Episode 89: Shadow Quest Part III

Steve Martinez, MEd (00:29)
Hey friends, welcome back to Under the Hat Podcast. Today is episode 8989. I'm Steve Martinez, a former high school social science teacher, ed tech practitioner, and forever student of how we make classrooms work. And as always, I'm joined by the lovely.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (00:47)
Sophie Young's a former middle school math and science teacher, instructional coach, and relentless advocate for UDL for learning. And it is fantastic to be here today, Steve.

Steve Martinez, MEd (00:58)
It is, Sophie. a little bit different here with us being in different locations, but looking forward to where we are going today.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (01:07)
Me too Steve, and as you know, before we dive into the next part of the shadow quest, I have a burning question to ask you.

Steve Martinez, MEd (01:14)
As always, let's go.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (01:15)
Where's your costume?

Steve Martinez, MEd (01:18)
wait, it's Halloween.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (01:20)
Dude, it's Halloween.

Steve Martinez, MEd (01:22)
That's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So

I forgot, but don't worry. I got you. I'll be right back.

Is this better?

Sophie Youngs, MEd (01:32)
Yeah.

Steve Martinez, MEd (01:36)
is really on brand 'cause we both love Star Wars. And so

Sophie Youngs, MEd (01:40)
Yes.

Steve Martinez, MEd (01:41)
it just just in case anyone is unfamiliar with the galaxy far far away, Sophie, you are

No. Leia.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (01:55)
Princess Leia, episode

Steve Martinez, MEd (01:57)
Yes.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (01:58)
four, right? Three.

Steve Martinez, MEd (02:02)
Correct four, not three.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (02:04)
That's what I thought for.

Steve Martinez, MEd (02:06)
superior. Yeah.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (02:07)
Yeah.

Steve Martinez, MEd (02:08)
Yes. yeah. And I am

Sophie Youngs, MEd (02:14)
Hansolo.

Steve Martinez, MEd (02:15)
Solo. Yes. so good stuff. really into the Halloween season as like my birthday is around this time. And Sophie, you just capture all of Halloween with all of your energy around this month.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (02:31)
I love this.

Steve Martinez, MEd (02:32)
so yes, so really good. So one one thing I did want to mention is we we kind of talked about this in passing, Sophie, like over the last last couple episodes. but we

We have not spoken about this guy, which is a book that came out fairly recently. It so for those that are watching, listening, this is the Educators AI Guide twenty twenty seven.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (03:00)
In the future.

Steve Martinez, MEd (03:02)
I just thinking that, like was there's a time change? was this written in New Zealand? and so

Sophie Youngs, MEd (03:08)
Yeah.

Steve Martinez, MEd (03:10)
so Sophie, you wanna talk a little bit about the book?

Sophie Youngs, MEd (03:13)
the book was partially written and edited by Dan Fitzpatrick and Heather Brown. we've had Dan on the show before. It's fantastic. We talked a little bit about the first book because this is the second version of the Educators AI Guide. the book is really beautiful in full color.

So the cover is not the only thing that's in color, but the inside is in full color. And there are also places for you to like write notes, reflect. and it is a guide, not just a book. So it's more like a handbook, like a workbook, not just you read it. There's places for you to take notes and answer questions and to reflect on things. and the there are all kinds of perspectives in there from

basics to which AI tools are out right now for education that and like they're a little like rating scale type of thing based on like interviews. There are teacher quotes in the book. There are the first section is written by Dan, I believe, and then the rest of the book are written by other educators out in the world. And I am one of them.

Steve Martinez, MEd (04:38)
Including Sophie, yes. and so if you

Sophie Youngs, MEd (04:40)
Yeah.

Steve Martinez, MEd (04:42)
pick up the book, you read all the chapters, but if you want, you can jump ahead to chapter twelve. and chapter twelve is the parent perspective of AI in school. and so the Sophie speaks a lot to her personal accounts and experiences, not just as an educator, but as a parent, which I find to be like

incredibly beautiful and powerful. and her face is here. It's like you can't see it really. But but if you pick up the book you'll be able to. so yeah. and Sophie I I I kind of feel like there's a lot of authors that are in this book.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (05:25)
Yes. I mean

mine's chapter twelve. but there are a lot of like each chapter is a different author for the most part. And I mean, Steve, how many chapters are in the book?

