Successfully Train Teacher Candidates Online With GoReact

Dustin Ferguson:

Hello, everyone. Welcome to our webinar. My name’s Dustin. I am an employee at GoReact. Today, we have Dr. Tom Fisher joining us for our webinar on How to Successfully Train Teacher Candidates Online. We know that we got a lot of good response from our last webinar.

Dustin Ferguson:

Today, we wanted to do part two of the continuing series on How to Train Teacher Candidates Online or in a hybrid setting. We know that the world is changing online and hybrid courses are a necessity moving forward. We at GoReact just wanted to provide you with really good resources and pull the resources that we have together to just help you and provide you with the content that you need.

Dustin Ferguson:

Like I said, this is part two of the series. If you didn’t get to see the first webinar that we did with Dr. Jim Mitchell, that would be a great one to watch and start with. After today, we have that recording. That’s going to be shared in the chat here.

Dustin Ferguson:

Just to familiarize yourself with some of the tools, we have a chat feature, which is a great place to just introduce yourself, go ahead and put your name in there, where you’re from, what your role is. Then that’s also a great place for you to just interact with everyone else who’s joining the webinar today.

Dustin Ferguson:

We want to, again, provide you with resources and ideas of how to train your teachers and your students online. Utilize that. We also have a place where you can enter your questions. Tom and I are going to be having a conversation, just a Q&A for the first half of this webinar.

Dustin Ferguson:

Then for the last half, we’re going to open that up for Q&A. Go ahead and submit your questions there. There’s also an upvote feature. If there’s a question that gets asked that you really like and you want that one to be addressed, make sure and upvote it so that we can make sure and cover that.

Dustin Ferguson:

Without any further ado, like I said, Tom Fisher, Dr. Tom Fisher is joining us today. Tom, why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself?

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Hey, buddy. Welcome to my office. First off, I know that you and I have talked before and it’s twofold that I’m using the office day. I did get the approval for that. I didn’t go rogue. But from talking to me at my house, it looks like I’m in witness relocation. That’s one reason I’m using the office.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

The other reason I had to prove one of my co-workers that I’m not wearing my pajamas. Just prove to my colleague, Rex, out there, if he’s listening that I’m not wearing my PJs.

Dustin Ferguson:

You agree?

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Yep. UNC Charlotte, I work here at UNC Charlotte. We’re probably one, of if not, the biggest producer of student teaching candidates every year in North Carolina. I have a dual appointment in the College of Education. That means I teach in our middle secondary department, some coursework, especially around TPA.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Then, the biggest part of my role is I’m a faculty site coordinator, which means I supervise student teachers. I do probably upwards of 20 student teachers per semester in either middle school or high school. Also, I should mention that everybody has one of these guys at the college. I’m that guy that volunteers or gets volunteered for things all the time.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

You and I are talking today because of that, and we’ll talk about that. I actually volunteered for this. I wasn’t volunteered for it.

Dustin Ferguson:

It’s good to know. Yeah. You’re joining us on your own, on your own accord, right?

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Yeah.

Dustin Ferguson:

Tom, tell us a little bit about your experience with teacher candidates online, before GoReact.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

About five or six years ago, we started a program called ROGI, which is a Remote Observation Graduate Interns. Just our graduates, not our undergraduate. Graduate students that already had a degree, wanted to come back to college, get the teaching certificate. If they were 50 miles or more from campus, we weren’t going to drive there to see them.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Typically, obviously, with student teachers, I will physically go to the school site to supervise, observe them have the post conference. But with the ROGI candidates, we had to use some online platform. Prior to GoReact, I would use whatever they were comfortable with. I was trying to be flexible for them. Five or six years ago, could have been Skype.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

WebEx I’ve used recently. Google Meeting we’ve used. In a pinch, we’ve used FaceTime from time to time. Whatever was flexible for them, but it was usually five or six candidates a year. But our graduate program has grown and the teacher shortage because it is also growing. Our program has grown in probably 20% of our candidates last semester, were distance education, and would have to be observed remotely.

Dustin Ferguson:

Yeah. A lot of those tools that you use probably weren’t a perfect fit for your program, and maybe weren’t even educational tools, like you mentioned. With that said, talk a little bit about, just in general, how your students benefited from GoReact this past school year, and then we can jump into more of the tactical specifics here in a second as well.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

All right. Prior to, so I will say, fall ’19, ’20, it wasn’t just … I know we’re going to talk about some of our response to the COVID outbreak. But we started in fall ’19. We’re piloting GoReact with Coursework, as well as supervision of student teaching candidates.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

We started off slow. Obviously, I had to be introduced to it and get a comfort level with it on my own. But some of what I found out that there was some trepidation, also some excitement from some of the candidates in using this for the first time. It really came down to the benefits around flexibility, the benefits of reflection, the benefits of additional feedback.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Me, being able to double check some of that stuff, having that video resource to go back to, I think that it improved the conversation. I think it was more of us talking together, rather than me talking at them, and giving them feedback, “Here’s what I saw, blah, blah, blah, blah,” and then off.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

It was all about what I saw, and not about what they saw. I think GoReact helped them really reflect and then they could actually be part of the conversation, citing what they actually did, rather than just relying on me to give them the feedback.

