In this podcast episode, we dive into the world of education technology and innovation with special guest Jen Giffen. Known for her expertise in this field, Jen shares her extensive experience and discusses the profound impact of technology on education.

Transcript

Hi, my name is Blue. And I'm the host of this new podcast, the 21st century teacher with livid Earth, and my job is to ensure that our teachers and students get the most out of our programs. This new podcast series is just one of the ways I'm going to be supporting our community of educators, with a monthly conversation with a special guest educator discussing a different aspect of 21st century teaching and learning. A reminder that if you're a teacher in British Columbia, the Yukon or the Northwest Territories, thanks to focused education resources, you now have access to our blended learning library for K to seven teachers. If you'd like more information about our programs, please visit our website, live it dot Earth. Today, I'm talking with Jen Giffen, who is known for her expertise in the field of education, technology and innovation. She is a dynamic and passionate educator dedicated to transforming the world of education through the integration of technology and innovative teaching methods. With a career spanning over two decades, she has made a profound impact on the educational landscape inspiring both educators and students alike. Jen has worked as a teacher, librarian, and former curriculum and digital literacy consultant in the York Region District School Board in Ontario, Canada. She has a Bachelors of education from Queen's University and a master's of education in curriculum teaching and learning from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. Jen is a Google innovator, and Microsoft Innovative Educator, Apple teacher, HP Teaching Fellow student voice and master sketch noter mum of three boys, and she's a co host of a podcast called shucks and GIF. So I would like to start today by acknowledging that I am here in the Slocum Valley just north of Nelson and this is the actual actually the uncedeed traditional territory of the Sinixt, and the Ktunaxa. And as well as home to around 5000 of the Metis nation. And today I'm very excited to welcome Jen Giffen to the show. And Jen, thank you. I know you're so such a busy person, mom of three and a teacher and all the things. So thank you so much for taking the time to speak today.

Well, thank you, I want to acknowledge that I am on the land of two treaties. The treaties have been signed with the Mississaugas of the credit First Nation and the first nation of the Williams treaty, who are the Mississaugas of alderville curve Lake Hiawatha, Scugog Island and the Chippewa Beausoleil, Rama and Georgina Island. To honor the agreement that we have with the land. I want to acknowledge the connection that we have with that land through continued relationship and support with the First Nations that I mentioned and to the right, and Jen is LIVE coming from school. So very real teaching happening at the other end. Right, I'm on my lunch. I also want to acknowledge that we have a shared responsibility to respect and care for the land and waters for future generations. Thank you for having me.

That's lovely. Thank you so much, Jen, for sharing that. And let's start with we've already been talking a little bit before recording around technology, that there's so much now so many tools that we can access. I'm wondering, can you share a pivotal moment in your career, if you can think of there if there was one time when you saw the transformative power of technology in education? And what did you learn from that experience? And how has it shaped your approach to Ed Tech?

Well, there's a whole bunch of different things. I think if I went back to the very first one, I go to Edmodo, which, which came to me before Google Classroom and so innately it's Google Classroom. And that idea that we could have this really simple classroom virtually, where I could share messages to students who weren't necessarily in class at the time, who I could send documents home to, parents could come in and see what was going on without having to make the phone calls. I could automate emails home to parents and whatnot. Students could ask questions, and if I wasn't there, other students could answer and I was just like, this is huge. And I've always been a second wave adopter. I see someone else using it. I sit back, I watch, I watch, watch. And then in that sort of the second round, I'm like, I'm all in like I'm diving, fully clothed into the deep end. I'm like, I'm doing this here I go. And that was Edmodo, for me. And then the next semester that that fall, you know, Google, we really started becoming like a Google workspace for education or at the time like a G apps, a Google Apps district, and watching to the power of just Google Docs and the fact that students could open up And in real time, give each other feedback. And I was like, like, I think back to 1996 When I got my first email address, and I was at Queen's University after my age, and I was emailing a friend who was at school, just outside Montreal, and he emailed me back right away. And we were like we are on at the same time. And it was mind boggling where's my my children now, or like it was called texting mom, relax. But it was crazy. And that was that was Google Docs for me to see that power of as an English teacher at the time that you know that just in time feedback, and I could jump into a kids when they were writing in class, and from my desk, instead of going around and being like, Hey, I'm looking at this like, and just sort of pop in and be like, what are you working on give feedback, you know, the student who's not going to raise their hand in class, and ask a question, Who could I, I had certain kids that would just leave it even open. And they would ask me, and that's why I always have it, you know, on my eyesight, because we're not going to raise our hands. So you know, the accessibility of that, too, is incredible. And then of course, you know, I, I love Microsoft flip. And that did a lot for me with my own kid. We talked about that beforehand. And with students here, and then most recently, Chachi Beatty, like it I remember vividly, it is a core memory for me, where I was standing, who told me November the seventh? In my role, I was talking to this guy, Gary, I work with John, have you seen this? And I was like, Tell me more. No. And we I came in and I started and I was like, this is this is this is it. Like this is a pivotal moment with technology. So all of those things. And you'll notice, I think the theme that that weaves all of these together is this idea of collaboration, and amplification of voice and, and automation. making things easier, like so that whole smarter, not harder work ethic and AI all of them have just been like, yeah, this, this is going to connect, and this is going to make us stronger. Now they will all come of course with you know, certain concerns and, and privacy and the like, oh, we have Google Docs and who's to say another kid's not gonna go in and write their whole thing. And they're all essay for them like, Okay, well, maybe we need to rethink that essay, then. That's what we need to do. So there's a lot, but those are those are probably the big ones that I've seen off the top of my head just through through my, you know, couple decades of teaching. Yeah.

