Talk the Talk: Preparing Teacher Candidates to Communicate as Professional Educators

Hillary Gamblin:

Hello. Thank you for joining today’s workshop on helping teacher candidates to start thinking and talking like educational professionals. My name’s Hillary Gamblin. I’m a GoReact employee and the host of The Teacher Education Podcast. And today I’ll be chatting with Jodi Shorma from Valley City State University in North Dakota. Jodi, do you want to introduce yourself real quick?

Jodi Shorma:

Well, hello folks, and Hillary, thank you for inviting me to share VCSU’s experience with GoReact. And I teach in the English department, and I also teach the English methods courses to our secondary teacher candidates.

Hillary Gamblin:

We’re so excited to have you so thank you for joining us. Now, for those of you that are new to our GoReact workshops, let me quickly explain how we structure these virtual events. For the first 20 to 30 minutes I’ll be discussing with Jodi her unique way of using video and her English methods courses to better prepare her teacher candidates to think and talk and work like professional educators. After that, we’ll do a live Q and A for about 10 to 15 minutes depending on how many questions we have and how much time we have left. And if you’d like to submit a question for the Q and A, there is a tab just below the video feed. And if you see a question that someone else posted and you think it’s a really fantastic question, and you want to answer it, there is a handy up vote feature so you can use that.

Hillary Gamblin:

Don’t forget to use the chat feature which is located on the right side of the video feed. A lot happens there. It’s kind of always a party going on, people sharing information and resources. So make sure you are part of the party. Right next to the ask a question is a polling feature, and we actually like to start off today’s workshop with a quick poll just to get to know everybody a little bit better. The question is how do your online students share their thoughts and opinions with you and other students in the class? We have discussion board or chat feature, email, voice thread, video recording tool. So we’ll give you a couple of seconds there to answer that. And I’ll be curious to see what the most popular answer is.

Hillary Gamblin:

Okay. So right now, looking like the majority is the discussion board. That’s pretty popular so I’m not surprised. Well, we’re hoping that by the end of this you will have a new way of letting your students share their opinions because we are going to focus on this innovative way that Jodi is using GoReact in her English methods courses. And so we’re hoping the goal will be that you’ll be able to replicate this practice in your own teaching methods courses, and that by doing this you’ll see your teacher candidates make leaps and bounds when it comes to talking and thinking like professional educators. So with that being our goal, let’s get started. Jodi, my first question for you is that most teacher ed programs I chat with usually begin using video to record student teaching. Your program was a little bit unique. It was a methodology instructors that wanted video for their in-person courses. How are you and other instructors planning on using a video recording tool in your methodology courses?

Jodi Shorma:

Well, thanks Hillary. Slide 2 provides a history breakdown of our journey and or investigation of GoReact. So a year ago in the fall of 2020, and yes it was because of the pandemic, but it was also because there are many hours in travel time for the secondary method instructors to drive to the student teacher sites and observe student teachers. And so we wanted a tool that we could use and the students could use to record their student teaching. And so that started in the fall of 2020. Then in the spring of 21, we ended up… We got approval for the project to move to a pilot phase and we piloted the web version of GoReact. And we had three instructors who their student teachers recording videos using GoReact.

Jodi Shorma:

And then the secondary methods instructors were providing comments to the performance phases in the student teaching. Well, then that brings me to the present. In fall of 2021 I piloted GoReact in two of my English methods courses. And so if you move to… Well, not yet. And basically the focus was for me to prepare my method students for their student teaching so they were familiar with GoReact. And this time though GoReact was integrated into our Blackboard learning management system. And so GoReact became a tool inside Blackboard, which made it easier for me as an instructor to use in my courses. And so that’s our story for how we started the use of GoReact.

Hillary Gamblin:

Jodi, I think you mentioned this a little bit in your previous answer, but I want to highlight this. What were your initial goals with using video assessment, and what was your experience like piloting it in your methodology course?

