Course Organization Models for K12 - Instructurecon 2013

MIKE KISOW: Well, I appreciate you all being in the room here for me, and hopefully you all can see and hear in the back as well. And what I wanted to talk about today was K-12-specific course organizational strategy. So I have models crossed out here, because as I was creating this PowerPoint, and as I was-- you know, I apologize, I'm going to start my own little timer there, just to keep me straight. As I was creating my own PowerPoint, I started reflecting on some of the schools I've worked with and some of my own experiences, and I wanted to talk a lot more about strategies than modules. So my name is Mike Kisow, and I'm the K-12 Southeast Regional Director. I'm a Schnauzer dad, as you can see. That's Hulu, the miniature Schnauzer, and he's basically our only fur child that we have. And I live right here in Park City. So originally from Pittsburgh. I did my master's at the University of Utah. And this is really coming full circle for me because Park City Schools was actually the third paying customer ever of Instructure Canvas. So we're the very first K-12 customer. And we did the process that many of you are probably engaged in or probably were engaged in, form a committee, build some rubrics, have the vendors come in, all of those things. And eventually, we selected Canvas, and things have worked out pretty darn well ever since then. And I like to say that I've had all of the roles possible in Canvas. So when I was getting my administrative licensure at the University of Utah, I was a student in Canvas. I've taught adults through PD sessions in Canvas. I've taught through Southern Utah University in Canvas. I've also taught K-12 students, hybrid, in-person, fully online. I've been an LMS admin of Canvas in several capacities, obviously a TA, a whole bunch of different capacities. So I like to think about things from different angles when I go to schools and we talk about Canvas. But there's one role that I've had in Canvas that's probably the most scary. So my wife Tara also worked for the school system in Park City for several years, and she was a Canvas user. Now, when I was running Canvas for the school district, there was some mercy involved. But once I joined the organization, right, I was provided with lots of feedback from time to time when you got home. So that's another interesting role that you can have in Canvas. And I'm a big fan of learning management systems, and every time I'm onsite, I'll talk about these things. That learning management systems, really, any of them, they're this conduit between the world. So my world was a one-to-one laptop program here in Park City, and that's what I'm most familiar with. So teachers have always had classrooms. They've always known what they've done in these classrooms, and they've had their systems down. And then we introduce these $1,000 paperweights with an Apple on the front. How are we going to connect these things? What is the conduit? How do we be less random and more orderly and actually construct a narrative of a classroom? Our classrooms are narratives. They're logical. There are beginnings. There are ends. There are middles. And with technology, we don't always do that. The other thing I really appreciate about a learning management system is that it can actually physically embody other initiatives. So we spend all this time and energy doing PD on things like Understanding by Design or an IB program or programs like SIOP for English language learners. And teachers are wondering, well, what is the practical application of that? Well, those things can and should be all embodied in the learning management system. And if you don't have a traditional one-to-one like I've had-- I was the luckiest person because I had a set of guarantees. I could guarantee my teachers the device, guarantee the image, the software, the version, the operating system, the training, the parent training. I could guarantee them that there was equity. I could guarantee them that if it was broken, I would fix it. And with a BYOT, which many of you are working with, you don't have as many of those guarantees, and that's not bad. But I will suggest to you today that the learning management system could be that one common thread, that one guarantee, regardless of the device, the OS, the whatever comes into your classroom. That's something that I would certainly enjoy if I was in a BYOT environment. So Canvas is a lot like a Warp Pipe in Mario, it connects those worlds, And down, down, left, right, a, b, a, does absolutely nothing in Canvas. And this is, unfortunately, how I began a lot of my technology things. Like I'm the early adopter, right? I'm the true believer. I'm bringing all these things to my people. And I'm like, you know what? I'm just thrilled that you know who is doing anything on a computer. And like, I'm just glad that they can even turn it on. Like we got to start somewhere, right? And I'm pulling my hindsight card now. And my hindsight card that hopefully I get to do as the first K-12 client along with Park City Schools is that, although the, hey, let the wild, wild west method of let teachers-- we're happy they're just using