Steve Martinez, MEd (05:38)
just jumped to chapter thirty. So I'm assuming thirty. Yeah. Thirty chapters.

Not to quote a someone else we've had on the show, but it's like thirty chapters, thirty educators, thirty years. I don't know. but yeah, no, so it's

Sophie Youngs, MEd (06:02)
That that was forty, Steve, but but close enough.

Steve Martinez, MEd (06:04)
Yeah, I know,

but it's still a number. and

Sophie Youngs, MEd (06:07)
Ha ha ha.

Steve Martinez, MEd (06:10)
but yeah, so this is yes, it does have that workbook vibe of like taking notes. I do love the way it's organized. Like there's like a color scheme for the book.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (06:19)
Yes, there are sections

in the book and the sections are each a different color that have like their own theme to it. I'm in the second section, which is yellow. the first section

Steve Martinez, MEd (06:30)
Mm-hmm. Can't sure the purple section.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (06:34)
I know I was a little sad that I wasn't in the purple section. the

Steve Martinez, MEd (06:38)
Yeah.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (06:39)
first section,

Is the purple section, right?

It's been a while since I've had it in my hands and Steve is in California and I am in West Virginia for this day. so I can't just grab it from him and look.

Steve Martinez, MEd (06:53)
so I I I I do feel that

we could like almost like a like we can have like a round table on this.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (07:00)
If we could

I we do have, I think a future guest is another author in the book.

Steve Martinez, MEd (07:05)
Yeah, we do.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (07:07)
and I would love to have Dan Fitpa Fitzpatrick on again. And Heather, I believe, was on before too, maybe? Or she was

Steve Martinez, MEd (07:15)
The

I don't know if Heather

Sophie Youngs, MEd (07:17)
No, I

don't remember if Heather did. We did have

Steve Martinez, MEd (07:21)
It was someone else from that community, right? It it's teacher goals.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (07:22)
From that community, the Edu Guardians.

Steve Martinez, MEd (07:25)
Or yes. Because is it isn't she part

Sophie Youngs, MEd (07:27)
It was the Edu Guardian community.

Steve Martinez, MEd (07:28)
of the teacher goals? Or am I okay.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (07:31)
Yes. Heather

is an editor in in teacher with teacher goals. So she has edited a number of books that come through the Teacher Goals publishing company. and I think what happened here is that Dan Fitzpatrick made his own publishing company. and hired Heather to be the the editor of this book. 'cause I think of their previous workings together, they they

worked really well together and he appreciated her work. Heather is meticulous in her editing and it's not just the words, but how it li lays like on the page.

Steve Martinez, MEd (08:09)
Right. Right.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (08:10)
so the gorgeous layout of like this color schemes could be it could have been her idea, but like how your notes sections and your questions lay out and how it flows on the page is mainly it's mainly Heather and her editing skills.

Steve Martinez, MEd (08:26)
the work of an editor

work of an editor is one of those like unseen things.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (08:32)
One of the invisible work things that you don't think about.

Steve Martinez, MEd (08:35)
Yeah. So I do wanna I do wanna point that out. Like it it it's just like that that that work is so like like books wouldn't be books without editors or just any print, right? Or any type

Sophie Youngs, MEd (08:46)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Martinez, MEd (08:46)
of thing that we consume.

Well, we could have an entire episode on talking about the book. though I think Sophie, like we should do a bit of work on like trying to get either a panel discussion going, some sort of episode, like a bonus episode, talking about it. but we are here in part three of the shadow quest. and so for those that are catching this, maybe perhaps for the first time, this is a free virtual.

Educators conference brought to you by Learning Genie and Snorkel. we'll be sure to drop all of their info in the show notes. and and and so big big shout, big thanks to them for contributing, helping make this event reality. And so really looking forward to who we're showcasing, who we're talking about today, Sophie.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (10:13)
Today, we are going to showcase our dear friends Stephanie Howe and Tina Nunez. Stephanie Howe, her session is about removing the hidden barriers that keep students from learning. She highlights that there is sometimes an illusion of a simple assignment. She identifies some common classroom barriers. She talks about how to apply universal design for learning principles.

she also includes some supporting details for execu executive functioning skills and how sometimes making the smallest change can make a huge makeover on a lesson. Those are just some of the things that she talks about in her session. her 15-minute session is absolutely fantastic. She even gives you like an interactive piece where you click on it and explore and some extra resources.