Dustin Ferguson:

Definitely. Yeah. I can see how that is such a paradigm shift from going from just hearing feedback, and then actually becoming a self-reflective practitioner, and how important that is. Last webinar, we talked a lot in general with Dr. Jim Mitchell. He gave us great points and great overview based on his experience.

Dustin Ferguson:

Some of the feedback that we heard was, “Hey, we want to see more. We want to see what this looks like. How is this built out in GoReact?” We wanted to just allow you to show some of the things that you’ve done in your courses and what you’ve done in GoReact specifically.

Dustin Ferguson:

Why don’t we go ahead and put up that first screenshot, and then I’ll just have you talk through this in general, and then we’ll jump into more of your evaluative tools that you’re using.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Okay. Yeah. Definitely, an evaluative tool, you can’t use GoReact. GoReact is awesome. But if you don’t have a evaluative tool, or rubric, some criteria that you’re basing assignments, or how you’re observing the candidates, if you don’t have something that is very solid, and that the students understand, then using GoReact isn’t going to be all that helpful.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

You got to start with the evaluative tools. The first couple screenshots you’re going to be looking at, this is our UNC Charlotte internal rubric that we use to evaluate student teachers. It’s called the STAR. What we had to do is I had to get together with … I previously mentioned colleague, Rex.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

He and I sat down and looked at the STAR, which is our main observation tool. We have to say, “Okay. What are observable element?” If we’re going to the classroom, what stuff are we going to see anyway? There’s 10 elements in the STAR. Not all of those are observable in an actual lesson. All right. Some of those things would have to be evidences that we’d collect after the fact.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Looking at the first two screenshots, I know Jordan is going to show both of them, but we’ve got the STAR Observable Elements. You can see number one, the Learning Environment; number two, Student Differences. Number four there is Instructional Strategies. All right. Then you go down to number five, which was Application of Content Knowledge, and then number six was Assessment.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

We picked 5 of the 10 that were things that we knew that we would actually see in the classroom. Those are things that we were going to score them on. How were we going to score them? We had to create the markers. Maybe if Dr. Mitchell, I don’t know if that was a conversation you guys had last week about the creation of the markers.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

But for anybody using GoReact, the markers are key to actually creating a good online activity, or a really good online observation. If we jump to the third, if we look at the third screenshot, you can see the 10 markers that we did end up creating.

Dustin Ferguson:

Yeah.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

I should say that if I didn’t say it, the STAR, which stands for Student Teaching Assessment Rubric, I got really familiar with that. But now we’re moving to something called CPAST. Guess what, I got to make all new markers coming up this summer, for the fall. But as we look at the third screenshot, you can see that there’s a list of 10 markers.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Now, I didn’t just focus on STAR. If you look at that, because there’s other things that we’re using, we’re using an internal tool for our faculty site coordinators called CLASS, which is the Classroom Assessment Scoring System. That was something that we were piloting, seeing if that was something we were going to use.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

If you’re looking, there’s some very common language in these different markers. Also, we had a program called the Teacher Educator Institute, TEI, where we had three focus practices that we wanted all of our student teaching candidates, regardless of program. We wanted them focusing on whole class discussion, eliciting student responses, managing whole small group interactions and collaborations with the actual students in the classroom.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

I had to think about those things. Then, of course, one of the big things in fall of ’19 in North Carolina, at TPA became consequential for licensure. As an edTPA person as well, I wanted to look at the Look Fors from the test to video, and also build those into the 10 markers that we would be looking at.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Looking at those 10 markers, you can see what I would normally be looking for when I go into a classroom if I was going in there live in person.

Dustin Ferguson:

Yeah. No. That’s super helpful. Thank you for sharing that. For some of the participants here on the webinar today, maybe you’re familiar with GoReact, maybe not. I just wanted to just throw in there really quickly that you can see Tom is talking about markers and rubrics. You can see that this is GoReact.

Dustin Ferguson:

If you haven’t seen it before, you’re unfamiliar is that it’s video reflection right in line with your evaluative tools like feedback, text, comments, markers, rubrics where students can really improve by seeing themselves and you’re going to talk a little bit about that, Tom, and how that reflection is important.

Dustin Ferguson:

But also, it’s very customizable to your program. Creating these markers with, you said edTPA, or whatever accreditation you’re using and things like that. It is really customizable. It also provides some benefits to your students that you talked about earlier, like flexibility, access, self-reflection.

Dustin Ferguson:

Then you also mentioned creating that conversation with your student instead of talking at them and telling them what you see, but also allowing them into that conversation by them seeing themselves on video. Why don’t you maybe speak to that a little bit about some of the benefits you guys saw with flexibility, creating that conversation with your student and just … how GoReact help with those benefits?