Jodi Shorma:

So slide 3 provides two goals for me when I started the semester, this fall. One goal was for my colleagues. Since it was a pilot I needed to use GoReact and understand all the technical moves that were involved in posting assignments, reviewing assignments. I needed to have experience well enough so that I would be able to help other faculty on campus implement it into their courses. And the second goal was for my students. I wanted them to practice the use of GoReact so they would be ready to use the tool when they started their 12 week student teaching assignments. So those were my two initial goals. And what I found out was that GoReact brought much more to the table than the video recording tool that it had.

Jodi Shorma:

Just to introduce you to the students and the courses that I piloted GoReact in. So slide 4 provides some general information about the students. I had a classroom course that meets Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 9:00 to 9:50. And the students in that course are very traditional 21 year olds that are… who are soon to be student teachers in the spring. And another unique characteristic of that group is that they didn’t have experience in the classroom as substitute teachers, which is something that we find in the second group of students. So I also have an online section of students and this group, the majority are non-traditional.

Jodi Shorma:

I have three who are non-degree seeking, which means they’re taking the methods course for their licensure requirements in their states. I have one student from Wyoming and one student from Montana fulfilling the licensure requirements in their state for achieving the English minor. And non-traditional in the sense that these students are long term substitute teachers or they could be para-professionals in schools. And which is then where the importance of the substitute teaching comes into play because this affects their responses that I found coming out of their assignment responses.

Hillary Gamblin:

Fantastic. I love the fact that we have kind of a online and in class just right there to compare and contrast. So we’ll jump into that a little bit. What problems did you face initially and how did video assessment present a solution for you?

Jodi Shorma:

I guess the biggest concern that I had was the students’ ability to share thought and opinions with their voice. Like we saw in the poll feature, the most popular way, those who are attending are having their students share their thoughts and opinion as discussion board or chat features, but that’s with writing. And the sharing of the same thought and opinion by voice I find is very important in preparation for student teaching, but also in preparation beyond when they are new teachers so that they have the vocabulary and the practice and the pacing to share ideas in a lesson plan or a unit plan, or to defend a book selection to a parent. And so that’s where I found the use of GoReact to share those opinions by voice. Very important for the development of my students, both the online and my classroom students.

Hillary Gamblin:

So you’ve been kind of alluding to this unique way that you’ve been using GoReact. So everybody, the big reveal is coming. Jodi, can you share with us how you’ve been using GoReact to help teacher candidates to think and talk like educational professionals in your methodology courses?

Jodi Shorma:

Sure. So initially when I started, I thought I was just taking them through technical moves, but to be able to record something, I just thought, “Let’s throw out an assignment that they could share with by voice instead of sharing in discussion board,” which would’ve been my traditional way for them to share. And so slide 5 is an example of an assignment. The chapter and the text had a number of teaching techniques. I asked my students to share their three favorite, and then I posted an assignment with a little description with what I would like them to share. And notice in the assignment, I did have a time requirement. So this is a lesson learned for me. My first GoReact assignment, I didn’t have a time expectation.

Jodi Shorma:

And I had some students who were 12 minutes, they just shared and shared and shared. And I had some at two minutes. And so the time requirement is important for students so you have some consistency in that message because once that message is recorded then you as the instructor or myself as well as other students can enter and add comments by voice, comments by text or comments just using audio, or they could upload a video in response to discussions that are happening in that video recording. So slide 6 is an example of a student in my online class. So let’s see if we can get that up.

Speaker 3:

Hello, my name is [Michelle 00:13:58] Barnes, and I’m going to talk about my top three teaching activities from this chapter. I liked Punchline, Change Agents, and Trio Tales. And the reason I picked those three was because I thought they were all very unique and kind of activities that I hadn’t thought about before. For example, Punchline, I never thought about teaching about humor or comedians, but I actually think it’s a great idea. I think it’s great to teach students about body language and timing because it’s something they’re going to have to do when they present and stuff. And I think it’s just a fun activity for them that they’ll be really interested in it.

Speaker 3:

And Change Agents, I really like interviews. I’ve done a bunch of interviews for college with teachers and stuff. And I think it’s good for kids to do interviews with people who are older than them who can teach them more about life, who can tell them how it used to be, how things are now. And I think it’s good for them to do that, and then come together and talk about how time has changed because I think that we need to talk about that more. And then the third one was Trio Tales. I love creating stories and I think it’s really important for students to do so. I think it’s great that there’s different kind of genres that they can do something serious, something not so serious.