And then there's even another piece where you do use the another resource to do a lesson makeover. It's it's all fantastic. She even talks about how the curse is so is is are the barriers and you sprinkle in the ingredients of UDL and supporting executive function and you break the curse. It's super cute.

Steve Martinez, MEd (11:37)
So good.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (11:39)
The Tina, love Tita's. So Tina's favorite Disney movie is Beauty and the Beast. So behind her, you see this gorgeous stained glass window situation. And then that beauty is transformed also into the slides that she obviously prompted AI very strategically to generate for her. they're beautiful. and then her session is all on googly things and data. Her

Title is Shadow Quest Data Seer. and so like a fortune teller, Seer. And so what she does is she walks you through how to create a Google form so you can collect some data. And how do you make that like sheet with that Google form and

How you can then take that data from the Google Sheet, pop it into Google Gemini and create particular charts, make them look a certain way, and like and pulling certain information to create the chart that you want with the X and Y axis that you want, with the labels that you want, comparing what you want. But then the last thing where she creates a data dashboard blew my mind. It's even interactive and you can like custom it's so cool. It's so cool.

it really is

Like you sit down at your crystal ball and you just you see your data come to life. It's absolutely fantastic. she is wonderful, presents very well, and the ideas that she is pr suggesting here are really easy and she gives them all to you so you can play around with the data yourself too.

Steve Martinez, MEd (13:29)
I love that.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (13:30)
I know, right? and she goes into the theme because all the data is from Hogwarts. So which is Shadow Quest.

Steve Martinez, MEd (13:42)
We can get behind that. Yeah.

okay, cool. All right. yeah, so I'm assuming we want to do Stephanie first, right? And roll.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (13:50)
Yeah, let's go

ahead and do Stephanie first, where we're talking about removing those hidden barriers to student learning.

Steve Martinez, MEd (13:58)
Awesome. Here we go.

one thing that comes to mind is when we think about barriers, oftentimes like the barriers that are there are like the

Things that we've always done that don't work, but we continue to do them. Right. So anytime that I see Stephanie present, or like back at the Kami days, like when she would share resources and stuff, it's just like it's so that's not a worksheet. That's not a scantron, that's not a just sit and get, right? And so I think from an engagement standpoint.

the biggest barrier that I've seen recently is the hey kids, fill this out quietly in a silo and hope for the best. I think intentionally

Sophie Youngs, MEd (32:16)
Well and

Steve Martinez, MEd (32:17)
targeting that, I feel.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (32:19)
Well, a little bit, yeah. So something that she mentions is her example of using a one sentence, she thought in her assignment the kid is just going to write one sentence.

But it isn't just one sentence for every single child. Because it was odd in this situation, it was a given to him orally. So he had to keep the full sentence in his working memory, in this particular student's working memory, and break it into words while he's trying to write it down, as it's starting to fade, spell each word from memory, form the letters by hand, and if there are any fine motor skills.

that are delayed, then that's a barrier. And then do all of those things all at once with no way to check to see if it's correct because the sentence was given orally. So it wasn't even like a place where he could go back and refer to and look at it. it is given orally. So it's all trying to stay in his head all at one time. And he's trying to spell the words and sometimes it might be a word that's like he's unfamiliar with. So now he's trying to decode it while he writes it. All of those are little barriers.

That could together create a huge barrier. So it's one sentence, but it was five jobs for that little brain to do, if that was the only five things that that little brain needed to do. so sometimes the barrier is rarely the skill that you're actually teaching, but it's everything else around it, is what she's trying to point out. so it's like having you look at

what you're asking students to do in a different way.

Because to us it might be a simple thing. But to some of our students, and Stephanie is back in the classroom and she is an interventionist, all of her students have daily barriers, just living barriers, just functioning it barriers in general. And we've got students that come to us with barriers that don't come along with IEPs, such as they had a bad night's sleep or they got a migraine. And so sometimes

looking at what you're asking students to do in a different way. And this doesn't have to happen like every single time because yes, students need to write. But do they have to write this time for this thing that you're teaching them?