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Sure. I think jumping right on the flexibility right away is so important, because I mentioned that I have upwards of 20 student teachers per semester. I had 21 last semester. Aside from what happened with COVID, if we just focus on 21 student teachers that I have to see a minimum of three times each, okay, throughout the semester. Some may need more. Some may need more attention. I could go a fourth time to see people.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

In the past, we actually did see every candidate four times. That means I’m not on their schedule, they have to get on my schedule. It could be one of those things where they’re looking at a schedule that I put out. They have a really great activity, especially if they’re Social Studies, which is my background, and they want me to see this social studies activity and get feedback on it.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Well, they look at my schedule and they see, “Hey, he’s at another school that day. He can’t come see that activity.” With GoReact, they just record it. They’re going to get that feedback from me, because I am going to be able to watch it and score it, mark it and give content comments that they were looking for.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Anyway, another piece of the flexibility for me, and we talked about that conversation, I think the conversations, even though these people that were remote, I never met with them face-to-face, I think that we had really strong conversations, because when I’m face-to-face at a school, with that really tight schedule, along with teaching evening courses, and having to drive around to schools all within a 50 mile radius, I would tend to be in a hurry.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

I’m not going to lie. I would go into a school. I had to do the observation. I’d have to see if they had time to do the post conference. If they didn’t, we’d have to schedule it for another time. Then boom, I’m out the door.

Dustin Ferguson:

Right.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

I always say, “Hey. I’ll make sure I talk to you at least sometime today.” We might not actually have a post conference, but we’re going to talk. With GoReact, I watched the video whenever I want. Now what happens is, we schedule a time to have the post conference, and it can be after school hours. It could be during their planning period. It could be before school.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

That really helped with my flexibility, especially as those … like I talked about, those remotes have gone up to 20% of our caseload is people that are outside of 50 mile radius. It helps to be able to do this GoReact.

Dustin Ferguson:

Yeah. Definitely. No. That’s perfect. Let’s move into the screenshot. Yeah. The fourth screenshot.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Yeah. What are we looking at? Looks like we’re looking at Taylor’s classroom. This is the one that we’ve got the red, and the blue arrows, and the orange arrows.

Dustin Ferguson:

Yeah.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Here’s one of the things that we probably need to … We’re definitely working this out. Like I said, this is always anytime you use a new technology like this, it’s a work in progress. You can see if people online watching and see, Taylor’s got lots of markers right away. You can see, I’ve got that with the red arrows. It’s like, boom, boom, boom. She’s mentioning all these things that she’s doing.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

If you look at the black arrow, you can see between the two of us in a 1 hour and 15 minute recording, there’s 124 comments. That’s a lot. I’m not going to lie. That probably went a little overboard. We were new to this. We didn’t set up the protocols. What you can see with my blue arrows is I picked out the very specific things that I wanted to work with Taylor on.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

As somebody that knew the markers, and was actually watching her and knew areas that I wanted to help her grow, I focused in on the question then. Yes. She saw that she did that, as well as some of the other things that she was constantly tagging back-to-back-to-back. What I did is I focused in on the things that I knew that she and I needed to talk about. You can see where I could plug those comments in.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Again, I know you’re going to … You’re talking about if people are not familiar, when I feel I want to make a comment, all I do is click on the … If we’re looking at the orange arrows, I just tag one of the markers, and it pauses the video. It pauses the video wherever I’m at. Same thing with the comments, as soon as I start typing in the comment, it pauses the video.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

You could see everybody on the left hand side of Taylor’s name, it’s time stamped. Anytime you’re going back to the video, this is my view, this is her view, we both see this, we can go to a very specific time and talk about what happened at those individual times. This would definitely be an example of an early … You can see this was her second observation.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

One of the things we did is we wanted to get a baseline. With the first observation was a live observation. This would have been the first one that she actually tagged. That gives you an idea of why there’s so many markers. She wasn’t sure how many do I need? Should I do it every couple minutes? Did I just do that? She didn’t want to miss some great student, very reflective.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

I think this helped her a ton. She was very technologically savvy. Her principal definitely gave her high marks on that and helping other people use technology at the school. But like I said, 124 comments probably shouldn’t be the norm on something like this.

Dustin Ferguson:

Definitely. That’s the perfect segue into our next screenshot. Let’s talk a little bit about that one. That was your first example. With Taylor was lots of markers, lots of comments, maybe a little bit too much to actually digest to be helpful. This next screenshot, you can see there’s a lot fewer total comments. Let’s talk about that. Let’s look at the red arrow first.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

This is Shannon. Shannon, you can see right there that this was observation number three for Shannon. This was technically her last observation. This was in November. This would be later on in her semester. Now she’s feeling more comfortable with this. Now I know I’ve got the purple arrow over there shows us 14 out of 20.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

But that shows that she was proficient in a lot of these categories. That’s not really a low score based on the rubric. You can see the comments are a little bit lower. But now what you can see is that Shannon and I are on the same page. Shannon actually now feels confident by this third observation where she’s also putting comments in.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

She’s not simply putting in markers. She’s also making comments. Then therefore, I can address those comments. These become our talking points. Again, this might be an hour long observation. But now she and I are on the same page based on some of these markers, where we both have comments, and then this can drive our post conference whenever it was going to be.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Because, again, I got to watch the video and I got to mark it. The way that we did this is she got a chance to go back and take a look at these before we met. We both saw each other’s comments before we had our post conference to discuss these things. I think that what this did, for both candidates, really, because we only looked at Taylor’s early one.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Taylor had a much better one later on, where she had less markers and comments. But I think what it does is it makes them more reflective. It gives them an opportunity to be a real stakeholder in this. They’re citing actual information from their own videos, again, not relying on me to tell them what they did. They can actually go to the video.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

They’re more an equal partner in this conversation than maybe they would have been if I come out and I’m in a hurry doing a face-to-face observation.

