skills should they be learning? We hear from the workforce all the time. They don't know how to do ABC. Right? And we see it in the classroom. It's becoming it's getting better. But when I started teaching high school, in twenty fifteen.

I had long term subbed for a while. And when I worked, in the private sector, You have people graduating high school who don't know what a web browser is. They don't understand if you say, Hey, can you send me that link? Or they only know how to use mobile technology and not computers. So there's a lot of skills that we wanna work into here. So I have a big list of technology we we leverage.

Or skills they need. My library degree says effective searching. I can outsearch any high schooler. I have a library degree. Hopefully, I can outsearch any high schooler.

Right? But that's something when I was in high school, we still to do a whole lesson every year with our school librarian on bullying search terms. Doesn't happen anymore. Right? We just assume they know. They don't know at all. Recognizing reputable sources Standing classroom rule posted in my classroom every year that I was in the classroom.

We will talk about anything related to this course, if You bring me three reputable sources that also talk about it. I only had to talk about, like, five things in my whole career. Because, you know, TikTok's not reputable. So, digital citizenship is a big one. Online collaboration, cybersecurity, and safety, social media.

They do not understand permanence. Their brains aren't developed enough for that until after college, really. And so maybe you shouldn't post yourself doing crimes on TikTok. Yeah. That's a conversation I've had with dozens of kids.

Basic troubleshooting, basic troubleshooting, reloading a webpage. Lot of them don't know. They'll just it's not working. Did you refresh it? What's refresh? Okay. See button, click it.

Basic keyboarding. A lot of my students type like my dad. And, guys, you're gonna have to pick up the pace. No one's gonna hire you for a job. If you can't type a little bit.

I'm not saying you have to type correctly, but, like, a little bit. Data privacy, Once again, they don't understand permanence yet. How to recognize if something is safe to use. How to not download something off of the internet that's gonna crash your whole computer or phone or whatever. Copy right.

And citing sources, but the big one, the theme of the week, it feels like, responsible use of AI. That's one we're seeing all the time. All of our kids have had Chromebooks for years. Twenty seventeen, twenty fifteen for high school, middle school twenty seventeen, yeah, and elementary twenty twenty. Ish.

So our kids know. And a lot of our teachers are scared or unaware, we are thrilled. So we have already started creating trainings for our teachers. And some of the stuff they showed yesterday I'm so excited about. But they need to understand how AI can benefit them in the future and how to use it responsibly so that they don't, you know, fail a class or get themselves fired from a job.

So responsible use. Oh, too far. Assessing learning outcomes. He mentioned already authentic assessment. It's becoming harder and harder for assessment to be authentic.

But everything we're building into our coursework is about student thought and student creations. Like he said, one of our every unit in our Oklahoma history class, which the one we just finished. Every unit in our Oklahoma history class has a student choice board. They're allowed an essay. They're allowed a pod cast.

There are a lot of video and three other options. They're six. They can choose any of the six. But all of the questions are largely opinion based that they then need to back with information. Cause you know what AI is not great at doing quite yet? Reliable opinions.

So is it gonna get there? Yes. But in the meantime, it also forces those critical thinking skills because I can ask you all day, you know, what did Alexander Hamilton mean in this particular letter? But if I ask you to take that information, synthesize it, and give me back something new, That's going to be more authentic than just googling what did Alexander Hamilton mean in this particular letter. So other than multiple choice, which has its place? Sure. Are some other authentic forms of assessment you guys have used? We're looking for ideas. We I mean, most we do a lot of certificate based course in higher ed, and so all of our courses with, like, capstone project that we hope that they go on to implement in the real world.

Some of my courses also do, they have a video project where it's, I do medical education. And so they do a video project demonstrating them teaching that students then get to then critique on, like, how is your teaching and stuff and, like, a peer review process as Yeah. Yeah. And that's, our, we call it Options Academy, it's our alternative program. They finish every year with a big project.

They across curriculum. It's spectacular. And, when I first entered Broken Arrow Public Schools, I was at one of our alternate of schools and we got to participate. It was really fun. Do assessments need to look the same for all students.

We have a huge EL population. And oftentimes, because of staffing shortages, I would have a class that had, like, thirty eight kids in it, twelve of whom didn't speak English because we only have one translator. So all of my Spanish speaking students are in that one hour. Did I let them take their tests in Spanish? Yes. Because, you know, learning content specific US government terms in a language you don't speak yet becomes almost impossible.

Or I just let them take their test as an oral exam. Maybe they can speak it, but they can't read and write it yet. And yet's the key with any kid. But the big part, a part that cannot do without ensuring student support. Our biggest issue or at least biggest issue with a lot of those pre made courses is this.

