Teacher's Guide to Tech, with Jennifer Gonzalez

In this episode, Jennifer Gonzalez, the editor in chief of The Cult of Pedagogy, joins us to talk about effective tech integration in the classroom. She shares tips and best practices as well as an overview of the popular resource she’s developed called The Teacher’s Guide to Tech.  Visit AVID Open Access to learn more.

Transcript

#330 — Teacher's Guide to Tech, with Jennifer Gonzalez

AVID Open Access
32 min

Keywords

teachers, tools, tech, students, technology, learning, kids, classroom, year, thinking, talk, ai, jen, guide, pdf, education, work, quizlet, feel, jennifer

Jennifer Gonzalez  0:00  

What we're going to care about the most, what's going to matter the most at the end of our lives, is the experiences that we had with each other and the relationships that we built with each other. And so, we just cannot lose sight of that, and always kind of try to come back to that when we are questioning the value of this technology. It's about those connections that we make with each other.

Paul Beckermann  0:22  

The topic for today's podcast is Teacher's Guide to Tech, with Jennifer Gonzales. Unpacking Education is brought to you by avid.org. AVID believes in seeing the potential of every student. To learn more about AVID, visit their website at avid.org.

Rena Clark  0:41  

Welcome to Unpacking Education, the podcast where we explore current issues and best practices in education. I'm Rena Clark.

Paul Beckermann  0:52  

I'm Paul Beckermann.

Winston Benjamin  0:53  

And I'm Winston Benjamin. We are educators.

Paul Beckermann  0:57  

And we're here to share insights and actionable strategies.

Transition Music  1:01  

Education is our passport to the future.

Paul Beckermann  1:06  

Our quote for today is from our guest, Jennifer Gonzalez. On her website, she writes, "You don't want to use tech to simply replace the things you already do. You want it to enable you and your students to do things you could never do before." All right, well, Rena, why don't you go first? What do you think of that?

Rena Clark  1:22  

Well, when I meet with teachers, I always think about when they say, oh, I want to use tech. I want to use tech. And I think what is it you're trying to do? What does it you want students to know and be able to do? But what is it you're doing pretty well and okay, and how might we be able to amplify that with technology? What is it that maybe we couldn't do without technology? So I feel like if it's not going well already, and you throw technology in the mix, it's probably going to be worse. So my advice usually with this is, let's amplify something that's doing well, and then from there we can expand.

Paul Beckermann  1:59  

All right. Winston, what are you thinking about?

Winston Benjamin  2:01  

I agree with Rena that it's it doesn't make sense to just throw a tool at a problem without knowing exactly how to use that tool. So I agree with that. But part of it, it's I like the future thinking of it, realizing that teachers are thinking about the current moment. How do we think about what students will need for their future so that they'll be able to be prepared and engaging in a world that they'll be successful in. So like, how do we look at technology, not as a momentary thing, but as a future thinking? How do we support students in engaging with that? That's where I'm seeing that quote.

Paul Beckermann  2:36  

Yeah, right. Tech literacy is huge for being future-ready and getting more so all the time. Well, our guest today is Jennifer Gonzalez. Jen is a former middle school language arts teacher. She earned her national board certification in 2004. She's also the founder and editor in chief of the very successful Cult of Pedagogy, which includes an education blog, podcast, videos. There's a store and a bunch of other things on there. She's also the author of the Teacher's Guide to Tech, a User-Friendly Encyclopedia of Technology. Welcome, Jen.

Jennifer Gonzalez  3:10  

Thank you so much. I'm happy to be here.

Paul Beckermann  3:12  

Awesome. We're going to talk about your Teacher's Guide to Tech in just a bit, but before we do, can you share a little bit more about yourself, your journey and maybe what drew you to educational technology?