Speaker 3:

Collaborating is also very important. It’s great for them to talk to each other, find the story out, talking to each other. They can bounce off each other, learn from each other. And brainstorming is also very, very important for them so they can think of what kind of characters they want, where should the setting be? What should be the plot? And I just think those are three of fun ones that I would love to try as a teacher. Thank you for listening.

Jodi Shorma:

And so GoReact and the practicing of sharing thought and opinion is something that would help this student. If you noticed in her sharing of her three favorites, she started with the activity, and then she used you. And so she said, “You could use this.” And she deferred the use of you each of those activities for herself. And so she, rather than saying I, she was comfortable with you. And so that was interesting for me because later on after she listened to other students and I think felt more comfortable, she got more comfortable with the recording feature she has improved. So I have another assignment Hilary, or do you have questions?

Hillary Gamblin:

No. You have so many examples because you’ve been piloted in this and taking notes. So I would just love to see more examples of-

Jodi Shorma:

All right.

Hillary Gamblin:

… How you’re doing this.

Jodi Shorma:

Okay. So slide 7 is another assignment, and it’s a little deeper than your three favorite because I started around week nine and ten. I started getting comfortable with the tool, and I started realizing that the students are developing these skills. And so this was beyond my initial goal of just having them practice the use of GoReact. So slide 7 is another assignment that I had my students respond to. And I gave them a group of students, grades 11 and 12. And I said they were to choose a genre of writing, and reference a rubric that was going to be used, and also a pre-writing idea. So to plan an activity, to incorporate the rubric for a particular writing assignment in the classroom as teachers. And then also what would be a pre-writing activity that would help the students. And so slide 8 is an example of a response from one of my classroom students.

Speaker 4:

So for the week nine pre-writing process lesson plan, I chose to do a shorter activity around narrative writing. So in my lesson plan, the unit overall is going to be narrative writing. And then I chose the lesson plan itself as pre-writing activity. I think I’ve done it before in classes, but it is essentially just a 10 to 15 minute free write where it’s sort of a stream of consciousness type writing about a memory that we have. After they’ve completed the writing after the 15 is up, students will then move on into the editing phase where they will go over their own writing with a partner, and they will take a red pen and they will cross out any detail or information that is not relevant to the idea of the narrative.

Speaker 4:

I just think this is really useful because it gives students that opportunity for creativity in the free write portion, but then it also gives them that opportunity for critical thinking in editing their own free writing. I think this also can be really helpful to show students the writing process of what details are necessary and what details are relevant to your writing and which ones are not. Also, for this lesson plan, I think that it is an activity that requires very little differentiation because there’s not really an expectation of writing quality or length. So I think that even for an ELL or a IEP student, this would be an activity that they could part in without having to change much of it. So that is my lesson plan.

Jodi Shorma:

And the confidence level of the student that you just heard was different from the first student. If you noticed the use of I and my students, and it was about the learning and the activity in engaging the students. And so that’s what… As soon as I saw the difference between the two, and then the improvement of the first student in sharing assignments later on, that’s when I knew that there was something else going on with GoReact that I didn’t recognize upfront at the beginning of my pilot. And so also what I did was I also explored one other thing, another feature or use of GoReact. And slide 10, what I did was I formed groups and had a peer review. And so I had the…

Jodi Shorma:

(Silence).

Jodi Shorma:

See the markers when there’s feedback or comment at certain timestamps in the video as the video stream runs. And so that’s where the student who recorded the response can go back and review what his peers thought. And then also it’s an indicator for the peer to identify where he had left his comments to the person who had recorded the video. So that was just an activity that I had added on to that recording, and the students really enjoyed that. I know my classroom students as well as my online students liked that feedback. And they like providing feedback and receiving feedback from their peers.