Yeah, Chad GPT. Just before, it was only in the last couple of weeks, actually, from speaking to ALEC Curos, who I know that you're, you know, of, yeah, it kind of blew my mind. And I've been quite resistant to it. But actually, I'm realizing I'm in my 40s. And I don't want to get left behind. So I'm being very mindful, actually, in just the last week to use it in the way that I would traditionally use Google. Because there's, there's another layer to it as well. Yeah, I'm finding it fascinating. But I think it's really, I think we need to embrace it. And just learn how to how to use it.

The genies out of the bottle, like we're not coming back and just tell you, like, as much as you want to say like, Oh, we're not gonna let kids do this. And I'm just gonna ignore and it's gonna be a no, hey, no,

we can't count. Nope. No. And I love that what you said about Google Docs, because that was actually for me, my first experience really in like being collaborating online in that way. And it just blew, it also blew my mind. So you've been an advocate for great creativity and innovation education? What are some of the most inspiring or innovative uses of technology in the classroom that you've come across recently? And I think you've kind of mentioned some of some of those, some of those moments. But yet, how do you see these approaches changing the future of education?

I think we're going to have to look more at what we're asking students to do and what our core skills are. So I listen, I don't want to stop thinking. And I think that's at the foundation, everyone's biggest fear with AI is that we're not going to think anymore. It's we're in a while, right? That Disney movie that I adore, and like, oh, gosh, we're gonna be that we're gonna be floating around and look, oh, yeah, I want to wear you know, blue clothes, and then click a button and your red clothes turn blue. And I don't want to lose that I don't want to lose the creativity. I don't want to I don't want to stop thinking because I love thinking and I love exploring different options and topics. And so I think there's that that really frightens people. But I think there's things you can do, like if I think about myself as a traditional English teacher, and like, Okay, we're gonna learn something and write an essay on it. Like, I don't know that we're there and I've been off that essay trained for a really long time. Like I talked to most of my friends. And I say to them, like grown adults in their 40s and like, always asked me to write a five paragraph essay and they laugh ever. Like why are we spending so much time what was the last time you had to read Shakespeare? And I love Shakespeare I was actually with friends last night all teachers and we're wrote for an adult beverages catch up and and we were talking about Shakespeare and and when one is teaching ninth grade English this year, and she's like, I'm not teaching it because I love it, but I don't think they're gonna love it. There's so many other voices that we can embrace them. and whatnot. And I think that Chachi Beatty has an AI in general just has the affords us the luxury of, of getting our answers quickly, which is good and knockin, I will acknowledge that. But I think I think differently now. And that's where we're headed. So it's not that I'm not thinking, but I'll give you an example. Last year, I had this incredible young lady doing a co op, in the library with me she is she wants to be a teacher. She was a grade 12 student here, she'd done a whole bunch of coops. And she wanted to be in the library anyway, called the her and her friends were the crew from great first eighth grade nine, they were in her everyday right up to the end of grade 12. And so she's like, Can I do a coop in here? I'm like, absolutely. You want to be a teacher? And she has since she was little, right? Let's show you a different way. You can use a teaching degree that's not traditional in the classroom. And she was applying for this huge scholarship through RBC, the bank, and she's like, can you write me a reference letter, and I said, yep. And I really wanted to do well. And I'm like, all of this. And I was just, I felt overwhelmed. I had this like perfection paralysis. So here's what I'm going to do. So I dropped her CV into Chachi, Beatty, and point form notes that I'd taken just observational notes throughout the semester of things that she had done, you know, less than she taught display, she put up interactions she'd had with some of our students, and said, this is I'm going to put them in, I say, Link, these are my observations. Here's the CV, link them to show why she's deserving of a scholarship. And I showed her I'm like, This is what I'm going to do. And so it came out with one focus on this, too, this has to be shorter. And so I thought about, I had to read everything. I tweaked it to meet my needs, we went through a five iterations of it, then I threw it into Google Docs. She was in there with me right back to that, like we're there collaboratively, and I'm typing things out. And I'm like, Oh, I wouldn't say it this way, it would go this way. And then about 20 minutes, we had a beautiful reference letter that would have taken me hours and hours and hours to do to do it justice. And in the end, she won a $10,000 scholarship. And that, to me was so phenomenal. I don't think it's because of my one letter. But even the thought process and her like sitting there with me being like, yeah, that's not really what we did in that like is more that's like, okay, let's reword it. And, you know, I see teachers just at the base and the fundamentals, like instead of saying, write an essay about this, like, let's have aI create an essay for us. And now let's take that and critique it. What worked for this, what didn't work, why? What is good about this, what's not good about that, like, you don't want to do things like I have a friend who went and had an interview yesterday, like, I'm not going to open chat GPT in an interview and give those answers. So when I show up for the job, I'm like, I can't, I can't talk talk the talk, right? Or walk the walk. Rather, I can only talk the talk when it's in front of me. But there's so many things that we can do. Like we had to disseminate all this data. Last year, we interviewed 120 students about engagement and what engagement look like in education so that we could inform our practice for next year. And our, you know, we have a challenge practice that we do every year, and this year is around engagement. And we were pairing and our principals like, Okay, go through all the answers and see if you can pull out like some common themes. And we're like, you know, what, like, I don't think I have to do this, this is not because my own bias is gonna come I'm gonna be guessing Oh, that's more of a math thing. That's not the library or that's, that's are they do that? Well, because, you know, of course, they're gonna be more engaged than they are here. Anyway. So I just threw all the answers into chat GPT. And I said, summarize this for me. And he came back with 17 points of the 120. I'm like, okay, that's too many. Can you actually come up with seven major themes? And they said, Yeah, this is great, or five, strip five major themes. And then from that, that I didn't my principal came over, he was like, You're cheating, you're gonna get in trouble. I'm like, I don't think I am my principles. Amazing. And she came over and she was like, give How do you do that? So quickly, I was like, let put in charge up. This is what I did. And she's like, that's genius. Everyone do that right now. Because then instead of spending all this time trying to tease out the themes ourselves, we have this like, unbiased, arguable envoy is like looking at data and throwing it back at us. And now we can actually get to the the heavy lifting and doing the work. Because then immediately in September's meeting, rather than being like, Hey, this is what we saw, what do you think? Do we now have our five themes, and we've created professional learning communities around that, pick your one and dive into it? So it just, it can really afford us the luxury of time, which an education I always say is our currency, maybe more, and that will give us that so sort