Jennifer Gonzalez  3:23  

Sure. So I was a middle school teacher for a while, and I taught pre-service teachers, and it was one of those things where a negative thing turns into a positive thing. I was working with student teachers, and we met seven times for full days throughout the semester. So most people who have been through student teaching probably had something kind of like this, and there was a lot of guidance that I was able to give them. And then all of a sudden, our university said we're going to take those seven days down to two. And I said, how on earth are we going to do this? And that was when I learned about how to make a screencast video, which was in this platform called Tegrity. This was like 2011 and somebody showed me how to do it, and I thought, oh, my gosh, I can replicate myself with these videos. And so it completely opened up a whole new world of possibilities. So I replicated myself of what I would have done on those other days through these videos. And then I realized, oh, they can watch them over and over again. This is almost better than us being together in person, because they can repeat things. Anyway, I got the tech bug. Then I took a couple of edtech classes because I just had to get six credits to keep my teaching certification, and our professor made us turn everything in through a WordPress blog. That was how we submitted our assignments. And I was so extra in that class. I did above and beyond what my classmates were doing. And I thought, I think I really like this. So eventually, I sort of phased out of teaching pre-service teachers. I realized I was either going to need to get a PhD and really do it for real, or I thought maybe I could just do it on the internet for more people than the 29 students per class that I was working with. And so that's how I started Cult of Pedagogy in 2019 and it really did come out of, I mean, I had a lot of other reasons for starting the site, but the ability to do it with the technology that I was learning just a little bit was what really got me excited. And so at that point, I was 43 years old. Hearing the term MP3, even at that time, I was like, "What even is that?" because I was a Walkman kid. So, I was really starting to fall behind I felt like and I started realizing, no, you can teach yourself almost anything. None of it's that hard. It's kind of like the travel bug. If you haven't left home in a while and you go on one trip, all of a sudden it's like, oh, now what else? Where else can I go? It was the same thing. That's kind of been my journey. And then with the tech guide, once I started working with teachers on Cult of Pedagogy, I started asking people in my audience, what do you need? What things are you struggling with? And that kept coming up. Teachers saying, I know that there's a lot of technology out there, but I can't keep up with it. I don't know what all the tools are. It's overwhelming. And I thought, let me write a blog post that kind of categorizes all the tools and puts them all together. And that never happened, because it turned into this giant PDF that I started putting out every year, and that was 10 years ago.

Winston Benjamin  6:33  

That's awesome. I appreciate that the journey went from practicality to what do I need to get done to let's make this thing happen. One thing that I wanted to try to talk about is, on your Teacher Guide to Tech website, you write that students can't just be sitting there and staring at a screen, right? Like a lot of times. that's even how parents and families do it. And even in the classroom, we sometimes assume that students know more about technology than we do, so they'll figure it out. So how should students be using technology in their classrooms so that's not the case—that they're just sitting there waiting or not doing anything. 

Jennifer Gonzalez  7:14  

That's a good question. It's got a big answer. I think there's a lot of different answers. You know, one of the things that tech has given us is just the ability to replicate the stuff we were already doing in a more efficient, quick way. And there's nothing wrong with doing that, but if we stop there, then we're not taking advantage of all of the other things. I actually give a presentation to teachers where I talk about starting with knowing the things tech can give us that we can't get from other non-tech things, and to think about it that way before you start to choose a tool. So one is the ability to create things, even if you just go to YouTube in the video capacities that I had figured out in that early experience. It used to be that if we were going to watch something, that thing was going to be made by somebody professional, and that was the only way we were going to ever see it, and now we all have the ability to make our own videos, edit them, do all kinds of things. That's true for audio. We're doing it right now. What we're doing right now, would not have been possible 20 years ago. We wouldn't have known—how do you even do this kind of thing? But now we can not only record this and talk to each other from across the country, but publish it. You could publish this an hour after we're done, and it could be on the air for people to listen to all over the world. That's mind blowing to me. So if we're not putting that stuff in kids' hands and showing them and giving them that same experience that I even had as somebody working with student teachers, all of a sudden, it unlocks all these capabilities. So, the tech gives us the ability to create new things. It allows us to collaborate with people without the barriers of time and space, basically. It gives us portability. We can do things on the go that we couldn't do. It allows us to publish all kinds of ideas and words and art and all kinds of things. It gives us experiences that we could not have had before in terms of things that AR and VR can give us, virtual field trips that we can go on, people we can have conversations with, famous people that we can have live interactions with. All of these are things that we can do with the technology. And so what I started with when I answered you was to say that it was a big answer. It's a big question. It's a big answer. If we're not thinking about those things and all of the different possibilities that it has, then we're just missing an opportunity, basically. 