it. It's not a death sentence. But I want to caution you that it may come back to bite you later. So this is the guy from the Holy Grail, right? And what does he say? Choose wisely. So I have spent an incredible amount of effort in my career getting teachers who have sort of sub-optimized their Canvas existences to their own classroom. And it can become exotic, dare I say? Different ideas, different models. And reeling that in, and taming that. So today, my audacious goal is to basically talk about well, let's start at scratch, and forget the wild, wild west, the exotic. "Let them do whatever they want, because we're happy they're doing anything" mentality, and go from scratch to awesome. I talk about our classrooms. We all know that our classrooms-- most of the time-- we're not winging it. Do we occasionally wing it? Yeah. But we're deliberate. We're intentional. We do purposeful planning. This is what teachers do, right? We're professionals. And we really have a plan. You throw technology in the mix, we run around like chickens with our heads cut off. We're like, wow, a tool. A this. A that. And I used to say that one of the worst days of my life as a technology person in a school building would be the Monday after ISTE or FETC or USET, when teachers came back with seven bajillion new free tools that probably won't even be free next week. And they wanted logons. And they wanted them unblocked, and all of these things, and that narrative wasn't there. It wasn't cohesive. I changed the name of today's presentation, because I thought back to last year. And I talked about unifying for success. And I talked about nouns. I talked about things that we could do. Well, hey, it makes sense. Maybe we should all have the same kind of a home page. Or maybe we should curtail the amount of left-hand navigation items. And you can see sort of a before and after. Just little common sense things. Well, maybe there should be some template. Or maybe we should start to standardize the "stuff." And basically what that created-- what I thought it was going to create-- was a more consistent experience. So the title of this slide is "Is Your User's Canvas." This isn't "Is Your Canvas Course as a Teacher." Because when teachers sub-optimize their own Canvas course for whatever they're doing, potentially, if you're a student with nine periods, or eight periods, or whatever it's going to be, you can have a very different experience. So I have the trail signs up there. Whether I'm skiing in Tahoe or at PCMR, where I'm a volunteer ski patroller or in Stowe, or somewhere-- anywhere else, if I see a blue square or a black diamond, it's going to mean the same to me. What if every zip code or area code or state, even, had different road signs? What if stop signs were square and orange in other states? That's sometimes what we're doing. We're sending the mixed signals to our students. Just when they cross the very minor boundaries from teacher to teacher, where really it's a good idea that stop signs have eight sides, and they're red all throughout our nation. So today I'm going to have a conversation about tools versus goals. So I used to teach tools. I would have trainings on, let's do quizzes! Let's talk about pages! Hey, there's this thing-- modules! And now, again, with my hindsight card, I'm going to have a little different of an idea. Now, this is the slide where I acknowledge that it's not entirely fair, all the things that I'm going to say to you. So this is not fair because you all might be thinking, yeah, buddy, but we don't have any previous experience with an LMS. We don't have the same devices. Our kids don't have internet access. We don't have capac-- I get all of these things. So I'm acknowledging that you might be-- these are the grumblings back there. But we're going to push on, regardless. So my proposal to you is that this part, the Start from Scratch to Awesome Part-- and again, your mileage may vary. Now here's my theory-- that teachers love systems. Canvas has a dropbox for assignments. Who invented the dropbox? Teachers. It was called that paper shelf thing on the desk over by the pencil boxes, and that was the dropbox. Or a file repository? The same thing. Students and teachers always knew where the makeup work was, where those worksheets-- How about a calendar feature? Yeah, we have that in Canvas. Well, guess what? On every side whiteboard in any classroom you go to, there's a calendar. Teachers have always had these systems. How about taking attendance in elementary school, where the kids just walk in. They grab their little tongue-depressor stick-figure person, and they move it to the attendance thing. Teachers love systems. We have cubbies. We have Conversations Inbox, and those types of things in Canvas. Well, I remember making the Pringles can mail center in second grade. Teachers have always had these systems. And they do more than just have systems. So sure, we invented the bell schedule. We invented the block schedule. The modified block schedule. We're surrounded by these things. Teachers don't have systems. They actually teach the systems. Those first two weeks in your classroom, you are teaching those systems. And students become