Hillary Gamblin:

So many interesting ways of doing this. You’ve kind of alluded to this, but what improvements and benefits have you noticed as your teacher candidates are completing these prompts, especially as you went beyond just the pilot and started putting in more assignments?

Jodi Shorma:

I found that my online students were more focused on the task of what they needed to do. And I don’t know if it’s because they had five minutes or three minutes to record, but their discussions were very focused. From my classroom students, I felt that they were just going through the movements, and I think it’s because in the classroom naturally they can share with one another in the classroom. And so this was for the sake of sharing so to speak because they meet with me three days a week. But for my online students, they look forward to the use of GoReact. And one more thing about the feedback in that, for that one in particular assignment, I gave students the choice of adding comments and GoReact or comments in discussion board.

Jodi Shorma:

And every single one of them opted for GoReact instead of adding the comments in discussion board. So I think they enjoyed the features of the tool, and allowing them to upload comments while they were listening to the presenter. Let’s see. So besides the attention to task, I think that the online students, and this is something I’ll have to survey at the end of the semester, but I think they would say that they felt more engaged in the class and in the learning and in the discussions because of the videos, and their sharing by voice their thoughts and opinion. So I do have an online student in slide 11 Sabine. She introduces herself. She’s a student from Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Sabine Livingston:

Hi everybody. My name is Sabine Livingston. I am an online student at VCSU. I am in my senior year, and I am based out of Cheyenne, Wyoming. I would like to give some feedback about ease of use for online students with the GoReact tool. While browsing through it now, and working with it this semester, I found it very easy to use. I found it really neat. For example, that when I do watch a video from one of my classmates, and if I would like to comment at a certain point, the video automatically stops when I start typing and then I can resume it where it left off, and I found that pretty neat.

Sabine Livingston:

It just makes things a lot easier where I left off. Excuse me. I also like the variety of the voice comment and video comments as well. At least I have a choice to use several tools in order to comment to my classmates’ GoReact videos. I also like that I can jump ahead and reverse, that just really makes it a lot easier to study a video and really evaluate it properly. The posts, I found really easy to find, and it’s nice to have my own posts separated from others so I don’t need to look through and find mine. It’s very organized. I really thoroughly enjoyed working with GoReact. Thank you. Bye.

Jodi Shorma:

So to preface the video of Sabine that Sabine had created, I had asked her to share her thoughts for a presentation to the faculty and the teacher education office or teacher education department. And so that was the audience of Sabine in the recording of her comments.

Hillary Gamblin:

We’ve mentioned a few times, and we started drawing emphasis to this, that there’s an online, and brick and mortar in class section. You have those two different sections. What similarities and differences have you observed how these assignments have been used or received in those two learning environments?

Jodi Shorma:

Right. Like the example of the uploading of ideas for a teaching unit or a teaching lesson so that it’s in GoReact. So it’s there so that another classmate can enter and record comments. Both of my classes liked, enjoyed that feature, and they enjoyed adding comments, and they enjoyed reading the comments from their peers. But slides 13, I have a video from a student, Haley, and this was outside of the course assignments. She started as a on campus student, and because of the pandemic changed to an online student. She ended up having to go home. And so she then stayed at her home. And so Haley provides some good insight from a student perspective. Slide 13.

Haley Skinner:

Hi. My name is Haley Skinner. And previously I was an on camp student at VCSU. However, when the pandemic hit, I switched to online and ever since then I have been [inaudible 00:30:39] student. Through my time here as being an online student, a lot of the activities that we do are written based assignments. There are some discussion board posts when I do have the ability and chance to see what my peers are thinking, but as far as an actual seeing them in person or anything like that, it’s very limited. That’s why GoReact, I’ve really liked because it has opened that opportunity for me to visually see my classmates as well as the chance to verbally say what I am thinking, my opinions, instead of just a written base.

Haley Skinner:

How that relates to being in the teacher world is not everything your students are going to read or learn is going to be written down. As a teacher you’re going to need to be able to demonstrate what you’re thinking, what they want to do in a verbal format. So by doing this type of GoReact, this type of activity, it allows that ability for me to work on being able to express my thought, what I’m saying in a verbal format, working in that kind of speech area. So as a teacher, future teacher, this has been really helpful as being an online student to kind of gain more of that interaction, that verbal speaking, anything like that. So I think this is a great tool as far as using it for that type of ability as well, type of discussion with my peers.