of we still need to be you have to be critical thinking and still analyze the information you're getting and tweaking it. I did just a thought. I don't know if you've experienced this, but when I'm doing up for more of a creative for creative reasons using chat GPT for writing and and things like this. I found that it's almost overwritten. So I almost need to kind of put my own human spin on that. Otherwise, you can almost tell there's a chat GPT document. That's what I've noticed. Anyway, even doing bios, I actually I should have read it out. I wrote a little bio using some of what's online on your own website. And then I put it into chat chat TPT I don't know if you've done this. Give me a bio for Jen Griffin. Amazing. so detailed. very heavy on content and it just you read it. Yeah, it was incredible. I highly recommend you do it. It would take too long to read out on the podcast because it was quite. Yeah, it's quite something I was really impressed. So worth doing for yourself. But yeah, I just felt like it needed the human twist. Like it needed me to go in and kind of, and then yeah, so I didn't use that, because there was so much information that I already had what I wanted, but I was just really curious, like, what what it would how it would read. But yeah, that was my that's been my experience so far would catch up to anyway can be a little bit overwritten and a little bit worried.

Yeah, I find it's very wordy. Like I wanted directions for this activity. I had it in point form notes. And I want to like put it through into chat up and like put the end that was like, I don't need a page of notes. I'm like, can you make this like three lines? Like, which

is a good point, you can't so you can ask church up to con you to like reduce it, as you were saying and cut it down to the number of themes that you want, which I think is really neat. Yeah. So that being said, so how does tech support accessibility in the classroom? You've already kind of mentioned a couple of a couple of points on this, actually. But is there a stigma? And is there a stigma to accessibility when you're using in a classroom, and using these different tools in different ways? Yeah,

