Making Technology Accessible to Students

[00:01] SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, bringing you the best in professional practice.

[00:06] Announcer:

Here's your host, Director of the Principal Center and Champion of High Performance Instructional Leadership, Justin Bader. Welcome everyone to Principal Center Radio.

[00:15] SPEAKER_01:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and my guest today is Daisy Dyer-Doer, who is a 2014 NASSP National Distinguished Principal and a fellow Arkansan.

[00:27] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:29] SPEAKER_01:

Daisy, welcome to Principal Center Radio.

[00:31] SPEAKER_02:

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

[00:34] SPEAKER_01:

I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about your passion in terms of the speaking that you do and what you're known for online around digital leadership.

[00:45] SPEAKER_02:

I would say that probably my passion is doing whatever it takes for all students, whatever their socioeconomic status or their locale, be it rural, which is where I am. or perhaps maybe an urban setting, inner city, and making sure to use technology and relationships to provide them with a top quality, world-class education. I always say that we're a small town community providing a global education here at St. Paul Schools.

[01:16] SPEAKER_01:

So take us into a little bit about what that looks like. I think a lot of districts are trying to use technology, particularly things like mobile devices, maybe iPads, to give students some additional resources and additional opportunities. What does that look like in your world?

[01:31] SPEAKER_02:

Well, a lot of times when I get the opportunity to speak, which is such a blessing, and I always feel so honored because I always learn more from the people I'm speaking to usually than I actually feel like I'm providing. But one thing I always really key in on is the solution is never to throw a bunch of devices out and think that it's going to solve all of your problems. And that's definitely something that we didn't do at St. Paul schools. When I came here three years ago, we were a failing school. We were not meeting any type of achievement level academically.

[02:05]

We weren't doing what we needed to do with the community. Our parents weren't engaged. And we got together with all of our stakeholders and came up with a plan that one, we needed to improve relationships across the board. And two, we needed to expose our kids to more things, even though we were here in this rural, isolated locale. And the way we decided we needed to do that was through technology. and it was a process how are we going to do that and it's really a process and you do that by changing the way you teach focusing on tools which are the devices those type of things but it's not the tools that do the changing it's the education you provide with the relationships and the tools as part of the whole process and that's really what we do here at st paul is we provide a different type of education than they were receiving three years ago and it's been an amazing process and we have an amazing group of educators and community members and students that have really come such a long way and it's been just an amazing ride

[03:12] SPEAKER_01:

Well, I love that. And it sounds like an idea that's been around for a while. I mean, I think back even into the days when kind of cutting edge was having pen pals for your class. And I wonder how the approaches that you're taking now are both similar to, you know, kind of a class pen pal and different from that approach.

[03:31] SPEAKER_02:

Oh, absolutely. And I'll always tell anyone and any of my friends, and I have some amazing members of my PLN at our I would point to every day and say, yep, I got that idea from Tony's bananas or I got that from Jimmy Cassis and I got that from so-and-so because I'm a person that gets resources from other people because there is no one that is going to point to me and say, wow, she is the smartest apple in that tree. I am by far the most resourceful apple in the tree though. And I am, I am going to go and I'm going to find whatever I need to for my kids. And what we do at St. Paul is we make whatever opportunities we might have become a learning moment for our kids.

[04:18]

So we use all kinds of technology and we bring them in and the things that we do with them, they're not an add-on to a class. I don't ever ask my teachers, hey, let's use technology in this lesson. That's never something that comes out of my mouth. My ask for them is if technology can improve what you're doing, if it can improve the learning experience that your students are going to have, please use it. And so my teachers do all kinds of amazing things. We've been able to differentiate learning.

[04:52]

And we use the gamut. I've been able to write several grants. That's the only way we've been able to get all this technology. We're a very, very poor impoverished area and our budget's very small, so we've been fortunate to receive many grants. And we have iPads, we have MacBooks, we have a beautiful Mac computer lab, we have all kinds of Chromebooks at this time that we've just started with this year and we're in love with. But we have the gamut, we have PCs, we have netbooks, We have everything.