Dustin Ferguson:

Yeah. Exactly. Again, going back to those creating self-reflective practitioners, that video really helps create that. Did you want to talk about any of the other arrows, like the blue arrow? I think we you covered that one as well. Then the purple arrow was her final score.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Yeah. I think the blue arrow just goes to those arrows that she indicated. Then, me basically talking about giving the feedback there and how she can improve. Of course, you can see … I guess I don’t have an arrow attached to it. But you can see that there is the ability to attach something to the GoReact video. That would be the rubric.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

You can see that she is scored 14 out of 20. You can see next to the comments, that there’s actually a rubric. That would be the one that we’ve already looked at, which was the STAR. We did have the students self evaluate themselves. I should mention, even though I didn’t show this element, they do have an element that is about self-reflection, and professional growth.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

All of my candidates that use GoReact on that particular element, they were all either proficient or accomplished because they really did buy in, and really did feel good about using the process. I would say, I know that we talked about there was some hiccups early on. A lot of that I’ll take the blame for in terms of technology.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Because if somebody didn’t have a good internet feed you … I don’t know that we talked about this, or you talked about this last time. But you can record via GoReact. But you can also record just on your iPad, and then upload the video once you have a more stable and secure internet connection.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

I did have some students that were in some rural North Carolina mountain towns that didn’t have really great Wi-Fi in their school where they had some lagging. Their videos weren’t so great because they were trying to record through the app. That was some of the negativity that we heard. But that could be easily fixed by just recording it on your iPad where you didn’t necessarily need WiFi.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Then when you are home on a more stable WiFi connection and secure WiFi connection, you could just take that iPad video and loaded into GoReact.

Dustin Ferguson:

Exactly. Yeah. No. Thanks for that clarification. We always get that question. How do you get videos into GoReact? I’m glad you went ahead and address that. Let’s transition a little bit. You talked about your role as faculty site coordinator, which means you’re supervising the student teachers and helping provide feedback for them.

Dustin Ferguson:

But you also teach courses on campus. COVID and moving online, heavily affected you in lots of ways.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Yeah. Yeah. Definitely.

Dustin Ferguson:

Yeah. One of those was taking your face-to-face courses, moving them online in one week. This was one of the big reasons why we wanted to bring you on because of your experience with online courses. Talk to us a little bit about that. You can go ahead. Jordan, if you want to show the next screenshot. How did you do that? How did you transition everything online so quickly?

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Well, a quick disclaimer here. I’ve been teaching online for forever in a day, five years. I’m QM Certified. I almost do strictly all of edTPA score is all online, some of its asynchronous, some of its synchronous. But I was so excited that I actually got to come on campus a couple times a week and teach a face-to-face class and of course right in the middle of the semester of the first time I get a face to face course in five years, it has to go fully online.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

I’m sure, I mean, I know this happened to people across the country. We were asked. We weren’t given a one week grace period where the classes might not meet, where you had to transition from face-to-face to some sort of online coursework so that students could finish out the semester. Then there was some other great stuff that we don’t need to talk about that they had to work out.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

But everybody was supposed to move their class online. Again, I do have online experience. But I did build this class with very specific activities that I wanted to use. One thing I should definitely mention, this was a classroom leadership course is what is called … a lot of people call it Behavior Management. It was a new course. We watched videos anyway.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

We could load released Task 2 videos, and we could mark them in GoReact. That’s fine. We were already watching videos. We’re also watching Get Better Faster videos, because that was one of their textbooks. We had access to those videos, and we mark those. But one of my biggest activities for the class was around rehearsal. We’ve been really big on doing rehearsal.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

You and I’ve talked about this from the sports metaphor of that muscle memory and that practice, and that rehearsal, just building your confidence. I would run a lot of rehearsals in class, either small peer groups rehearsing, or rehearsing in front of the entire group. Once we moved online, that was a major component that I was worried we were going to lose.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

What I did, and what … I guess Jordan probably has the screenshots up. There’s my COVID beard. I cleaned up a little bit for today. But I look like a extra in Deadliest Catch or something. One of the big things is you’ve got to … Using GoReact, you’ve got to be comfortable with it. We talked about I had some missteps with the student teachers. I wasn’t going to do that with the class.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

The class assignment, I actually did it myself. The screenshot you see here is I made my own video of myself giving instructions, which was the activity that they had to do. They had to rehearse giving instructions to a class that wasn’t there. They had to do in front of the camera, or we had rehearsals where they had to address expectations, or they had a behavior management scenario that they had to work through.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

This was really easy, because I already had set criteria for the activities. In the very first one, you can see I have tagged and order or marked and order the criteria for the activity. Then around the Economy Language, we didn’t want to go on and on too long. You can see my video was about three minutes. The max I had for them for their video was five minutes.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Everybody had to do this teaching rehearsal video. We had multiple takes of this. But like I said, to introduce it to him, I made my own video. I think that that’s very important that people using it out there, actually use it like the students would, because that’s just great teaching. That’s modeling for them.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

But I want to make sure that I’m ready for every question that would come as their instructor. You can see in those first two is me just setting it up trying to get them comfortable and, of course, modeling what I expect the video rehearsals to look like now that we’re not doing the live rehearsals. I think Jordan takes us to the next ones, which is going to be three students.