Rena Clark  9:45  

I love that you pointed out rather than just that "sit and get," it's about students creating, collaborating, and everything else. So, on the teacher side, how do we see technology really transforming the learning in the classroom? Rather than just taking, we talked about it a little in the quote, digitizing—just taking something, maybe a written paper, and just typing it out. You know, that's just digitizing. So how are we really amplifying and transforming learning?

Jennifer Gonzalez  10:17  

I think it really does require us to look at what we want students to ultimately be able to do. Historically, as as an industry, teachers have a lot of times fallen back on the easy "I'm going to just give information, and the students are going to spit it back to me." And I think especially during the pandemic, we saw a lot of kids saying I was able to play this game before because I needed to get the degree and move on to regular life and things that I care about. But once they were all doing it at home, I watched my own three kids literally cheat right in front of me. They're like I'm going to play the video, I'm going to go take a nap, I'm going to come back, and then I'm going to find the answers on Quizlet and turn it in and be done. And I was just like, why are you cheating? You can't blah, blah, blah. And they were "Why not?" It's so easy, and this is a dumb assignment, and I'm not learning anything. And I could really argue with that. Anyway, the kind of stuff that we were mostly doing was just a lot of this regurgitation of information. And I do think that things have been moving in a different direction anyway, but that really highlighted the lack of real authenticity in the learning that we were asking of students. And so there's not going to be anything real creative in my answer, but a lot of the movement toward more project-based learning, more problem solving, more inquiry-based learning, I think now there's so much information out there that it's almost impossible to say "We need this discrete amount of information for all of our kids to know and learn." 

We're so beyond being able to do that now that we need to be teaching them how to how to learn, and how to follow up on what they're learning and turn it into something that's a contribution to their communities, or to solving problems locally or on a larger scale. That's a big ask, really, because there's not a whole lot out there yet that's a good template for us to follow. I think there's a ton of people out there that are doing it, and they're doing really good work. It's just that it's kind of all over the place right now. The piece that I think is already in place is that the language in the standards that many of us have already been saying we're following is already pretty well written. When I even look, Common Core is obviously very controversial. But when I look at the language of the Common Core, it's not saying kids need to read these three novels and tell you what happened in them. It's saying they need to be able to analyze. They need to be able to critically evaluate, and that's good stuff. You can plug any text into that and have them do that work. But I'm finding that the assessments that we're designing for our students still aren't actually asking them to do that stuff a lot of times. It's still multiple choice tests and super quick on the stuff that can be standardized. And that's easy to grade, and it's easy to report out to our communities, and that's why we do it, because we still have all these accountability measures that we want to be able to report back to our clients. Are we doing what we say we're going to do? And I think it's harder to do that with the project-based stuff, but I'm really encouraged by the fact that I see a lot of people trying to put all that together and figure out a way to do it. And I think it's happening. It's just that it's happening kind of slow.

Paul Beckermann  13:47  

Yeah, we talk about that on this show all the time. We're all about authentic learning, empowering students, giving them those, those real world four C's—I don't like to say 21st century skills anymore, because we're deep in that already—but future-ready skills anyway, right? So that authenticity, that active learning, and technology just open so many doors that were never there before. And some teachers really want to get into that, but they feel kind of overwhelmed by it all. You kind of alluded to this earlier, the overwhelming aspect of them, because there's just so many tech tools out there, they don't even know where to start, and it changes so fast. If they kind of step aside for a year or two, they kind of feel like they're out of the loop already. So what kind of advice would you give to those teachers? The ones who are struggling, not knowing where to start, not knowing how to cut through all the noise?

Jennifer Gonzalez  14:43  

I would say two things, two possible routes. One would be to go to a teacher that they think is already doing it well, sit in on their classroom, demystify it a little bit just by watching and realizing this isn't actually that scary. They're not coding the next space shuttle launch in here. This is not really that difficult. And see if there's something that they could take and try on their own. But then another angle, which I think maybe they could be doing at the same time, is to start with their learning standards and look at them really deeply, and even just pick one and say, "Am I really doing this with my kids? Are they really doing what this standard says that they're going to be doing? And if not, could I be pulling in one piece of technology that would help with that?" Because honestly, there's a lot of stuff that we can do that's good deep learning that requires no tech at all. So the answer sometimes can and should be no technology. Let's just have conversations and face-to-face and just do that because in a lot of ways, the technology is making it harder and harder for us to just have actual face time with each other and have regular conversations. And so that sometimes is the answer. I really do think sometimes the answer is right down the hall from you in your school. But it might not be that teacher who's doing the flashiest things. It might not be the person who's always got the name of another tech tool in their mouth, and they're always just like, I'm doing this and now that, and I'm an ambassador for this. It might be two doors down from them, where somebody is just sort of quietly, effectively, using maybe two or three tools really, really well. And so I a lot of times advise people to go with their gut. If they're in a classroom and it feels good, and it feels like the kids are really plugged in and they're not frenzied, and things are really interesting and engaging, that's the person to use as your model.