Jodi Shorma:

So Haley is an advisee of mine, and she often has commented about the difference between her classroom and online experiences. And one of the features that… distinctions for her was engagement and her engaging with assignments in the class. And you can see from her comments that it’s that voice contributing by voice really provides her with some of that need for her to share and hear from others in that online course.

Hillary Gamblin:

So these sections of your methodology course are happening right now in the fall, and they’re going to be doing their student teaching in the spring. How do you see these video exercises fit in into the big picture of student growth and development?

Jodi Shorma:

So slide 14, I have just… There’s our topic. Well, I go back to my two goals and that was to learn the ins and outs of GoReact well enough so that I could support my colleagues in the teacher ed department. And the other was for my students to learn GoReact as a tool. So when they are out in student teaching in their placements, 2, 3, 4 hours from Valley City State, I wouldn’t have to be teaching them the movements of recording and commenting and things. And so the extra that GoReact is providing, I find it useful in my courses for engaging the students, obviously with a greater depth of thinking than just writing. But I do have two videos from students. One who will be a student teacher in the spring and another who is a junior who is… I’m still progressing in her program. And they provide some really good insight how they see GoReact in supporting them. And so I think gets better hearing it from them than me. All right. Slide 15. This is a video of Hannah, and she’s a senior in our program here at VCSU.

Hannah Dockter:

Hi. So I’m Hannah Dockter. I’m currently a senior English education major, and I will be student teaching next semester. I really like GoReact, and I can see myself using it in the classroom as I student teach. I think as I do record myself or I could even record my cooperating teacher just so later when I’m preparing to do a lesson, I could go back and see how she’s structured her classroom, how long it took her to do each activity. I could see it as a resource that way. And personally, for myself, I could record myself so that I could use the videos for my TLC, or I could use them to show other professors and ask their opinion about where I could improve. And just for my own reference where I could look and be like, “Okay, I need to make this activity shorter.” So yes, that’s how I can see myself using GoReact.

Jodi Shorma:

So Hannah is one of my on campus students. And a discussion we had in the class was how they see the use of GoReact, and supporting their student teaching and their program development. And that’s where the words from Hannah are coming from. Cassidy is a little different. Cassidy is still taking courses within the program. And in our program we have field experiences and practicums where the teacher candidates are interacting with students. And this is prior to student teaching. So Cassidy even has a larger perspective on the big picture of GoReact. So that’s slide 16.

Cassidy Hoyt:

Hello, my name is Cassidy Hoyt, and I am a junior here at VCSU although this is only my second year, and I’m majoring in English education and minoring in communications. I see GoReact as a way for me to document my progress as I move throughout this program. I can achieve this in several different ways. I have recorded my lessons for teaching in front of students in my practicum. I have recorded different class periods throughout the day while I am subbing. And this is a way for me to document my progress as I move through the program so that I can look back at what I have done in a year and see how I have improved. And this also ties together my development because from where I am now to where I will be in a year, can be vastly different. And looking back, I have the opportunity to, in a year from now, look back and see exactly what I was doing and how I have improved. Thank you.

Jodi Shorma:

So Cassidy’s description of her view of GoReact in supporting her throughout the whole program was something beyond what I had expected at the beginning of the pilot. So those two brought a different perspective to the use of GoReact and supporting not just teaching inside the class, but also the activity of their student teaching, and the support of their growth in that education program.

Hillary Gamblin:

Fantastic. I so appreciate the fact that you’ve shared so many of your students’ voices and insights. I feel like sometimes we miss that and that’s really important, especially as we’re talking about developing professional voice. So think you for going to all the effort of having those videos for us so we can hear them. It’s safe to say that you’ve discovered some far reaching unique opportunities-

Jodi Shorma:

Yes.