like your little droid army. If you've ever substituted-- and I think most of us have-- two things can happen. One, the students can walk in on autopilot. They walk in. They might not even notice you yet, that their teacher's not there. They go to their cubby. They do their thing. They get their at-the-bell activity. They are on autopilot, because they know the system. The other thing that happens is they say, oh, but Mr. Johnson doesn't do it like this. Oh well, as the sub you don't know the system in the classroom. Systems are consistent. They're predictable. And here's why I'm harping on this. I've had educators say well, it's on Canvas. Well, it's up there. Well, I put that on Canvas. Well, that's like saying, oh, that make-up work? It's in my classroom-- somewhere. So having a system online, which is the virtual extension of your classroom, is more important than even having them in your classroom. So again, I'm going to suggest that systems are persistent. The systems you lay down in the beginning of the year, they're also the systems that you'll conclude the year with. And instead of the tools, I would suggest that, perhaps, your building administrator and your technology coaches sit down and talk about moving a system to Canvas-- whether it is, hey, these laptops are coming. We got a whole bunch of iPads. They grow on trees. They're coming in. We have to coordinate somehow. So at the very, very minimum-- I don't care what you do on Canvas. But the one system we are going to talk about is the calendar. So at the very least, perhaps, you need to have your assignments on Calendar. That system is now a Canvas-type system. And what it helps you to do is-- I love this phrase. I stole it from somebody on Twitter somewhere-- to avoid techno tourism. So sometimes I would have a training on a specific thing. Oh, you can do quizzes in Canvas. The teachers, they did a little tourism. They took a vacation. They did quizzes-- once or twice. They're like, yeah. Yeah. Well, they've always had their same-- systems in place in their classroom. And just added. It was just to additive. It wasn't integrated. So to make something standard practice is a lot different than just having sort of techno tourism. And do you know who these people are? Does anyone know who these people are? They're CAVE people. Does anyone know what CAVE stands for? CAVE people are your Colleagues Against Virtually Everything. And we all have those. We all have CAVE people. And CAVE people are more reluctant to buy on to a gimmick, too. Oh, well, this new thing happened, and you could do a presentation on it. Or, oh, you can upload a file. I believe that CAVE people will be more receptive to the idea of translating something that they already know and bringing that onto Canvas. So there are reasons why I'm suggesting this. So, in Canvas, we have global features, common features. The To Do list, the Gradebook, the Assignments list, what parents see. The calendar. These things really work better when all teachers are leveraging these things. So when I go to my To Do list as a student, I don't want to be like, well, math and science are there, but Johnson actually puts his assignments on a wiki page. And this other person puts them somewhere else. The teacher doesn't know that the global experience for the student is diminishing. But these are things that we want to start from the beginning. I visit so many schools-- several schools a week. And all they want to talk about is data, data, data. Analytics, analytics, analytics. So I'm like, yeah. You can align mastery, and we have all these things. And I'm like, so what are your plans for roll-out? They're like, oh, well, teachers, they can choose to use it. I'm like, how's your data gonna look? It's going to be like Swiss cheese, right? So I have to remind them. I acknowledge that these adoption processes aren't a light switch. Everybody just doesn't jump in day one, and it all works. But for some of the beauty of Canvas to work, like really accurate analytics and data, it has to be an accurate representation-- a complete representation-- of what you're doing. Although I was born in the '80s-- I don't remember the '80s, so I'm more of a '90s child, and this gentleman here, Master Splinter was a big part of my '90s growing up. So at the very least, if there's maybe one takeaway from today, this is one of the simplest things that you can do. We love to talk about master courses here at Instructure. And there's ways to automate this, and also ways to have teachers elect to grab material for master courses. So I used to think of master courses as simply, oh, well, there's going to be a Common Core Math Eight master course. They can grab some content. Now I'm thinking of master courses as basically a framework or a template, where you can actually go in as instructional designers, and say, listen. I'm going to create a homepage. I'm going to put in a placeholder image. And then I'm going to write "teacher name" where you want them to put teacher name, and hours. And you can give them little starter content. You can put the LTI apps in there already. You can have your state and Common Core Standards associated with that course already