I want to say there's not a stigma like there used to be. And I think a lot of that is because we have these things, right? Like we have our cell phones. So a lot we can get away with a lot without people knowing. So for example, I was teaching a class this morning, they, it was Family Studies class. And they were doing, they're doing a sketch note of their carbon footprint, they call it and rather than just taking notes, or doing something on Canva, which is another great way to do it, she wants them to really like think about it. And so she does these handwritten analog sketch notes with them. So I was just teaching them that sketchnoting one on one. And she came over to me at one point, the teacher and she handed me her phone. And she said, I have a student in here who's MLL like multi language learner. ESL A, so very, very little English at all. And so she's using a translation tool, I think she was using Microsoft translate. That's which one, it was just like if you could just like put this near you or carry it when you're going to walk because I'm a big Walker when I'm teaching to check in with the kids. And what it does is as I'm speaking it, like transcribes everything I say in English, and then on his phone, it was transcribing into his home language like, and he was like, oh, okay, this is great. And I could see him falling on, he would read and then he'd go, and he would do the activity. So like, that's accessibility at its best, like that student wouldn't have been able to participate to the level he did. Without that it was very discreet. Kids just thought I was carrying around my cell phone or just like in which is totally normal. Had I known ahead of time, I would have just, I would have actually put in my air pods and just had that so I could walk around without it. I think things like that are really great. I know that my own my own kid, when he got his ADHD diagnosis, there was a lot that we did for accessibility. And just the idea of like, to me, I really love in Ontario that we're focusing now on like conversations and observations as much as we are products. So the fact that, you know, he writes a test, a teacher will come and be like, Okay, sit and talk to me about this. And they're using tools like Microsoft flipped to be like, Okay, go on to your thing, I can't talk to you right now. But he goes, and he sits in the halls and when he can't write a full paragraph, because you know, his brain is on sentence eight in his hand. So in sentence, one, he can go into sort of like, verbally dump into this Flipgrid topic and be like, This is what I want to say to you about this. And the teachers can go back and see that. So I think there's a lot in there that can be done. And just in general, like AI in general has been baked into so many of our products without noticing it, like you're writing in Gmail, like an email in Gmail, and what does it do, it finishes your sentence for you and things like that. That's already there. And for some students without AI, and without that kind of assistive technology, it's it's inaccessible, their education is inaccessible. So that's not fair at all. So I think check does a lot of that, to be able to make things a lot easier for students be it like, you know, you and I talked about Google Keep or notes or whatever, like, I know that Google or Apple reminders was something that we used with my son really early, he didn't want to write in an agenda, we knew it was not going to happen. So we had an iPad at school. And every day when his teacher would put the homework, anyone else would write in his agenda, he would go to his he would go to his iPad, you would go to reminders. And he would add a reminder and just take a picture of the board. And that reminders list was automatically linked with my phone and my husband's phone. So when he got home, whichever one of us were there, we'd be like, Okay, this is your homework for today. We wouldn't have to remind him, get it out of the bag and do this because, like with his exceptionality, that just that was more of a fight. And now we're fighting you to do all this and then to fight you to get homework. So if we can take out some of those barriers with technology and that way, that's just a really simple example. Then why not? Why not use it like to me that's, that's a no brainer.

Yeah, that's really neat, actually. Yeah, I'm gonna remember that for my kids, I think that's a really neat one. In the advent of blended learning, what is the challenge of the modern library? I'm curious, how is blended learning playing a role? And then I was thinking, why, what are the challenges of a librarian, but at the same time, it feels to me, just from the little bit that I got to know you that it's almost it's kind of like a new lease of life as a librarian. In a way, if you accept the tech tools, like it sounds really exciting some of the stuff that you're doing, including the podcast, and I'd love for you to just mention a little bit about how you use that with the students the podcasting, because I'm a big podcast fan. But yeah, yeah, tell me about blended learning as a modern teacher library.