Without a teacher, kids aren't gonna remember it. They're just gonna Google it, and the relationship is missing. So it's only the beginning. It's only a piece of the pie. The most important part of an apple pie is the apples.

And in this case, it's the teachers. You need good, passionate, dedicated educators to make course work, especially k twelve course work work. Because the other big difference, k twelve to higher ed, our students have to be there. They don't necessarily want to be there, especially when you teach a core class out of freshman academy. No fourteen year old wants to take US government.

It is not a passion of theirs. So it was fun to get them engaged. So I know we haven't been super talkative, but we do have a whole Q and A slide. And we can tell you more about what we do. Our weird team with a weird name, if you'd like.

Or he can. It's, it's not totally their success, but if somebody's not having success, then it's, I'm in trouble again. Sorry. If if somebody's not having success, that's that's where they're at. But to bring this kind of full circle, when we talk about teachers and that struggle and what the future is gonna look like, if we have this, you know, when this beginning talks, and we don't know exactly.

We're actually teaming up with quality matters if you haven't heard of them and really, getting trained on that rubric. And and because at the end of the day, you know, in ten years, if we're still having issues with teachers, if as long as we can have professional teachers create the experience for our students and give the students a space to learn with some supports and feedback, that might be what it kind of looks like. And so just know we need to address the current virtual learning space. And that current virtual learning space can be in person and buildings. It can be at home.

It can be anywhere. And we just know that that that is something that needs to be addressed. And so Is anybody else dealing with that question and and concern and keeping you up at night or, what what you guys are dealing with? No. Do you guys have it all? No. Just the case of, like, if you're, like, using you guys came here.

If you read the description, we're talking about blended learning or the environment of virtual coursework. Right? So the idea that current virtual coursework is not great. And I don't know if you guys have discovered that and how you were addressing that. And so that's what we kind of wanted to come and bring. Honestly, we, we have so foundational ideas, but we love conferences that are interactive and that we can get some ideas.

And really, we come to make connections, right, so that we can broaden in our, our scope of understanding. And so, you know, what were you guys? Let's just say I have a daughter who, because of men my oldest daughter, because of medical issues had to become a part time student, her, well, the end of her freshman year into her sophomore year, And I guess the anniversary freshman year, it was just great teachers working with us, but we had to complete a lot of content in the summer on her own or with me supporting her is a little easier when your mom's a teacher, but and then great teachers who just continued to assess it over the summer and so that she actually got credit for things. Her sophomore year, she was a part time student. So we tried to use some of the online things that were out there. Our district tried to put her in some of them, and it was horrible.

Like, I worked in instructional technology, and we weren't able to make work. So that has been like an inspiration for me. And one of the reasons why I like to see what other districts are doing because we do need to reach those students And, a lot of times, the students who need online coursework, they're students who have a specific need. It's not just your student the regular classroom work is going to work for them. So whether it's medical or family or social emotional, whatever it is, that's where our kids need.

And that's why I'd love to see an example of one courses, like, if you guys could pull that up? I just told her I was like, can we pull up one of the courses? Can you pull this up? It's a Mac. I can't. Tomorrow. I'm not. I I am absolutely not.

That's why I'm not really in charge. So, I don't we we have our we use city labs currently for our teacher training, piece of the, the work that we do. And we're actually going to be using city labs and we're creating templates currently for our push in to do this. The course that she has developed here, was something that we started at the beginning of last year before we moved into using city labs in the virtual space. So not organized quite the same.

It will be, because we will overlay it. But, if you haven't used city labs, you did a great job, your your your district, so make a connection. What was your name again? Yeah. City Labs is amazing. It's just a way to really overlay some visual HTML to merely make your courses look well, well done.

And so, it is a, it is a great tool. It looks like just like you guys had issues with internet we may as well. So it is a That's the right path. It is a constant struggle. But our our environment is very much, like, our districts wanting to look outside the box, I guess.

We're very much Like, with this whole AI thing, we're not creating policies what we just talked about. We're very much trying to be innovative. The scary thing, that I kind of you guys might deal with too is that desperation kills innovation. And as we're discovering, like, for the first time ever, we have funding we just don't have people that wanna do the job, and that's a whole different deal. I'd rather have not have funding and teachers lined up to teach, you know.

But it it is interesting. And we're gonna have to get creative and push through and figure out solutions to these problems. The problem is there's no better and then teachers with kids, you know. And so how do you create that experience, even in an online setting to where feels like we're still with kids, because I'm just a big believer. I don't know if you came here to talk about virtual course work or whatever, but I've been really studying it for the last two years.