Do do they have to

actually physically write that paragraph or are they just supposed to form a complete paragraph with an introduction, supporting details, and a conclusion? And could that be orally? Like does it have to be written? So going some and I would say go back to the standards. What is the standard actually asking your students to do? And maybe for practice the first time it's all done orally or with a partner or with sit and stems. But maybe like and then later they're actually writing it.

But like it doesn't have to be that way every single time if sometimes that's a barrier and sometimes they get options to pick. So that's what she talks about with the UDL. They can read it, hear it, see it, talk, talk it through same content, different doors that they can choose to

learn. And then they can write it, record it, draw it, build it, the

skill that you're having them do is all the same, but the format flexes as to what they're how they're showcasing what they're learning. and then they get to like maybe choose the topic they're talking about, choose which way they decide to work with it, choose if they're using a partner. And that adds in that relevance for the students. so it's not just thinking about like you said give them a worksheet, work in silos. Working alone could be the barrier.

having difficulties

reading the paper could be the barrier. Comprehending the directions could be the barrier. and so and that's what she I really like the barrier hunt. She gives you like a little lesson and

some resources to sort of potentially spot some barriers and sometimes

The barriers are what you're asking them to do. Copying down ten definitions.

Steve Martinez, MEd (36:53)
That sounds really fun.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (36:53)
You're gonna

that sounds boring AF, right? And so, like, who is that actually helping? Silently reading is only one way into the passage. Do they have to read silently? Can they read with pairs? Can we do a choral reading? Can we do a closed reading? Like, there's lots of ways that you could do the reading, as long as everybody's reading. So just a couple of examples of what's going on there.

Steve Martinez, MEd (37:20)
Yeah, and can 'cause like what what you just said kind of made me think of like sometimes the choices that are being made are more for behavior concerns than there are for like instructional practices.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (37:40)
I can see that, yeah.

Steve Martinez, MEd (37:42)
Right. Like so it's kinda like like, I know if they do this thing, I'm gonna get like thirty minutes of silence. But then it's not thirty minutes of learning though. So it it and I'm not saying that happens everywhere, but

Sophie Youngs, MEd (38:00)
Or every time and sometimes it's important to have that silent reading, right? Like it's important to have kids

Steve Martinez, MEd (38:05)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (38:06)
reading. But my my follow up question to you would then be, Are you sure they're actually reading then? How do you know they're reading? If we're all sitting there in silence, how do you know that they're reading?

Steve Martinez, MEd (38:19)
So it's the it's the visibility, right?

Sophie Youngs, MEd (38:22)
It's the visibility. You don't know what's going on up in their head. So this is something I went and I did an observation. The lesson was very well organized. The front loading of information, the background, building, the context, it was fantastic. It was wonderful. I had never even read the book and I understood what was going on. So it was great. but then the first step that they did was read silently and

I have at least two annotations on each page.

I watched the children. Some of them were actually reading. I saw a lot of them looking around. There was a read aloud going on in the other end of the room for students who are required to have read aloud read, like read to them.

And I could see those students that were closer were just listening to that rather than actually reading on their own. And then as the teacher would move around the room to monitor progress with the annotation and that they're actually getting to the second page and whatnot, because it was just an excerpt of the book, the kid would see her coming and just like hurriedly underline something or circle something really quick.

So in theory, annotations are letting you know that they're reading because the particular annotation, the circle lets you know that they don't know what that word is or they thought it was a cool idea. The question mark says that they have like questions about it.

that they don't they they don't know what that was. and in this particular situation, there was like a hand crank for a window in a car.

I grew up with a hand crank. I know what that is. These children did not. And that was never a topic of conversation in the

building background knowledge and was not brought up well after they silently read 'cause then they just moved right into the listening to the reading.

with the audio book. And I was like

I feel like there could have been some barriers removed there to in increasing student engagement, to ensure that students were actually reading it, and to make sure that we're gonna answer questions with the students about like what's going on in the book.