to help them get on to their systems a little bit faster. And I tried to think long and hard about non-tool related systems, little things like update frequency. So parents are always, well, when are those grades going to be on PowerSchool? Or when is the Canvas going to reflect the same thing? So how about-- you don't have to know anything about Canvas-- but how about, as a teacher or as a building, you say, listen. Tuesdays and Thursdays? Those are Canvas update days. So your parents and teachers can expect to come back. I follow certain blogs that I know what day they post of the week. And that's when I come back, because it's predictable, and it's an expectation of mine. I'm not wondering what's going to happen. Things like On Paper Assignments. It's an interesting one that you'll learn from practice. So Canvas does amazing things online. Online assignments in Canvas? Like, what we do best. Well what about the average little homework assignment that's just in your classroom? Is that represented on Canvas? Do your teachers put in an On Paper Assignment? Well, if they don't, does that To Do list really show accurately? Does your calendar really show accurately? Does your Gradebook really show accurately? So maybe that's the one thing you focus on quarter one of your Canvas adoption. If you do nothing else, teachers, you'll have all assignments, at least in name, reflected on Canvas. And I'll show a few other things and some screen shots. So this is an Assignments list I pulled from one of my demo courses last night. So my assignments, they're just on the left there. And there's really no rhyme or reason to them. They're just what I called them in class. Also, look at my due dates. Look at the kinds of the due dates. It's not awesome, right? Well, what about something like this? What about a simple naming convention? A system that I have in my classroom that takes it from this to this. So when you do something in Canvas, it reflects everywhere. That's the beauty of what we do. So if the teacher would learn the system of creating discernible assignment names, that doesn't just show up in the Assignments. It shows up on the Calendar, on the To Do list, in the email notifications. It shows up all throughout Canvas, everywhere that that shows. And look at my due dates. 8:00 AM. How about these due dates? So instead of the parent and the teacher and people-- well, I was late because last week it was due at 9:00 PM. Well, I chose 8:00 AM here for a reason. Perhaps, in a laptop initiative, some students don't have access. So instead of making the due dates 11:00 at night, like a lot of my teachers wanted to do, because kids should be in bed, we would do things like, well, what if you make it 8:00 in the morning so they can get off the school bus, even though they did their PowerPoint at home, grab our network, then hit submit. And they're not late. Little tricks like that. So again, I have a few other screenshots. Here's one in math. Math is very chapter/section driven. And this teacher chose to just label on the left-hand side. Very, very easy, right? These are-- every time a teacher puts a little bit of effort in like this up front, it saves you a couple phone calls, emails, late papers. So I think I think of it sort of as an investment. So Modules are my favorite. And I like Modules for a lot of reasons, and I evangelize Modules all the time. But Modules can become unruly dumping grounds of stuff-- if you don't have a system, if you don't think about it. So at the very top of each Module, the first element there is a page. So this educator chose to put an introduction page to come before all of the stuff, to curate all of the stuff. Now they didn't just do it for one Module. It's on every Module. So when the kid goes home, they're like, ah, what do we have to do again? It's after soccer practice. There's that page in the beginning. So I think I'm going to choose this page here. And of course, to basically kick off the Module and all the elements, there is a nice little page that curates the info, and talks about and curates that narrative of the next elements. Here is an educator from Park City that I have a lot of respect for. And look how they did Modules. This is clean, right? So they didn't use Modules as a big dumping ground. We were on the block schedule here. And they said, wow, well, Monday/Tuesday-- we're going to have a page. So instead of listing all the stuff-- a quiz, an assignment, a discussion-- and having 10 or 12 different elements under a Module, they said, well I'm going to have the dates out there, so any student, any parent can immediately see that. And then, within the pages, this is where I'm going to have links to the individual items. And it reads a little bit more like a lesson plan with content objectives, language objectives. All the things will be there. So if I had to make a list of underrated things about Canvas, I'm also a big fan of what we call the Text Header. Anybody know what the Text Header is? Like that it even exists? Some people? Maybe? I dig it. Because again, Modules can essentially be a list. And the Text Header affords you an opportunity to give a little bit of information, a little bit of