And have found that, a lot of the, the advertisement selling points of it were all marketing, flexibility. That's marketing. Right? Virtual school should not be flexible. Virtual teachers should not have to grade four five weeks of content all in one day because kids are at different places. That doesn't create great feedback.

That doesn't really do much for Right? And so that's just one example of many things that we're looking at that, really, for us, we're changing that space. And so we're trying new things weekly, monthly. You know, our families understand that we're changing things, how we do attendance and how we do engagement checks, we're, we're really, investing into that time, but we're not using that word flexible. I mean, it's flexible daily, it is not flexible throughout weeks and months. And unfortunately, virtual school and that kind of learning, a lot of people use it to hide and we don't let our kids hide, and we don't let it, you know, we want to I mean, they're our future.

And so we're we're very much own that situation for our district. Yeah. So he he asked if we have any asynchronous classes. So, well, and, and so in the situation of asynchronous, so we do credit recovery. We all that kind of stuff, because if you guys are district leaders in here, you know that the goal is to graduate kids, and you have a whole bunch of diverse students.

And so you somewhat have to kind of get those through there. When it comes to first time credit, again, about being flexible. I don't believe a course should be completely asynchronous. Unless you're maybe, like, a senior and you've proven to be very self started. Like, you have check those boxes to be able to do that.

Right? And so what we're doing when we're addressing our coursework is we're building in synchronous requirements, we're still working on, like, the percentages. Percentages are big for us right now. How much is teacher scored? How much is computer scored? How much is authentic? How much is non authentic? Cause it's okay to have those those checks in there that are not authentic, but the weight that you applied to them in the grade book should be a lot less than the weight that you applied to the authentic assessment And so we're really looking at all these percentages, percentage of synchronous versus, you know, the student just working by themselves helps. And so that's we're still in this foundational development state, but I can tell you right now, in a first iteration, it's gonna blow the socks off of what you buy year to year from a company that doesn't live in your state trying to, you know, because, I mean, I go on with that. But it looks like we're loaded now.

So well, go ahead. We have a couple. So let's let's let them go here. So I work for city labs. We love you, but so I work with a lot of different schools and I've dealt with it at my children's own schools, and a huge huge thing is just consistency.

When you're building out these courses, you need to have similar looking front pages where students can go in and know exactly where they go. Some of these kids have a lot of stuff going on at home, and they just don't have the bandwidth some days to click a million different links within the course to get to where they need to go. And we produce everything in modules and use course pacing to keep students on track. Yes. Yes.

Yeah. I've worked with, I worked for a school in New Zealand, and that was their big focus. They were K twelve, and they were online. And they did a, they worked with their students to find out what the main issues were, what the struggle points were, and they rebuilt the courses. They worked with the students to do that, and it made such a huge difference.

The, the statistics that came out of it, the student response was fantastic. So that really does make a huge difference. Something we were talking about on one of our meetings the other day was really unique because think about this. You think about building content, and it seems very over whelming. Right? You had that first meeting with people.

It's like, you're gonna build this, and you're gonna put it online, and then it's gonna meet all these things. And these are the things we need to discuss. And they're like, crazy, like, and they, you know, we're giving them half day every day to do it. And they're like, oh my gosh. But we give a teacher that has never I mean, I was a sixth grade science teacher, Okay? I was elementary certified, and then I took the test for science, and then I got the job and they handed me the book.

And then I read this unit that I was gonna teach the night before. And, I mean, I'm just being real with you, right? And then I, and then I taught it the next day, and I learned it with the kids, and it was a great experience. And, like, was good for everybody. Like, it worked. Right? But that's why is that not scary? Like, I mean, in reality, that's what we do, but that's just as scary as saying, okay, now I just want you to put it somewhere.

Right? That's all I talk about. Yes. It's comfortable. It's because what we know, because imagine if it was the other way around. Imagine is is if you'd built it online, which is you have the security of time and reflection.

And then you told them, Hey, you're gonna do it, you have to come up with it every day. And do it live in front of people. Like, I would think that that would probably be even more scary, right? So I'm really excited about. Once you get the formula, once you get the idea, and and once you kind of put the parameters around it, you really can create things that are really meaningful. Know we had a hand back here.

Did you still wanna share? Yes. Sorry. We were I was giving them a city labs mini tutorial in the back. That's, so first, I'm from Texas. Thank you for giving us your teachers.

We appreciate you. No problem. We still have a shortage, but that's where we are. You guys got our teacher in a year or two years in a row. Our state teacher of the year moved to Texas two years in a row.