[05:32]

And I think that that's what's so amazing is that really a lot of the things that we do are so driven by what do our kids need? What is going to help them be successful? What is going to make this lesson be more of a learning experience for our kids? And I think that's what's so special about what we're doing is that not because, hey, we're using full technology. No, our kids are learning more because we're using the technology in the right way. And one of the best ways we're doing it is we're really asking our kids, how do they need it?

[06:06]

What do they want to do with it? We're letting them kind of be leaders and showing us what's a great way that is useful for them. And I can tell you right now, they're teaching us so many things and it's so amazing.

[06:19] SPEAKER_01:

Well, and it sounds like you've taken a different approach than a lot of districts where I think a more common approach is to decide on a platform first and commit to that and say, okay, we're going to buy this device for all of our students or for every two students and then see what that platform can do for us. And you're saying you've gone the other direction, which is to say, what do our students need? And let's see what devices are out there and what they can do for us. And you've got kind of an ecosystem of tools available for your students. Is that right?

[06:48] SPEAKER_02:

That is absolutely right. And I can tell you, I can pinpoint you exactly when that happened and why that happened. I was and am still personally such a Mac person. I can't function without my MacBook, iPad, everything, iPhone, everything. But I was blown over by Patrick Larkin, who is probably one of the principals along with Eric Scheninger that I respect. I just looked to as my mentors and people that I want to be like them.

[07:25]

I want to impact learning for students like they do. I was having a conversation with Patrick. We were talking about, you know, what platforms, what's most important about what students have. And we were actually, you know, doing some stuff on Twitter, back and forth. And one of the things that I thought was most powerful that Patrick said to me, and it really did impact what I did and the decisions that were made here at St. Paul Schools, was you know obviously Patrick being the one to one of iPad's guru for all principles you know he's the person you look for he's the person that does all the iPad summits he's that person but what he said to me that rang so true was he said for me it's never about platform it's about exposing your kids to every platform he said it's so important for students when they leave school to be able to navigate every platform because think about it Daisy you want your kid to be able to apply for every job or you want your kid to be able to go into any college

[08:31]

that's outfitted with whatever platform and be able to be successful on it and that just hit home so hard because at that point we were really just gonna go straight with Mac and you know how expensive that is and that was really gonna stretch us and how we're gonna be able to do it and it just hit me like that's shortchanging our kids if we do that because now our kids don't have computers at home our kids don't get to experience things like that at home But you know what? If we provide them with a PC environment, we provide them with Mac environment, we provide them with Chromebooks, we provide them all those different platforms. Look what we're doing for our kids. They're well-rounded. They're leaving here with the ability to perform on any device. And I don't think there's a better gift you can give a kid than providing them the ability to be successful anywhere.

[09:23]

And I feel like that's what we're doing.

[09:24] SPEAKER_01:

I wonder if you could give us an example of what it is that your students are finding a lot of value in. So as you give them access to all these different devices and kind of flexible access to choose the tools that are going to meet their needs, what do you see them doing that really has amazed you?

[09:42] SPEAKER_02:

Well, being a pre-K 12 principal, it's so awesome that I get to see that gamut of all the different grade spans. So I would say at the elementary level, it's awesome to be able to see differentiation in learning become so much easier for students and my teachers. So a teacher can have a class of 25 kids, but they can be teaching at virtually 25 different levels if you give them a classroom set of items. or you give them three different types of devices and it's just really awesome to see kids and for example we use the daily five in our elementary literacy programs and kids know you know they're gonna do one of their daily five choices is to do iPads and they know the different things they can create

[10:42]

literacy thing and they know that's one of their choices and then responsibly at the age of seven be able to go create something with it but more at our high school level I would say probably the most exciting thing to me which I'm a techie person and I really enjoy technology but I don't enjoy it just for the sake of technology. I enjoy it because I really like to see excitement and I like to see learning and I like to see growth. One of the things that I really enjoy seeing is we went to Genius Hour fourth through twelfth grade last year and one of the really cool things and you have to remember In a study that I did in 2012, only 10% of our student body had internet access at home. So that's something to keep in the back of your mind when I'm talking about this.