It was a great lesson though. Like I there was just a little bit of tweaks, just little tweaks that I would have done specifically around the reading part that I think would have just elevated the lesson. and ensured that all students were participating and engaging, not just 'cause they could have the entire time spaced out that entire forty minutes and learned nothing. Cause there was no student thinking involved.

in any of it.

Steve Martinez, MEd (41:18)
And that goes into like D-O-K.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (41:23)
And when the when they did do like student questioning, it was like volunteer and the same like three students answered all the questions. And so how do you know everyone's learning when you're only calling on volunteers who know they know the answer? how do you know everyone is learning or how do you know everyone is reading when you're walking around and there are th things written on the page, but there are not like

inferences or questions or drawing conclusions or anything like ac at

on there. It's just underline, circling, exclamation point, question mark type of stuff. Cause you could just put that anywhere and look like you're doing something. how do you ensure that every single student understood what they read?

and I only saw half of the entire lesson. So maybe like the other half was more along the lines of what I was looking for and like the student engagement and ensuring everyone was doing it. But I just think that some of these

things that Stephanie was mentioning, removing those barriers.

could have elevated this lesson even more. So like instead of silently reading, do partner reading.

when one person is reading, the other person is annotating. And then vice versa, you take turns on paragraphs. The other the partner A reads, partner B annotates, and then y you talk about what you annotated. And then partner B reads and partner A annotates and then you talk about what you annotated. There could have been

A cyber sandwich situation, where they took notes and then they talked to their neighbors about what notes they took. or they annotated and they talked to their neighbors about what they annotated for the entire thing and discussed and maybe their neighbor knew what a hand crank was because their granddad has a like a a whatever and they saw it, like and that that would have taken care of it.

But there are just other things that that could little tweaks, little changes that could have elevated the lesson to ensure that student the student brain was actually being activated and being used, not just passively intaking information.

Steve Martinez, MEd (43:29)
Yeah. Kinda like Miss Youngs, Miss Youngs, what's a phone book?

Sophie Youngs, MEd (43:36)
Ready? But no one raised their hand and asked what a hand crank was. No one did. I was flabbergasted.

Steve Martinez, MEd (43:44)
Nice. Yeah, no, so really good session. I just appreciate the focus of barriers and then breaking of that curse being the UTL principles, right?

Sophie Youngs, MEd (43:54)
Mm-hmm. Ud the UDL

principles. it was two ingredients to break the curse. UDL principles and the executive function, the engine under the task. Your working

Steve Martinez, MEd (44:08)
Yes.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (44:09)
memory, your task initiation, your planning, your flexibility, your self monitoring. All of those things are going on. And if one of those things is like wonky for whatever reason

executive function difficulties doesn't just come with an ADHD brain. It can come with a traumatized brain, it can come with a sleep-deprived brain, it can come with a stressed-out brain. Those the executive functioning skills is something that everyone can work on. And if you remove some of them, then it's able to build capacity in the other ones. And then you rotate around which ones you're removing so that your students have.

the cognitive load space to like work and build capacity on those executive functioning skills a little bit at a time instead of all of them all at once.

Steve Martinez, MEd (45:02)
Yes.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (45:03)
yes, I love how Stephanie broke it down. I love how she included interactive pieces into this, which is essentially last episode we were talking about, Dave and Chrissy were talking about how we almost had everything to be like an amazing PD opportunity for educators, except we didn't have that interactive piece. Stephanie just solved this problem for us. We got ideas for next year now.

Steve Martinez, MEd (45:27)
We just

need to make that a criteria, right? Of just like

Sophie Youngs, MEd (45:29)
Yes.

Steve Martinez, MEd (45:30)
you need to include the interaction.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (45:33)
Some interactive

piece for the audience that will work asynchronously. bingo. I love it. I do want to point out this one. Stephanie

Steve Martinez, MEd (45:41)
And secondly now the example part.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (45:44)
is, of course, is the exemplar. we give everybody an example. I love that. one of the things that I love about this one, though, one of the examples, same standard, one change, one of the examples she provided hit me really hard. And it was

before she would maybe d give students copy tin definitions from the board. Removing the barrier is actually give them the pre printed definitions. Just give them to them. And spend time actually using the words.