I don't know that how that happens. And I'm on the mic, so I'm not gonna but, what I did wanna just contribute to the conversation. So, we're in the process of sort of revamping what we do with our online learning, how kids are earning original credit credit recovery, but in the in the facet of looking like I've I've spent the last month in about five years' worth of historical data. And at the end of the day, it doesn't matter if your course is synchronous or asynchronous. What matters is a a caring adult checking in on that child.

And so one of the ways that we use, I don't have a lot of funding. My labs are staffed by para professionals. They're certified teachers. They don't have any training in classroom management, but what we have found is by offering stipends to our current teachers to check-in on those kids. Somebody who you know, if you have a question and you send an email third period, then at the end of the day, that evening, somebody's gonna respond.

And by the time you come back to that tomorrow, you'll have an answer. And so really just looking at flexible ways to make sure that there's somebody available on that campus who's checking in and saying, Hey, Ashley, where are how come you haven't made this kind of progress. And most of our courses as they sit right now are asynchronous for credit recovery or, original credit, but it really just matters who's working with them, who's following up on them, and, that relationship that we have with our counseling team, and a lot of conversation about why did you put Ashley in this class? Because if she was not successful in algebra with the teacher, then her sitting in this lab with a para professional is probably not the best place for her to be. So really just leveraging partnerships and making sure that we're spending our time talking to the people who are actually in the building with students every day so that they're making better decisions so that the students who are participating in our online programs have a better chance sixty. So when we build these courses, we use a team that's one from our team, one from our instructional specialists who actually help write our state stand for social studies.

So they're already pretty student friendly. And then one classroom teacher. Because I haven't been in the class. This is my fourth year out of the classroom, and we've had a major shift in education since I left. And I can read research all day, but I haven't been a classroom since spring twenty twenty.

So we have to have that classroom teacher aspect. So this is sort of I'm just gonna show you our first module in history, it's not been prettied up yet. This is just basic. So every module starts with outcomes. What are we learning in this module? This is Welcome to Oklahoma History.

This is like what are the requirements for this course, essentially? So it's read aloud. The screen reader works. The text is there. So that's gorgeous. Right? And then Next one is content delivery.

First content we deliver for this one, how to take great notes We require note taking. We require them to them to submit their notes. We don't care how they take notes. We actually give them several examples of effective notes, and this is an h five p activity interactive. Lots of stuff to do.

It's got videos. All the videos in here are student created videos. So it's students saying, this is how I take notes. As a ninth grader, this is what works for me. And then It's me reading, sorry.

And then we can go to the next slide, and it just requires that they interact with that page. And then they complete this interactive video. This is just about real basic stuff, state bird, like the stuff we have to teach them, but maybe there's more impactful things. So that that audio clip that you've got on these, and especially on the previous one where you had the h five p, slide show. Is that the narration that goes along with the slide Is that right? Oh, okay.

Because, you know, I know that, you know, the HIP, slideshow thing doesn't automatically have an audio track that you can, you know, stick in there. You know, there's that what is it? The read something -- Yeah. -- thing? Yeah. And there's a thing that'll make it, you know, do audio, reading from from the text within the HTML, but I don't think that it carries over into slideshow. So the slideshow's all recorded us teachers.

But you just recorded it as like an impeachment file or something and stuck it in there? You open the h five p to edit and there's a record option. Adds the little pause button. I actually record it on my phone because it's the best microphone I have -- Mhmm. -- and then import it. But, you know, we work with what we have.

So I, yeah, I use my pixel buds and my personal phone to do all my audio recording. I'm at Aubrey University. And but I'm I work for extension, which is on the outreach side of the university. So I build online courses for catalog that are non academic. We also use the academic, you know, for Canvas, but, you know, oh, the majority of the courses that are building your asynchronous and, you know, been looking for ways to make them more interactive because we're getting pressure from above to say, oh, you you need to cut down on the number of videos you use in these things because, you know, that takes too long to produce.

We have a we have a pretty hard and fast rule to to fifteen minutes, you're too long. If if I wouldn't stand in front of a classroom of kids and talk that whole time, I'm not gonna put it in video. I just know for my own morning styles, I I don't get a whole lot out of having to read pages and pages of text. Yeah. And that's, our our max reading length for a high school course.

Four to five pages of fourteen text. You are out of time, dear friend. Okay. We're out of time. Here's our student choice board, the next, or the previous, yeah, right? Choice board made on Canva.

Beautiful. We'll hang out for a little bit if you have questions. Oh, dramatic interpretation was one I couldn't remember. They love that. Oh, it is. Get this up on me. Thank you for your time.