Hillary Gamblin:

… With video in the very short time that you’ve piloted this GoReact. So thank you for answering my questions. I’m sure that you’ve sparked some ideas and questions among those participating. So we’re going to take the next 10, 15 minutes to do a live Q and A. Again, if you’d like to submit a question for the Q and A, it’s the tab just below the video feed. My colleagues have been monitoring your questions and selected a few that we can ask. The first one is, and I actually may answer this, and then Jodi you can join in with your observations. But the first question is, do you require students to caption their videos so they are accessible to deaf or hard of hearing students? How do you make sure students with disabilities are not left out in this activity? Jodi, I’m going to, because I know the software so well, I’m going to jump in right now and just say that-

Jodi Shorma:

Yeah.

Hillary Gamblin:

… GoReact automatically has caption videos. We got our start actually with the ASL community. They’re the first people that really championed and loved GoReact because as they could sign and video record themselves signing, and then give feedback that way. So those are our roots. And so GoReact we really care about accessibility and we make that a priority. And so we make sure that our software is accessible to not only those that are hard of hearing, but those that need other accommodations. So that’s my little take on it. Jodi, what have you noticed?

Jodi Shorma:

The students tried it. So they were inside the GoReact and there’s a little button off to the left of their video and they can click on that. And once the video’s to arts playing the captions automatically come up on the bottom of the screen. So it was a very easy click to get the captions added to the screen.

Hillary Gamblin:

It’s what we like to hear. Perfect. The second question, what is the best way to learn how to use GoReact tools and features? What’s your experience been Jodi?

Jodi Shorma:

Well, basically I just go in and start tinkering around, that’s the kind of learner I am when it comes to technology. But I do have colleagues that want to have training. They want to hear about it. They want instructions in a print copy beside them before they do any movements. But since our GoReact is now integrated in Blackboard, if you think about posting a discussion board assignment with a link from the content area into discussion board or the journal feature or voice thread, it’s that easy. If you click the tools in Blackboard, you’ll see the GoReact. And then you have the prompts for what’s your assignment topic, what are your special instructions? And then you click submit and the link comes up right on the screen with your posting of the assignment. So those who are familiar with Blackboard, it takes on the same features of posting assignment as the other tools that we’re using.

Hillary Gamblin:

Fantastic. The next question is, how long did it take you to get set up on GoReact and how much IT help did it require?

Jodi Shorma:

So in the spring it was we used the web based GoReact. And then over the summer, once we bought so many licenses for students in the teacher ed program, it was integrated inside our Blackboard system. Now I don’t know the technical ins and outs of that, but I think my information is there for participants. They can email me, and I can certainly connect them to the person who uploaded it or is responsible for our Blackboard management system so that he could answer those questions. And so then once the tool was inside Blackboard, it was visible to all instructors on campus, but it was closed to only those courses and instructors who are within our teacher ed program. And so then the approval came from the teacher ed program to our Blackboard director to allow this course and this instructor to use GoReact. And then that’s how GoReact track the number of users according to our license agreement.

Hillary Gamblin:

So overall, do you feel like it was pretty user friendly?

Jodi Shorma:

Yes. For an instructor, for me, an instructor, it was seamless. It was very easy.

Hillary Gamblin:

Okay. Once again, what we want to hear. And the next question is, have any of your students been able to use GoReact for certification documentation?

Jodi Shorma:

We haven’t used it for that purpose. We do have a project, a capstone project that involves a collection of videos to demonstrate skill. And the students will be able to take their GoReact videos. And it’s a real click this button and you save it right into to your downloads, and you can rename it and then have access. It comes out as a MP4. That’s how I ended up moving the videos outside of GoReact for you Hilary for this presentation. So it’s real easy for students to do that. So they can upload them in their one drives and get the link, and then place that link inside their capstone project. Now in North Dakota, those capstone projects are not used for licensure. However, Wisconsin does have a project. I know I’ve had a couple students who have licensed in Wisconsin and have used their capstone projects for that particular requirement.

Hillary Gamblin:

And to add to that, Jodi, we’ve talked to a lot of our users around the country, and a lot of them are using it for certification especially AAQEP, edTPA.

Jodi Shorma:

Right.