There's a there's a lot of things like the traditional like, sit and shush and read books that you see in Library Learning Commons, not there. And I really like I don't really have a library, I have a Learning Commons, which someone, someone when I first started here said, they thought it was very pretentious, because it's an everywhere common area to learn. I'm like, okay, whatever. But I just I love that. It's not just about that, like I love to read I read I'm, I'm slow this year, I think I'm gonna book 38 of the year last year, but like 65 books or something like that. And I'm an audiobook user. So again, speaking about technology and technology and, and accessibility in that, like, there's absolutely no way I could sit and read a book, there's no way I have, I'm too busy with the kids. My kids are in rep baseball, like I'm at the diamond all the time. So when they're late before their games start, I'm listening to an audiobook when I'm cooking, I'm listening to an audiobook or a podcast or whatnot in the car, or wherever I'm going, like, I used to have a fairly long commute, so I don't as much anymore. Anyway, as far as the challenges that I see, there's a lot of people are like, Oh, well, it's a dying, dying field. And why would you want to be a library because no one wants print books anywhere? Like that's not what my job is about. So like you mentioned, the podcasting equipment, I got this equipment through a grant funding from the province. And I started reaching out to teachers and like how can we move away from traditional writing pieces and have more you know, performative pieces for some students or time where they're able to not just stand up and do a presentation. So I partnered with our a French teacher who used to be here, it's gone on to another school, but the the assignment lives on, and our grade 12 French students come pick a topic of whatever they want. And we teach them about what podcasts are and they listen to a little bit and they create their own and they can during their, their spare their lunch and their class, can rent out this room or rent out this room, like book the room. They don't, they don't pay anything. They come into this room, and they show them how to hook everything up. And we have little QR codes all over, they can scan if I'm not here, and they need to learn in a pinch. And they record a French podcast has to be like five or 10 minutes long. And they have to they have certain elements that they need to include. And then we did that the one year and I thought this is great. And I created a little QR codes and a poster that when kids come in, they could scan them and listen. But then I started talking to the head, the new head of French the following year. And I said, Listen, this is a really cool activity. But why don't we level it up a little bit. And after they record because they do it fairly early, to just sort of assess their their oral communication, because they've been speaking French for you know, 12 years. They we bring the ninth grade students in and they do we call it a podcast promenade. And it's very fancy. And they scan one of them they think they would like and they have to listen to it. And as part of the assignment, the grade twelves create certain questions to see if they understand what they're saying. So now we can assess, okay, did the grade twelves express themselves clearly, like how's their enunciation? How's your pronunciation as, like, are you speaking too quickly, but also then the grade nines comprehension is evaluated through that as well. And it gives a reason that authentic audience which I've always been, like, you know, I was talking about authentic audiences for assessment since before it was a traditional thing to talk about. And it gives them a reason to be like, Okay, I won't want to dwell on this because it's not just my teacher listening to it. It's, you know, possibly my neighbor, or my younger brother, or sister or cousin or just kid in the hall. And while they may not care necessarily about all these what these young kids, these younger kids thinks he's Niners, they do want to represent themselves with integrity and show like, like, I'm I do good work, right. They we have a really high academic standard here at the school, and kids have a lot of pressure on themselves and put a lot of pressure on miles. So it's worked really well. So things like that I see. I just look at like, okay, where, what can I do, even things like I have a Human Library speaker series that I just invite a whole bunch of different people in. And because of the advent of the virtual and doing things like zoom and Google meet and whatnot, we can very easily get people in No, I don't love to do them virtually, because I think the kids are just burnt out of looking at a screen. But I can get people from all different walks of life and speak to our students about things that they wouldn't have access to otherwise, and most of them volunteer, I'm like, I can't pay you, but I can give you a cool mug with the school logo on it. And it's amazing. We reach out to our parent community and we've had a number of parents come in and speak to different classes and it's it's really, it's really cool. There's a lot of things that we can do. If we just look at okay, what I find a tool that I like I'm like, I always think I'm like, Okay, how can I use this with a lesson? With a club? How can I like there's there's always something that I can do right now we're actually preparing my co librarian and I are going to prepare a little like mini AI as like for teachers. And just a little snippet like send out a little like, Hey, did you know this and like, if you don't want to create a slide deck from scratch, here's this if you want Leveled Reader check out defeat. Defeat is definitely taught me is defeated and Google defeat you find it was one of the one of the big thing that came out yesterday. And it's it's fantastic. You're like, yeah, I need something on this. And I want the level to be for like eighth graders. And then you might say, Okay, I actually have a whole bunch of different levels in my classroom where you have one student like, who has an exceptionality, that's processing and you're like, Okay, I need this topic, or I need this content, but it needs to be a few grade levels lower so that they have accessibility, and no one knows because like, I'm pushing these out on Google Classroom, yours looks the same. We were all on our devices do because we're one to one school, right? Everyone has their own. And no one's any the wiser. We can all talk about what we're reading. And yeah, I think it's really cool way to get teachers to understand, Okay, how are you going to use it? Because I think a lot of apprehension around AI is like, Oh, they're automatically just gonna copy and paste and do it and pay? How do you? How is it that you use it? And how are you using it ethically, let's transfer those skills that we're using to our students. It's a lot of the unknown that we're scared of like, I remember being a literacy teacher, and talking about later literacy and getting kids to read and how do we know that they're going to be successful? In what strategies? Do we read that to really do a lot of thought? And like, what do I do when I read? Okay? Well, what I read, I see like, the movie playing in my head, and I was aghast, early in my career to find out that some students don't have that they don't see that movie in their head, they don't visualize at all. And it's like, wow, that's something I have to teach. I didn't realize that happened. So I think we explore it too. And that can be, you know, independent of our students, or I think there's a lot of benefit to doing it alongside our students, right, like saying, like, hey, let's dive into this. And what did we find?

Yeah. What about being like, what, how do you approach digital citizenship, in terms of like, safety? And like, where do you start with that, because it is a big, big, scary world. Parents too. I don't know, if you have a lot of interaction with, you know, that concern that parents have, as a parent, my 10 year old now has his own laptop at school. It's a school thing. So he stays at school as well. But I was I'm just coming around to it, like the idea of my 10 year old with an iPad, like an iPad or, you know, whatever kind of mail, whatever he's using device. Yeah, I've had, yeah, I'm still kind of working through that. And I'm really coming to embrace it for sure. And he's not a kid that's into gaming, so don't feel that he's gonna go down that. And not that that's bad. But as a kid, as someone who doesn't game the idea of my kid stuck on a device gaming and thinks he's very physical and outdoors anyway, so he has a lot of that. But yeah, how do you approach that? Like, what does that look like? Well,