[11:36]

We had such a huge amount of students that wanted to learn to code, that wanted to do all kinds of things like that. And the freedom that they have in Genius Hour and being able to choose activities is amazing. And now we have such a huge group of kids that are creating video games, which is something that just is empowering to me because I came from a small rural environment growing up. And we were very impoverished in my household. And I was never able to experience these kinds of things. And I remember small things that were so joyous to me.

[12:12]

And just to see the joy on their faces when they're creating things like that from something that they choose. On a more academic, like classroom level, the things I see at the high school are we're doing, we have an awesome math program called Carnegie Math and I'm seeing huge amounts of gains because our students are able to be levelized every single day they're able to move forward in a math program or be brought back down to a different level and my teacher is able to move around in the classroom and help students individually while other kids are able to move forward and that's something that has never been available to us or most schools and that's just amazing and it's a great opportunity for our kids that are upper level to move forward, and also kids that are struggling to get that extra help.

[13:07]

And technology's been able to bring that to us.

[13:09] SPEAKER_01:

I think that's fabulous. And you touched on two issues there. Most recently, the issue of kind of economies of scale where in a small school, you may not be able to offer AP calculus, but with some technology, you can give more students access to work that they're ready for. And I think that's a tremendous opportunity. I remember I went to a very small high school. And I think there were five of us in my calculus class.

[13:35]

And it wasn't offered every year. So I mean, that was just a stroke of luck that I got to take that. And that certainly provided access to a lot of other things, a lot of opportunities in college. So I think that's tremendous that you're opening those doors for students in a community where, as you mentioned, the internet access rate is very low. And yet kids are now doing things like building video games. So Daisy, if people are interested in reading about your work in St. Paul Public School and learning more about your approach to helping students kind of connect globally with technology, where can they find out more?

[14:12] SPEAKER_02:

I am super excited to be working with Corwin Books, and I will be releasing a book in January of 2016, so I'm very excited about that. My Twitter handle is at DaisyDyerDoer, and I also blog at DaisyDyerDoer.com.

[14:32] SPEAKER_01:

Well, Daisy, thank you so much. It has been a pleasure and a privilege to speak with you today. Have a great day.

[14:38] SPEAKER_02:

Awesome.

[14:40] SPEAKER_00:

You too.

[14:40] SPEAKER_01:

Thanks, Justin.

[14:41] SPEAKER_00:

And now Justin Bader on high performance instructional leadership.

[14:45] SPEAKER_01:

So high performance instructional leaders, what did you take away from my interview with Daisy? I hope you're inspired by the journey that she's been on these past three years to take a community that has so little access to technology and and the internet and digital tools and devices, and do the hard work of writing grants and building relationships in the community and giving students access to not only the technology tools, but to the opportunities that they'll need to be successful in life. And one idea I took away from our conversation was the idea that we don't need to be tied and overly committed to a specific platform. Now, if you follow my work, you know that I'm kind of an iPad and iPhone and Mac guy, and Daisy mentioned that she's pretty committed to the Mac platform, but out in the real world, students will have to use all kinds of technologies and solve all kinds of problems using the tools that are available to them.

[15:39]

So if you're in a situation where you feel kind of bad because you haven't been able to get an iPad Air for every student, or you haven't been able to get Chromebooks for all of your students, and you have kind of a patchwork, Look at that as a strength. Look at that as an advantage because it gives you the opportunity to find a wider ecosystem of tools and give students the opportunity to solve problems in different ways.

[16:05] Announcer:

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