Dustin Ferguson:

Yeah. Looking at your students, we’d looked at how you modeled that for them, and showed them what that would look like giving yourself feedback. You’re used to this because you do things online. You make videos. But your students, maybe not. Maybe this is the first time ever seeing themselves on video or recording something, practicing, doing these rehearsals with tools like GoReact or just using video in general.

Dustin Ferguson:

How did your students adapt to it? How did they go through that transition and how do they handle it?

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Well, again, it goes back to I think you have to have really good evaluated tools. For me, the markers were the criteria. You can see we’re looking at Luke in the first one. You can’t see the time on Luke’s video, but looks video was under a minute. You can see where he talks about his grows, and then he talks about his glows.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

You can see that he and I were right on par with what his grows need to be that he did rush through. I think he was so worried about that economy of language that he rushed instead. I said to him … We talked about, “Hey, the next time you do this, make sure you that you’re repeating these things.” We talked about doing things in threes.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

We want to make sure that the students respond to us and kind. He didn’t necessarily have a volunteer. But when he watched it, he could see that he was too keyed up, and he went too fast. All right. If we were doing that in class, where we did do those rehearsals in class, he might not necessarily see that. He might hear it from his peers.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

If the first time he’s hearing it is from his peers, then who knows how he’s going to take that. But when he actually gets to see it on video, then he can practice it the next time. That’s in his mind. This is something I got to do. I got to slow down. I got to say the directions multiple times.

Dustin Ferguson:

Yeah.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

I think it was super helpful.

Dustin Ferguson:

Yeah.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

I think the opposite end of the spectrum is our next guy, one of my favorite guys, Patrick here. I didn’t have a good relationship with Patrick. I did get away with that comment where it says, “Make your bed there.” I told him “To make his bed was my first comment.” Although I have a dirty office, so I shouldn’t talk.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

What you can see, look at the break, and you can see where my comments come in. The idea is they had the six markers. That’s the criteria and those things should go in. They go in a very specific order. You should be stating the goal first. You should be giving the clear directions. You should be giving the time. Then you should, lastly, give the behavior management expectations to the students. Look at the break in time.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Again, if we go to the timestamp, look where Patrick gets off on a really good start. In under a minute, he’s given the clear directions. But then all of a sudden, he doesn’t give the time for three minutes later. What’s he doing during that three minutes? He’s pretending like he has a class in front of him. He’s doing some play acting, and talking to people, and so on and so forth.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

What it is it becomes that economy of language is lost, because there’s so much that he’s doing in those three minutes before he tells them how much time they have. What the behavior management expectation is they may have already forgotten what the clear directions were.

Dustin Ferguson:

Yeah.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

That was something that he and I talked about. Of course, he could see that, or you could see that as well.

Dustin Ferguson:

Definitely. Definitely. All right. Let’s move on to the last screenshot.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Yeah. The last one, this is my favorite one to really talk about. This is Jen. This is Jen’s second video giving directions. The first one, she did the one where everybody was nervous about doing it. I actually use some props and use my kids in my video that I did. But in her first video, it was her and it was right at the screen and talking to the screen.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

You could tell sort of nervous around doing it. Then I gave her the feedback. Then what she did the second time, the videos, just under four minutes, but what you can see is Jen is using props. Now she’s using her content. On the screen, her content is displayed. She actually got a family member to pretend to be a student. Now she has a volunteer.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

What that did is that took that anxiety of talking to the screen, it took that anxiety away, and she felt comfortable. She was talking about her content. She had a volunteer there, and it really came through. She actually scored higher than I did. I actually gave her a higher score on her video that I gave me on my own modeling video.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

This is something that she may have never have had the opportunity to do because she might be that student in class that didn’t … Patrick’s a perfect example and Luke, too. Those were guys that were like, “Hey, I want to do the rehearsal. I want to do it in front of the class. Jen wasn’t like that she was a little trepidatious of jumping in right away. I think that this helped her tremendously.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

That was some of her feedback when we, of course, surveyed these guys afterwards, because this was a pilot program that we were doing some research on.

Dustin Ferguson:

Yeah. I think that’s a great example of improvement and how self-reflection actually makes you better at what you’re doing. In this case, made her a better teacher and helped her develop that teacher voice. I love that example. I think that’s a great one to end on. But I have a follow-up question to moving your courses online before we jump into our Q&A.

Dustin Ferguson:

Looks like we have plenty of time to answer some questions. Since you made that emergency transition online, now, over the summer, you’re obviously still busy. But before the fall starts back up, and I’m sure this is everyone who’s watching today is probably in a similar situation, preparing for fall with some uncertainty.

Dustin Ferguson:

But what are you doing now that you have a little bit more time to prep? You’re doing anything differently? Are you just rolling forward with some of your old assignments, maybe talk to us a little bit about how you’re prepping for the fall?