in high school, it's a little bit more of a challenge than with my own kids who are in middle school. They can like middle school, it's like you have an hour on your iPad a day. And even that, that's sort of a newish thing. It used to be an hour on the weekends. And then they were actually really honest with me last night, I started, like you guys keep sneaking in. And like grabbing your iPads, we have a cupboard that we keep them in that we charged them in. And then finally one of my sons was like, well, you forgot to turn on our timers, because they should have timers that they couldn't access like their games and this and that. You forgot to turn it on. And I was like, well, that that took a lot of courage. Because you said that right in front. Your brother's like you're throwing all three of you right under the bus. And we'll see how they react. And they were all like, Yeah, we were doing this and I said, Okay, I'm, we just need to have a conversation. And I think that's a really big thing. Like, let's have some conversations about why you want to use it and what you want to use it for. And, and they did and I wasn't angry. I was like, I'm disappointed that you've been doing this and didn't tell me earlier. But let's talk about why. And I think keeping those lines of communication open. Like my eldest son, I actually allowed him to sign up for discord when he was 12. Because I remember hearing an analogy, like you wouldn't just hand your car keys over a kid at 16 Like you would teach them how to drive and social media needs to be looked at the same way. So we did a lot of mentoring like his discord account was on my phone as well. I can jump in at any point it's and see what's going on and, and what they're talking about. And we had one instance where he was, I don't really understand this core, but I guess there's like servers and like a little chat rooms. And they he was he was the admin for one of them. And someone invited friends in and one guy just started just being an idiot online, right, like calling people out picking baits. And I was like, Who is this kid? And he's like, Well, I don't know. And I'm like, okay, but you're in charge of this room. So you letting them in? What does that tell you about the tone you're willing to send? He's like, Oh, and I'm like, You need to remove him and he was so cute. So he wrote the guy and he's like, I'm sorry, but the way that you're you're talking in my in this server doesn't align with how I want to run it. So I'm going to have to remove you and like the guys like bra, bra, think what they say to each other. You could have, you could have just removed me. You didn't have to write the essay or whatever he said. And he was like, and so then he removed him. And he's like, Well, I sort of felt like I at least owed him. And I loved that, because it's like, why did you think that Bennett? And he said, well, because if it was real life, and as I asked him to leave somewhere, like he's just he understands, right? Like, that's, that's key. You don't just like rage quit things. Like, yeah, you need to need to make sure that people are aware he goes, because like, maybe he didn't know he was being offensive, and then wouldn't you would have done it again to someone else? And it's like, yeah, there's a lot of learning in that. So I think it's constant communication with students, like the one thing that I do I see in classrooms all the time is like, there's the kids like staring down on their phones, right? When we're trying to teach. And I say to them, I'm like, listen, I understand the addiction, I have it too. Like, I get on to Instagram. And it's like, by, like, I have blocks that I purposely put for myself, so that I can't look in social media for more than two hours in a day. And I manage six social media accounts, through school and through like for the library, and this like, some of that is like work related. But if I've done a lot of work that day, then I'm off, like, go out and crochet a little bit more, which I'm trying to learn and go out and, you know, go for a walk or like, go play ball with the kids. And I think that's important to model that behavior to our kids. So for me, that's, that's a huge thing is those conversations around that and don't just like, yeah, sure, you can play and it's easy. Like, it's really easy to give your kids an iPad for hours, and they're out of your hair. And that was one of the things we live my husband's works at home still, post pandemic, like his office downsized, and like their actual physical space. He's like, Yeah, there's not really a desk for me every day, so I can't go in. And for him, it's a lot easier if the kids are quiet for that first hour. Right? And then they go out and they play and they want to power down and just like chat with your friends. And that's another thing, right? i This summer, we realized when they kept they want to talk to their friends is not like back in the 90s when I was in high school, and you pick up a phone, and you'd call each other and I'd sit on the phone for six hours, like you're on a different device. And it's not like my cell phone isn't just a phone. So now listen, it's like, oh, I this distraction and this distraction. And I had conversations, like I said last night with the kids, like, do you understand why we're doing this? And my kids are crazy athletic, like you said about your your kid? And they say yeah, well, you know, you're really athletic. And you're, you're playing all this ball, and you're making all the school teams and you're doing all this and why is that happening? Again? Because that's they're just used to it, like our friends go out and run and they're out of breath in three minutes. But it's like we're, we can't play on our device. We're not just sitting, we don't have this, you know, lethargic mentality. So we're I know. So it's huge.