Steve Martinez, MEd (46:22)
Right. And so

Sophie Youngs, MEd (46:23)
Right writing

them in sentences. what else did she

Steve Martinez, MEd (46:27)
So the

Sophie Youngs, MEd (46:28)
say?

Steve Martinez, MEd (46:29)
no no no no this is I'm gonna give you I'm gonna give you like

Sophie Youngs, MEd (46:32)
Okay.

Steve Martinez, MEd (46:32)
a a good one here.

if anyone out there has used Paradeck flashcards, so the flash star the flashcard feature in Paradeck, there's a good example of that. So it you load up the terms and the definitions, the kids get those, but with their partner on their devices.

They are creating examples. They're building their own flashcards. They're building examples in their flashcards. One person has to type it, the other person has to draw it of what those examples are. And then they're talking about it. and then the the pair deck automatically moves the whole room into two different teams, and then within those teams, they're in pairs. And so once the flashcards are all there, I have you're able to vote.

And give it the stamp of whether or not it's a good card, good examples. And then they toss votes, they have fun with it. and pro tip here, if you use this feature, by the way, this is a free feature of Paradeck. The cards export straight to Gimkit to play with the cards,

which is

Sophie Youngs, MEd (47:47)
So

then you can do the cards and then you can go and do basically fast and curious with the cards?

Steve Martinez, MEd (47:53)
You could. You could. Yeah. It is it is peak student centered creative stuff. Like, and I tell this, I show this feature to my pre-service candidates, and I'm like, hey, if you know your principal's gonna come observe you, do this. Do this thing because the admin loves it. They're like, my god, it's so good. It's engaging. They're but it it goes back to don't hide.

the meaning of the word in the back of the book or elsewhere, give

Sophie Youngs, MEd (48:27)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Martinez, MEd (48:27)
it to them and dive into the deeper thinking of it. I think that's

Sophie Youngs, MEd (48:32)
Yeah.

Steve Martinez, MEd (48:32)
what I'm getting at. Yeah.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (48:34)
Like when are you gonna use it? How are you going to use it? Who how how what kind of places are you gonna put it in a sentence? The Freyer model is fantastic. This is the word, this is definition, this is it in a sentence, these are examples of it.

Steve Martinez, MEd (48:43)
Same thing, right? Yep.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (48:45)
It's the same thing, but it's like instead of right copying down the word and the definition, how do you let's learn about it, let's get some examples of it being used in a few sentences.

And then let's like create our own definition with our own words. Let's you create our own sentences of when you would find it. Let's go find the word in like the text that we're reading because they're usually aligned. and how do they use it? examples, like images, like you said, the drawings of it, there are all kinds of ways that you can engage with the word without just copying down the definition, which is

Uberlow engagement. And I don't know about everybody else, but like the handwriting of kids nowadays is atrocious. Can they even read it to study? So like what what are you what do you where are you getting at here with like understanding the word? Anyway.

Steve Martinez, MEd (49:45)
We

but we okay. but but we can model

Sophie Youngs, MEd (49:49)
Anyways.

Steve Martinez, MEd (49:50)
we can model this though, right? Like you know how like in the in Fryer it's like example, non example. Like what it is, what it's not, shadow quest. What's the non example of shadow quest? What is what is it not?

Sophie Youngs, MEd (50:05)
sit and get one time PD that's live and not accessible elsewhere? I use that was that a liberal question?

Steve Martinez, MEd (50:11)
Yeah, it was

I put you on the spot there.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (50:15)
the non example of a shadow quest is yeah,

Steve Martinez, MEd (50:16)
Okay.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (50:19)
is a one time provided P V that's just a sit and get without any follow up and you just have one way to participate, which is just sit there and listen.

Steve Martinez, MEd (50:32)
And a boring website. Okay, cool. awesome. Good stuff. All right. So we let's let's go to pivot if we can. We're gonna go right into Tina Nunes' session. really looking forward to this. And and Sophie, I think you mentioned this earlier. Well, Stephanie Howe's session is really like like if you're a teacher, boom, stuff to use right away. Tina's is more like

instructional coach, like leader kind of kind

Sophie Youngs, MEd (51:05)
Yeah.