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Yeah. I would say the first thing, if we go back to the student teaching, I think I mentioned that we had used the STAR. I had those markers. I don’t know that they’re going to have to change a ton. But we’re moving to a different evaluative tool. That’s a big change. The other big change, momentous change, is there’s not going to be any faculty site coordinators from UNC Charlotte actually going into physical classrooms.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

We are doing all. It doesn’t even matter if it’s … When we’ve done the Zoom from my house, and I show you out the window, you can see a school that I work with, right out my back window. I have a student teacher at that school in the fall. I’m not physically going to see her at the school. I’m going to watch her on video from my house, because we’re not allowed in the schools.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

No volunteers. No visitors. We’re doing 100% student teacher supervision remotely, whether it’s live, or whether it’s asynchronous using the GoReact video. That’s a huge change. One of the things that you and I have had a lot of conversations, because they’ve asked me, because I was part of this pilot, and I’m comfortable with it, I’m helping our office transition to use this going forward.

Dustin Ferguson:

Yeah.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Don’t know what that’s going to look like. I think those things that I talked about that are helpful and make them reflective. I think people are nervous right now, because it changes what they do, in general, and maybe takes them out of their comfort zone of how they supervise. But I think that the positives that I discussed with the flexibility and the reflection, and being able to be more of a partner in that conversation, I think those things outweigh some of the kinks that we might face.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

As far as the coursework, I’m really excited to use it for the course. Because to that point I made before, I can load those Task 2 videos in there from edTPA, and we can watch those and mark them. But I have a much bigger group of students in the face-to-face classroom leadership course for the fall. I’m going to start with rehearsals in video before I do face-to-face.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

We’re going to have a modified face-to-face. It’s going to be hybrid. But I’m going to start with the video rehearsals, again, to help them build that muscle memory, that confidence, build that teacher voice. Before I have them do it in front of their peers in the class.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

The first time they do the video, it’ll be just for me and for them to mark, then we’ll get to that point where we’ll do peer to peer, and then we’ll get to that point where they can do it live in front of the class. Yeah. That’s definitely going to be a big part of my fall course is going to be those video rehearsals

Dustin Ferguson:

Awesome. Yeah. No. That’s super helpful to just share what you’re doing and your experience. I know that there’s probably lots of people who can relate with you in that and maybe some uncertainty, maybe a little bit of fear of using new tools or never having taught online. Hopefully, today, you gave them some good resources and ideas to maybe ease that fear a little bit. Perfect. Well, Tom, you want to jump into some Q&A?

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Yeah. Absolutely.

Dustin Ferguson:

Okay. I have some questions. That some really great questions submitted from some of the listeners. The first one here is real practical question is do you obtain student release forms from K-12 students who might be captured in recording in the classroom?

Dr. Tom Fisher:

We do. We already have to do that because we have to do that for everybody for edTPA. The waiver that we use incorporates everything that we’re doing, in that same general sense, is used. Of course, it says on the waiver, that it’s used for evaluation of the student teaching candidate. It’s not used for future coursework.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Now, you and I talked before that I checked with all of … I received permission from the students that we saw the screenshots up. That’s different. When we use exemplars hear from edTPA, we have to blur all the K-12 students. But for GoReact and for edTPA, when it is an official evaluation, that waiver that we send out that is for edTPA, doesn’t necessarily say edTPA on it, but it covers the fact that student teachers will be capturing video in their classroom.

Dustin Ferguson:

Cool. Awesome. Thank you for sharing that. Next question is a really good one. This one is right up your alley. Please talk about your training process for your field supervisors. I’m guessing this talking about part-time, adjunct, supervisors who need to be trained on using a new process or technology, how do you go about doing that?

Dr. Tom Fisher:

One of the things I did immediately after we found out we were going to do this is I did a needs assessment. I sent out a survey share. It was simple five questions, but I want to know what people were familiar with, what people had access to. Then I created a needs assessment of those people. I also asked, how did they want to receive the professional development from me?

Dr. Tom Fisher:

The way that I’m rolling it out, in fact, I’m doing it this week is I’m using asynchronous materials. I’ll use short training videos with screenshots or what we’ve done already. Then I will hold … You may be joining me for one of these, where we do a live walkthrough of setting up markers. I’ll do that. Then I’ll do some one-to-one if there’s people that have really high needs in certain areas.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

But I’m going to start with everything that I’m working with. We’ll start with some flexible asynchronous that will lead up to a date where I’m going to hold a live walkthrough demo, and then more one-to-one after that.

Dustin Ferguson:

Perfect. Super helpful. Okay. Next question is what is the percentage, maybe if you give us a rough estimate, of GoReact videos that you use versus face-to-face observations? Obviously, like you said, for this upcoming school year, they’re all going to be video.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

That’s right.

Dustin Ferguson:

But maybe in an ideal world, how many videos do you expect students to upload per semester?

Dr. Tom Fisher:

They would have to do a minimum of three, because we’d have a minimum of three observations. That’s what everybody did. Like I said, I had five, and then I had, I think, seven. I had 12. In two semesters, I had 12 student teachers that did GoReact. Now, I’m going to have 20 or more that will do GoReact.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

It is going to be more videos than I saw before. But I think the balance would be, yes, I can do a live. But also that flexibility of, I think, what I would want to do is I’m going to do live. I like what we did with the … Get the baseline. At the beginning of the semester come in synchronously. I can still use GoReact to do asynchronous observation.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

We can still do the markers. We can still record it. You know what I mean?