Paul Beckermann  16:43  

Yeah. I like that you said the answer is probably right down the hall. That's a T-shirt moment. We have T-shirt moments on the show. That could be on a T-shirt. Sometimes, like you mentioned, it's not the most techy teacher down the hall that you're connecting with, because they might be the ones that could potentially overwhelm you if you're just getting started. With those other teachers, they'll start at your level so that you can feel empowered to keep growing from there. 

Jennifer Gonzalez  17:09  

Yeah, and it's not about using all the tools because you can overwhelm your kids. You can overwhelm everybody with that. And so it's really about curation and careful selection and knowing when something's not serving you anymore, and being able to let that go, because we can't use all the tools.

Winston Benjamin  17:30  

That is so true. We can't use all the tools all the time, every time. So let's so let's talk about your Teacher's Guide to Tech. We've shifted this idea about, boom, this whole thing. So what is it? Why did you create it, and how can it benefit teachers in this large space that we just mentioned, that is so big and growing?

Jennifer Gonzalez  17:53  

So one of my main roles in education that I have just developed on my own is because I am not in the classroom anymore, I know how little time teachers actually have to do the research they need to make the most of the time that they're in the classroom with students. And so I've taken on that role of let me go and do the research for you, and try to make it as quick and digestible as possible so that you can make decisions for yourself that are going to work. So that's what that guide is. If I'm a teacher, let me give you a couple of use cases. If I'm a teacher and somebody says the name of a tech tool. I just said Quizlet a few minutes ago. And maybe I've never heard of that, and I'm too embarrassed to ask. I can go to the tech guide, look it up. Now, I can go to the internet too, and look it up, and I'll find it, but if I go to the tech guide, there's going to be me there saying, Hey teacher, I'm going to explain to you how this can work for you as a teacher. I'm not going to be advertising it to you, trying to get you to use it. I'm going to say, this is what it's for, this is how your kids can use it. Here's a video that shows it in use. We went through all the videos, and this is the quickest video that shows you how it works. Here's a link to their website, and here's how we think that you could use it. And here's some other tools that are similar to it. So it's meant to really fast track their ability to make a decision. 

Another use would be we've got all of the tools broken up into about 50 categories. It's funny. Just last night, we were talking about the history and social studies category, which is massive, and we've got that broken down into here's some curricular stuff. These are websites that have activities, lesson plans, games. There's another section that's just the geography, mapping kinds of social studies things. There's another section that's only primary sources, where you can be looking at the actual original documents and old photos and old video footage and that kind of thing. So what we're trying to do is just really sort things out, so that if I'm a history teacher, I can go right to that category. I can browse around. Oh, I know that one. I know that one. Oh, I've never heard of that one. And that's what I usually hear from people. They say I thought I really knew technology, but even I discovered stuff that I had never heard of. There's some incredible platforms out there, and they don't necessarily know how to reach teachers, and so it's a way for teachers to save time making decisions, make good decisions, and then also uncover some things that that they weren't aware of. And then we also have articles in it that are helping you think through the process, learning about the legal aspects of how to use stuff and not get yourself into trouble. There's a glossary of over 100 different tech terms, because new stuff comes up all the time. And up until this year, it's always been a PDF that we have updated every fall and put out every January. Because, shockingly, not shockingly now, but I'm always amazed by how much we think we've got it all in January, and then by November, 20% has completely changed. This tool's gone now. This one has a new name. But what we're doing right now is we are, for the first time, converting it all to web-based so that we'll be able to update it all year long, instead of having it decompose over the course of a year and then need a fresh update, and it's going to just be a subscription model starting in January. 