Yeah, totally. I love the dialogue piece that you just mentioned around being really open and having a conversation. And also, the modeling I think is true, too. Like, we don't have any devices when we're eating dinner. Or anytime we're eating at the table as a family. There's no devices within reach. And if

the only time that we do is if we ask a question, then I'm like, Oh, we don't know, school yelled at Google, aka Google. We ask her Google. And she doesn't have or like, we say, can we go and get this? And it's only to foster further discussion of what the discussion we're already having. It's like, pulling out a copy. Yeah. Right. Like if you can't, you don't have a set of encyclopedias. And that's the only time we have it at the table. And it's only one of mine or my husband's? Yeah,

yeah, like that. So in the rapidly changing, you know, evolving landscape that we're talking about in our tech, how do you recommend or what are some what are some advice you could offer, about how to keep up with the latest trends and tools and education? Technology? And I know you have a website, and I know you have an online presence? Are there any particular resources and strategies that you would offer? So

I was really big on Twitter for a long time now x, which I don't like to be x something to eat recently. I know. Yeah, I'm with you. Like no thing. So weird. It is a weird one. Threads I got into a little bit too. I like the integration. So I'm a big fan of social media. And even just like, following people, finding people and, and reaching out, like sliding into their DMS, so to speak, to ask questions. There's a lot of people that are really willing to dialogue in that way, commenting, liking gait, build your algorithms, so you get what you want. Like I remember during the 2016 election, in the States, I didn't have a single political, anything on my feed for the week leading up to that election. And it's because they really carefully curated who I liked, who I followed who I stopped and I read things for him like Nope, don't want this. This is not where I want to go. And I think that's that's really important. The one thing I really also like to do, like I mentioned SD a few times, right, like the big conference that happens in the States, usually in the end of June. I didn't go this year I was going to go and then our graduation here at the school got flipped and I am CR grad and it would have meant that like I could go for a day. I'm like this doesn't make any sense. So I bowed out but I just followed the hash saglik Hashtag SD hashtag not at ISTE. So if you know that there's conferences going on, if you're just wondering, like, I'd really like to go there, but I can't financially or the timing doesn't work, go on to social media, be it tick tock, be it, Instagram via Twitter X via threads, and follow the hashtag. And it's amazing what you can learn from just following what people are sharing. It's almost like you're there fly on the wall without actually being present. It's like the cheapest way to go. And even after a conference, if you are there live, I often will go back like on a plane ride home or on a drive home if I'm not driving. And I'll read through things. And I'll be like, Oh, that's a cool one. I'm going to like bookmark that or whatnot. And I usually have, I use wakelet, which is a digital bookmarking. And it's, I love the tool. And I just, I save everything to awake and I just call it like SD 2023. And then I can go back and find in fact, I have a wakelet that I do every season and I say cool things I found online in the winter. And every time like I see something on social media, or if you were to share something with me, or someone said something at school, I'd be like, Oh, I'm gonna go on. And it's literally just online bookmarking. And I go back so I can I can search in there to be like, oh, there was this thing once that created slide decks using AI. And I just, I searched in there and I have it all in one place. Right? Like I think that's that's the tool. That's the workflow that works for me. So I think that's also really important listening to podcast to just even if it's not a regular thing, like I got, for a long time as like, I have to listen to every episode. And if do this, I'm like, No, you know what, I'll just I'll sort of peruse and be like, Oh, that sounds interesting. Or today, I've half an hour I want to go on a walk. Why don't I just whatever shows up next on my feet I'm gonna listen to so podcasts are really, really great for that. I have certain ones that are ed tech that I that I really love. They don't necessarily I'm finding since sort of near like, after about a year into the pandemic, I found a lot of the ones that I was listening to. They aren't they're producing as as frequently as they once were like me, me even right like my podcast. I haven't done anything since March. I was I was pretty regular, but people are taking hiatus but like some ones that I like in education are like check this out with Ryan and Brian. They're a couple of educators from California. They haven't they did a couple over the summer but they've been pretty quiet since but I got got tech ed the podcast with Eric guys and Nick Johnson is one that they're still producing pretty regularly. I really like there's Casey bells shakeup learning podcast is really great. I've done a lot of work with Casey like her. The creative classroom podcast with John Spencer, is another really great one. If you're if you're he's really big into AI right now. He was like big maker movement, but he's shifted. So I find a lot of really cool stuff with him. If you're into like Chromebooks and using Google, John Sawatch has one called the Chromebook crap, the Chromebook classroom podcast. That's really good and trying to see what other ones that I have here that are, are good. There's another one called leading equity that I really like with Sheldon Egan's if you're not edtech, but if you're looking at sort of the equity lens of things, and he does a lot of equity work, too. I really like his the Ed Tech takeout is put out by the Grant Wood AEA out of Iowa. I really like listening to there's my friend lens on them a lot. Like there's there's a whole bunch of the house of Ed Tech with Christmas. That's one of the originals. And what about yours?