Dustin Ferguson:

Yeah.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

I would set aside more time at the beginning of the semester to capture that. Then as we progress, and time gets a little bit tighter, and we need more flexibility for the second and third observation, those would ultimately be those videos that they would all share with me, and that I could flexibly look at.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

We have a 48-hour turnaround. We wanted them. Initially, we said, “Hey, we want you to record within 48 hours, go watch your video, score it. Once we see that you’ve done it, we’ll go in and do it and then we’ll set up our post conference.” Usually within the same week, I did meet with that candidate.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

If that candidate recorded on a Monday, we didn’t go into the next week without having a conversation around that video.

Dustin Ferguson:

Yeah. Yeah. Which is super important if you’re just having them upload videos, just upload videos without conferencing and reflecting, then you’re not using the technology the way it’s supposed to be.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Yeah. If somebody wants something specific, I talked about our focus practices. If somebody’s doing small group collaboration, and they want that, then, okay, schedule. I’ll come in live. Then as the group collaboration is going on, and you have a chance to break way, you can check your screen for my comments and for my coaching.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

If you need that real time coaching, during the small group activity that can happen, because there’s time for you to jump aside while you’re monitoring. There’s a lot of different options. Obviously, if you’re more familiar with doing this, you’re going to be more comfortable with branching out and doing things like that.

Dustin Ferguson:

Right.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

I might do that. Somebody that’s a first time user, they might not do that right away.

Dustin Ferguson:

Yeah. No. But I think that’s a good point, talking about the focus areas where sometimes it may be is overwhelming to think about, wow, three-hour long observations, but it doesn’t always have to be that way.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

It doesn’t.

Dustin Ferguson:

Yeah. You can do 15-minute videos, or you can upload the full video, but focus on a specific area. I think that helps people to who may be new to it as well. Perfect. Next question, does supervisors complete the evaluation tool within GoReact? Or do they still have to complete it outside of GoReact?

Dr. Tom Fisher:

That’ll be a protocol that people will have to discuss within their institution. You can complete it in there. I mean, we looked at … That screenshot that we looked at for Shannon, for instance, where you can actually see Shannon score, and you could see that she also had an attachment. She did self-evaluate herself. I also evaluated her.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

It lived on that Canvas page. It was a digital tool that we could get at whenever we needed to. I did not necessarily have to record that in multiple places.

Dustin Ferguson:

Yeah. Just …

Dr. Tom Fisher:

That’s an institutional thing. That’s not …

Dustin Ferguson:

Yeah.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

I’m not making decisions for some other institution out there or my own. I’m not a decision maker here either. I’m the worker.

Dustin Ferguson:

Man. But yeah. No. That’s helpful. Just the technical GoReact thing is that even if they fill it out in GoReact, you can still print it out, download it after, and then have the hard copy as well.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Great point. The same thing goes for the video.

Dustin Ferguson:

Yeah.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

For instance, if somebody decided they wanted to use … Now, I would never do this. Just make sure that people hear this the right way. I did say that this is great for edTPA purposes to prep people for Task 2, if somebody is in a pinch in terms of how they want to record, they could actually say to me, “Hey, Fisher, I want to use GoReact to record my Task 2 video.”

Dr. Tom Fisher:

They could actually do it. I wouldn’t go in and watch the video and give it feedback, because I’m not allowed to do that, it’d be unethical. But they could then pull that video. They can download that video from GoReact, and they wouldn’t be able to then use that as their Task 2 video.

Dustin Ferguson:

Yeah. No. Great point. I’m glad you reminded me of that, too. We have a few more questions. About eight more minutes, and then we’ll start wrapping it up.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Okay.

Dustin Ferguson:

Let’s see how many we can get through. Next question, are the markers set at the account level so that all student teachers and supervisors are using the same markers?

Dr. Tom Fisher:

That’s the idea. It could be … Depends on how you’re using it. If you’re using it for student teachers, that’s an internal conversation that has to be had. For instance, I said that we’re moving to CPAST. We’re moving to use the CPAST tool from Ohio state, obviously, that’s going to be used by all of our faculty site coordinators regardless if they’re doing special education, high school, middle, secondary, like me, EL Ed, the arts, everybody’s using the same evaluative tool.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Then what you want to do is there’s Look Fors in the CPAST, just like there is an edTPA. You’d create the markers out of what is observable. What from the CPAST evaluation tool is an observable classroom lesson? What are those items? Then what is non-observable? What is an evidence that a … like a lesson plan? Yeah. If I physically go into a classroom, I’m going to look at their lesson plan.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

But if I’m not there, they just send it to me by email. I’m not sure checking their lesson plan is not something I’m checking in GoReact.

Dustin Ferguson:

Right.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Okay. Yeah. Absolutely. Those things have to be consistent. Now, if you’re using it for your class that you’re teaching, then it’s based on your assignment. You have more … I mean, you saw that with my last three examples. That’s from my class. Nobody else teaches that class. I didn’t have to ask anybody for permission to use those markers.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

They were based on the assignment that they were doing in my class. You would have a little bit more purview over your own course markers.