curation to what you're doing. And they can be long. They can be a paragraph. They can be an essential question, whenever you'd like them to be. Another one of the teachers that I worked with, again, instead of saying, well, it's on Canvas. Well, what did we do last quarter? Where are the notes at so I can study for our end-of-level exam? Well, it's on Canvas somewhere. No. This educator chose to make a really comprehensible list of her pages by week. These are probably the same pages that were in Modules that we just showed from the block schedule from the Monday/Tuesday or Wednesday/Thursday. But it's not a mystery. And again, I bet she gets a lot less parent phone calls. When I talked about the master courses, earlier, one thing that, should I have to do this over again, myself, I am going to have a standard icon set in a master course that I am going to blast through the Course Copy API to every single course that is ever created in my own school district. That is an absolute must. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to Google "free school icon set," and it is going to be consistent, just like those stop signs that we talked about across the board. So whenever my teachers go to Page Tools, where you can bring in an image or a file, there's going to be a light bulb for lab. And there's going to be some type of a test icon for quizzes. It's going to be standard. And if I'm the building admin, I'm going to say, these are the icons we're using. Because it's going to be immediately identifiable, just like that stop sign, yield sign, or whatever it's going to be. The other constituents-- these are parents. They 're part of the deal. What if, as a building admin, I said, listen. This Canvas thing, it's new. It's crazy. We're all going to learn it together. We're going to have training. We're going to take some time. But if you do nothing else, would you please have a parent corner? And would you please make it a big picture that says "Parent Corner"? And you can import that from the master course. Just so, if that parent has three students in the same elementary school in different grade levels with different teachers, they go to three different Canvas courses, they're not wondering why they just cannot find things in Mrs. Johnson's class. So the master courses offer a starter system, if you will, that you can bring into your courses. Did anyone catch Megan Powers' presentation yesterday? Wow, right? Like, wow. And last night I sat in front of my machine, and I thought about the things that she was saying, and it was way better than anything that I could say. And she talked about a system. Her system in her classroom is to provide feedback. Not once. Not tourism. Not just in some assignments, some of the times, for some of the kids. Always-- through the SpeedGrader, through the voice and video, through the annotation. She talked about kids don't have to know her chicken scratch anymore. Or they're not limited just to the space that's in the columns of the pages. She talked about so many cool things. And we record these sessions if-- She's from Sioux City schools and, please, that's going to be first on my re-watch list when those things come back out. And she really talked about reducing the distance and reducing the friction between her students-- her English students-- because her system was to offer feedback through our integrated voice and video. And she could do it from her iPhone, or iPad, or computer, or anything like that. I recently was at a conference in Alabama, and I heard a keynote speaker-- a really smart man-- talk about the ink effect. The more ink that you mark up a student's paper with, regardless of what you actually say, there's data that suggest their perception of how they did actually gets worse, correlated to the volume of ink that you put on there. So he was talking about this teacher who created these little MP3 files for every one of their students' assignments, and I'm like, that's like one click in SpeedGrader. We have that. That's a really good way to walk people through. I will leave you with some super secret tricks. And basically its K-12 ed, and it's a pretty glamorous life, so things come down to parties, models, and money. Right? Isn't that how we do things? So by parties, I'm talking celebrations. It you're having trouble getting attendance at a training, oh, well, after school on Thursday, you could stay after, if you want, and learn more about Canvas collaborations. You're not gonna have a line at your door, perhaps. If you have Mrs. Whoever, the art teacher from down the hall talk about the collaborations she's done for five minutes before a faculty meeting, you are going to have other teachers are your doors, the [? tech coach ?] go, hey, I didn't know Angie was doing that. How does she do that? Can you help me do that? A little bit of positive peer pressure, right? So celebrating successes more effective than training sometimes. Models. I know you were hoping for a Kate Upton, or something, to show up. But when I talk about models, I'm thinking about modeling Canvas. Get your teachers in as students. Make them submit things. Make them do an exit ticket on Canvas from a faculty