Winston Benjamin  21:21  

See now, the follow up question is how can teachers access? Where can people go to get access to it?

Jennifer Gonzalez  21:28  

So if they wanted the 2024 version, actually, at any time when a person is listening to this, they would just go to TeachersGuidetoTech.com, and that is where it lives. Until this coming year, it has basically just been an informational place to find out where to go and buy the PDF, and it covered some of the basics of what is the guide? What does it do? Starting sometime in January, that platform actually will be the guide then, and you'll be able to then subscribe and access all of the categories that way. It solves another problem for us, which has always been accessibility for people with disabilities. I have never been great at making a PDF really accessible, and I've struggled and struggled with it, and so I think just having it online is going to solve some of those problems automatically, too. So that's where they would go, teachersguidetotech.com and if they are listening to this in late 2024, we're probably going to be selling the PDF at a super discounted rate if somebody wanted to see the old one, but pretty soon, it's going to be web-based.

Rena Clark  22:33  

And as you said, things change so quickly, and I just think, even the last few years, we haven't mentioned that magical tool of AI yet, but you recently updated your guide. So we're just curious about what did you discover about current trends in ed tech or changes that you've seen in the past. So what's going on this year? What did you notice?

Jennifer Gonzalez  22:57  

Yeah, obviously this year, no one is talking about anything but AI this year, and that's where I'm now starting to feel like, oh gosh, I'm falling behind again, because I'm seeing AI everywhere, and I'm basically dumping it all into a folder and saying I'll get into this eventually and learn about it. Luckily, what I decided to do about three years ago was hire a team of ed tech people. These are all people who are teachers in different schools, and they are the Ed Tech specialists in their building. So now they are serving as my brain for learning. They're really on top of things. So the thing that's been encouraging to me about AI is that I feel like we're moving on two tracks. There's the fear of it. That it's going to take over the world, steal all of our jobs, steal all of our information, and make it to where no one ever has to do any actual thinking or working, and there's a danger in that. And then I think there's another parallel track that says yes, but it's also got all these cool capabilities. It's going to save us some time and effort on the stuff that's always been really monotonous so that we can use our brain power for the things that are really creative and interesting, and things that really, as of right now, only humans can do. And I feel like the education world is starting to embrace those things more, whereas it seems like just a few years ago, it was just ChatGPT, the kids are going to cheat. All of a sudden, now it's yeah, but AI can also save you time as a teacher. It's like, "Oh, hold on. Maybe it's not all bad." So I do think that so much of what teachers do is just so draining time-wise and repetitive. And so, if the AI tools can help us save our own time too, so that we can really do the stuff that matters, that makes a difference, I think that's great. My main statement honestly about AI is that we just have to kind of keep paying attention to what it can do and learning from the people that are trying it, and see the use cases. And the same thing I said before about going to that teacher down the hall and seeing what they're doing with it and try not to be too afraid of it because fear comes from not knowing. Once you get in there and see what it's doing, you can get to where you're not afraid as much as just curious and wanting to try it.

Winston Benjamin  25:21  

That sounds like how everyone tries to figure out a new tool. That's sometimes how I feel when I'm going under the hood of my car. Oh, I don't know this. Let me figure out what this does before I mess something up. But this is time for a little transition to what's in your toolkit. 

Transition Music  25:38  

Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. Check it out. What's in the toolkit? What is in the toolkit? So, what's in the toolkit? Check it out.

Winston Benjamin  25:48  

Well, what are you thinking about? What are you carrying with you? I'm gonna start with Rena, what are you carrying along in your tool bag?

Rena Clark  25:57  

Jennifer mentioned this one, but we have people. In a lot of districts, a lot of schools, there actually are instructional technology coaches you can reach out to. I happen to be one of those in my district, and I wish I was utilized more, but you have coaches that can do some one-on-one coaching and will meet you at where you want to be. There's also in the building, and I know a lot of districts, even as like Jennifer mentioned, there are usually technology integration specialists, or they're called other things usually in the building, as well. It's like a stipend position in a lot of districts around us. So, utilize your coaches, if you have them. I think all of us have been kind of in that coaching role, and they're great people to work with.