Hillary Gamblin:

All of those. In fact, if anyone’s interested, we actually had a wonderful workshop or a video we can share where someone shows how he basically give a students practice. In addition to, they can use the videos from GoReact. To give students practice for edTPA requirements, he puts in the rubrics in there and gives them feedback and does a two birds with one stone. He has a student observation and he also just give some edTPA feedback too. So it’s a really fantastic tool to help your students not only use videos that they can submit, but also prior for them to practice with those videos that they’re not going to submit. So, yes. The next question, let’s see. Can you use the same controls that are embedded in canvas or Blackboard such as students post their videos before watching others?

Jodi Shorma:

I don’t know of a safeguard or a requirement that I can set in the GoReact assignment in Blackboard that the student has to record something before he can listen to others. I haven’t run into that.

Hillary Gamblin:

Yeah. I think there are security controls for that. Another question is, are all the features that you’ve used in GoReact.com available through your Blackboard or your other LMS?

Jodi Shorma:

Yep. Everything that I’ve had my students do, it’s all in Blackboard right now. It’s all inside the Blackboard course for each of my two methods courses.

Hillary Gamblin:

And I know there are other LMS that people are using besides Blackboard, and I can say that that’s the same for those as well. So that should be the same experience if you don’t have Blackboard as well. Another question that we have right now is what are you going to do next semester? Now that you’ve discovered this, are you going to change? Are you going to do anything different? What are you going to do?

Jodi Shorma:

So next semester I will be observing two of the on campus students during their student teaching. And so I will be going into their classrooms and I’ll be sitting in back of the room and observing them teaching lessons to their students. There are three of the online students who will be student teaching, but that’s at a distance. And I hope to be using GoReact to have them record their student teaching so I could still help in their development of their teaching performance. When it is at a distance, VCSU hires a individual from a university close to that student teacher placement to the school. And so that person is there observing, but the responsibility of the mentoring is still within my hands. And so then this would allow me to more closely help the student in improving his performance, student teaching performance.

Hillary Gamblin:

How wonderful for you that you get to stay with some of those students.

Jodi Shorma:

Yes.

Hillary Gamblin:

Oh, that’s perfect. I’m happy to say that we were able to answer everybody’s questions that were submitted. So thank you to those that submitted those questions. This makes us a living, breathing, learning experience for all of us. And we appreciate you taking the time. Before we end, I like to ask our guests to share three takeaways. So Jodi, what would be the three takeaways you’d give for using a video assessment tool like GoReact in teacher education?

Jodi Shorma:

So my take-aways, slide 17. Here’s what I found that I’ll be sharing with the faculty and the teacher ed program after the pilot that GoReact to is more than a video recording tool. And it does a good job of that, but it’s so much more. It’s a tool for learning. It’s a tool for the students to support their learning, and then it’s a tool for teaching. It’s a tool for the instructor to organize those creative assignments, to get that engagement going, and discussion going with the students in those online classes, and then to set up those peer review activities even in online… or even in your on campus classes as well as your online classes.

Hillary Gamblin:

Perfect. Succinctly put, thank you. Jodi, thank you for sharing your expertise with us today. You did this workshop voluntarily, so we appreciate you taking your personal time to be with us today. We’d like to thank everyone that joined us live. To show our appreciation we have selected one participant that is with us live right now to win a pair of AirPod Pros. My favorite piece of technology that I own. So congratulations to Denise Callaway. We will be reaching out to Denise to ensure that you get your AirPod Pros. We did these drawings live for each of our workshops every month. So if you didn’t win this time, join a next time to get a chance to win.

Hillary Gamblin:

We know that these workshops are particularly valuable for everyone that’s signed up. So we’ll send you an email with a link, the recording today’s workshop and the slide deck, and there should also be a link for captions as well. I know that was in the discussion today. So watch for that in your inbox. And those slide decks, I know there was some pretty detailed parts for the assignments. So you can actually sit down and read through those. So those will be there as well, but that is it for today. Thank you to our participants. Thank you to those working behind the scenes. And of course, thank you to our guest, Jodi Shorma, and we will see you next time.