meeting. Make them do a video discussion to talk about their topics for PLCs. Make them do things on Canvas to get that empathy for students. It is the most powerful PD. And money, I'm thinking quarters, here. So some schools think I'm crazy. And I say, don't give your English teacher an English 11 course and let them ride that out from August til June. Don't do it. Break it up into two, or break it up into four. Some people are like, Mike, this is new. We were giving them one. You want me to give them four. That seems crazy. Here's my suggestion. Teachers would be reluctant to completely re-conceptualize how they're operating in Canvas if they didn't have an opportunity-- a natural break-- to do so. So as your training ramps up throughout the year, you're getting your feet wet. You're slowly moving to the deep end of the pool. They get a couple do-over points. And that-- again, hindsight card-- I would do that again. So what I'm suggesting is don't dabble. Now, I know. I know, I know. You've got to start somewhere. But having purpose. Having a system. Being predictable. Being consistent. So when Mario tries to go down this work pipe, he's got to time it right. He's got to have a strategy. Who cares how persistent he is? You've got to wait until that darn fire-spitting plant thing goes down, and then you're able to hit the Down button and go down the pipe. So these are just a couple things that I wanted to talk about, more behavior-type things than actual Canvas tools. And there are things that I truly would consider again, if I was doing Canvas. And that's how I end up here. And that's winning. So does anyone want to tell me I'm wrong or crazy? Q and A? Mindy. I'm expecting something good out of you. AUDIENCE: The pressure's on. I was wondering, does Canvas have any of its templates or models or master courses, as you were referring to it, do you have it available for your clients to access [INAUDIBLE]? MIKE KISOW: So we do. Now, I'm often reluctant to do so. It's almost like, when you're doing a project in your class, and you're like, if I show this example, I'm going to get the clone of this example 34 different times. So the answer is yes. And we've got some secret things that we hold back where we have individual conversations. But the clone effect is tough. We do want you to think on your own, and integrate your own things. But we have tons of ideas, and please talk to me after. Anyone? AUDIENCE: Talk a little bit more about the standard icon set. [INAUDIBLE]? MIKE KISOW: So I think that it's one of the easiest things you could do. And again, it's that stop sign idea. If you have an art department, if you have high school kids that can draft you icons, I think that would be really, really cool if they were homegrown. Now, with iOS 7 coming out, you wouldn't believe the conversations just around their icon set. It's crazy. So what you would do is you get that standard icon set. And you would insert those basically just as files into a course, so where they would show up is on Page Tools. Anytime you're editing something where your images are, where a teacher, all they'd have to do is touch it, and it would go into their page or assignment. And it would just be little indicators. A lot of them-- when I Google along for standard icon set, a lot of them have the watermark. A lot of people want to sell them to you and stuff, but I mean, you wouldn't need more than seven or eight for your whole district. And what you could do is use our Course Copy API. When your SIS creates courses, they would automatically just be there. And it would be incredibly easy for the teacher to touch it. And that would help students. Help parents. And reduce our parent phone call load. And now-- we can talk about where you're going to throw those in. Yeah. AUDIENCE: You briefly mentioned the Parent Corner. Can you explain that in a little more detail? MIKE KISOW: So nothing fancy. Every-- well, I shouldn't say every-- most of us understand that the parents also are going to be constituents of our Canvas course. They're more of a read-only place, but sometimes parents are just expected to pour through, to sift through, all the things that are going on. Here's the problem. With our students, their butts are in our seats. We are drilling them, and we are talking about these things. And we're giving them context on these assignments. We've been working on this project for two weeks, right? They know what's going on, so they can identify what's on Canvas really, really well. The parent might not have logged in for two weeks. They come, they're like, what? Where? What is this? They don't have that same context. So the idea of a Parent Corner-- all that graphic was was a link to a page where, I am guaranteeing the parent-- if they click on that page, that's my running list of whatever it may be, whatever information. It's just easy access. And how cool would that be, if every Canvas page in your building or district, you had that spot? And it would make things a little bit easier. That would be a system. It would be predictable and efficient. Anyone else? I appreciate all of your time today, for staying in this room. And I'll be here to chat afterwards. Thank you.