Paul Beckermann  26:41  

Yeah, like you said, Rena, that was my role, too. And it's great when people reach out because that's what tech integration specialists live for, to help those other teachers around so reach out. But I would throw blogs into the toolkit. Blogs and podcasts like you're listening to now, and specifically check out Jen's Cult of Pedagogy. It's great. I've been a fan of that for a long time now. Check it out.

Winston Benjamin  27:05  

So I'm going to do the same, have everyone check out Jen's Text Guide for Teachers, as well as our old episodes of Tech Talk for Teachers. We provided a little bit of a conversation on what's going on, how to help others. Jennifer, is there anything you'd like to throw into the toolkit, like what do you want us to walk away with? 

Jennifer Gonzalez  27:26  

The thing that has had the biggest impact on me in the past year-ish is a book. Cal Newport's book, "Deep Work." I don't know if you all have heard of it, but I actually have done a keynote and I'm trying to get it accepted at ISTE, because it's probably the best thing I feel like I've ever written. It's based on his work and how I think that all of this stuff that we're trying to do with tech would be impossible and is not going to have any real impact unless we can carve out time for deep work in our schools. And that's really what Cal Newport does in this book. He talks about what deep work is and how necessary it is, and how we are really short on it in our society right now. And so I would recommend that because I feel like that thinking is a really necessary companion to where we are right now with technology, even though it's not about technology. I think anybody reading it would see the connection right away, that we can't do what we want to do with technology unless we can harness deep work. 

Rena Clark  28:36  

I think that takes us right into thinking deeply about our one thing.

Transition Music  28:41  

It's time for that one thing. One thing. One thing. Time for that one thing. It's that one thing.

Rena Clark  28:52  

So what is the one thing we're either walking away with or still thinking about? Winston? One thing.

Winston Benjamin  29:01  

It's something that Jen said earlier. It's like don't just stop at making the systems faster. That's a great way to help, it's to have the kids sit there and fight a way to cheat. So it was like what do you really want to do, and how do you support student learning? So that's one thing that I'm definitely walking away with.

Paul Beckermann  29:18  

I really enjoy the conversation about not just having kids just passively staring at screens. Let's have them do things. Let's make it active. Let's empower. I think of the SAMR scale, and I know that a lot of people are familiar with that, but it's okay to start with substitution of what you're doing with tech if you're just trying to get familiar, then augment what you're doing to try to get it a little more efficient for yourself, or some kind of functional benefit. Then modify, and finally, at the top, redefine. Once you get comfortable enough, you can redefine how learning looks in your classroom. So climb the ladder, get up on the SAMR scale.

Rena Clark  29:59  

I loved when Jennifer pointed out teaching our students how to learn is really what we're focusing on. And then I love though, the extension of that is: then follow up on what you learn. So it's not just about how to learn, but then what do you do with it? Because I think sometimes that's where we stop. So now what do I do with the things that we've learned? So I love that. So thanks. And then, Jen, do you have something you want to add?

Jennifer Gonzalez  30:26  

Yeah, I think whenever we're talking especially about technology, I think it's really important for us to keep remembering that it's the people that are really the most important thing, and that we are all still human beings having a human experience with each other, and these tools are just our current equivalent of the wheel and the microwave oven or whatever, that changed our society before. But really what we're going to care about the most, what's going to matter the most at the end of our lives is the experiences that we had with each other and the relationships that we built with each other. And so, we just cannot lose sight of that, and always kind of try to come back to that when we are questioning the value of this technology. It's about it's about those connections that we make with each other.

Paul Beckermann  31:19  

So true. And I think that's a big takeaway from this episode. We do talk about technology a lot, but it is about the humans. It's the people first, and then what can the tools do to support that? Well, thanks so much for being with us, Jen. We've really appreciated the conversation today. 

Jennifer Gonzalez  31:35  

Thank you. Thank you. This is fun, guys.

Rena Clark  31:38  

Thanks for listening to Unpacking Education.

Winston Benjamin  31:41  

We invite you to visit us at AvidOpenAccess.org, where you can discover resources to support student agency, equity, and academic tenacity to create a classroom for future-ready learners.

Paul Beckermann  31:56  

We'll be back here next Wednesday for a fresh episode of Unpacking Education. 

Rena Clark  32:00  

And remember, go forth and be awesome.

Winston Benjamin  32:04  

Thank you for all you do. 

Paul Beckermann  32:05  

You make a difference.