Dustin Ferguson:

Okay. Perfect. We have a question. That’s gotten a lot of votes. We make sure we want to cover this one before we run out of time. How can GoReact work with schools who may be doing online only instruction due to COVID-19?

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Again, this is not a problem, because we already talked about this. You better than me know, from the technical side, you could do screen … I mean, I just did two virtual edTPAs with candidates who didn’t get edTPA done in time to turn it in before COVID happened. Those two student teachers did a virtual edTPA that was still based on the same task to rubrics.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

But now what they had was what you and I have, they were teaching online. Well, they had to turn in a test to a video. All it was, was a screen recording. They just did a screen capture like we’re doing right now. Same thing, you just go ahead and upload it to GoReact.

Dustin Ferguson:

Yeah.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

All right. Because Scale and Pearson did not change the rubrics that were used to grade students on Task 2. They didn’t change that for people that went to a virtual assessment. Okay. They kept the same rubric. Everybody had to be scored on it. I’m happy to say both of those candidates passed.

Dustin Ferguson:

Yeah. No. I think that’s a very hot topic, obviously. But I mean, that’s a great point, because they’re going to be using other tools. We know that GoReact, we’re not trying to compete with Zoom or Google Meet, those tools have their place.

Dustin Ferguson:

But as you’re using those tools for instruction, you can also use GoReact to work in tandem with those other tools, because you can transfer videos, you can download, upload into GoReact so that they’re still able to get the feedback, self-reflect and still get their online instruction done. Super important, I’m sure.

Dustin Ferguson:

Lots of resources and ideas that I’m sure people are hungry for moving into the fall because of what’s going on. Thanks for sharing that. Last question, Tom, is I think you provided lots of great resources. There’s been a few questions …

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Okay. It made me nervous.

Dustin Ferguson:

No. This is great.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

[inaudible 00:53:06] versus their job offers. Okay.

Dustin Ferguson:

Everybody wants to know, can you share some of your resources? Are you willing to share maybe your rehearsal videos that you did? Maybe a sample of your STAR assessment, even though you’re moving away from? It sounds like there was some interest in sharing that. What would you be willing to share with everybody?

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Yeah. That’s an interesting question. I think that we definitely need to … I know that we’re recording this. I’m sure that I know Kelly’s out there. She’s keeping track of the questions that come in. That is most everything that I have that I’ve created. I don’t necessarily have ownership of it. That would be something that I have to check with the university in what can be released.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Because I know that when I’ve had to go and do edTPA trainings at other schools, I use the released Pearson stuff. I’m not allowed to use our internal candidate. I only use our internal candidate materials with our future candidates. That would definitely be something that I’d have to check on. Because I think that there’s an institutional ownership over those things. It’s not necessarily my intellectual property.

Dustin Ferguson:

Yeah. Definitely. No. That makes sense. Would you be willing … Someone asked to share an email address for questions later. I also know that this is something that we on our side of things at GoReact, we’ve created a Facebook group for the teacher ed community to share ideas like this.

Dustin Ferguson:

We definitely want you to utilize that and as many as possible. Join that group to share ideas, share resources, pull together what we have. If you’re willing to share those things, that’d be a great place to do that. Yeah. Tom, it’s totally up to you.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Yeah. Definitely. I think I would put that on there on the Facebook. I’m not going to say what it is right now. Of course, I don’t … who knows how inundated with emails I’d get. Somebody’s got my email, and then they signed me up for a reverse mortgage or something like. Who knows what people do when they have somebody’s information like that.

Dustin Ferguson:

Right.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Yeah. I said already to you today. You didn’t unfriend me on the new Facebook group.

Dustin Ferguson:

Oh, yeah.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

You don’t have to do that so that I can supply my information.

Dustin Ferguson:

For sure. No. We’ll be sharing the link to that Facebook group on the chat. Please, utilize that and we’ll be sharing resources there from GoReact. We’ll be sharing some of the resources that we create. But we also want that to be a community where you can reach out to each other and share your ideas there, too.

Dustin Ferguson:

Well, Tom, thank you so much from based on the feedback we’ve gotten in the questions, I think, this has been really helpful. It’s been really timely, I think, as well. We really appreciate you taking time to do this. Like we said, we didn’t force him to do this. He did this on his own accord. Tom, thank you so much, and let’s keep the conversation going.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Yeah. Absolutely. I will say now just to embarrass or because she said that she registered for this one of my colleagues. It’s her birthday today. Happy birthday, Melinda, if you’re out there listening. She said, “I better learn something if I’m going to give up time out of my birthday to join the webinar.

Dr. Tom Fisher:

Hopefully she’s listening and she’s embarrassed. I’m not going to say how old she is. She’s younger than me. But she’s catching up. Happy birthday, Melinda. Thanks, Dustin, and Jordan, Kelly. I definitely enjoyed it.

Dustin Ferguson:

Awesome. Yeah. No. We appreciate it. All right, everybody, thanks for joining. We recorded this. The recording will be going out to you if you want to review it later or share it with your colleagues. Please do that. You’ll be getting an email with the link to the recording after. Thanks, everyone. Have a great week.