You got to drop yours right now. Yeah,

shucks and GIF, which is like it's my last name's Giffen. So we're I was GIF and my old co host, Kim Polishchuk was shoots and that's what we call it. We're like, no one's ever gonna find this who's ever our goal was like, maybe we could do 50 episodes and get like 500 downloads or something. And I haven't checked it recently, but I think I was well over 25,000 downloads last time I checked, maybe it was, I don't know, but I never like I sort of stopped doing that after our first few and we're like, oh, wow, it says a lot of traction. And we would go to conferences and people be like that's a gift. I which is very strange to me, but very flattering to to know when I show up somewhere like oh, what are you gonna podcast again? I'm like, Oh my gosh, thanks for listening. So fresh air at five is another one that I really liked. Now, I don't know if Brian's still doing it. He's in BC to actually and he he listens to podcasts. And then everyday I five in the morning. He goes on a walk and his last like five minutes was walk. He just recaps in his in he does a little video. He used to post it on Twitter, the recaps. He goes okay, this is what I learned. And this is one thing that in a couple things just to help resonate. And so then you would know it's almost like, you know, Blinkist where they like read like 15 minutes of a book and it gets through. I call them the Blinkist podcast, you're like, oh, yeah, I want to listen to that one. That sounds interesting. So Brian does the work for us to weed out what I might want to hear.

That's great. I want to buy your platform is how Yeah, tell us just a little bit about your cuz you got a website and there's a few different links to different things. Maybe you could just share what that is. Yeah,

so I have virtual gift.com is where I am. It's my very neglected website. It's there. I do need to update it. And I always say we should update and then I don't. But I have I have a whole bunch of different things in there. So I have like my youtube channel when I when I post new videos I'm going to actually go to me Make sure I cover everything that I have there on my YouTube channel. So when I do instructional videos, I used to do a lot of those my old job and anytime anyone asked me, Can you show me how to do this? I don't think I think Done is better than perfect. So I will sometimes I really polished ones and sometimes be like me my hair up in a messy bun, like no fancy background and be like, Okay, here's what you're gonna click here. And I'm sharing my screen cuz I'm like, Well, if someone's asked me this, someone else might find it helpful. So I do a lot of those. I have some of my Ignite talks on there for like some talks that I've done via keynotes and that I have my sketchnoting, I run a sketchnoting course often, once a year, just learning how to sketch Note that you can do alongside students or for yourself, if it's something that you're interested in as an educator or otherwise, like I've had actually industry, people, friends, who have their like marketing people say like, Can they take the course? I'm like, Yeah, I guess. And like, most of my examples are education. But if they can transfer that, that's fine. I create an add on or to create a whole bunch of documents really quickly. So I'll link to that there. Because teachers are always asking me for that. They're like, How can I like if I want to, it's to use doc Appender, which is an extension that I love. But one of the things you have to do. How doc Appender works is you fill out a form and automatically for every kid, you check what you write on that form populates to their single documents, so you could share it with all their stakeholders, pretty cool. But you have to initially create all those documents for your kids, which if you have a class of 20, no big deal. But if you're following like hundreds of kids, as your guidance counselor or something like that, you're like, Oh, I can't create all these. So I actually decided why what am I like, I'm 40 I want to learn new things was I want to learn I'm using all these apps, I should really learn a little bit about scripting. And I don't really know about this, but like, let's go in posture syndrome, you know, extraordinaire, and so I learned and I did I call it Franken coding. I took some codes from everywhere, and it's like, okay, I want this from this and this and this. I basically, it's sort of like me with Portuguese. If you give me something in Portuguese to read, I can kind of read it because of my French and my Spanish, my Italian I took all those for school. But I'm like, I, I couldn't write you anything in Portuguese, but I can make sense of it. And that's what it was hence my Franken coding. But basically it what it does is it creates use you in a spreadsheet, right? All the kids names. It's nothing special. But it was something that I didn't I was pretty proud of given that I have like I'm an English teacher, right? It's not Yeah, sorry, thing, no resources. Like anytime I do a presentation, I like to just throw it up there because people are always like, Oh, do you have it? I'm like, yeah, just go to virtual gift.com. I'm big on sharing. I'm big on like, If anyone asks me for it for free, I will send it to them. It shouldn't be like education and reaching. Yeah, young minds might be cost prohibitive. It's just that's not fair. Yeah. I

love it. I love your energy. And I've been I've really enjoyed listening to you today. I've actually already as you were talking, typed a couple of things into my address bar there and Google to to make sure they can follow up. And I'll be listening again, as they go through it. So yeah, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge on tech. And yeah, I honestly really appreciate the enthusiasm and the energy that you bring to it. I think that's really refreshing. Because there is a lot of concern around chat GBT, GPT and just you know, all these different tech tools that are flooding the classrooms these days, or maybe not the classrooms necessarily, but teachers brains. So yeah, so thank you so much.

Yeah, thanks for having me. It was great. I love chatting. It's been a while since I have been on a podcast read on podcast and myself. So it's I do I love connecting with educators all around just to, to hear what other people are thinking and when, where people's heads are at right and how we can reach our kids. So thank you very much for having me.

You're welcome. And hopefully this will be a little inspiration for someone listening to set up their own podcast studio in their school. Because as a podcaster. I really appreciate that. It's great. Yeah, thank you so much, Jen.

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