Steve Martinez, MEd (51:05)
of so really, really looking forward to that.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (51:08)
I mean, a teacher could do this if they're wanting to really analyze and look at their student data a little differently. but I feel like the this one is more for leaders when it comes to like mass like a masses masses more more data than just like one test or a few tests. This is like or even one class.

Steve Martinez, MEd (51:25)
Or one plus, right? Like or one like like a PLC.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (51:30)
yeah. So this is like you're gonna collect data from multiple teachers, you're gonna collect

year over year data. You're gonna look at comparing she does comparing Hogwarts house data. so you're like yes so there's all this cool data and things you can do with data and I'm a little gata geek data geek and I absolutely love it. and her slides are beautiful. So enjoy watching reading the signs of data.

Uncovering hidden patterns and transforming spreadsheets with Google Gemini.

by Tina. She's fantastic. It's a absolutely wonderful. She's even wearing a little like beanie hat because she's on under the hat.

Steve Martinez, MEd (52:23)
All right, looking forward to it. Here we go.

So just over the years, like watching emerging newer-ish teachers get into the profession and like seeing them teach with real kids. The big common theme that I saw with all of them, they all had their different strengths and, you know, areas of growth. But like the one thing that was like common was like A getting them to collect data and then

B and the B was more of like that's that was the larger area of growth, was like what to do with the data. Like, okay, so you you have some student achievement data of sort, right? You have some like cool, this is where what they know, what they don't know.

But then it was always like, okay, well, what do you do now? And how do you look at that data? And how's tier two intervention gonna fit into that? But now, and Tina Tina does a really good job of modeling this, but like now you you're you're in a place where like you don't have to do that. You don't have to make sense of the data on your own, which I find to be super beneficial as we move forward, you know, into the future with education.

but like being able to just like not only capture it easy in a easier, it's easier to capture, but also now like, you know, how to analyze it. Show me the themes, show me the show me the patterns, right? And show me where I should go next.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (1:05:48)
Yes. on one of the last slides she says like the crystal ball shows possibilities. The educator interprets the signs. So Gemini is sort of your crystal ball and like helping you analyze your data, helping you organize and summarize, helping you comparing patterns and trends, helping you creating visuals and explaining your findings. But the teacher must know.

Classroom context, the teacher must validate the patterns and question the assumptions that are being made inside of the AI. And you've got to look for equity and meaning within the data and the things that it provides to you. And the educator is the one asking it to pull the particular data. So, like what she's she has the prompts and everything there, and you can essentially copy them.

To create your dashboard, which mind blowing interactiveness. Like, what? because like just just just okay, so like you can filter by house, by extracurricular activities, leadership title, blood status, wand core, all of these things. You can filter it out, and those are just the type of things because it's all Harry Potter themed, because of course she did.

and so it's an interactive exploration tool using your Gemini Canvas and then you can download that and like use it. It's just so freaking cool. And it's pretty too. so you can be like, okay, so it compare and contrast, okay, how did the Gryffindors do? How did the Slytherins do? so for for secondary teachers, how did first period do? How did second period do? for

elementary, maybe you've got different groups that are like the gold group and the blue group, depending on how you have separated your ITI or MTSS groupings. so you can compare groupings or

If you have like longer term data, maybe you can even have like comparing year over year or your student progression throughout the year. If you want to see this particular

Student. speaking of student though, Steve, I think we do have a little pro tip here to mention

PII. What's P I I stand for Steve?

Steve Martinez, MEd (1:08:22)
Personal identifiable information. Right? Did I get the star?

Sophie Youngs, MEd (1:08:25)
into yes. you

get the stars, Steve. I did put you on the spot there.

so you you be sure to check out like your district's rules about putting student data into AI. Like if you're gonna go and put it in your personal AI chatbot, don't do it. That's not a good idea.

But there are some if your district has signed agreements and it's set up a certain way that sometimes you can do that, so that you can but you can

Steve Martinez, MEd (1:09:07)
Also like

Sophie Youngs, MEd (1:09:08)
also clean up the data and like give them fake

Steve Martinez, MEd (1:09:10)
You can play in that.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (1:09:11)
names.

if your district

is like a Google district and you've are paying for like the Google Gemini for educators, and like your AI is not feeding

the masses learning, it's not learning from your all's stuff, it very well could be a possibility and could be be completely safe. But yes, please do check before you just start go playing around. But

Tina has provided y'all with like

the links to that Google form and that spreadsheet. So you can go play and prompt it different ways and see what kind of data and comparisons you can get. which is phenomenal. the heat map one, I wasn't even thinking about like you can I didn't even think about using a heat map to analyze some data. It looks it's really cool.

Steve Martinez, MEd (1:10:00)
I also feel like

there's a lot that can be done here

through the lens of a of an instructional coach.

Right? Like analyzing data on that on that front, on that end.

PLC.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (1:10:13)
PLC time, especially if you have

benchmark data,

FAIBs is what they call it over in California, I know now. it's not called that over here in West Virginia, but benchmark data, practice, ummative assessment tests. but what I really liked about Tina's data is sometimes there are numbers and sometimes they're like drop down answers, like choices.

So she does talk about having

the make sure that your data is

clean data, that the data organize the data into clear, meaningful buckets, and so that it's

not a whole lot of qualitative data and

more quantitative data so that it's easier for Gemini to like

manipulate and create charts and stuff because

a lot harder to

Steve Martinez, MEd (1:11:05)
And all the state.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (1:11:06)
it likes the numbers, it likes when there's fixed options. So you can have words

like your blood status, if it's half, muggle, or pure, but they're like those are the only three options you can have, type of thing.

Steve Martinez, MEd (1:11:18)
Yeah.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (1:11:19)
yeah, your wand core, there's only so many options you have for the core of your wand. mine's Dragon Heart String, by the way.

Steve Martinez, MEd (1:11:29)
What is mine?

Sophie Youngs, MEd (1:11:30)
have you had a wand to choose you yet?

Steve Martinez, MEd (1:11:33)
No. Well

Sophie Youngs, MEd (1:11:35)
Sucks for you, you don't know.

but yeah, so like having clean data, organized data, easy for AI to read data, makes the chart creation and the dashboard creation just easier and more streamlined. she also points out like the prompts that you give it. You need to be extremely specific as to what you want.

So before you just start popping information into Gemini, what do you actually want? What are you looking for? What do you want it to create? and then be specific. The more specific you are with like

the X and Y axis, how many

what you want it to look for, how many different columns you want, depending on the chart that you're creating, the better off you're going to be.

Steve Martinez, MEd (1:12:34)
Well, friends, that is all the time we have for today's episode. A massive thank you to Snorkel, Learning Genie, and all of our presenters who made the Shadow Quest possible.

be sure to check out the website, the lovely website that Sophie has made. and Sophie, are we gonna be able to make the the archive accessible even after the event for folks that want to jump into it?

Sophie Youngs, MEd (1:12:59)
Yes,

Steve Martinez, MEd (1:12:59)
Yeah.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (1:13:00)
I would say that we can keep that form open. And if you want to register later, because yeah, you just when you go to our Under the Hat podcast website,

there is a button that's for the shadow quest. It'll take you to a Google site. you can register there. And then I get a ping every time anyone registers. And we might actually just since like the competition and everything is over,

We might actually just change the automatic reply to be the link and the password to like get in.

Steve Martinez, MEd (1:13:32)
Nice.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (1:13:33)
so that we don't have to worry about sending out any more emails with it.

so that yeah, anyone can access the rest of the sessions because there are 14 sessions that are 15 minutes each that are

about a variety of things. watch at your leisure in your PJs or however you like to learn about how all of these educators are breaking curses in their classroom and elevating

teaching and learning.

Steve Martinez, MEd (1:14:09)
Yes. This was a whole lot of fun having conversation today about barriers, UDL, executive function, and Sophie's favorite, maybe I'm making an assumption, data. yeah. so

Sophie Youngs, MEd (1:14:24)
Data, I love data. I

Steve Martinez, MEd (1:14:27)
and again, a massive thank you to Learning Genie and Snorkel. feel free to catch Learning Genie at learning dash genie dot com.

And of course, snorkel at snorkel.app. be sure to check out both of those platforms and the amazing work that they're doing in and out of classrooms. But okay, friends, until next time, keep your hats on.

Sophie Youngs, MEd (1:14:50)
But your minds open, stay curious.

Steve Martinez, MEd (1:14:53)
A curious.